my name is russell and i'm the chair of the community path implementation advisory committee on behalf of my fellow committee members like to welcome you here tonight to the fifth and a series of public engagement meetings with the town consultant on the community past few civilities study just before before we get started as i have it at their previous meetings i'd like to provide a little background on on where we are in this process was to procure a consultant on behalf of the town with a combination of town and state funds to to conduct a few civilities study on  after a competitor care to perform the feasibility study for us as a part of their proposal to the town par had proposed a very robust public engagement process as a part of the feasibility study and that process included a number of public engagement meetings and that's where we are where we are now as i mentioned before this is the fifth such meeting in the  first meeting was really a kick off and her direction to the process and the beginning of the effort to to define the criteria that will end up evaluating the various route alternatives the next three  at each of those meetings which many of you attended the consultant basically laid out what in their view was the very best alternatives for for  tonight what you'll see is a brief overview of really all the alternatives that they can propose at the previous three meetings to sort of set the stage of what we're looking at i think are some like forty six different alternatives at the at the end of the day that they're there now evaluate and in addition they will be presenting t you what is the sort of working draft of the evaluation matrix and the evaluation matrix is what is ultimately going to be used by the consultant  to make a recommendation about the various alternatives that will make up a route through through belmont so obviously it's hugely important to get public input and feedback on that on that  process through the course of the first four meetings of course you have been providing public impact public input and feedback on the on the development of that evaluation metrics and so so you know just to be clear there while the consultant has again presented their view of this sort of best versions of these alternatives there have been no decisions there have been no rankings there have been no recommendations at this point that is not where we are in the process we were sort of halfway there after after this meeting the consultant will take the public input received on that working draft of the matrix they will incorporate that feedback into it and then we will come back in the new year and they will be really going through the sort of same three part process that we went through before western central turn but they'll be really applying that more robust working draft matrix again with the public input incorporated to those alternatives that they previously presented to you over the past couple of months and that's really going to be the beginning of that sort of ranking recommendation process that will calm an aide in the consultant making a sort of final recommendation to the c pac and to the board of selectmen so that's that's really where we are i hope that's helpful contacts i know you know i've certainly seen a lot of you know  commentary outside of outside of the process which i personally think is really great i think it helped contribute to to a nice turnout tonight but you know among that as is typical there was i think misinformation and misinterpretation of what had been said so i just want to kind of clarify where we are as i'm sure the consultant will do in their prisons and the other thing i want to mention is just how how sort of what is useful feedback to and i you know first of all i think we should all keep in mind and so far i think it's really been great to this point throughout the process that you know we should be frame what my understanding of what the console is really looking for in terms of feedback is this it's not so much it won't be as useful feedback to say i prefer alternative and not alternative b that is that is not going to be a particular useful feedback for the consultant what will be useful feedback for the consultant is if you can think about what features what aspects d similarly what aspects of alternative b that you didn't like do you not like do do do you think will be will be negative features those are things if you can if you can identify those and articulate those for the console those are things that they can use when they are when they are refining the value evaluation matrix that we're talking about tonight so i don't urge you to think about those things as you're as you're contemplating what feedback thank you very much for us that was a perfect introduction and at least half of what i was about to say that is exactly where we are in the process we have developed all of the alternatives using the c pacs alignments as a base expanding on them in every area where there is an alternative we've tried to propose what we think the best option would be if the path of those go there we have not selected a path the matrix will help us select the path so tonight we're going to give an overview for anyone who hasn't been able to attend the past couple of meetings of all of the alternatives that are on the table in the various areas of the alignment we will then cover the hot topics that we've been hearing from the public through this entire process through these public meetings through the walks that we held along the path alignments through the various e mails we've received through geoffrey and through the input in the original workshop and the online survey then will show you how we're taking those hot topics and where they will be addressed whether they're going to be incorporated in an element of the matrix whether we're having the design of the path and what we are putting a cost estimate to reflect some of those issues and whether there are one or two things that need to be held off on a little bit there are a couple of things that have come up so far that will not be within the scope of the feasibility study they will be preliminary design oriented and will outline for you what all of those things are so as i said briefly i just want to start with a summary of all forty six alternatives as ross said that is the correct number let's define quickly the purpose of the study i know of you a quick overview of where we are but just to reiterate the purpose of it in the level of design that we are getting into i think that's always helpful so we're trying to recommend for the town a preferred alternative for a non motorized to use path through belmont for the residents of the town as well as to become a piece of the overall mass central rail trail that will span across central massachusetts and then we've added this bit in blue it's a little bit hard to see and to develop an evaluation process that ensures that the selected alternative is justified and that is essentially where we are in the process now let's make sure that matrix is everything it needs to be to adequately and accurately rank all of the alternatives we've prepared so this design is going to develop essential a conceptual level of alternatives in every area throughout the path the alternatives that the c pack had as well as the ones we've added in areas where us mentioned where there was either a shrink to pinch where we couldn't get quite get the offset m b t is requiring where there was a substantial property impact that we weren't expecting areas that the had those two features we've tried to come up with an additional turnit of that we can we're going to take those concepts and put cost estimates to them so that the town is aware ok this seems like a grand option but it is going to cost more so that we're fully aware of what every different alternative could cost the town and identify funding sources that could help pay for those different pieces and the different aspects of each of those alternatives and then a quick reminder from kathleen on our public  d and thank you russ because he covered a lot of this as a lot of you understand seeing a lot of familiar faces that have been here for all these meetings at the very first meeting the kickoff and workshop we  outlined the public engagement plan and that is an actual document it's online on the web site for this project and it includes the definition of what the engagement goal is and that is not to just inform you of what we're doing not just consult with you but actually collaborate with you and that is a really important distinction it was important to the town and it's important to our team and it has been a great exchange of information with you all it means that we're here to listen to you we're also here to take in that information and reflected in what we give back to you and hopefully tonight you're going to really start to see that reflection of what we've been hearing all along the other thing that it means is that we have certain rules responsibilities ours is to bring this professional unbiased evaluation we have the c p a act that's guiding us the board of selectmen will actually be  the the entity that will make the decision you all don't have we won't have a vote that's not what this is the board of selectmen has that power to accept or not accept what we end up recommending but your role is really important to guide us in what we're doing and as russ mention and and i we all attest to having seen this at every gathering we have had we want to promote respectful civil discourse that's your responsibility and ours and that's what we've been seeing really appreciated and we want everyone to really make sure that we have mutual understanding of everybody's viewpoints on this project so as we move through this conversation all the rest that will be important to continue to do ross also touched on this a little bit about where we are in this process so he mentioned that we started with a public meaning and a kickoff and a workshop and some of those workshop materials were online for everyone to view and partake in then we have had a meeting for the west section center section in the section and those are what's represented in these three boards over to your right additionally is amy mentioned we've had two site waltz one from the west end of town to the center from east to the center and those are just super well attended and very valuable to us and we're actually meeting number five right here and that is just halfway we just halfway we will have ross mention another set of four meetings west central east and the hot topics before we are even at the point i'm making a final recommendation which would be  meeting so attend meetings and we appreciate your patience there's going to be a lot of information presented tonight and it's a lot to take in and we hope that we have made it a simple is understood to understand these forty seven a let's get into it the sea pack originally had oh i meant on both north and south side of the rail all the way from the west end of town to the east end of town as i mentioned we've expanded on though so i won't go through everything they have been to what the alternatives are starting now so on the west end we start at the connection to all fam we can either come up through the beaverbrook reservation or continue east to waverly station if we go through beaverbrook we then come into the wooded area of the mcqueen woods and over through this reservation conservation land and come across either through was or at the north side a pleasant street if we get through waverly station then we would continue east and then we have an option to either switch to the north side or continue towards the d p w lot so i'm going to walk through those western alignments first as i mention as we start at waltham we will be on the north side of the track that's where this path will connect to their piece of the m c r t so we can either head into waverly station on that north side or we can divert into the beaverbrook reservation the original mint had the alignment in the beaverbrook technically still in will  fam and now with the data in the field work we've done crossing a fairly large like of what and so what we've proposed is to shift that area in the beaverbrook reservation a little bit to the east to make a shorter crossing of the wet one to pull the path actually into belmont and to make the shock sure of the boardwalk that we need to be produced within that wooded area a little bit simpler and a little bit less costly it also brings the path closer to this is marine street so this would be heading east towards waverly station this is heading up into beaverbrook this could make a nice connection to the community in that area near marine street and then extend into beaverbrook from there it would connect with one of the existing paths in the beaverbrook reservation however we'd have to widen that path it's currently about eight feet wide and you'll see later we're recommending one overall with sixteen feet paved so we have to widen that path but we would utilize that same alignment and then we approach propeller road and we have to cross it if we use this alternative the original turnitin from c pack was to cross mid block excuse me between ministry and waverley oaks we feel that that would be unsafe it has a little bit of limited visibility it has a lack of control for vehicles it's a low point in the road so it already has some drainage issues so we would move it instead to the waverley oaks inters so just to point that out on the map original are shifted to come through a short when crossing this is the utilization of the existing be rebooked path and then instead of crossing mid block here we would come up to the waverly oaks intersection and then cut down into the conservation land past that point we enter the fully wooded mature forested area the original meandered through that wooded area while that is possible from a running grade perspective to achieving a compliant no more than eight percent grade across it has a very steep cross slope so from one side of the path to the other there's a steep incline in that wooded area and there would require a wall of approximately on average twelve to fifteen feet so that would also be very costly that's a length of over a mile as an alternative we've presented taking that path and moving it closer to pleasant street not being directly adjacent like a sidewalk or shared use with the road but maintaining the wall that already exists there on the north side of pleasant street and putting the path adjacent to that but as you can see this is only about a three foot wall as i said in most areas that already exists so we be taking advantage of that existing infrastructure and we would not have to build as much it also makes this path more visible as fire and safety need to access this if there's ever an emergency and patrol it as they go along their usual patrol route it also lends itself a little bit to redevelopment along the pleasant street card so that was one of the turners we came up with if we do not head up the beaverbrook and across into the wooded area we would just continue east through waverly square access that station and then continue east from that point more direct less of a length but definitely some and how do we interact in get passed how do we traverse that waverley station area lexington street intra road so this is the option that could work with any of the alternatives heading east of there and truly as we mentioned at that meeting number two even if we don't pick the route that goes to waverly station we may want to build at least this connection to the station so it would go to waverly station the path would then split and either go down into the station vox as you can see here or come