This doesn't make the same sound it does at city hall. Um, for the record, my name is Sharon Durkin, District 8 City Councelor, and I am chair of the Boston City Council Committee on Planning, Development, and Transportation. Today is October 6, 2025. The exact time is 6 PM. This hearing is being recorded. Written comments may be sent to the committee email at ccc.plos.gov and will be made part of the record and available to all counselors. Public testimony um is going to be taken. Some of the public testimony is going to be taken early. Um, just want to give a heads up. Everyone has two minutes to testify and I'll be keeping a timer. If you were interested in testifying in person, please add your name to the signup sheet near the entrance of the auditorium. We already have a lot of signups for public testimony. So, thank you for being engaged. Today's hearing is on docket 1450. order for a hearing to discuss next steps to improve street safety on the northern stretch of hyde park a from walkill street to the arborway. This matter was sponsored by councilors Benjamin Weber, Enrique Pepen, and Brian Warell and was referred to the committee on August 6, 2025. Today I'm joined by my colleagues in order of arrival. Um, Councelor Ben Weber oh sorry actually Council President Rousul Leen, Councelor Ben Weber, Councelor Enrique Pepen, um, and do we have anyone else? Good evening, everyone. Thank you for being here. As chair of the committee on planning development and transportation, I consider pedestrian safety one of the most important aspects of my work. I share in the administration's commitment to making our streets safe for everyone and reaching and working to reduce traffic fatalities, and I believe this must remain one of our city's top priorities. I know there's just some natural noise, but if we could try to tone it down just a tiny bit, um, just so everyone can hear, uh, the federal context is important as well. The Trump administration recently canceled over $30 million in infrastructure and pedestrian safety grants to the city of Boston, including 11 millions for the Safe Streets for All program, fully uh designed to help cities reach the goal of zero fatalities um with scarce federal resources um for transportation improvements. We need to be thoughtful and strategic in how we invest limited resources, focusing on the most critical areas and being deliberate about the improvements that we need to implement. I know this issue is very emotional for this community. The tragic death of a JP resident last year led many neighbors to call for change. And just in the last week, there was another serious crash along Hide Park Avenue as well as a fatal crash in Mission Hill in my district. Um, it is it's heartbreaking to lose members of our community and a sombering reminder of why this work matters. As chair tonight, I'm here to facilitate this discussion and my goal is to ensure that we have a productive conversation between community members and city officials where everyone has the opportunity to speak directly about the challenges and possible solutions. Ultimately, I hope we can find a path forward to make our street safer for everyone. I'm going to hand this over to the lead sponsor, Council Rever, to give an opening statement. Um, and I'm going to let my colleagues give very, very brief opening statements, um, because we are looking, uh, to prioritize resident feedback at the start of this hearing. So, um, Councelor Weber, you have the floor. Thank you very much. Uh, my name is Ben Weber. I'm the city council for district 6. Uh, I represent, uh, this neighborhood. I also live in Jamaica Plane. Uh, you know, I want to thank, uh, Chair Sharon Durkin. Um, you know, most of these hearings take place at city hall. Uh, uh, we get, you know, one or two hearings a year off site and and councelor Durkin, uh, thankfully, uh, agreed to have this hearing for for her committee here in the community with everyone in this room. And so, uh, you know, this wouldn't be possible without councelor Durkin. Um, you know, I I think all all of us have uh I'm sorry, I'm worried about feedback, but uh I'm not sure how that's working. Yeah, I don't know. Jordan's giving me two thumbs up, which means that his thumbs are absorbing the feedback. So, um I I uh you know I I think just to uh level set here um we uh this is not our first meeting here uh our first discussion about street safety in uh in the Hyde Park Avenue Forest Hills area. Uh just to go over it, you know, when I first took office, we talked to uh Chief Franklin Hajj uh about a plan to make H High Park Avenue safer. Uh, and when I first got into my my office, I have my predecessor's office space. Councelor Laura had notes in the office talking about how to make Hide Park Avenue safer. There have been discussions for years about this stretch of road. Um, you know, tragically, a year ago, uh, this month, we we Glenn Ingram was killed in front of the Forest Hills uh, station on a, you know, crossing on a green light, uh, and was killed by a bus. Um, you know, we had discussions with the city. Uh, I just want to get everything right. In November, the city implemented, uh, uh, some safety measures in terms of timing of the lights. In December, BTD held a meeting here. This is December of last year. Uh, at the BTU school, uh, to inform neighbors uh, to talk to neighbors and they heard about how frustrating Hide Park Avenue uh, you know, uh, safety has been and how they need that street to be safer. In January, more than 700 uh uh members of the Forest Hills community signed a petition urging the city to take immediate action to make Hyde Park Avenue safer and more accessible uh for pedestrians and cyclists. In April, the city and BTD join residents on a community organized safety walk to observe current conditions, listen to concerns, and discuss feasibility of various design concepts. Uh I and and many of you here were on that design walk with BTD in May. BTD presented uh two alternatives right right here uh at the BTU for redesign of of Hide Park Avenue right in front of uh uh the Forest Hill Station. You know, one of those was to have uh sort of painting to make it safer and an extra crosswalk. That was option one. Option two was more radical. Took four lanes and made it three. uh added uh bike lanes and an extra crosswalk. Um we had an informal vote here in the room and it unsurprisingly it was uh overwhelmingly in favor of option two. Um uh and in June we had a letter from 350 neighbors here in JP urging the city again to move forward and choose option two. In July, the city announced it had decided to proceed with repaving High Park Avenue as previously planned, but would not implement either of the two options. Instead, would leave that open maybe to a future date. And um you know, now it's October. Uh I think I don't want to jump the I think we're told that the repaving is going to be next year. Um, you know, but uh all of this is to highlight how we need a a safer street right out here in front of Forest Hills. I biked I live on Spring Park Avenue. I biked down the Southwest Corridor on the way here. Um, you know, I got to Forest Hill Station. I'm Jewish. I crossed myself and went right down Hyde Park Avenue. It's so dangerous. There's no room for for biking. Uh, it's so tough to cross the street. And I know uh Chief Franklin Haj knows all of this. Uh, he's a avid biker and a JP resident himself. Um, so I'm glad we could all be here to talk about how we're going to make High Park Avenue safer. So, thank you very much, J. Thank you. Um, next we're going to go to Councelor Enrique Pepen and then, um, Council President Luent. Thank you, Councelor Durkin. And good, good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for being here tonight at this very important hearing. I'm glad that we are doing it in district instead of at city hall. I think it allows people to really truly come out and share your opinions and concerns that we have for High Park app. Um I'm also thankful to councelor Weber and councelor Warell. So the fact that the three of us tag teamed on this hearing order because the High Park app actually touches all three of our district 6, district 4, and district 5. And the part of High Park app that we're talking about here today, I think it's the one that really needs some attention right off the bat. And I know that's something that our chief of streets is going to hear from tonight, but I just want to make sure that I'm also sharing the fact that transportation safety has probably been the number one issue that I've dealt with in my first term. It's constantly every single day I'm getting emails from residents of speeding concerns, concerns of their children not having a crosswalk, concerns of feeding going of drivers going 50 miles per hour where they're not supposed to, of unsafe conditions. And it's every single day where I go without hearing something like that. And here we have an opportunity to make a one of our major corridors safer for every single user whether you're a driver, a bicyclist, a pedestrian, etc. And I think that we really need to take the opportunity to do something with it. So I I see a few a few I see a few some few faces in the room here tonight that of community members that do a lot of good work in regard to transportation safety. So, just thank you to the advocates that are in the room here tonight. Thank you for keeping us holding us accountable in regards to the policy that we move forward. Looking forward to tonight's conversation, hearing your testimony as well. Thank you, Councelor Durkin. Thank you so much, Council President Luan. Thank you so much, Madam Chair, and thank you for um hosting this hearing in district. I want to thank my colleagues, Councelor Weber, Councelor Pepen, for holding this. as an atlarge city councelor and as a president of the council it was really important for me to be here to support and also want to give a big shout out to our central staff team because these um off-site hearings cannot happen without them. I want to thank all members of community who have come out and who have elevated this issue. I was recently in the Woodborn neighborhood a few weeks ago and with council Weber and folks were asking us about this. So, um I whenever I take a commuter rail home, on my walk home, I walk by a ghost bike. Um and that's just a symbol that we need to be doing more to make sure that our neighborhoods are safe. I I'm I I haven't done it often, but I have ridden my bike down High Park A and it was a a really dangerous experience just to be very honest. So, I understand the importance of this and want to thank the administration for all of the work that they're doing um to uh make our streets safer. Um, and I look forward I actually am double booked so I have to leave but I look forward to reviewing the tape and my staff is in the audience um to make sure that you know we are doing the work to support all of you in the city of Boston. So thank you and thank you madam chair. Thank you so much council president. Um we are going to go to public testimony or first round of public testimony. Um so the first um and I just want to announce that we've been joined by councelor Brian Warell. Um councelor we were just giving opening statements. So, if you'd like to give one, speak now or wait for questioning. