City Manager Louis DePasquale
February 12, 2018 City Council Meeting
Regarding Cambridge Street and Policy Order O-4 (amended during the meeting and passed):
I do want to talk about Cambridge Street briefly, before I turn it over to Joe. I would say that on Cambridge Street, yes, the separated bike lane process was quicker than usual, but it was a three-month process, and we did have two public meetings and many small meetings which we did include residents, business and other stakeholders. So I do think that’s important to bring home. I also think, that I stated it when we put these separated bike lanes in, we were in somewhat uncharted waters and we were going to evaluate and we would make tweaks and adjustments based on dealing with pedestrians, bicyclists, drivers, business people and residents. Joe’s gonna go over some of that, but we’ve done that. But the one thing I also committed to, was that we were going to make these lanes work in the long-term, and I really think we have been moving in that direction. We will continue to monitor and evaluate these changes when we feel we need to make improvements. And I’m certainly open to continuing to work with the current stakeholder group, which Joe has been working on since day one— we had a little stoppage because we’ve really been evaluating where we’re at. And I’m happy to work with the committee of the Mayor as I did with with the committee Mayor Simmons had. So we’re certainly open to make this work. I believe we’ve made improvements. I can tell you as someone who’s been on Cambridge Street numerous times, every time I go by there, I look, what’s happening with parking, I’ve talked to the bicyclists community numerous times about respecting the pedestrian piece of it, I think that’s been a part that really has not worked as well as we had hoped, and also about trying to go into the business community and support them. So, I think this is a work in progress. I do believe we’re making progress.
To watch the comments, go to: http://cambridgema.iqm2.com/Citizens/Default.aspx
Select Feb 12, 2018 City Council – Regular Meeting, timestamp: 2:48:30