up to lexington so we'd be making that double connection connection to the roadway system and waverly square in the businesses that are there as well as connection down into the city so the original c pack alignment was to have the path itself be in the station box as an elevated platform over the transit platform so here you have the transit platform and the people waiting for the train and then you would have the bike path over it that was a sea pack alternative we think this would be the best for that to have at least part of our path be open invisible so the people on the path that will only be ten feet wide between the abutment of the station in that wall to have at least some sense of openness we've also raised the platform here to nine feet which is the maximum we can have and still get under the bridge clearances at lexington and trip so that way people on the platform if this is the  d have the most space alternatively we came up with an option of being at grade but trying to cross lexington st interpol road in the best way possible to take some of the vehicles off the road so you can see here we're showing bump outs that eliminate some of the parking just a couple of spaces not much but allow for a shorter and more visible crossing so the path would cross lexington meander through what we've proposed as a park using all of the space boxing over the existing station hole and then again to continue east on the other side this also gives more of a meeting place more of a sense of space a park near those businesses and some of the expansion that's going on there in the waverly square area along with this overall concept we have a conversion of church street to one way west movement which works with the existing bus circulation but allows for greater expansion of this if first some reason we run to complications with them and we can't build the park or for some reason cost prohibits it's a national construction although this is the ultimate goal the third alternative is to keep the existing box opening and build just those bump outs and enhanced crossings that were showing and we would come through the network cross through the existing wide sidewalk that is there between the parking and the station box and then use the bump outs to cross on the other side continuing east from waverly station we have two options we either go past a little bit of commercial land that's right there to the east and then buy white street grant street street some of the residents along those parcels and head into the yard so that would be heading purely east along the south side of the rail  alternative alternatively we could come out of the station area along the south side of the rail and cross there is an existing paper street that the town owns between the car wash in the adjacent building and then come to the north side of pleasant street ultimately that would tie into what we've identified is w five b the alignment that we were showing on the north side of pleasantry so that is everything from the western end so now continuing from there into the central area we've broken this down into four areas getting from the d p w to the clark street bridge what happens at the clark street bridge between current street in downtown and then what happens at downtown and you can see each of these four sections has multiple alternative so now you can start to see how we ended up with forty six total here's five plus four plus three plus four and every one of those can connect or switch to another at any link point clark street bridge be annoying point downtown being a link point so in that area between the d p w property and clark street bridge the forced alternative came from c pac and it was to run along the south side of the rail on the north side of people's properties we found that that alternative with the offset that we require from the m b t line would require direct impact to a couple of residential structures and shown much more detail to that alternative here that is more of an impact than anyone realized we thought we could get closer to the m b t a rail but they have requested a minimum fifteen foot offset with a wall separation but more preferably that to only be at a pinch point and for any running length which this would count as to be at a twenty five foot offset the second alternative that come up with was to enter the b h a parking lot and then come out of the parking lot to pearson road and then continue clarke lane up to the clark street bridge for that alternative we could be on pearson road here's a sample of how we would narrow a little bit of the pavement but maintain the one way travel in the on street parking and widen the sidewalk to accommodate the path similar would happen on clark lane we would be going to try to say this in a non confusing way we would be on the south side of clark lane on the north side of houses so there are some houses that face clark lane and then there are some houses that have their back end to clark and we'd be along the backs of those properties on the south side of the roadway however once we get up to the approach where clark lane comes to clark street we can't continue up there a compliant path it is currently a twelve percent grade and we can't go higher than an eight percent grade so we would have to do is for anyone that isn't aware of it right on the corner there one hundred four clark street is the house for individuals it's a two floor home with access on both the upper and lower floors we would have to sneak behind that building and then approach clark street either on a ramping structure if we want to cross grade with clark street or we would tunnel under clark street behind the existing abutment so that alternative exists and then the i'm sorry that was he won a b and c i just want to make sure i didn't miss anything oh i'm sorry i'm sorry i misspoke i'm sorry want to go back just a little bit see one i was actually on the north side of the tracks which is the same as what i was showing coming down from the woods from the mclean woods and on to the north side a pleasant street that becomes a c one and a as it approaches c one b is on the south side that would have direct impact to residential structures in c one c is the one along pearson could we get by the housing authority property without having those impacts to residential structures or having to overcome that twelve percent grade so the first alternative we came up with was to go around the housing authority to the south we would come down from the d p w lot to midland street and then out midwinter waverly continue up thomas and up clark street that would get us back to the clark street bridge that would require some narrowing of the roadways again as i mentioned similar to the pearson and clark lane options we would either maintain to a travel on waverly street and widen one sidewalk or this actually came up on one of our field walks potential to convert to a one way pair were waverley street would carry westbound traffic in beach street on the south side of town field would carry eastbound traffic so here's the other alternative showing one way traffic movement and an even wider sidewalk that could accommodate more a path users the other alternative if we don't go around the b h a to the south is to go around to the north so that became c one easy we would come out of the d p w property and then instead of going through the belmont housing authority parking lot to pearson road we would stay right along the rail at the north side of the parking lot and then cross the tracks to the south side of pleasant street so th takes away the requirement of a crossing of pleasant street itself but it would still put us on the north side of the tracks as we approach the clark street bridge so this wall would rise over the length of the parking lot you can kind of see a view of it here and people would park near the edge of that structure and then we would come across and this shows a cross section of the wall that would be needed to retain a new path on the north side so that's for this area here so those are all of the areas leading us from the d p w to clark street bridge at clark street bridge itself we can either stay on the north side if we want to be on the northwest and we want to be on the north east we could stay on the south side if we want to be on the south both west and corkscrew bridge or we could cross if we did decide that the best alternative is to make a transition from the the north to south or south to north unfortunately if we do cross the clarke street bridge there is an implication of that is requiring a vertical clearance over their tracks of twenty two feet six inches that bridge currently only has about eighteen feet of clearance so we need to raise that bridge at least four and a half feet unfortunately on the east side of the bridge clark street is already at an eight percent grade so we're not able to catch up to the road within a compliant grade there will be that four foot grade separation so what we're trying to show here is how would we account for that we would maintain clark street pass the access to the handicapped housing one hundred four carcieri as i mentioned previously put in a couple of parking spaces and then there would need to be a couple of stairs so this would be a wall approximately a four foot high wall to make up that great difference we would put a couple of stairs in this area to make access directly to anyone from the parking spaces to the path and then for anyone that needs an eighty eight compliant there would be a handicap spot that would then come down in an acceptable grade to join the path there is a little bit of a back movement if you're trying to cross clark street but that is the implication in the impact of crossing card street so if we are north and want to go south or for south or want to go north as i mentioned if we are north and want to stay north or are south and i stay south we can keep the existing clark street bridge and it would remain the connection that the town has now from the north side of the rail to the south side of the rail and we wouldn't have to worry about that interaction with the m clear this was just a brief picture we showed of what a reconstructed bridge could look like we'll get a little bit more into the design of bridges later moving on from that we're now in the area between the clark street bridge and downtown we could either be on the north side of the rail which goes along the police station and the municipal light building or we could be on the south side the original alternative was to be in the center of the royal roads woods so on the north side as i mentioned there's a little bit of a retention heading east of the clark street bridge it then quickly comes to be at grade with the rail and it goes behind both the police station municipal light building as the municipal building is currently undergoing a change of use we think that gives the opportunity to be have the path actually incorporated in whatever the reuse of this building is so you see this potential for maybe a back door and on ing some way that these people whether it may become a partner in building hotel whatever to have access to rectally to the path on the south side if we are in the center of the royal road woods we have significant separation from the rail which is very nice we also have good separation from the road the only drawback to this alternative is we have noted from both our research as well as our field reviews that there are wetlands in the bottom of this royal road would area so whether we traverse the entire length on boardwalk or accept impacts to the wet ones it would have to be one of the two we have not officially flagged the wet when so the extent of the impact is not fully known and won't be known until the preliminary design phase but we wanted to make sure we acknowledge the presence of the wet ones in that there will be need for either mitigation or avoidance of them since there is that significant potential for significant impact to what ones we tried to come up with an alternative in this area as well which was to take the path and instead of being in the center of the royal roads woods let's take it so it's up on the in bank mn as you can see here is royal road we would still maintain at least a six to eight foot landscape if possible mature tree separation to the roadway and then put the path up there on the embankment as i said that would allow for some potential of a park like space if that is the desire of the town that brings us to downtown  thank you for bearing with me so far we have a little bit further to go downtown there are several challenges with the interaction with the roadway network there with the fact that the town just did an improvement so we don't want to redo or remove anything that was just constructed and then again there are the options to stay north to the north side of the track to stay south to south or to change from north to south or south to north this being another linking connection point so the first alternative we came up with was to stay on the north side of the tracks if we come in from the north near the light building and we want to head out on the north towards the belmont citizens form property and then we just stay level with the rail elevated above the roadway network and we have room to construct a nice park space that would provide a access down to the roadway in the downtown area for all of the shops and businesses in that area it also provides an opportunity for people from the south using the existing sidewalk network to then get up to the path at this location alternatively if we are on the south side of the rail and we want to switch to the north side one of the options is to take the existing station access tunnel and widen it and shorten it so right now it is about seven feet wide and i'm not actually positive the length but it used to go under the existing fitchburg line rail and the old rail that the right away is still intact for but the rail is no longer in place so now that it doesn't need to go under the second rail we would pull back then in bank mn to try to make this as open as possible to give it more natural light give it more open have people in the underpass for less like so that would come out of the roads woods through the tunnel access again would have access to the downtown area and then would ramp up since we're now on to the rail we would have to ramp up over this distance to get to the existing overpass and continue east alternatively if we were going to use one of the options on the south side of the rail continuing east then we need to get down the concord ave there are three ways to do that alignment is coming in on the north side then we need to go under the existing concord underpass and then cross the street likewise if we are on the south side coming out of royal road towards and we're going to continue down concord out of we would not necessarily need to widen this area under the bridge although it provides better access for communities to the businesses up leonard street we would still need to cross so the potential for a signalized intersection here with higher visibility pavement and traffic control to allow that path to either come from north to south or to continue south to south and then finally if we want to come either from north to south or south to south in don't want to cross concord out of which means we would not continue down concord of we would move to the south side of the rail we would require the switch back it's actually a double switch back so there's the single switch and then the double switch that takes you from either the north side or the south side up to being right at the south side of the rail and then we would continue behind the flower shop in the post office and that's where