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you uh for everyone that's here today. Um we've had uh countless countless um communication back and forth on High Park A and it's very important for me to kind of chart a new path forward. Um I think now is the time after um so many stories on pedestrian fatality here in the city is that you know we want a clear path and understanding of timeline um and making sure that we are making High Park AB safe for everyone. So looking forward to this conversation, but most importantly looking forward to hearing from you. And I just want to say thank you to everyone that's here um and advocating um to increase the walkability and pedestrian and cyclist safety here in the city of Boston, but particularly on High Park A. Thank you. Thank you so much, Councelor. Um so now we're going to move into a first round of public testimony. We're going to start with Sam Pierce. I'm going to be really strict on the twominut um mark because we do need to get to questioning of the administration as well. So, um is Sam Pierce here? Okay. So, we're going to move to the next and we'll come back. Um Lauren Dodie Brown and there's a microphone right there and you have two minutes. Hi everyone. Thank you so much. Uh my name is Lauren Dodie Brown and I've lived in Forest Hills with my family for over a decade. Every day we walk up High Park A from Welt Street and cross at the intersection by the VO Apartments. We do it again in the morning and again in the afternoon almost always to get to the Orange Line. We avoid the dedicated pedestrian crossite where our neighbor Glenn died by Tower Street even though it's supposed to be safer because walking through the lower bus rays means pushing my toddler in her stroller through clouds of cigarette smoke, weed, and vapes. In the morning, things are usually okay at that intersection at Filo, but our evening commutes are really, really scary. Back in August, I was crossing the street with my one-year-old in her stroller, and we had the walk signal. A car ran the red light and came inches from hitting us, more specifically from hitting my daughter in her stroller. Ironically, the driver of that car was a mom my age with a kid the same age as mine in the back seat. I called 911 in tears. Boston police immediately transferred me to the state police, saying it wasn't BPD's trans jurisdiction, and the state police trooper I spoke to told me there wasn't much they could do. and even described my neighborhood as a nightmare. That was the worst thing that's happened to my family on High Park A for now. Cars blow through the no turn on red sign. They barely slow down and never see us. I have dozens of photos of cars, trucks, and even school buses blossoming the crosswalks. It happens every single day. There's no enforcement. No one ever gets a ticket. The street is designed for cars and not for people. But honestly, it doesn't work for anyone. I am so tired of the city and the MBTA and the state playing hot potato with our neighborhood and specifically I love the city and my spouse is a city employee and I'm very sorry to say this but I'm disappointed for the city with the delayed improvements on High Park A. The intersection we cross on is a city street. The cars are turning off a state road but I am a city resident on a city street and I need my city to take responsibility for my and my kids' safety. This is my home. I should be able to cross the street and get to the train without risking our lives. So, I'm asking you to please hold yourselves accountable and fund the lead redesign and do something before something else really terrible happens. Thank you. Thanks Lauren. So, um that was really amazing. I uh thank you for your public testimony. Christine Rogue is next. I am going to ask that we hold applause only because we have three pages of public testimony. Um, so I want to make sure that we actually have a chance for every single person to testify. So Christine, you have two minutes. And then up upcoming next, if you can stand waiting to testify, Molly Phelps and Ally Kelly Hawky. Hi everyone. My name is Christine. For the past nine years, I've lived in the Forest Hills area with my family, which includes two kids who go to this school. Based on where we live, where we commute, where my kids go to school, where we've made our community, Hide Park Gav is a part of our daily existence. For my testimony, I'd like to share my experience biking on Hide Park A. For context, both my husband and I bike to work. I go about 10 miles out and back towards Backbay. My husband does about 12 miles for his Cambridge commute. Without a doubt, the most dangerous portion of each of our commutes is the roughly onem stretch on Hide Park a before we hit the southwest corridor or going in the reverse direction home as we leave the corridor. My specific pain points as a biker attempting to share the lane with cars is heading into town on Hide Park A and trying to take a left on Ukraine Way and then coming home on Hide Park A, trying to take a left onto Walk Hill. With fast cars in all directions and no bike safety measures, it's not an understatement that this is a feat each and every time I make that trip. Yet, I make myself as visible as possible to cars and busy traffic to do so. I'd call myself an experienced biker, but if traffic is too too busy, I'll wait for the walk signal, choosing to go with the pedestrians instead. And in moments of fear where cars jam through those intersections, I take to the sidewalk with my bike rather than competing with the cars. I just don't feel safe. Biking on Hide Park AB should not be as scary as it is. I'd feel immensely safer with bike lanes in the current state of it. If I I don't allow my two children to be on the street on their own bikes or to cross it without an adult. The thought terrifies me. I urge you to prioritize biker and pedestrian safety on Hide Park Cav. Make improvements and give us more peace of mind. Thank you. Right on time. Okay, we're gonna go to Molly Phelps and then Ally Kelly Hawky. Okay. Oh, perfect. Hi everyone. Uh my name is Molly Phelps. I'm a resident of Forest Hills neighborhood at Wuset Street. I'm so grateful to live in JP where we have a family daycare that we have sent our eldest to and I now send this guy to. Our daycare is um on Hide Park A. So Hide Park A is a part of my day every day. I walk with a double stroller to pick up and drop off this little one there. And in order to avoid the zooming cars on the road, I push my heavy double stroller up and down the hills of Wuset. But the last quarter of a mile, I must travel on Hide Park A. When I stand at the crosswalk of Hide Park in Woodburn, I watch cars zoom by at 40, 50, sometimes 60 miles an hour. Unfortunately, the speedometer sign there does little except prove how well the road is designed for high speed and how little margin of error that would provide for a parent with children. I would love to be able to let my son ride his bike or his scooter to pick up his younger brother at daycare, but unfortunately that will never be an option with the road the way it is currently. Countless days on our walk, we have seen broken glass, hub caps, pieces of bumpers, and pieces of a wrecked scooter. Signs of crashes that thankfully never happen during our walk, but feel like a sign of what could happen. In the winter months, I wear a fluorescent vest and I've covered my stroller in reflective tape so that drivers see me as a pedestrian crossing the street and walking on the sidewalk. On the days that I do have to drive, I have to park on the street and rushing out of my car to take my baby out of his car seat is harrowing as well. Hide Park A has been part of my daily life for the past three years and will continue to be for the next three years until this one starts preschool. Over the last two years, I was encouraged to see how much the city seemed invested in making changes that would protect our families who use that road every day. I have been ouch incredibly disheartened at the act that the inaction and delays that make me now believe change will not come in time for us to see it and in time to provide safety for my family. I'm urging the city to fund a muchneeded safety redesign on Hide Park A to calm traffic and make it a safer space for all of us who use it. Thank you. Thank you. and we're gonna have to um we're definitely gonna have to clip that because that's his first public testimony. So, um Ally, go ahead. I'm Ally Kelly Hawky. I live on um Watus Street. I work downtown and my kids have been at daycare at various locations at Stonybrook, Green Street, downtown. So, I frequently am traveling either on the Orange Line and commuting to the Orange Line from Wusit Street or I'm on the 32 bus. Um, and there's three things I want to point out that I've been really scared about for my family's safety. The first is the intersection of Hide Park Avenue and Ukraine Street. I am terrified every time I cross that as a biker, as a