we're going next so continuing east we have three options as i mentioned on the north side of the rail on the south side of the rail or along concord ave so if we are on the north side of the rail just east of downtown there is the belmont citizens farm property however there is one property before that and is the coldwell banker building that we would need to skirt past in order to get to the belmont citizens form property so here you can see we could accommodate our recommended  would need to over a short twenty five foot length need to pinch down to a minimum path offset a minimum path with which is shown here and then we would open back up to our recommended with an alignment on the belmont citizens f property on the south side of the rail we have to go past as i mentioned the garden excuse me the flower shop in the post office that has a minimum offset from the rail but can accommodate the recommended path with and then here you see the representation of a structure that's either the flower shop or the post office and then we get to a series of commercial properties that currently have parking that is almost always fully used so we feel like we can impact that parking without potentially closing one of those businesses so to maintain those parking lots behind the commercial buildings we would have to reduce to a minimum offset to the rail and a minimum path with i just want to point out on the south side while the north side only has a twenty five foot pinch this pinch a fifteen foot offset to the rail behind the flower shop and post office and then commercial buildings totals an eight hundred foot shrug it's about four hundred feet the minimum offset recommended path and then it's another four hundred fifty feet at a minimum offset minimum path that may or may not be acceptable to and bta it seems to be more than just a pinch as we continue east as i mentioned we then access the belmont citizens form property so here there is space for the recommended path with landscaping on both sides barriers whether it be a fence or other to the rail and to the property and it could me under a little as there's an offer i'm here to do so this is actually i just want to point out you can see right away line there may be faintly this is a property and then the belmont citizens farm property so there are actually two parcels there that are making up the available space for the path as we've heard several times from the community there may be desire to have more separation from the path from a bonding properties so we've added since the last couple of meetings an option to have walls on the about or sides between the about hers in the path while on the south on the version here where we maintain the existing buffer between the about hers and the rail and the mature trees that exist today that wall would not be very tall if this mature tree area is removed and a variation is put in place the wall becomes taller we have not had a chance yet to talk to the police but we will make sure that they are ok with this before we move farther with it just because if they are patrolling on their standard route this may limit some of the visibility they would have of the pa from channing road on the south side if we continue past the post office and past those commercial properties we then enter the high school property which for anyone who isn't aware has already been approved by m s p a to be reconstructed so the alternative originally from c pack was to be on the north side of the high school property right along the south side of the rail that would look like this first we come behind the high school building so here is the high school building there's an existing drive behind the building that we would want to maintain it would require a short wall and then we could get our recommended offset from rail and recommended path with as we continue farther east we maintain that offset path with and we skirt past the tennis courts since m s p is accepting the school as a reconstruction then we think there is also the opportunity and this is an added alternative to be intermingled with the reconstruction of the high school campus here's just a brief rendering that kathleen came up with of what a potential high school reconstruction could look like maintaining the pond and utilizing the sizes of the existing fields and the approximate size of the existing building structure and parking lot but you can see how the path doesn't need to stay at the south side of the rail but could become incorporated into that and possibly make a better connection to neighborhoods on the south side of the high school the final alternative that the sea pack had was to run along concord avenue so if the path runs along concord avenue what we recommend is a reconstruction of the entire roadway for its length from downtown to underwood street to keep all of the vehicular traffic together to take the existing two lanes one eastbound and one westbound on street parking on each side and condense them to one side of the road that's what's shown here with the gray pavement that fits essentially in the existing area south of the current median so the area north of the current median becomes available for the use of the path if the path goes down conquered avenue so this is what we're showing  utilization of that area which is a minimum of thirty three feet wide the path could have it's recommended with meander a little bit have trees and landscaping and then would connect starting at this point so here is the flower shop in the post often those couple commercial buildings i was talking about and then just east of those would connect to the reconstruction of the high school property and then the park space that already exists in front of the pond and then the path would come up underwood street and use either hidden your street to get back to brighton street or would go behind the crate escape building and then come out to brighton street at that back area alternatively so at the east end if we're on the north side of the rail or the south side of the rail as we start her pro choice brighton street there's a pinch there's the french mahoney property on the north side and there's a crater scape building on the south side we do have just enough with on the north side to fit the recommended offset in the minimum path on the south side we can't quite fit that without impact to the crate escape building so since we have that tight restriction and potential impact that are currently owned by private developments we looked at is there something else we could do is there another connection we could make so similar to the central area where we went down midland to make a connection the town field we looked at going up sherman street making the connection to the when work elementary school and then coming back down brighton street so similar to what was shown previously for the waverly thomas clark option this would narrow the existing pavement and widen the sidewalk the eastern end of this project has two links similar to the central one is the alexander av crossing and one is bright and st so when we get to each of those points we could either stay on the north side of the track stay on the south side of the track or utilize it to make a transition from one to the other the first option here shows staying on the north side keeping the path itself on that combination of the citizens form property and creating an underpass to connect the south side communities and the high school to the north side communities and the path and then here's a rendering of what that could look like alternatively we could have the path continue and not depress itself use a switch back and make the connection to the high school property this would also work if the path was on the south side and it would work if the path was on conquered avenue and then finally there's an option for if the path is on concrete avenue there would just be a straight underpass very similar to what exists along the minuteman at york city road no matter what underpass is made we feel it's important to make the connection from the alexander underpass area to concord of so that the resources along concord have including the pool in the library in the music school and the neighborhoods down here have that connection to neighborhoods at the north to the school itself into the path if it ends up on that north side of the track final piece you've made it this far final piece once we get to brighton street we either have to cross that road and rail at grade or we can try to grade separate the path from those two potential conflicts of the rail and the vehicles that exist there so as i mentioned on the north side we either skirt past the french mahoney building at grade with a minimum path with a minimum offset or on the south side we have a minimum offset and since we have to hit the creative building anyway we would make our full recommended path with and then we would increase the pavement set back the stop bars and widen the sidewalks to make this crossing of the rail and the roadway as visible to vehicles on the roadway as possible alternatively we came up with two grade separated options one is if we are on the north side and we continue to the  cut off path and one is a for on the south side and continue to the fitchburg cut off path if we're on the north side the the path would elevate to approximately a sixteen foot elevation cross break in three only and then touch down on the existing cut off path if we're on the south side then the structure itself needs to go over both the rail and brought in street simultaneously meeting that twenty two and a half foot clearance that m b t a requires so that would be a taller s sure interesting way this does not end up being a longer structure because the structure on the north side would need to elevate to its clearance prior to the french mahoney building so it would be at a sixteen foot height past the french mahoney property over brighton street and then come back down and the two of these structures and that being close to the same length those are all of the alternatives that are on the table as we mentioned many of them came from c pac i've tried to identify the ones that we've added since then now we want to get into a discussion first a little bit of a presentation and then discussion and input from you all about the hot topics that we've been hearing through all of the public and gauge what we've done so far from the meetings we've held from the walks we've had and from various emails that geoffrey's received and forwarded to our team these are the things that we find are the biggest hot topics that interest you and are important to you and therefore are important to us to be incorporated in or considered in the evaluation of the path so path access and length a sensually where are the connections how frequent are they and what is the directness of the route to get from one resource or access point to another crossings roadway crossings and rail crossings are important what do they look like how do they feel to the user what kind of grades do they have and what kind of separations do they have proximity to vehicles has been extremely important to everyone where are we crossing roadways how close are we to traffic when we're adjacent to a roadway i would like to point out that none of the alternatives we've presented are on road they are all off road but some of them do have closer proximity to moving traffic than others so that has become a very important  to residences has been an ongoing issue and we'd like to point that out i think i keep bringing this up more than you but whether there needs to be a dedicated bike space versus a complete into mingling of all users edge treatments meaning what kind of landscaping are we putting in and where is it located is it close to the path this is a little bit farther from the path to give more of an open area are they high trees low bush has that type of element path amenities which kathleen continues to harp on where do we want parking where we want parks where do we want bike racks where we want water fountains and how many of them should there be and then the final one that we continue to hear is how is this path going to operate once it's in existence what are the hours of operation going to be is it going to be lit or is it not going to be lit or people who live adjacent to it going to be disrupted by people trying to take their existing parking or will permit parking be employed so this is everything we've heard to the extent possible we're going to try to address all of this within our study there are a couple that are beyond the scope of a fuse ability study so just to outline here what's being addressed in the next phase of our study and what will continue in the preliminary design path access in length roadway and rail crossings proximity vehicles and proximity to residences are all elements within our expanded matrix which kathleen we'll get in more detail in a little bit there's an overlap here we're addressing a couple of these things in more than one way roadway and rail crossings proximity to vehicles proximity to residences dedicated bike space edge treatments and path amenities are all to the extent possible going to be captured in what we consider our typical design and what we are going to be putting in our cost estimate over the next couple of months and then finally there are a couple of elements that are be on the scope of our feasibility study at least to some extent edge treatments whether the edge of the path in a particular area has a wood fence or chain link fence or wall can't really be decided officially until a path is selected so that is something that we are going to look at all of the options that exist we're going to cost we're going to incorporate into our cost estimates the more costly option to make sure that the town is aware of what the maximum amount of funding request may be and the conversation of where walls are and where fences are will need to continue in the preliminary design phase once a path is actually selected at a typical per mile basis based on history of paths that kathleen and i have designed and then the conversation of specific locations in the town of belmont will carry over to the preliminary design phase hours and lighting and permit parking really won't be captured within the feasibility study at all because the hours of the path doesn't affect the feasibility of one alternative versus another they don't really play into making one option differ from another however lighting carries a substantial cost so we will give the town across estimate of if the path is lit for its length this is what the cost would be so that can either be added or not included so as i said kathleen in a few minutes we'll get to the matrix elements i right now want to show you how our typical design and what we're including in our cost estimate over the next two months reflects all of these elements that have been identified as increasingly important to the town the first is roadway crossings in vehicle proximity we've clearly heard that there is a desire to have distinct separation from chaff and that you don't just want to bunch of glorified sidewalks there's a desire to minimize the number of roadway and driveway crossings however many of the alignments do you have some roadway crossings some of them do you have driveway crossing so in any area where an alternative has a roadway crossing we're going to make sure that the cost we put to that crossing includes a signal if it doesn't already exist pradesh improvements including highly visible pavement indicators and pushbuttons and that includes the crossings that propel oh road lexington street pleasant street concord avenue in brighton street so any alternative that crosses those roads will carry a cost for a highly visible signalized crossing rail crossings that happen on bridges we've heard several times that we want their bridges or underpasses to be as open and visible to the user and to the surrounding as possible so that users on the path have that level of comfort that they're not enclosed or confined and it was brought up to us that if you are going to rebuild the corkscrew bridge or build another bridge in town why not look to the history of the clark street bridge so the original clark street bridge was what's called a pony truss it was originally boxed in but it doesn't need to be however this has a lot of construction to it as far as material as far as weight and it has more of an enclosed feeling we would rather switch to a more open truss something that could either be topped or not topped have less material and therefore less cost and give more of that open desirable feeling also we've heard that warning steep grades are undesirable that you have small kids trying to learn how to ride bikes that are going to be on this you have elderly people it obviously snows here in the winter so it may be a little slippery during certain times of the year and for anything that is eight percent we have to have that variation of eight percent grade flat section eight percent grade flat section which the biking community has identified as cumbersome so we're looking to put a cost at a  five percent max running slope i wanted to point out at this point somebody asked about slope and what a five percent slope looks like and what an eight percent slope looks like so we brought a level with us the ramps in  aisle ways in this auditorium are eight percent so this is an eight percent grade if you were going to walk it if you were going to ride it on a bicycle i also using the contours we have for the town for the project looked at some of the of various roads throughout town just to give you a little more frame of reference so in addition to these ramps clark street as it approaches the bridge is an eight percent grid royal road in the area between clark street in downtown as a six percent grade so that is the closest i could find to what a five percent grade would feel like so if you have ever walked along royal road that is close to a five percent grade but still just a little bit steeper pleasantry is it past the star market and continues eastward is about a three percent grade and then just to think of something a little more extreme concord on the west side a pleasant street so if you're heading west of downtown after you continue from the underpass you cross pleasant and you continue t ten percent grade so that is steeper than anything we would be proposing even even an eight percent grade so just to give you a little bit of perspective the only area where we will still carry some eight percent grade is the ramp that i showed that runs along the north side of the belmont housing authority parking lot because if we go to a five percent grade that structure would extend into the d p w and we want to make sure that anyone in the housing authority is allowed to access that with how leaving their community going into the d p w and then trying to get on the path so using the combination of eight percent ramps and level areas that would touch down at the western edge of the housing authority and allow them t rail crossings underpasses again desire to be open and visible so the underpass that we proposed at the alexander is twenty feet wide which is a sixteen foot path plus a little bit of distance on the edges because most people don't ride right up against a wall and it would be ten feet tall it is a little over fifty feet in length in order to get under the two rail tracks in the drive  needs to require for their access and maintenance again for perspective excuse me at least some people are aware of the york city road underpass along the minuteman it shown here is currently eleven feet wide so we would be almost double the with of this opening this is currently a little over seven feet tall so we'd be about one and a half times the height of this opening and this is fifty four feet in length so lengthwise it be like this so i hope you can see from this picture it is a little small you can see on the other side of the tunnel from one end to the other it's a relatively short or underpass keeping with that desire to have open invisible path although this didn't come up specifically as a hot topic we wanted to extend it to all areas of the path so within the wooded area there was originally a concept of that cross slope has as i mentioned about a twelve to fifteen foot gray difference do we split that between two walls or do we keep it as one wall with the desire to have an openness we think it's better to just do one tall wall which allows the path itself to be directly a gent's against the wooded area instead of having a wall on the side and a fence on the side we think that gives it more of an openness and as i mentioned if the police to fire the rescue ever need to get at it they have one path to get to it without having a wall on both sides of the path the next hot topic was proximity to residences we've heard from many people that are butters want path users to continue moving and not linger close to their homes so there was an area where we were originally showing this path along the alexander of underpass we're also showing a park area in the depth of the royal roads woods perhaps those aren't good areas to have park benches the water fountains areas where people would stop and meet and talk so we haven't changed this rendering but we understand that will cost just a str here with low for the visibility perspective low landscaping along both sides and not put any benches or water fountains in areas like this close to residen so my question of dedicated bike versus an intermingled space we have heard from both walkers and bikers that it is on comfortable on some paths they've been on where all of the users are shared in one space where the bikers are trying to go fast and there's a series of people who either don't hear their bell or hear the bell and don't move anyway and then the biker has to try to swerve and hopefully not hit a tree that we just planted next to the path as well the feel that they are a little uncomfortable with people zooming by them trying to make their commute to work trying to make sure they're not late so we are going to incorporate at meetings previously we had to find a fourteen foot path for the volume of users with the designation of space for bikers separate from slower moving traffic or pedestrians we're going to widen that just two feet to a sixteen foot space and that allows for a separation of use that has a slight fifteen percent increase in the pavement and the excavation however any structure or bridge an underpass a retaining wall will not increase that same proportion the retaining wall changes very minor to support a sixteen foot with instead of a fourteen foot with and then there was some desire kathleen was asking if there was interest in a spur path in addition to this multi use path to have more of a natural feel natural running surface or of a like nature enclosed area so here's an example we found that we think could serve well we would maintain our sixteen foot paved with but then essentially just wide in the shoulder whether this becomes grass or becomes a little bit of gravel as it wears and accommodate a wide shoulder adjacent to the path so it's a minimal change in cost because we're really just adding four feet of grass shoulder not additional paved space edge treatments and amenities as i mentioned will continue to be talked about and conversed and pinned down in the preliminary design  however at this point what we've been hearing is it's the greatest experience for users on the path if the a budding landscaping and separation to adjacent properties is not right along the path edge but rather s back and put close to the property line so that's what we're showing here and that's what we intend the cost there will be some barrier on both sides to adjacent properties there also be landscaping to the extent that it can be accommodated within that additional space we do need to maintain at least a two foot on your shoulder with no landscaping no planting as i mentioned earlier whether it's a fence or tree a solid barrier we will be costing the highest option to make sure the town is fully aware of the maximum costs that may come from the path and then for placement of amenities that will be based on an average quantity per mile per previous projects kept and i have worked on those of the elements that were included within the design and will be incorporated in our cost now kathleen is going to walk you through how we've expanded the matrix from the simple five categories you've seen previously to our current nineteen to reflect the concerns and important elements from the thank you amy amy lost her voice this week so she deserves big kudos for sticking it in there all that time as it's a it's a lot of information and we really appreciate everyone's patience while we go through all of that because it's a lot to take in so when asked me about the board's outside and hopefully they understand how complex this is and then we hope that we are  pouring out the information in a way that you can absorb it we're going to get into a very important part of this conversation russ touched on it when he opened up the meeting and it's the matrix and the matrix is the tool that this team is going to use to do the evaluation for each one of the alternatives that amy just went through and so it's a really important part and it's a really important part of this ongoing conversation and  we had at the workshop which is a series of it was several boards forty five different criteria they were broken into different types of categories environmental or land use and that type of thing and then everyone was asked to put a dot where they thought it was important maybe less important most important and we got lots and lots of input and it was a great place to start this part of the process  and so we got that him put and it said everything's pretty close to important despite despite expecting really highs and lows there weren't  any except for a few there were particularly interesting pocket parks adult parks good but most important and they were a strong was community connections and high recreational value that's great input so we continued and at these series of three meetings we condensed those forty five to just five groups i'm going to go back to just five categories this was really hard for a wonder at their brain around but it gave us a tool to be able to start the conversation say look what happens when we start to apply a matrix to an alternative and everyone got to start to see these numbers and see how they play out and that was really really important because we got great feedback from a that makes no sense this makes a lot of sense hey wait a minute what about safety and we heard all of that and that was really great because we use it utilizing forty five criteria in a matrix against these alternatives is not a productive way of going about this let's hone down the matrix and so from that exercise we heard again community connections whoops keep using the communicate connections high quality recreation safety and lots of definitions of safety and so this feeling like how important is cos because we wanted to be right and that was great feedback if we can get the funding let's get the funding to do this the way we really really want it to be done so that is what we've been starting to hear so this is where we've been and this is what we used as a tool and this is where we're heading  so these criteria are based on the community input we've been hearing and from the past community input as well so we have the old surveys we've seen them we've read them we have all the comments we've read every one of them we have all of the emails that you've sent and thank you very much for forwarding they all got to the entire team and we had this input that is ongoing from you and this is been really really important so we now have a list that is draft of these of these criteria there are nineteen of them there we go there's nineteen of them and generally speaking there is going to be a five point system for each alternative each one of the these criteria can have a range of one to five actually zero to five zero would be zero points would be given if there is a fatal flaw and i will describe what that just a minute one point would be the low the lowest or negative assessment when we evaluate them three points would be more medium or neutral meaning it doesn't really apply and five points would be high or the maximum positive evaluation so five is good one is bad zeros a fatal flaw two to four is where we have those gray areas somewhere in between so i'm going to walk through now each of the criteria and talk about what they mean and we'll do this and then at the end we really want your input on these criteria so let's walk through them the first one is all about user experience very important from what we've heard and we have three categories here ease of access and by that we mean are there ramps you have to go around things to get up the directness of the route how easy it is get to the pa does this alignment allow for a good views or allow for plantings or does this alignment is nothing but to concrete walls next to us and comfort which is really important to a lot of people is it going to be a place that's really noisy or really polluted and will i have a comforts in my personal space when i'm in on this path the next category is environmental and cultural impacts so if any how much impact does this particular alignment have on wetlands for example or on historic resources let's say the beautiful historic bridge downtown or mature woodlands new large stands of old tree forests the next categories design attributes the first criteria under that this is important to point out actually i'm going to pause we had probably thirty different design attributes and when we went back to that big long list of forty five we we had to admit to ourselves we're going to make all these paths they're all going to be handicap accessible so that's not going that we don't need to evalu that they're all going to be multi multi multiple use paths so there are lots of design criteria we're going to meet all of the codes no matter where the path is so all of those things will be done no matter what so this list uses different attributes that differentiate the alternatives so one of them is encroachments this is been very important and we've had a lot of conversations about this amy pointed out a number of the alignments that have encroachments so zero points would be given to any path whose alignment must hit a path a private residential home in order for that path to be there that would get to zero if the path would hit another structure not private residential but some other structure it would only get to one if the path would encroach on a private residential property get it to if it crosses any other type of profit private property would get a three if we need to just have a construction easement but in the end no one would be on the property would be restored to its existing conditions you would get a four and if there are no encroachments you could get a five so this is what we currently have under that criteria the next one is fire and safety we've met with fire and safety personnel it's important for them to be able to see the path to be able to view the path patrol it and get to it in the case of an emergency so for each alternative we will be evaluating is this what are the views like for patrolling how remote is it how long would it take to get to any