walker. Um, I was with my son recently, that little guy running around there, the he was two at the time. And we were in the crosswalk. We had the walk signal crossing Hyde Park A and he was this close to getting run over by two cars going 40 miles an hour. I started screaming in the middle of the streets. I feel unsafe. I feel unsafe. I feel unsafe. And people came over to help me because I'm telling you, that little boy was inches away from two cars going 40 miles an hour through a red light. Cars run that light all the time. We had the walk signal. It must have been red for them. And it wasn't like they were slowly running it. It was fast. And there was a car parked illegally in that intersection, so I could not see them out of the corner of my periphery. It was so scary. The second is crossing Eldridge Hide Park A. When I take the 32 bus, the way I get to my side of where I live is crossing Eldridge. Cars do not stop there. I know there's an inter there's a crosswalk. I have stood there, waved my arms like this while holding a 2-year-old, and cars go whizzing by me. I don't know what it takes to get cars to stop there. I have brought glow sticks to wave like this to try to get cars to stop. I won't do it in the winter when it's dark. There needs to be a street light or something there like that. Nobody pays attention to those crosswalks. They are going 40, 50, 60 miles an hour as you already heard. The third thing is my kids are now at the Sarah Roberts school which I know counselor your children are there too. It's a beautiful school and a lot of kids in this neighborhood are going to the Sarah Roberts school. We don't qualify for buses because we're within the lane. So that means we are walking and we are biking our children down High Park A every day and there's going to be more and more of those kids as that school becomes a feeder for kids in this neighborhood. There are I know of at least 10 families already and there's going to be more. The way we get our children to school is biking and walking up and down High Park AB. And I feel scared every morning. And I feel like I'm doing a trust fall with this city right now to be honest because my kids are in this room and they're hearing me say that I don't feel safe. And the only reason I'm being vulnerable and let them hear that I don't feel safe is because I'm really counting on the city to do something. Otherwise, my kids are hearing right now that I don't feel safe. I don't feel like I can take care of them. So, please make it worth that risk that I'm taking. Thank you. Okay. Um, we have Hillary Till, Zack D Clerk, Katarina Scaramelli, Benjamin Seagull. Okay. Is this Hillary? Yes. Um, hi everyone. My name is Hillilary Till. Three years ago, my husband and I moved here from Houston, Texas in the dreams of starting a family. And luckily, we were able to do that. We chose Massachusetts and Jamaica Plains specifically to be our home because it seemed very f familyfriendly and I have been extremely disappointed in the uh lack of regard for safety that I have been experiencing when it comes to pedestrian safety. My husband and I are advent runners. My husband has run many many marathons. Um I run a little bit as well. I choose to run in the mornings. I have a small window of time I can do that. Uh, it is an absolute nightmare crossing Ukraine way so I can have a peaceful run in the arboritum before I start my day. I have walked across the intersection whenever it's my turn only to have drivers stop and then run red lights. Um, it is an absolute nightmare uh during peak hours. I don't understand why we can't have traffic lights, why we can't have an officer there. People trying to take a left on a Ukraine way. People in the right hand lane are cutting them off. Traffic's backed up. Drivers are frustrated. And it is just endangering the lives of so many of my neighbors who are crossing that same intersection to bring their children to preschool. And I'm fed up that we've had to lose people. We lost another JP resident yesterday in South Huntington. And when is what else is it going to take? Is it going to take a child? Is it going to take a a mother like me getting hit? What is it going to take to make basic improvements? I come from Houston, Texas, a heavily driving city. We do not have this problem. I live downtown and we did not have this problem of people running red lights, driving 40 miles an hour in zones that are not designated to do so. You know why? Because we have enforcement there. And what I'm saying is we need change. We need something different before worse things happen. Another issue too, um I had my sister visiting and she uh we were crossing the Bellow apartments where we saw elicit drug activity twice in one day in the morning whenever we walked into town and then whenever we were walking back. And thank you so much. I'm sorry. I just have to keep everyone to time. It's okay. Um Zach D clerk declar. Okay. Katarina Scaramelly and I want to announce we've been joined by councelor Aaron Murphy. Sorry, thanks for reading. Okay. Hi everyone. My name is Katina Scarameli. I'm a resident of Forest Seals for about seven years. I commute through the northern stretch of Hide Park Avenue about uh four times a day uh if not more on foot by bike, sometimes in a car or a bus, often carrying my young children. To get out of Forest Steel's neighborhood, you have to walk, bike, or drive or wheel down Hide Park Avenue. It's the only way to get out of this neighborhood and it's undoubtedly the most dangerous part of any of my commutes around the city. Merging into Hide Park Avenue as I leave Wild Hill Street is a harrowing experience. Illegally parked cars leave no visibility to merge into four lanes of car traffic moving well above the speed limit. When I bike with my eldest child, the loud one, uh the only safe way to be on Hide Park Avenue is on the sidewalk, which gets in the way of pedestrians and is not legal. But I'm not going to risk my children's lives by taking the legal option. And I need to bike them to school or to the doctor's office. Yesterday, I biked be dutifully in the traffic lane and was immediately grazed by a car driver who forced me to swerve away and almost crash against a parked car. And the driver then proceeded to run two red lights with absolute impunity. Walking is even worse. At no pedestrian crossing do car drivers actually reliably stop. And it does not matter if you're pushing a stroller in a wheelchair or you have a newborn strapped on you. At Ukraine way, cars take red turns on the pedestrian green even as one is right in the middle of the crosswalk. Um they blast through the red lights and credible speeds passing each other in the right lane before then taking left turns. With no infrastructural barrier to traffic speed and no pedestrian visibility, drivers seek to gain a few seconds of their stressful commutes. and local residents and vulnerable road users are the externality of this strategy. I spend the two long traffic cycles while waiting for the brief pedestrian green at Walkill Street, thinking about the life and death consequences of long-term neglect and infrastructure devestment. Despite the presence of several schools and a plague nearby, this road infrastructure seems to be designed to actually kill our children and ourselves. Thank you. Thank you so much. Um, we're uh Ben Seagull, a Benjamin Seagull. Sorry, I know another Ben Seagull, so I thought you were him. Okay, nice to meet you. Go ahead. Thank you, counselors. Um, my name is Benjamin Seagull. I live on Weld Hill Street. I'm the father of a three-year-old uh girl and a two-week old boy. Boston is the best city in America to raise a family, and you would absolutely never know that walking down Hide Park Avenue. In good weather and bad weather, I take my daughter to preschool to dance class and many playgrounds on the back of a bicycle or in her stroller. So much of that is easy and good, but Hide Park Avenue is the awful stretch where every day I imagine our family's worst nightmare in nightmare in the form of a traffic death of one of our children. Every day I make a choice between irritating pedestrians by biking on the sidewalk or biking on High Park Avenue and taking my and my children's life into into my hands. This is a miserable decision and I ponder it every time I pass the votives where our neighbor Glenn was crushed under a city bus. The first changes to Hide Park Avenue were proposed in 2019 and I want to say that that is many years before the funding crisis that we are in today. As a community, we've asked for basic safety upgrades for more than two years and our voices have been amp amplified very skillfully by our city councelor Ben Weber. The administration has responded with a disgusting and contemptable lack of action. It's really repulsive. The mayor told us to keep engaging. Her director of stakeholder engagement said that we just needed to keep on collecting more feedback from involved constituents. This is inane. We've engaged again and again. We're doing it again. I think this is the 12th meeting that I've been here in this bu in this building. If I were the mayor or if I were her director, I would feel ashamed of stonewalling, delaying, and risking more lives rather than listening to evidence, to data, and our lived experience. I'd feel embarrassed hiding behind ever more process to cover up what is fundamentally inaction and cowardice. Since 2015, and I checked this this morning, there have been 769 crashes on the Hide Park Avenue that required a public safety response. That's 769 times. And there are many others where an ambulance didn't have to come, but these are the ones where an ambulance or a police officer had to come. And behind every one of those numbers is someone like us. It's a worried or devastated spouse, parent, sibling, child, or friend. I'm asking this administration to move forward with the safety changes that this community has demanded, has asked for, and that our children and our families and our neighbors deserve. Every day of delay is another really shameful gamble with our children's lives. Thank you. Um, Will Cohen. Will Cohen. Is Will Cohen