point on this path and rank it appropriately and potential partnerships does this particular alignment mean that we can have a partnership in the maintenance of this path or a excuse me land acquisition for the path is there some partnership that is gained by having it in this particular place the next one hundred design attributes is distance to residential structures this wasn't in the original forty five but it's really important to this community so not only do we have the category of whether or not we hit a house or cross  partnership a property but also this category which says almost every alignment that we have passes a parcel that is residential that's the town we pass a lot of homes in the alignments that we're studying so we want to clarify if the path is actually over fifty feet away that means something different than if it's just ten feet from somebodies home and so to cordingley you know to zero to ten eleven to twenty that the further away we get a higher score the closer you get it would get lower and lower under transportation which is the next topic we have  complex safety is really really important and now we've addressed it in we've broken it out in a number of different ways we took comfort and put it under user experience and how people feel not personal space we put the fire and safety remoteness and viewing it under fire and safety which i just went over and this is all about vehicular conflicts and so i want to walk through these because this is really really important we're talking about  cars and trains so not just cars and we fully understand that the off road is a preference of the community and that's been a preference and supreme via surveys and for many many years now so if if there are over five driveway crossings within a five hundred linear feet of the path that would get a zero because it's just not safe at that point too many conflicts between a path user and a car if the the path is in the road like a bike lane which i don't know if we have any few right under  i think we have one that gets one if there are mid brought block crossings or if there's an at grade rail crossing it would get a two if there is a signalized intersection crossing some ones that amy just discussed but it's at a very heavy traffic intersection if the path is immediately adjacent to the road i think amy mentioned it as a glorified sidewalk and or if it's just that minimum of fifteen feet from the path for a sustained period of time from the rail excuse me for sustained period of time any one of those scenarios would get a three if it's at the signal d crossing at a low volume intersection or it is at twenty five feet away from the rail but it's still a long rail it would get a four and if there are no or very few conflicts with rails and it's not immediately adjacent to the rail at all it would get a five in this category also in transportation we have come to the to destinations whether the resources business is a man these transit ease of universal access again the directness of the route but also how many challenging the quality and the challenge of the access for the handicapped and are there is just so many ramps and will evaluate that consistency with regional plans will evaluate each path according to how consistent or not they are with the ems c r t wayside trail to the fitchburg cut off path that heads into l life which is really we're saying that the relative directness of the path of the alternative and then we've also added the impact to existing transportation and traffic does this alignment create a large impact whether good or bad to the existing traffic flow or transportation in the community the last topic is cost and in that is the range of construction costs so the next step in our process is doing a cost estimate for each one of these alignments and then you'll have a relative cost breakout and they'll receive points accordingly the relative operations and maintenance costs so we will also give a range of price cost for that and that will get points whether or not a particular path alignment can qualify for various forced funding sources and that will be rated as well and then we have this category called value added which means that a particular alignment might get a higher state high score in this category if there's a high community value despite its cost that is added by this particular path alignment the one station is capping over waverley station one that comes to mind it's going to cost a lot but there's a really high value that would be added to the community for that one so might get a higher score as well a low score might be given in this category to a path that's easy to build the cheapest one out there but it has it's sort of a negative overall community impact and three will be that it's neutral on this topic so it's a lot to take in there we're going to keep going i want to scribe to what i meant by fatal flaw so the fatal flaw is when a proposed alignment is completely incompatible with the guidelines we've set community interests the goal codes any of those pieces and they would receive a score of zero and receiving that score of zero in some of what you've just seen and what i presented means that they will not be considered for a route so recommended route what is that that means when we start stitching all these together will start coming up with recommended routes for the whole length of the study if there is a fatal flaw that that segment alternative will not be considered for that route so falls off the table r four a high quality rutland if we're making that level of an impact that will be a low fatal flaw if the maintenance for an alignment is physically in feasible to keep it safe whether it be because of access or because of its alignment that's a fatal flaw and if there is an excessive number of required roadway or driveway crossings conflict points that i mentioned if there's more than five within five hundred linear feet that's a fatal flaw that we've identified and again all of these points are up for your input last thing that i want to touch here relative to the matrix itself is the fact that we've certainly heard from everybody and amy really did a good job pointing out everything we've been hearing from the community and some pieces of these criteria have risen to the top and some we think we've heard have fallen to the bottom and the big part of tonight in the input we'd like to get from everybody is which ones seem to float to the top that you feel should have a multiplier that should be weighted more than something else so while they're all important you might feel ok this is a good list of nineteen but really some things we've been hearing so far and we'll see if you agree is user experience that's most important if we one half maybe three who knows that's for you to tell us conductivity to destinations really really important you know that's a two times two and a half you know what are we talking about and the one that we've heard  we've heard both sides but we have heard a lot of people saying cause should not be what's driving these decisions maybe that's point seven five and it's not the way it is have so these are the things we want you to think about and to give us your input on tonight the last thing that we're going to just touch on briefly is what i described a minute ago about a route our next step is going to be linking these things after we've evaluated them and they've come up with scores and we've had our next set of meetings we're going to need to stitch these together and does and that that would look like something like this here's an example so on the west side you know all of these stitched together that would be a route all of these stitched together that would be another route that's what i mean by route so when you come up and try to stitch all of these things together what makes one group better than another route and we want you to start thinking about this and also provide us input on it we have some things for example if it's a fully fatal flaw it's not considered for a root there's going to be some total possible school or ninety five one hundred twenty there's got to after we decide what the matrix is and what how it's weighted they'll be a maximum score you know is there some percentage seventy five percent that's a fail  as a fail what should that be and then when and then determine what those high ranking alternative alignments are to then stitched together so some of the things to think about that we have up here  does one high ranking alternative connected to one that's a little lower make the little lower one better or vice versa that's more complicated than forty seven right does links that amy was mentioning the link downtown the link at clark the link at waverley the link at alexander av and at brighton do they weight the same as the stretches the lengths in between them lots to think about we have our thoughts but tonight we want yours i'm going to put this up here for now but i'll hand back over  arts that's everything we wanted to present to you now we want input kind of give a little bit of an intro and kathleen's talked about a lot more you see in the one thousand components we have incorporated in our matrix and the elements that we think should weight higher in lower within that we want to hear from you if those jive with what is important to you with what you think this path should be and how it should be weighted and then if you have input i'm actually going to go back to this one about this evaluation and determination of routes as we said there are forty seven individual components in when you get to clark street you can go down left right you can basically connect to anything on the east side of it from anything on the west side of it so the number of combinations is easily over one hundred we can't just start to do it would be and less process so we need to find a way to categories what is important and how we create those stitched together routes as we put all of these alternatives together so we did this at the last meeting i think it was very helpful and it would be beneficial if we did it again tonight we have a microphone at the edge aisle so if you don't mind just coming to a microphone to make sure that your comments are captured on the record this is being videotaped by the media so we'd like to make sure everything is heard incorporated and just be conscious about time if the line starts to accumulate to make sure everyone has a chance to be heard and again if you don't have a chance to be heard or you don't like speaking in public please email jeffery he is  very good about forwarding everything to me as soon as he gets it and then our team has a chance to review everything that is sent that way as well go back and forth so you were there first i mean what thank you and your team for excellent presentation and it looks like a lot of hard work went into valuating really detailed options for our community appreciate that you have a question and a comment my comment is and leonard street so those are three areas that i get very concerned about it in terms of crossing at grade even if there is a light i've seen motorists  particularly at the underpass the idea of narrowing now not and cramming bikers pedestrians and making out two lanes just does not seem like a very workable solution particularly when we have plenty of room in the bridge overhead to separate bikers estrogens i also like the idea that you've added of having a wider area so that bikers and pedestrians can be separate one of the issues on minuteman path is it's gotten so popular that there have been more collisions between bikers and pedestrians in pets actually so i think that's an excellent idea question i have is actually more for ross i appreciate the assumptions that you're making that the community should have approached this with what's the best option assuming get funding but i wondered about if we see now of the state is getting crunched with budgets and federal government who knows where that's going to come out is this something where we go and they select are you sure you've presented an option and the select may go in a vote on it and they say yes it's good and then we find out that the funding sources have dried up there for this very expensive and nice bells and whistles path well that that's no longer or can we go back and say well what are the ways that we could shave the costs off of this thing given that we have  limited funding do you want to answer that or do you want me to ok as they all across that we're compiling we will have the grand option but as i showed just for an example that we really we think it would be great to box over and to build the park there but if the park is extremely costly if the funds are a little hard to get can we at least get the bump outs and what is the slightly scaled back this still gets us th same user safety the same connection the same route is there a way that we can either phase this for cost or a way that we can phase the implementation so that that was i think the only alternative i didn't show was we showed the grand option for concord out as well but if funding is limited temporarily and we need to go to the state or we need to go to d c are for two rounds of funding can we take what exists on concord out of and put something there that would be temporary while we go back for more funding to build something elsewhere or to improve on the concord of option whichever option becomes the heaviest there there are bike lanes so what wasn't shown was there is a very low cost option of concord out to just take the existing parking lane in the existing bike lane and flip flop them so that you are at least taking your bike space and protecting it from traffic with the separation of the parking light that could help implement  together our cost estimates we will try to identify all of those to the  town my name's william messenger i'm really impressed with this process and i commend you thank you i also thought that vehicular interaction was under waited and so i'm responding to your question i would think it should be probably triple weighted compared to normal is one i would think it and i'd also suggest that another fatal flaw would be if there is any possibility for a vehicle to block the path without crossing some kind of barrier so so for instance a lot of you know the lanes we have now the bike lanes along cockade avenue you can park in them and they kind of assume that people will park properly but i think it's a fatal flaw because people always double parked or block them and then  fall into the category of we would never design it that way so the fatal flaw and i think we'll make a note of it but some some fatal flaws or bad design engineering that's great to hear about the other i thought you said there was possibly want to live with that would be on the street and so that would seem like if you ever on the street somebody could always just park and in the path i was going to say so that the only option we have is concord out which we're looking at as is there a temporary  solution that can be put in place till we get to funding for a better and that would be the swapping of the parking lane in the bike lane that is the only one that is a bike area on a paved road way all of the others are up on the curb separated from the road off the road separated by landscaping in their own space so that is the only one we're only considering it is a temporary option but that is good input so there is potential the signage is asking for best friends to walk on the left so that there so that nobody gets dragged up behind you know i'm just saying is that is that considered for designers of beyond the scope of this that's a little beyond the scope of this that will be addressed in the preliminary right now we're just trying to make