here? Sorry. It's okay. We have So, we're gonna go to Will and then we are going to go to Rob Kurt and then we are going to let um the administration give opening statements um and then we are going to get into testimony and then we are going to have more public testimony. Okay, go ahead. All right. Thank you. Good uh good evening, counselors. My name is Will Cohen. I'm speaking today in my capacity as a resident. Um my eldest child attends kindergarten here at the BTU. My youngest attends preschool on the other side of Washington Street. We we live about threequarters a mile south of here uh in Council Royal's district. Um so a bike ride down High Park A between Walkill Ukraine Way including Ukraine Way as we've heard already tonight is a critical link for dropping off my kids and it serves as the approximate start and end of my daily commute downtown. It often means I'm making left turns on Hide Park A in both directions two to four times every workday, usually with one or two kids with me on the bike. There's really no good way as I think we've also heard tonight uh for bikes to turn left in either direction on height park a um that's agreeable for cars and so in response because of the difficulty for cars they regularly respond by shouting honking or speeding past I've witnessed two serious car crashes take place as they happened one while bicycling just a few feet away and I've uh seen the aftermath of many other ones debris mentioned by other uh public testimony earlier as a working parent I have no option that's compatible with the work schedule except for using my bike to shuttle my kids to school before heading to Forest Hills. And there's no reasonable commute path except this little small stretch of road. I don't like feeling that I'm risking my children's safety by dropping them off at school. My kids are learning to ride bikes themselves. Uh I'd like to feel confident letting them bike to schools themselves as they get older. I'd like to feel confident letting them bike with me as a family to go on the tea to explore our city. When they ask me when they can scoot or bike to school, when they get older or to force hills, uh I say when they're older, but really I think I mean when it's safer, but you know, it's not yet. Uh I'm proud to be raising a family here in Boston despite the many structural, financial, logistical challenges that life with kids in the city can present. This particular challenge seems eminently solvable with tools the city is quite familiar with and has uh has deployed with great success elsewhere in the city. Please council take the necessary financial and political steps to complete the multimodal redesign. Thank you. Awesome. Rob Rob. Uh hi, I'm Rob Kurt. I live on Woodlon Street um with my wife and two kids uh seven and two. So uh for us, Hide Park AB is literally the only way to go anywhere in the city unless we're going to jump the fence into the cemetery. Um, and we uh we use a car and a bike, but um use the bike primarily to take our kids to and from their schools. Our son is at the Curly and our daughter's at Pine Village Street. Um, so by far the best way to pick those kids up is by bike. I've I've done it by car and it's an incredible process of waiting in gridlock. The bike, you don't become part of the gridlock. You zip along the southwest corridor and you can pick them up quite quickly. But there's this one miserable stretch where as as numerous neighbors have said, the choice is breaking the law or putting the kids' lives at risk. So I choose to break the law and ride on the sidewalk most of the time because the city's not provided any legal way for me to safely get the kids to do that. Similarly, my son um is, you know, getting to be a strong biker, can bike all the way down to my sister's place on the south end. Um but I have to carry his bike until we reach the southwest corridor because there's no way to reach that infrastructure. The city's done a really great job in investing in some bike infrastructure and it is, you know, taking cars off the streets. It is making it functional to get around the neighborhood. And for us, it's this miserable stretch away from being a really incredible experience of being able to get our kids downtown um and to all the places that we want to go. But it's, you know, that that barrier of literally right at the bottom of our residential street is impassible gridlock and, you know, a highly dangerous situation stops it from really realizing the value that it should be to us. Thank you, Rob. Okay. Um, Sam Pierce, I see that you're here. Would you like to give your two minutes testimony? Go ahead, Sam. Thank you very much. I just wanted to thank you all for being here. Obviously, um for those who don't know, uh right down the street, we actually had a pedestrian killed who was my friend. And for those who also don't know, today, ironically, there was a pedestrian that was just killed uh by a bus. um over in Massachusetts Avenue. So, I think that pedestrian safety is very important mainly because um it involves people and and I think that people really should be the priority as we start thinking about who should be having priorities on our streets. And I think uh one of the things I wanted to also talk about is if we are to be a multimotal city, how does that happen? So, are there scooters? Are there, you know, motorcycles? Are there cars that can go on sidewalks? How do we differentiate, you know, who has the priority if there's a traffic light? So, um, having concurrent lighting stop uh, and being able to prioritize the pedestrian over other vehicles, I think, is very important. And I would like to to really um concur with a lot of what you heard here as far as really uplifting the BTD because we actually had several meetings in this very room. It felt like we were really moving forward and then um all of a sudden it seemed like there was some roadblocks. So I think that having natural barriers uh like trees and and different uh safety measures for pedestrians helps cars realize maybe I should slow down. um similar to what we saw on on Sver Street when they actually built the MBTA uh facility in the middle of the street that becomes a 15 mph uh pedestrian safety zone. And I like what the city council did in the past when they actually reduced the speeding limit to 25 miles an hour. I know that uh back then councelor Baker was a big part of that. And so I'd like to see other um lasting measures because I know in in school zones we actually see, you know, a speed limit safety, you know, between 15 and and 10 miles an hour. You see the little yellow lights. I know some of you are working on putting cameras on school buses but yeah, thank you so much, Sam. We we're keeping everyone to time because I still have two more pages of public testimony. All right, so I'll just be very brief. So I think the main Sorry, that's all we have to I have to cut everyone off. I'm so sorry. All right. Thank you so much, Sam. Um, okay. Um, and before we get I just want to make sure I'm giving everyone equal time. That's so important to me. So, um, I want to make sure, um, all of our colleagues gave an opening statement. Councelor Murphy, if you'd like to give an opening statement. No, thank you. Thank you everyone for being here. Just listening to the testimony. Thank you to the chair for making sure we start off with the residents being able to share their stories. That's so important and looking forward to hearing from Yasha and your team because I know that I see you Yasha out there on your bike commuting. So I know that this is something that hits home to you also. But one thing I do just want to say is that there's so many what I'm hearing a lot of too is there's a lot of laws already on the book and oftentimes we have conversations on the council about enforcing or adding new ordinances when we could just enforce the rules that are already there. So we definitely have to look at how can we make sure we're supporting and one question I had. So if I could ask you were the police the district police invited to this conversation? Um, so this was really um not not to my knowledge. So this was really just the main sponsor and who they requested. Yeah, because I definitely think um following up myself, but if we have another meeting, making sure the Boston police are here so they can talk to, you know, maybe they need more resources, which is something we can do on the council to make sure that this district is able to help at these hot spots across the city. So just looking forward to hearing more testimony, working together to make this right for all ways people get around the city. It should be safe for everyone. So thank you for being vulnerable. Thank you for sharing your concerns and just thank you to the administration because I know we'll hear um and I'll have some specific questions later, but thank you. Thank you so much, Councelor Murphy. Um, so I'm going to let um my other colleagues in government, the administration give their sort of welcome opening statement. And I know um we're limited in our tech capacity, but we the counselors do have a presentation that we're looking at. Um, so go ahead. Um, Chief Franklin Hodgej. Um, thank you. Uh, thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, are we able to get slides up? like should I move so that I'm not well while while we get the uh slide projector going uh I will start by uh introducing myself and some of my team members here uh I am Yasha Franklin Hajj uh chief of streets uh for the city of Boston I work for the mayor overseeing the public works and transportation functions of the city I'm joined by Matt Moran who's the director of our uh transport of our transit team uh which focuses on uh transit corridors and transit related projects uh as well as Tyler Lou who is a project manager on the transit team and has been involved in the hide park a work. If you've been to the other meetings, you have likely uh heard from uh both of these folks. Um so I am also a JP resident. Uh I live uh a little bit closer to JP center. I am a cyclist. I am a father of two boys who I take to the curly school on the back of my bike every day. And