sure we have the with for it but yeah that's and we actually designed the bike path but that was the point of it so that you're seeing the traffic that's coming at you and not still having someone whizzing by you even though you're in your own space thank couple concerns which i think you are addressing but i just would like to be on the record bikes and vehicles to not mix and temporary solutions have a tendency to become permanent solutions so i'm highly concerned about concord ave for some very personal reasons i'm some of you may have seen the cute photo of my son in the belmont citizen herald in october in his red shirt his red shorts and his red cast after he'd been hit twice in one week by cars while on a bicycle and we are fortunate that he's not dead and so i wrote what happened to him and i gave be the picture to the citizen herald to print i think one death is too many deaths and we've seen by deaths and i just think cars and  bikes never mix so he was hit on concrete street and a few years ago my daughter who is a student at the high school at the time was hit by a car on leonard street so we have we're a little shell shocked and he used to ride his bike to school and he no longer rides his bike to school so we've increased our carbon footprint we put another car on the road increased our stress level another concern that i had about flipping the bike parking lanes is a phenomenon called during which me anxious i know a number of parents who allow their children bike at all because the risk is just too great even if the risks seem small the consequences are huge and sometimes irreversible so i would hope that you would put an overweight on  vehicles and safety thank you on the charles river willman board of directors a few thoughts a main thought that i see in addition to some of the comments i've heard already is that some of these routes are very circuitous and particularly the one that goes up through mclean woods property the underpass that goes through waverly station i know because there is quite a bit of room there and i think that connection down to concord avenue can be made through the alexander avenue over underpass that's proposed which is something i've been hoping for for many years and you get down there and you can cross over and you can head up to school street and get on a street which is less heavily traveled so oh and also the sherman street just about this this question of crossing driveways their driveway crossing problems along concord avenue even if you even if you have the path really off road you're the proposal will narrow concord avenue people need to ride both ways they still need to cross over and then you have people riding both directions on one side and they're still going to have to cross over and you've eliminated the median refuge so i'm not in favor of that in addition to its being circuitous sherman street you're crossing driveways i don't think you put place enough emphasis on driveways you're crossing one residential driveway after another and they'll be cars parked in the street and cars crossing those driveways as they pull in and out and that's you know that's also a circuitous route so please just keep it close to the rail line and particularly go over the leonard street bridge avoid that whole mess and take a take along the north side as my suggestion thank you very so like some of the other community members here i appreciate the depth the reasoning that's gone into this analysis so park it's a great analysis of the range of options that can be considered for something like this the matrix as it's coming together now concerns me because it has a large number of criteria and you're looking at weight between the criteria to try to make some kind of ranking order and you know that's an extremely complicated process those weights can make dramatic differences and as i was sitting here and absorbing the design and all the analysis that's gone on so far i was trying to understand for  me and my family what the real essence of the bike path is and how it could be captured in a matrix and what i came up with and wrote some notes about is that we already have bike lanes and bike lanes on the roads accomplish a large number of needs that are covered in the matrix but a bike path does something much more than that the bike path ins up allowing bicyclists to go on and walkers to go on in ways that they would not go on the bike lanes right and so the three criteria that i wrote down that i think are the most critical for accomplishing that and i guess the recommendation i would suggest for the matrix is to simplify it make it into a two tier system where one set of criteria are for the first cut the major choices in which routes we take and in a gross structure way and the secondary effects go into a second matrix so  e three criteria that i think are the most critical and really not negotiable if you want to be different than a bike lane is  allowing those those people not to go on there so just to so the record here i have or that it be park like right if you want to be next to the hustle and bustle of the town the city you can easily walk along the sidewalks and see all your neighbors have access to everywhere they need to have the feeling of safety for the categories of people that aren't safe on bike lanes think of two year olds and when i went first getting my kids riding on the bike lanes i had my two year old and my five year old going blocks ahead of me and behind me and i was comfortable because i driven to the well constructed bike paths that were safe for them to be you know do blocks add two blocks behind if it were near the road even offset with a bet with access you know where they could just wander off a bit and be on the road before i could get to them i wouldn't have that safety and the usability and comfort again as parents we don't want our kids on the bike lanes until they're much older than they are now and they're already you know much older than they were when we first got them riding and i have adults who are very interested in riding on bikes but only on those off road bike lanes that make them comfortable enough to go they just aren't comfortable in the bike lanes so those three criteria in my mind are the single set they go into the first cut matrix you have those three in  their access to the community as a as an example in the larger matrix is a great design criteria you guys have done a lot of work in accommodating that but it can go in and all of those gross level choices but if you make the wrong gross level choice you'll fundamentally sacrifice one of those three criteria so i think those three criteria need to go into a first cup matrix with a secondary matrix that you do for the finer path may not necessarily here specifically because obviously we haven't made those decisions yet but just a sense of you know what what other community communities are doing in that space a lot of communities where there is a desire in a need for commuting  some paths will put in sensor lights where the lights aren't always on but as a as a biker or a walker or a user of the path starts to approach they have an area that's lit some don't light at all so  and it's just understanding that you should have your own light you know whether it's your taillights so it's more a question of whether their litter not rather then you're not supposed to be on here after you know ten o'clock at night right and then some do have general restrictions so they'll put general hours the only difficulty is and i think it made a mention this in a previous meeting of the path like this where there are so many points of access it's almost impossible to say the path is efficient short where you can have ours and then the police as they're patrolling can enforce that to say the park the path is closed you can't be on it but without getting every single one of those acts that's possible to technically officially close i agree completely with that i think one of my concerns is that it's not unusual for community meetings to go past nine o'clock at night or even up to ten o'clock at night and you know in belmont center of the town hall and when those meetings are over and you're biking home you're walking home it's couple other quick comments i really look at that community path as a really useful transit connector both getting towards alewife in one direction and to waverly square in the other direction i think that the idea of bringing it into a really station  both for access to the station and to the commercial area there is incredibly useful because i think that would bring people there who would not otherwise come and visit the area i would bike down there because it would be convenient it would be great if the past took that circuitous go there they're already very very narrow traffic there can be terrible at times and with the town field there and soccer practice it can be just a mess at certain times of the day and so that seems like a great way of kind of solving  problems at once but thank you i want to build off of that we've mentioned this a few times in the past as well some of the things that we've shown what we consider them to be the best design for every alternative if the path goes down that route we think could also be considered by the town as additions to the ultimate path through or as variations for funding in the future so the connection up to when burke elementary if that doesn't become the actual route of this path because it has too many driveway crossings it's more circuit as it could still be considered for safe routes to school funding it's going to connect to this path and make a connection to an elementary school the middling connection is similar to that and then if this route does go through the wooded area to still make that connection piece to waverley station with the ramp to the roadway and then down to the station so as we give all of these costs to the town they'll be beneficial to say the route that we recommend costs this much but if you wanted to do this later it would cost this if you wanted to do this later it would cost this if you want to improve concord avenue even if the route doesn't go there it would cost this so the town will have all of that information in those costs to continue to build on this network in the future so  which i'm very concerned with what i'm hearing about the description about the parking lane in front of concrete avenue for much of that segment it's not a parking lot in a parking lot i tend to think of this where's a single driver goes up and parks and goes off to work for the day and comes back at the end of the day this is for much of that segment a massive highly trafficked well used drop off zone for hundreds of student athletes and hundreds of kids and there's a ton of pedestrian access you talk about traffic but there's also pedestrian traffic and it's going perpendicular to the bike path so if you've got bikes going this way and hundreds of students going that way you're going to have an accident eventually  i think we need to re classify that section as a drop off zone and you know think about the implications of that thank you for the  ok yes i was just all concerned i think it's great that it would be available so skins could bike for me their house to the school i'm just sort of concerned about potential traffic around that area with a lot of younger students or sort of older students and issues about safety  also especially about accessibility and there were some points in the matrix you were looking at where i was very concerned about being sure that people with young as mentored for people parents with young kids people disabilities the elderly i do want to assure that this would be very accessible for them and make sure that as mentioned before there would be bikes possibly trafficking where young children or elderly or people disabilities so we know collisions and make sure there's plenty of safety and easy access so if it's snowing if it's a big slope people aren't struggling to mention that thank you i yeah i kind of want to follow up on what michael just said as much as i like the idea of a through campus path i think we have been ignoring the non pedestrian path users interaction with bicycles and and so that there would be a problem there has to be addressed and same goes with the with concrete out by the post office even if you separated from the vehicles if you have slow moving people coming in and out of the post office as we do you eventually someone's going to get killed if you put them in proximity with bikes and so by first vehicle is bad but by first pedestrian is equally hazardous  and i don't see that accounted for in the matrix and more generally i'm worried about over quantifying and i understand we have to strip some of the emotion out of it and th matrix certainly does a good job that like for example com when you look at road options congress have is a nonstarter in my mind but i could imagine the path unhit injure for a short period if it solved a lot of other one piece in the matrix that kathleen may not have touched on so under ease of access within the ranking there we're also going to consider the length of it and i think that's kind of what you're getting at that if it goes down congress avenue the interactions with both pedestrians and vehicles and driveways and it's a long stretch that if we have the same scenario but it's hit injure where it's only a couple of hundred feet that should play into it and that's going to be incorporated in part of and less i just want to echo about the more serpentina options particularly mclean but more generally i'm as similar engineers you know the concept of a desire path if you if you dumb people out by pleasant street and then asked them to detour half a mile around they're not they're going to take pleasant street and we've created a hazard that we're trying to avoid and thank you thank you very much magazine i have first i want to commend you for listening and trying to shape the conversation in a good direction i think the one thousand criteria help articulate some of the things that were difficult to see in the previous matrix the flipside is it becomes more complex to structure conversations hope couple questions about process so we can know how to engage effectively so the scoring you give examples on some of them what zero one two three four is that going to you can provide examples of that for all of the criteria so we can help to understand what the scores mean for each of the criteria we went through most of them some of the other ones are a little more quantitative like if we have impacts to historic properties do we have multiple list or properties there's no one historic property doesn't know historic properties i think there's a more distinct range there without us giving the definition of every single one what ones would be similar what is the range of what when impact will give the greatest impact the least scores or you're planning to provide transparency on how you're thinking about these scores restrict area so i better it's hard to structure the comment if there's a lot information here so how to understand what you mean by good and bad for each of the criteria well i don't think we like ascetics i mean there's the history of money here we don't have an idea of what you mean by that it's just i don't have any specific there's a lot of criteria just a matter under standing what he's of access means how it turned into one two three four five is a good example ok we are going to have to define them obviously you know order to fill this matrix out so that probably your next chance to give additional response with that expanded clarification would be the next round of meetings so coming up starting in january and then into february will be doing another weston meeting a central eastham meeting will say these are the scores we've given to all nineteen categories for each of the alternatives as well as presenting the cost estimates for each of the alternatives and then we will continue this discussion this is how we view the statics does that jive with how you would or does that not seem right for the different alternatives to more clarity and light on how you are thinking about each of them a good secondly the stitching together there's different segments are you planning to keep the existing so our thoughts are the top and the bottom kind of both have to happen and it relates to the third question i think a link should not have as much weight as a life in be interested to know if people agree with that or disagree with that but it comes back to that duration of exposure if a link has a poor ranking but you're only there for one hundred feet it's not as bad as if a lank has a bad rating and you're going to be there for a waverly station alexander those are all of our link points we've got five of them so those i would give less weight as i said just because it's a short duration that you need to endure we are going to design them to be safe as safe as possible so as you move through it i think an area of the path where you're going to be on for a mile should carry more weight than something that is going to be a short duration so that i would say winks wait less then length and in that regard that kind of answers the first two questions at least from my perspective if a link is low but the length this high then i'll write will consider accepting the link in order to get to that greater length but if the length is bad and the link is good then the link is not going to be powerful enough to pull up  criteria for cost so each of them being one outweighs vehicle or conflicts i think good having a path that avoids conflicts is the purpose of the path we can exist we can go on the roads now with bikes we can walk on sidewalks that's the purpose thought i was going to say that ties into a previous comment i don't think we should do the five overall categories first because that was essentially what we did and we got a lot of input that it gave really poor results so we don't want to go back to that but maybe vehicular conflicts should be under user experience in each of these five categories should carry a weight so then user experience would have a multiplier to lose sight of the overall purpose of the overall purpose of the great common thank you i want to go i think it's been a very good process and i don't know how you're managing all this information but i have a couple questions about the matrix that you put up one is the value added which i'm glad to see has made it in there because i think the attention certainly on the western part wasn't there a couple years ago and it really has a lot of potential for that community one of the questions i have is in the areas where you are looking at unique paving markings and striping and lights you know i'm hearing that that is a most not exactly second area but those seem like design decisions that can get easily done away with once things progress and the value of them in terms of avoiding conflicts can get lost and so i want to know how that's going to be articulated as you move forward that those certain decisions are really critical to a particular connector or whatever i think some of the things that you're defining are what we've now embodied in the past what we would consider the path to have the separation you're standing is you're you're saying how will those elements be carried forward to the preliminary design yeah that when you're putting those decisions for that you're saying without any given one of those it doesn't work or it won't it won't meet the needs that were defining you right and essentially everything that i had to find in those recommended design details need to move with the path no matter where it's alignment is so if we cross a road it needs to be signalized with the volume of users that are going to be on this and the volume of vehicular traffic in town we don't recommend crossing a road without having a signal for the users of the path so all of that i think is this continues to progress and we give a recommendation to the town will say your path needs to be this to function with the purpose that's been defined and then we are evaluating where that goes as far as all the a different turn of it's come up  some of the accounts tonight but in this matrix where you are identifying just increased usage for pedestrians and cyclists and diverting those folks from their cars you know we're hearing people talking about the high school situation we need to get high school students you out of their cars they are you know one of the problem users in vehicles right so based on what we've heard in the last few meetings this was an element that we did add that wasn't originally in the query of questions at the workshop impact on existing traffic and transportation and that's we're trying where we're trying to say will we get enough people to use this because the path is such a great option that they're not going to be traveling in the underpass and concord or along brighton to get to the high school that they're going to take the path instead that is the element where we're incorporating that are we taking cars off the road by creating the path in this area or is there a version of the path where we think this may actually worsen t raffic or add more cars for some reason that's your intention with existing traffic and transportation because i read that as well and have a negative impact on the flow of vehicles motorized vehicles is that not the case that that is also an element of it if it has a negative impact on the movement of vehicular flow then that will get reflected there but we also are looking at a positive for both the users in the traffic if we can off the road and improving the flow of traffic a one would be an area where we're crossing the road so many times that we're continuing to add to the congestion in the back up that seems an marriage so at the very beginning we were hearing a lot about the path having conflicts with the cars but we also heard a lot of feedback and read a lot of comments from previous study that there's concern about being near the rail period so whether it's broken up into two or we just conglomerated it and look at it at the same time you know we could have another category but it's we're sort of dealing with the same thing is it is the risks and the conflicts increasing and therefore it's a worse situation or a better situation so that's how we handled that because they were both were  different different potential conflicts and i think to some extent it makes sense to have it be one category though because we are either right along the rail or we're not along the rail so we're really looking at one of the other if we break it in the two different categories that we're going to have a lot of not a lot of political and then this one hundred rating and then flip side so this alternative is not applicable to the other category but now has a rating here i don't want them to end up washing a child or out to have those nonna put in there so i think all of the alignments are generally either along the rail and therefore not adjacent to traffic or they are adjacent to and interacting with traffic and not along the rail so i think it makes sense to have them i don't think you're going to have an alternative from what i'm looking at and thinking about it hits both of those at the same time except the brighton street crossing obviously which is a current  making assumptions about how people will be parking on the sidewalk or you know obstructing driveways and such as kathleen mentioned we have met with the fire and safety as well as the police their biggest concern so far have been how are we going to patrol it will it be visible will we resurrect the old patrol and have policemen actually on the path certain times of the day and then a little bit separate from the feasibility study the town will have to define those this bring about anything that needs to become enforceable by the police is there a new area where someone could be parking on someone's lawn or in some near someone's driveway that needs to be enforced that wasn't previously something that the police patrolled so now that we have the slew of alternatives we do feel it's important to continue our coordination with the police to say you know this has what this is what has developed these are the different alternatives and see if they have any all of that as we're going along just because there's so much of it pointed out a lot of those resources are also listed in the previous ipac report from two thousand and fourteen that's available on the website that's all been hammered road precinct five tommy mobile like previous move with we have met with the housing authority i'm not sure about any previous vote within town but we met with them and they said that they want to make sure that if the path is near their property that it is built in a way that it can benefit the community that lives there and that it doesn't detract from what they currently have for on tree parking for their circulation or for their parking and the the meeting we had in the central area or we show that ramp coming across we showed how we could keep the number of parking spaces that they currently have there are one hundred eight i believe it was straight spaces there today and we would maintain those with any option that goes near or through that area they were willing to give up  to that we now develop some ideas like fire and safety including the high school including b j thanks for the public process you mentioned five driveways within a five hundred feet how did you arrive at that i've tried to research within the u s and internationally if there are direct correlation between number of driveways in the number of incidents unfortunately there's nothing that seems to exist with that direct corresponding number breaking point or definition of whether it's an exponential amount of incidence increase or if it's just linear so we are that is a little bit up for discussion as well that is something we put out there essentially it's one driveway pro hundred feet i think clearly defines a well developed area and that's an area where there are enough conflicts pedestrian path would have difficulty crossing without having to worry about the number of potential conflicts so it's the number we've proposed it's just kind of what we've come up with so far as they said just as what i would consider the definition of a well developed area if there's consideration of something different if you think it should be more driveways or less driveways that can be discussed that's that's up for what would you say this is about one hundred feet from from from this to that wall i think that's about right because then we measure about fifty for the tunnel last time and it was close to the center that's probably close to one hundred feet so we're in envisioning five driveways between there and here in order for it to now know it was five per hundred feet per five hundred feet is approximately one per hundred so far so our driveway within this distance that would be a substantial amount of conflicts if the path goes conflict in fact i would almost argue that it should be a disqualifying tribute since the whole point of community is to be the point of that being a fatal flaw that if there center bridge wouldn't necessarily require a signal it would we showed one there if we cross grade if we're not on the existing overpass if we come down to the concrete of level and crossed her it would need to be signalized for the volume of users that will be along this path combined with the volume of vehicular traffic that already exists there it would definitely need to be stabilized to make a safe crossing  pedestrian bike movement across the intersection which means the pedestrians and bikers would control that signal if if a signal was put in the is just a push button then yes every single time a pedestrian or biker comes they interrupt the flow of traffic we would not recommend that we would recommend full signals ation where the vehicles and the cycle would be on a timed   to have have any kind of signal there due to traffic during rush hours is bad as it is without a signal thank you thank you assume the clapping means you all agree with the you're right in the middle of it and have a lot more ahead of you and it's wildly complex the number of things you need to work through i wanted to maybe beat a dead horse an echo the the need for the considered paramount absolutely not just something to be waited second trip triple to be a one hundred percent disqualifying factor and i think that needs to  include any kind of bike lane if we're talking about flipping a bike lane in a parking area you know something that's a little more popular now where they're trying to reroute and boston what that is doing is obstructing visibility of that bike lane and you still have the exact same interaction with an intersection that it is unsafe to bring in my own personal background with a few months ago i was struck alone in being someone who now i used i used to ride everywhere in boston i'm not on to being someone who now does not ride in the road and only feel safe on a path that is entirely separate from traffic and when you're talking about feasibility and whether or not it's worth it if we're getting cars off the road and people on their bikes i know that there are many people who will consider a path that is entirely off road and if even if you say it's only temporary it's a deal breaker to have part of it be a bike lane and that's a deal breaker for them every day going to work it's a commute it's  heavy use you'll see cars come off the road if it's off a small note on signals i don't know if you are considering it at all but some spots if you look at concord have again where you have a full signal and then further down towards of cambridge and you have a flashing yellow flashing yellow you do not stop but also to echo the importance of pedestrian involvement and viewing bike vs bike if you look at the minuteman now there's so much really scary stuff happening with children and pets and you know running across and i think that that's a huge part of making this community path a valuable thing is making it safe for the community to use it so where you have wider areas don't just put a park there maybe put like a toddler runway a little safe separate area where kids can practice riding their bikes where you have footpaths crossing perpendicular you know entering what i mean we need all kinds of signage and lighting etc because even just people simply crossing the road don't look but anyway i of having ours i know that's down the road but i wanted to point out that there are spots if you look at the national river trail there's that piece that goes across wetlands and there are signs that say sensitive wildlife please be quiet if you in you know if you put up areas where you request people to be quiet they really are it's pretty impressive you ride through that spot people don't stop and linger for the most and they're very quiet i think that anyone concerned with having noise or loitering in there near their residences would be you know can take some solace in knowing that if you properly sign and designate different areas of the path to be used for sitting on a bench or you know to be lit like the idea that you said it's having li come on and off and you really can have quiet hours in certain areas instead of shutting down the path to any to any one i mean that part of it being a useful path for everyone is also having it be useful at all hours if the