uh I'll just say, you know, I really appreciate the testimony from folks here because as a parent, it resonates. Uh and I have been in those circumstances. I understand the fear that comes from being on a street that is not well suited to keeping you and your family safe. And uh I appreciate everyone being so honest and vulnerable about what their experiences have been here on Hide Park A. And I will say I think the city has recognized for some time that Hide Park A as it's currently configured does not serve many of the people who live immediately adjacent to it. Well, it is a moat that separates people from transit that separates people from parks that separates people from biking infrastructure and other pathways for accessing the things that people need in their daily lives. Uh and we have been looking at ways to make this better for some time. Um the city has had as part of its vision zero project an effort to look at the intersection surrounding Forest Hills to find ways to improve safety. This has been ongoing for several years and the urgency of this was tragically underscored with Glenn Ingram's death last year. Um you're going to hear from the team about some of the short shorter term changes that we have made uh reflecting some of that work uh as well as some of the things that we are looking at long term. But the big context for the project that we're here to talk about is a recognition that Hide Park A as a corridor the whole of this is a crucial artery for all of the neighborhoods in the southern part of Boston. No matter how you travel, whether you ride the bus, whether you take the train, whether you walk, whether you bike, whether you drive, Hide Park, A, if you live in uh JP, if you live in Roslandale, if you live in Matapan, if you live in Hyde Park, if you live in West Roxbury, these neighborhoods, all of them are affected by what happens on Hide Park A and in particular what happens at this critical crossroads here around Forest Hills. So, we're going to walk through where we are with some of the planning efforts that we have been. But I think the message I want everyone here to to hear from me is that we understand that we need to make change, but we also know that any change we make here will be felt across this part of the city. And we want to make sure that we are doing it fully informed not only by the community that lives along Hide Park A, but by all the parts of the community that are served by it or that are touched by it. Uh, and our goal with this meeting today is to really have a chance to listen to hear your stories so that we can work towards changes that work for the city of Boston. So, I'm going to hand it over to my colleagues to talk through a little bit more background on the project and updates on where we are today. Great. Thank you very much, Chief. And thank you to the council for hosting this meeting tonight. And also thank you to all of you for being here, for advocating, for spending your time uh to really push for a safer hide park a we really appreciate it. So we're going to talk a little bit tonight about um sort of the project in the project recap, talk a little bit about the repaving project and then we're going to talk about next steps. Next slide. Uh so the chief introduced us but um their names again up on the screen. Go to the next slide. All right. So a little bit about this project. So, as we think about Hide Park A, as the chief noted, we are really looking at the entire street and we'll be talking about specific improvements that we're considering for different parts of the street. But as we think through the holistic part of this project, we're thinking about for hide park from Forest Hills on page left all the way down to Reedville on page right. And as we think about this nearly five mile long street and the thousands and thousands of people who rely on it every single day, we need to take that into account as we think through uh changes to different parts of the avenue. Next slide. And as people have noted in this meeting, this work, this advocacy has been going on for a long time. We first started planning this back in 2019 with some community meetings. It got a little bit disrupted with COVID and the pandemic, but then we picked it back up again a few years ago. And we're making this a part of an overall action plan for the southwest part of the city, uh, Hyde Park, West Roxbury, and Rosendale. And as we think through what changes we can make to the street, what we can do to make the street better, we're taking those different elements into account. Next slide. And of course, want to recognize all of the hard work that people have done over the past several years in terms of contributing to surveys, contributing to petitions, contributing to public meetings. I'm not going to go through these in each all these um individual um engagement efforts in detail, but you can see on the screen and we'll post it on our website that there have been a number of different meetings and um engagements that have happened over the years. And again, thank you for your uh hard work and advocacy with these. Next slide. So, I want to talk a little bit about what we've done over the past 11 months since October of last year. We've looked at making some near-term safety improvements on Hide Park A in the vicinity of Forest Hill Station and on Washington Street. Notably, Washington and Tower. We have increased visibility for pedestrians and motorists at the crosswalk there through daylighting. We've added an exclusive pedestrian phase to remove all turning vehicle conflicts with pedestrians. Um, we've created signal timing changes at other intersections in this area. So, notably Hide Park A at Washington Street and Arborway and at Arbor Way and South Street. And we've done some maintenance and upkeep work like lighting um adding new LED lights from Walk Hill to Arborway and fully refreshing the crosswalks uh to make them more visible as safety measures. Now, if you go to the next slide, some things that are in progress. Um, so Hide Park Avenue have at Webster Street. This is really uh going a little bit further south in the corridor. We've added a new crosswalk. We've fully repaved that section of street. If you go down there today, you'll notice that the lane markings a lot are a lot brighter. The pedestrian crossings are very much improved. And we've begun to do things like narrow the travel lane to uh push vehicles to go uh slower. Uh Hide Park Avenue at the E8 E18 police station uh which is down by Clary Square. We've added a casting in place concrete uh crosswalk or I'm sorry, we will be adding this. Um and then we are doing other things to improve daylighting and again narrow the travel length and make it much safer and more visible for people. I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Tyler Lou who's going to talk to you a little bit about the repaving project. Tyler, thank you Matt. Uh and thank you for everyone uh for showing up tonight. Um so we are going to talk about the repaven project which is the uh meat and potatoes of what you all are here to discuss tonight. Um it really is that northern section from Arboroway to Ukraine way which we were initially targeting in this uh project when we first met about this particular one in May of this year. Uh we really wanted to look at this as an opportunity to uh evaluate you know pedestrian safety, bicyclist safety, signal improvements, everything that you guys have been telling us for years. Next slide please. So in our current condition uh just to level set here I'm sure all of you know this. This should look very familiar to a lot of the folks in this room. We currently have four vehicle travel lanes. Uh we are dealing with a very complicated street network at this particular intersection. Um, in this particular stretch of road, we have lots of traffic congestion, lots of traffic delay. Uh, and we have a road that functionally, as you guys have said, does not feel safe for pedestrians, does not feel safe for bicyclists. Uh, there's currently no bike infrastructure. There's limited street space and very few alternative routes that are viable. Uh, we also have a large MBTA facility. Sorry. Yeah, I Yeah. Um, next slide. Uh, these are quotes directly taken from some of our prior meetings, uh, or directly from one-on-one conversations I've had during office hours. Um, it's really a lot of what you guys have said here today as well. You know, anything is better than what's out there right now. you currently drive the corridor but would prefer to bike safely. Four lanes is too much. It's it really encourages dangerous driving. You feel like the city has not been listening to to your concerns. Uh all those intersections on the west side of Forest Hills are just frankly too dangerous. Uh and it already takes 20 minutes to clear this intersection. Why are we adding additional delay? Uh next slide please. So just to reiterate what we talked about in May, we were exploring two alternatives. Uh really three alternatives. One was to restore and repaint the status quo. The first alternative was to uh push forward with daylighting and curve extensions on the section from Arway to Ukraine way. Uh this would give more time for pedestrians to cross at Ukraine and make it feel like a safer crossing. That would also include increased uh northbound motor vehicle and bus queuing delay at Ukraine Way and would not include bike lanes. The second alternative we discussed at that maybe meeting was uh daylighting and curb extensions as well. those similar improvements at Ukraine Way uh with a new crosswalk at Welt Street with the potential opportunity for painted bike lanes in the future. This would also come with northbound and southbound motor vehicle delay bus queuing uh in both directions at a few key intersections. Next slide. Just sorry jump in here. So I just want to add a couple of comments on this. So this, you know, as I said at the outset, right, this is this is probably this is one of the most challenging locations that we have in the city because the trade-offs that exist here are tremendous. Um, this is a an intersection that this is a street a