commute if you work a night shift at the hospital you're not trying to ruin anyone's backyard just trying to ok sorry about that that's pretty much all those g trump the consultants since we do pay the consultants i am going to request that if you just want to make a comment that's the only reason why you've gotten up please e mail me you don't need to voice it right now please just e mail me if you have a comment to make if we spend five minutes on each one of you were here for another hour so please make if you have a comment please only come to the microphone with questions about  matrices we've heard already about the vehicle conflicts here or some other stuff to comments about the if comp conflicts please we've heard already send the email to me we don't need to hear about it again it is nine thirty everything else how is that even possible so what we've proposed is moving the parking so it's all on one side of the roadway so it's not going to interact with the parking it would have a separation and a landscaping between the vehicle traffic in the parking it will need to interact with the driveways we recommended what's called access management where we would take the number of driveways that exist now and reduce them to the number of critical openings there are some of those commercial buildings that have to access is ones wide enough for two way traffic one isn't reduce it to just the one driveway that can accommodate two way traffic so those are two ways that we would reduce the number on that one yes it was the same point  was much video as i could fit on my s d card and from the gas station from from the lower half of the gas station down to the post office i counted nine thousand vehicle crossings in twenty minutes so it's about one minute and this is from eight to twenty so i'm not actually full commute time so and i think you know in that eight thirty to nine hour you you would see actually more as people arrived at work at those office buildings so very frequent vehicle crossings about once a minute just data point for you and i'm happy to share the video the other thing would be my concern with the matrix is viability so for example one of the routes you have is this sort of magical mystery tour through the high school property which is contingent on a whole bunch of moving parts that are years down the road what happens to belmont high whether we tear down the existing building or build a new building and where that building is situated in a whole bunch of other things and we've waited twenty years for this path you're here now studying and i think what we'd like to come out of this is an actionable plan in the next you know two to three years not a asterix let's see what happens with the high school and maybe we'll have a magical solution and solves everybody's problem so viability of there's a within belmont there's a thousand times multiple for anything that allows us to defer a hard decision really you don't understand that but i live in the south for ten years a thousand times multiplier anything that allows us to kick the can down the road and not make a tough decision so you need to help us make a very difficult decision and hopefully come together and sing kumbaya on the end around a wonderful path that's going to make our community a great place but please help us and don't give us a bunch of clouds with question marks and and non non clarity ok thank you very much and thank you for your wonderful sorry just going back to the previous one i'm still concerned with how the parking outside post office in the business will work because anyone along the parks if there's a linear path they would be stranded they wouldn't be able to get across that are parking and trying to access the flower shop the post office those exactly and the road will be now you're talking about what they had mentioned before pedestrian conflicts at that perpendicular well not so much but i can people actually talking about the people even trying to get to the pa way where that somehow equals off road i can't i can't wrap my brain around the idea that that is off road so it's off road only because it's not physically in the road but what's to keep in mind is we were tasked to evaluate that route and instead of just saying we're just going to be on a road and have a sidewalk we try to advance the design to a place that it was better than that and that's what we're showing ok that explains the route we're not saying that's the best solution but we're saying that's the best if we have to evaluate it in that location after standing in line for twenty minutes i want to say just the following sentence i'm strongly not in favor of that as the best route but we'll send more about that an value so even though an option may be costly or may not be that costly what is the benefit to the town to the businesses to the commercial to the people that live here and the people that have their business within the town so that is that value added and that was not on the original question here in the matrix or online that was just something we've developed and that's i think it's a positive step i would add that sort of the directness of the route is something that would be i'm sorry no i'm sorry i thought just operating all right really quick when you had designs up there along chatting on the north side of the tracks you had the wall down the side of the embankment while previous designs were at the top at the edge of the path so i'd like to know why that was change because the fire department already said they were going to twelve foot wall at the height of but it looks like you're making a much bigger one by putting it down at the bottom of the embank you're looking at why is that on the other side of the tree first of all you'd have to cut all those trees but it shouldn't be up at the top where so this option maintains the existing trees wall this option maintains the existing trees that are there now between the residence and the rail and the wall is inside the treaties so we would be maintaining those mature trees if the wall is here then the user experience becomes diminished but that's what we've defined throughout all that we've only done that in areas of a pinch point that to run along a wall for an entire length i believe that's over about a mile first of all and that was based on the feedback that we've been receiving as user experience being the primary goal of the well having a house that i can tell you would fit that well behind the trees there's no room there at the trees and again it changes the height of your wall by having it up at the top so it would be a significant difference in cost and height you could put the twelve feet at the top i don't know how big that they would be at the bottom twenty seven feet probably so that just doesn't make sense to me and the criteria from the residents you had distance i don't understand why hide isn't also included that's part of the problem it's not only the distance from the residence it's the height above the residen so i would probably somehow include that in your criteria don't stand also why one of the criteria was not i was of use it's come up depending on the path you pick that will limit make longer the i was of use and if that's an important criteria if people need to know up front you can't drive here on this one you can use and make to me that's an important the alignments do not dictate the hours of operation the town is going to need to decide what the hours of operation are so we have not incorporated that into the matrix because it doesn't help us distinguish one alignment from another whether it's on its merits along the north side a pleasant street or on the d p w property it can have the same hours of operation in some areas there may already be existing lighting that helps it maintain longer hours but it does not define the hours by the alignment and we don't think that distinguishes want to lyman from another than the previous committee was wrong them with because they said that the so we've kind of lump them together as public but they are different entities have different requirements the land adjacent to the belmont citizen i think you're now referring to the land adjacent to the citizens form where we said if we're on the north side of the rail we will be on a combination of m bta and l much this property and bta to my knowledge does not restrict ours we can look into that further and my last question is on the criteria i don't understand flaw concept because you guys were asked to evaluate a variety of roads and it seems to me that that automatically eliminating routes that it's kind of great because you've proposed the one book which you're to have more concrete out if you don't have that and quite frankly i don't see it as a flawed because if you have to get off your bike it's not doesn't have to be a perfect path it's not perfect and other communities around us and some of will and i me the fatal flaws are taking off the table before we even got to the full evaluation we haven't taken anything off the table so we will fully evaluate everything including cost and evaluation with matrix before anything and we have to take everything off the table except for one route to get to our recommendation so it is part of the process to ultimately take stuff off the table once they've been fully evaluated so we appreciate the comment we will take it into purposes for this path i want like a nice place to go for a run an old bike personally but my kids do that my wife does i want a nice place to go for a run is go look pretty and everything like that but also i want the most direct possible route to get to ellen shriver i had all sorts of things i would want to say but given time i won't for a very quick things i want you to take into consideration as you're doing number one i heard you refer repeatedly to the fact that cost was not important that you got feedback that cost was it important in that it might have a lower multiplier given the fact that we are in an uncertain funding world i think cost is actually quite important because at some point i assume the town is going to have to pay for some of this and we're either going to have to pull it out of our budget or we're going to house that have to as the voters for it so i don't want to have the fallacy i see that cost is not important number to the matrix i understand what you're trying to do you're trying to take a very complex thing and boil it down to something that is clear concrete and spits out an answer i i have doubts about that kind of process because of things like the weightings you're talking about well should you wait it this high or should you wait it out how it should be low or should it be more and in the process of doing that you're kind of artificially applying value judgments without the specifics and you're going to wind up popping out something that may or may not be the right decision so i think you're trying to take something that is fundamentally qualitative and make it quantitative and i don't know personally how that's really possible without a problem we're doing it by incorporating the qualit point so this is where we are with the draft we're going to come back in january and february with another round if something still seems offer isn't jiving continue to i just worry about a number ninety five you know ranks higher than ninety and therefore it is automatically the decision in the interest of time two more things really quick one very minute but when you were talking about the number of driveways you said five for five hundred feet i don't think the number of driveways is really the right thing i think it's the number of cars crossing that driveway so if you have you know a residential driver that's different from a post office drive so you're saying number of conflicts not necessarily number of yes i think that's minor  and then the last thing i would ask to whoever is scheduling the meetings all of these meetings are on wednesdays so i for one have a town committee meeting that's usually on wednesday so i couldn't come to any of the other ones i know there's no night that's good for everybody but if you could move them around that would be great thank you so i also think vehicular conflicts are important so that's there but i have a question about that that part of it  proximity to me those are two completely different metrics safety versus static essentially are noise so i think they're totally different and my question for you and why wait around  i don't hear anything about sort of bike ability or the gentleman said you know why can't people just get off the bike but for me a metric and i've heard you talk about this is how often i have to stop on a bike trail and crossings are obviously relevant but in general i think a metro could be just a number of crossings that i might have to do on a segment whether it's residential driveways because i don't want my five year old to go further ahead of me even if there's residential driveways or if it's elsewhere but so is stopping and bikeability part of this yes i think it comes in to number of driveways and conflicts it comes into a number of crossings also has to do with the impact on transportation if the bike path itself has to make so many stops that people aren't getting that benefit if they're trying to commute or to move more quickly to get out of their car and get onto a bike then it's affected there so i think that  captures it to say if you keep getting on and off my bike on and off my bike it's not going to encourage me to get out of my car might as well just take in my car ok and i think a metric is actually number of crossings that could be another kind of more thank you  belmont center waverly and so forth and so i'm assuming that you are assuming that the state is going to help us with this that have you have thought about whether or not the state would pursue a goal of winding a bike path for transportation all through all the streets of the town as opposed to running it along of the the the railroad tracks as they have done in other communities and whether or not it will qualify for various funding sources will reflect that it is i don't think you have to you know again following up on alan's comment about the fact that you have a kind of a black mark next to cost i mean we're down that way because it is actually something that should be investigated as to whether or not the state is willing and what kind of effort they're willing to make with the community if the community isn't willing to try to make it as much of a transportation car as possible thank you very clemons meyer if crossing the traffic at belmont center is decided no longer to be a fatal flaw that i really think you should consider abandoning the concept of fatal flaw all together and if if all proposals all possibilities that would be considered then we should consider possibilities that involve the direct impact on residential structures and consider the possibility that the town might take them by eminent domain mean the question of funding i was wondering if you guys were able to find information on whether or not the alexander street underpass or alexander ever underpass would be fundable through by through the pathfinding if it wasn't light to that thank you said i think if the path is north or south of the rail and historically connected if it is farther removed it does become more of a question so we will try to get that answered it is nerve racking the way it's now config because but but at least you in your rearview mirror and you can see if the bikers coming if there's a car parked and you're going to be turning in front of the car you're not even going to see a posterous i hope you've got the need to be a long distance bikeway high on no priority list as a question or comment whichever you like