stretch of street that has widespread effects. Uh, when something changes here, we hear about it from all over uh this part of Boston. and the space we have to work with is relatively constrained for the volume of uh vehicles of buses of people walking. The fact that this is a key transit hub and there are not one but two large bus facilities with the upper and lower bus way that all need to be able to move buses in and out in an efficient way. The lines that serve Hide Park A, the bus lines that serve Hide Park A serve about 12,000 people on a typical weekday. uh there's tens of thousands more on some of the other lines that come out of uh the Forest Hill station. So, I say all this to say that, you know, for us, like we I never want to be in a position where I have to say, well, you know, we're going to trade off your safety against vehicle delay. But we have to make sure that the corridor continues to function because some of the safety issues that we experience today, the crosswalk blocking, some of the uh behavior that we see is in part related to just how intensely congested the corridor is today and the competition for space. Um, I talked to people who, you know, we have heard so many so much from the folks here who live in this neighborhood, who walk, who bike here about the challenges that that you puts on them. But we also talk to bus riders who talk about what happens when their bus is unreliable. I talk to people who drive who do child drop off, you know, and they drive through four times a day and they they, you know, they they're not trying to make your neighborhood unsafe, but they talk about losing an hour out of every single day dealing with the congestion in Forest Hills and just how frustrating and difficult that is for their lives. So again, there's this is not a world where we want to kind of trade off one person's safety against another person's convenience. But I think my perspective is that the city owes it to all of those people, no matter how they're moving, who are affected by this corridor, to get it right, to be thoughtful, to be deliberate, and really take the time to understand all of the options we have, all of the trade-offs associated with them so that we can try to find a balance that improves safety for people who live here, but also keeps this as a functional node in our our, you know, trans transportation system for for the all the people that live in this part of Boston. Yeah, thank you for that. Yasha, next slide please. Last one. Last one. Oh, sorry. Uh, well, there's only really one slide left and that is really to talk about what comes next. Uh, as we have had uh this old time office hours will continue to be open. You can book them on directly on the project web page. Uh and the streets cabinet has been tasked with doing additional engagement through uh winter 2025 with the goal of the repaving implementation being in the 2026 construction season. Uh that being said, the Southwest Boston Transaction Plan will be continuing engagement, the plan that this project is a larger part of through spring 2026 and beyond. And that is all. Thank you everyone. Perfect. Okay. So, um if we can turn this off. I'm really sensitive to light. Okay. Um so, we are going to start with um city council questions to the administration. We're going to give every colleague five minutes to start. there's a lot of public testimony still left to get through. So, I want to make sure we keep it concise, but um generally our hearings are, you know, 50 to 60% counselor input. We definitely know that there's a lot more feedback in this room. So, I want to make sure we get to that. So, I'm going to give usually we do seven minutes. We're going to do five minutes for each colleague. And I also want to announce that we've been joined by councelor Eden who has a really really great attendance record in my in my hearing. So, thank you, Councelor Flynn. Um uh so uh, Councelor Weber, you have five minutes. Okay. Uh, thank you. Thank you, Chair. Um, okay. So, this is we we've heard a lot of this before. Uh and it just in my kind of relatively short time dealing with this, it seemed like we were moving forward uh to to something to to option two or lease option one. Uh and it seemed like not just here, you know, and Yash, I don't know if you can answer this, but uh or or Chief Franklin Hajj, sorry. uh uh uh you know it seemed like because uh in the mayoral election Josh Craft was making such an issue of street changes, bike lanes, trying to sort of make that you get some traction on that. Uh and I think as we saw in the election, he did not get any traction on that. Uh especially in Jamaica plane where I think 88% of folks voted for Michelle Woo. Um, so I get the question I get a lot is, okay, now that the election's over, you know, is there going to be a return to putting in this infrastructure? Because I I I've seen, you know, sort of delay here, delay in some other places. C I can you just can you give us some sense of, you know, like was there a stop and then are we going to restart, you know, what we thought was moving toward more pedestrian and bike safety and having that as a priority? Um, sure. I'm going to stay out of the electoral politics piece of this, but I will say I think I think Ben forgot that we're not that because we're not in city hall. So, um you know, we we we have uh there's without a doubt, right, there's been a little bit of a pause uh on some of the or reduction in the volume of safety infrastructure work that we've done this year. And uh you know certainly there has been a lot of political ferment around some of the work but I would also say you know one of the things that I am proud of in my time in in this first term is that we got a lot done. We built more bike lanes than any previous administration uh in just three years. We built speed humps. We made changes throughout the city. And with those changes I think has come a lot of different feelings. There are people who love them, who are happy to see them in the street. There are people who have felt uh very frustrated by uh some of those changes. And so from my perspective and I think the administration's perspective, it's incumbent on us when we do a lot of change and when we hear very strong feelings from both sides to make sure that we are being thoughtful about how we are engaging the full spectrum of residents regardless of whether they agree or not with the approach that we're taking to listen and to make sure that their feedback and their perspective gets integrated into how we work. So, this year has been a bit of a pause as we try to find good ways to make sure that we're hearing from all the voices that are affected by the decisions we make. Uh, okay. Uh, yeah. Now, I didn't I didn't mean to put you on the spot about the election, but I think in terms of like, you know, how your office is approaching these things, I mean, just I I will say I think and I you know, I wanted I I supported the mayor and and I, you know, if we're going to get this infrastructure that this is the mayor to do it. I just, you know, hope we can get back to that as a priority. Um, in terms of like what you're talking about, you know, making sure we have a good community process and hear feedback like you what what does that look like? Uh, what more do you need to hear from Forest Hills? Do you need to hear anything more from from this neighborhood, which you know, I I represent? What what else do you need to hear from other other you know you've got district four and five uh you know uh so tell tell me what that is how how this should look I mean I think we have this neighborhood has been organized this neighborhood has been clear this neighborhood has stepped up and participated and told us what you want to see and we hear it um I think we want to make sure we also hear from other neighborhoods that are adjacent and that use and are served by this corridor uh and that is something that I ask for help with the from some of the counselors to make sure that we are reaching and speaking with the community groups that represent all of the users or the broadest spectrum we can get of people who use this corridor, people who ride the bus, people who drive, people who come from Hide Park, from Rosundale through this area. Uh we do need those voices in the conversation understanding that the people who live along the corridor are uniquely and most significantly affected by its design. Okay. And and so I you know I hope by having this meeting everyone you know at least that I represent who's here sees that you know I care about this issue and you know when I was when I was told that we weren't going with either either option you know I wanted to have an inerson conversation about that and thank you for for being here. So if in terms of advocacy for next year, so so the so just the just to recap, there's no repaving that's going to happen this season. You're looking at next spring. Can is there is option two which we which would have which we were told about, you know, uh and which would go from four to three lanes uh and and I certainly would continue to support. Is that still on the table? Yeah, I think at this point any any plausible design configurations are on the table, including, you know, things that have been previously shown or other variants um from there. I think this is really the goal is to use this hearing and other engagement over the winter to uh arrive at a decision about how the street will be put back post repaving. Okay, just thank thank you very much. Does anyone in the room who is familiar with the two options? Does anyone want to com raise their hand if they support option two? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Thank Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, uh, Councelor Weber. Okay. Next, we're going to go to councelor Pepen. Uh, then councelor, councelor Murphy, and councelor Flynn. So, and we do have a letter of absence from councelor Henry Santana. Councelor Pepen, you have five minutes. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I think that council Weber hit the nail on the head with questioning in terms of priority and what else is missing in order to move forward. Um, just for the record, I am in support of whatever it takes to make H High Park app safer. I am not happy with the delays that have been happening. So, I I represent the part that is a little bit more southern part of of Hyp where a lot of the speeding happens just because it's like the wild west. Um, there's no sense of enforcement. There's there's no traffic lights to stop vehicles from going up to 70 miles per hour as they were tracked. And that I think that's part of the concerns of the of the concerns we heard from the parent that is crossing the street to go to the Sarah Roberts school and and the other just public facilities that exist along High Park app. So my question to the chief is not only do we need the improvements near this part, but are there any efforts from the city to deviate traffic away from High Park A, let's say onto American Legion or to towards the Washington Street side arbor way? um just want to make because I I can hear that congestion is a major part of the issue. Um but I feel like if we were to make it easier for a bus to go down High Park a more people would use it. Um if if we were to if we were to So usually in the chamber there's no clapping or applause. I let's just try to keep it short because I really do want to run an efficient hearing and I I what I don't want is us to hit 900 PM and then people haven't testified. So go ahead council proven. I do think the applause show that the strong sentiment about using our public transportation. Um just straight to the question are we are there any efforts to deviate traffic away from hyper app in regards to cars? I you know I think when it comes to sort of telling people here's where you can go or where you should go we have a pretty limited toolkit. Cars tend to be like water. Traffic tends to be like water. It sort of finds finds the paths of least resistance. Um what we can do is change the design of a corridor to prioritize different modes of transportation. That is the intention behind this larger southwest Boston transportation action plan is to ident is to look holistically across the major corridors particularly Hide Park A but looking at the adjacent and and potentially complimentary roadways and figure out what sort of changes are there stretches of Hide Park A where it would make sense to have bus priority. Are there places where we have the width that we can create more dedicated bike facilities? These are all questions on the table as part of the larger planning initiative to really think about how people flow in this part of the city. Yeah. And I appreciate you saying that and I I also represent the Washington Street side of of Ross and they all I am able to see how the bus lane works there and they they do it on you know the AM hours and the PM hours. I'm able to see how just fluid it is. I'm actually jealous when I'm in my car and I see a ton of people on the bus and I'm stuck in traffic. So, it's like I do see that if we were to go with an option that allowed for a bus lane, that could really help with a lot of the problems here. Um, so thank you. Yes. And make the 32 bus free, but um, another thing that I wanted to point and I know my time is limited. I can see the time. A lot of the concerns are from pedestrian safety in terms of crossing from one side of Hyper Park to the other. Are there any ways for us to in this in this first phase of the re of the reconstruction of High Park A to add those the buttons where pedestrians are able to press the the crosswalk button and it stops the traffic from flowing at least during the AM and PM rush hours. Uh you're talking about an exclusive crosswalk where all the traffic is stopped. I mean we we have that in some locations already. So the Ukraine way intersection for example isn't exclusive but I think as we've heard compliance is a major issue at that intersection. I've seen that myself. No I'm not sorry not the one with traffic lights already. I'm thinking like like Eldridge Street where Green Laundry is like for you to cross that street. It's true what the parent mentioned like you do really have to wait for dozens of cars to eventually see you. I wonder if we were to put signal in intersections like that when there where there isn't traffic lights. Yeah, that that is absolutely something we can look at. There's different types of flashing signals that we can use. Some are harder and more expensive than others, but we are absolutely can look at that as a um something consideration. And then the last thing I'll do is ask is also something that councelor Murphy brought up is about the enforcement piece. I know that we usually we tend to have crossing guards and other types of enforcement at our schools, which is amazing. I wonder if we if we were to have some to some type of transportation officers or some someone that directs helps direct traffic during rush hours at that Ukraine and forest hill way. I mean, it's probably dangerous for them just to stand there, but is there any mechanism that we can implement so that there is some sight of guidance there? We we don't have great tools for this right now. It's certainly within my cabinet. We do not have enforcement powers for moving violations. Um the crossing guard program is within the Boston Police Department and they have historically in Boston been the place where all of the human enforcement happens. We have flagged for BPD as we often do in in critical locations that Hide Park A and some of the intersections we've been talking about today are places in need of increased enforcement. I know the city has in recent years not prioritized traffic enforcement. Um and I think that is a worthwhile conversation for us to have. We are also supportive of camerabased enforcement. Uh there was a bill that passed last year that uh allows camerabased enforcement for bus lanes and on school bus stop signs. Um there has been some movement at the state legislature to expand that to include red light andor speed cameras. We would be supportive of that. Uh I think what I have heard here today and what we see is that there are parts of the city with a culture of impunity around moving violations and we need better enforcement tools to be able to change that because we can design streets that are slower. We can design safety infrastructure but ultimately safety on the streets depends on a compact that includes motorists being willing to follow the rules. and we need to make sure that that happens no matter what the design of the street looks like. Thank you. Thank you so much, Chief. And thank you um thank you to Councelor Bean. Uh councelor Rurell, you have five minutes. Thank you, Chair, and thank you again for everyone that's here and thank you to the administration for your presentation. Um, and then just dovetailing off of enforcement. Um, I know there's a state house bill, um, I think it's bill House number 3754 to get more automated traffic enforcement. Um, just hearing from our police department, I I do not believe that they have a traffic enforcement division right now in BPD. However, I I do believe um that you know we should be um enforcing some of these traffic infractions, especially the speeding. Um I have a two-year-old uh son and you know we visit you know a lot of the playgrounds in the area. Um and in fact any place right where we should be enforcing traffic um infractions. It's around our playgrounds. It's around our you know our schools and it's around our hightraic areas like our but our our our field our transportation um our MBTA stations. So my question is one um any any uh coordination with BPD on identifying areas where you know they should be visible and then also um any update um and maybe this is a question for our state house colleagues on bill house number 3754 around automated traffic enforcement. So we do uh ident we do work with BPD to identify places that we from a streets perspective think need additional enforcement. We flagged some of the areas around here. I know that last year there was a period of increased enforcement and I did hear from uh our local district that they were pleasantly surprised at all the positive feedback they got from neighbors about seeing that enforcement happen. Um I don't know they do not provide us with regular updates on the volume or locations of their enforcement. So I I don't know kind of how much of that has continued. Um we uh are working with our intergovernmental relations team to try to support the automated enforcement bills that are moving at the state house. Um but I don't have a status update on that yet. Um, we will see the impacts of the automated enforcement for bus lanes and school bus cameras start to kick in in Massachusetts hopefully by the end of this year. And my hope is that that proves effective in those areas and that becomes a catalyst for more state support. But I would also encourage all of you if you feel strongly about this to reach out to your state legislators about automated enforcement as well. Yeah. Yeah. And I would definitely, you know, echo that and it's bill house number 3754. Um, and if I could I can't find a Senate House, but bill House number 7 375 54. When it comes to bike lanes, you know, you know, you drive around the city, there's so many different ways the city of Boston does bike lanes, right? You know, sometimes it's part of um the sidewalk, you know, over on Massav and Comm on Columbia Road, it's on the outside and then other parts it's on the inside. Is is can you talk to me like why or even on Causeway Streets down the middle, right? Can you talk to me why you know so many different standards and is there one that's better than the other? Um and is the city looking to just pick one standard to kind of implement across the city? Um it's a great question. Uh I think there's a lot of different factors that go in um big uh the three big things are space uh speed and uh uh cost. So the more separated the more physically separated bikes are from drivers and from pedestrians, the safer it is for everybody on the street. Um so we always aim to create separated bike facilities. Those can be done in a variety of ways as you've observed. Sometimes when we are able to do a large street reconstruction and we have a money to spend, we can do fully constructed separated facilities or sidewalk level facilities when we are trying to move quickly or there is budgetary limitations. We typically use quick build materials. Historically those have been flex posts, those white posts, we are moving away from those but we are piloting other materials like cast inplace concrete and uh rubber bumpers that can be used to create that physical separation. But the big constraint that we run into and the starting point for this conversation is about space. And this is the challenge on Hide Park A outside of Forest Hills is that to maintain four travel lanes for cars and buses, we do not uh and maintain parking on one side for the businesses across from the Forest Hill Station. We do not have space for bike lanes of any kind separated or even adjacent to the travel lane. My last question is around, sorry, finding my notes. What metrics um are you using to decide what would increase or hinder hinder safety? So, I'm not sure I quite understood the question. So, I know um for example, you just said space, right? um is is one of the things that you put in um consideration for for you know protected bike lanes versus you know not having protected bike lanes. Uh what what other things are you looking into in order to you know safety improvements to increase whether it's pedestrian safety or cyclist safety? Yeah, I mean other things that we can do involve changes to the signals. We can look at how the curb line is constructed. We try to reduce crossing distances for pedestrians wherever possible, which we can do by extending the curb. We can also look at putting uh pedestrian refuge areas in the street where there's a median of some kind that gives people a place to pause when they cross. Um the phasing and sequencing of signals are cars allowed to turn over a crosswalk at the same time that uh you know vehicles that pedestrians are crossing. Uh these are things that we look at. Uh and then we look at overall the functioning of the roadway. We look at speeds. We look at the volume of vehicles. We look at signage. We look at just how do we improve visibility so that it is predict more predictable and people have more reaction time to sort of understand oh there's somebody waiting to cross or there's a car where maybe it's not supposed to be and so that the more time that we give people and more visibility we give people the safer they can be. Oh and just one last question chair sorry um transit priority traffic signals. Um I didn't see that. Can you provide an update on the status? Uh, sure. Thank you, counselor. So, as many of you might know, we recently piloted three transit signal priority um locations on Brighton Avenue. It was success. We saw over a 20% improvement in sort of bus run times on the street and that also helped to improve general purpose traffic flow and also helped with some pedestrian crossings as well. We are looking at uh working with the MBTA and our partners there to bring that to more locations around the city. So, we're currently evaluating additional locations around the city where that might be possible and looking to implement that as soon as we can. Thank you. Thank you so much. And um so next we're going to go to councelor Aaron Murphy. And um what I'm trying to do is I'm giving everyone five minutes, but if they have I want them to be able to finish their points. So um so go ahead. Thank you. Um, thank you for that presentation. I'm going to go back to what I heard when the residents spoke and the quality of life and many of you shared that you're choosing not to do things that you either grew up here or moved here to enjoy like your kids are not going to ride their bikes, they're not going to scooter in sections where you just don't feel safe. So that's just something that I think we have to keep in mind that this type of traffic concern isn't just an inconvenience. It's like changing the way you're living your life. So that matters to me and that I would think, you know, matters to how much we're going to push that. I think we need to do more. Um I think it was Ben who said there were 769 um you know, incidences. I'm not sure exactly, but Yasha, do we know like what data do we have on the crashes, near misses, pedestrian injuries, and how far back would we be going to get a good picture of what changes we want to make now in this area? Yeah, I mean, typically for um safety projects, we do rely a lot on crash data. Um these are the city's stats um are based on EMS uh callouts. So they cover a wide variety of scenarios ranging from, you know, no injuries at all up to a fatal crash. Um, when there are serious injuries, injury or fatal crash crashes that occur, our vision zero team works with the Boston Police Department, which investigates these crashes to really try to understand the more precise mechanics of what happens so that we can make sure we are incorporating any lessons from that into the design of the street. Um, we also use speed data so we can do speed studies on corridors. We look at traffic volumes. We look at turning movement volumes because that often tells us how off how likely, for example, is a turning car to come into conflict with a pedestrian that informs decisions about, for example, the signal phasing and whether we allow concurrent turns. So, those are some of the data sources that we do. Do we use any 311 calls? I'm not sure if residents make a 311 complaint or a 911 call because I heard many people share near misses, right? which are just as scary and many of the near misses are what are causing people to like choose not to ride their bikes or let their kids you know scooter to school with their friends. We we don't have a formalized way for capturing near misinformation but we do hear through our office of neighborhood services through the members of the council through meetings like this we hear from the community about some of those experiences that they have had and we do try to incorporate that into our thinking on our projects. Could you share some specific policy changes we make as a city based on the data? Because we can collect as much data as we want, but what do we do with that data? And are there any concrete examples of changes we've already made based on that? I I mean I think if you look at um some of the other safety projects that the city has undertaken uh corridors throughout the city that have been redesigned whether it's Massav between Dorchester and Roxbury or Center Street in West Roxbury if you look at um you know our uh uh vision zero program which identifies specific intersections that have a high crash rate. The reason why we were already working on some of the Forest Hills intersections is because our vision zero program identified those looking at crash data as places in need of attention. And so that's why there's been this multi-year ongoing signal work that's happened and some of the changes we talked about are the result of that. So those are just some examples, but every project we do starts with the data that we have to understand what the risks are, what where we can make things safer. Our goal whether it's a pedestrian focused project, the state of good repair project, the bike lane project is can we use this as a vehicle to make the street safer for all users of the street and that is always the goal with any project. Can you share what factors contributed to the decision in July 2025 to proceed with repairing rather than implementing the proposed safety changes? I mean, I think for us what we have in discussions with folks who um within our neighborhood services team and uh others who speak with elected officials who represent the wider area, I think what we heard was some concern about whether uh we you know we have heard a lot from people who live along this corridor and very clearly what people along this corridor want to see. The concern was raised that we have not heard much of anything from folks who use this border but do not live here. And that ultimately was the reason for delaying any implementation of any project was to create space for us to have those conversations. And lastly, and they may not they may be on the horizon, but what engineering changes like raised crosswalks, curb extensions, or um protected bike lanes or plans? Uh at this point, we don't have specific plans for the corridor. We have a couple of concepts that were shown earlier this year, and they contain some of those elements. um specifically curb extensions, uh pedestrian islands, uh as well as some uh other kind of geometric changes uh to improve visibility and the functioning of some of these intersections. Um all of these are continuing to be explored and we'll look at the whole toolkit that we have to find appropriate tools that uh can work here. Thank you. Thank you so much, Councelor Murphy. Um and next we're going to go to councelor Flynn. You have five minutes. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the residents for being here tonight. I came as a district city councelor to support my fellow district counselors uh that represent this neighborhood and also the atlarge counselors as well. But I came here to support the residents especially and to listen listen to you and your your comments. Um, I won't ask specific questions about certain streets or or the impacted neighborhood. I don't know the issue as well as as as my colleagues. But what I would ask is uh traffic enforcement is a critical part whether it's here um in this part of Boston or AC across the city. I represent District 2. Um but Madam Chair, we don't have the we don't have the Boston Police here. Is that correct? We don't. Yeah. And and we I'm happy to follow up with them about future and with and with the lead sponsor. Okay. Um so I'll maybe I'll put a couple questions on the record for the Boston police and then maybe we can get an answer um answer and then we can forward them to. But my question would be um and recommendation is more traffic enforcement um speeding reckless driving that we see in almost every neighborhood. In my opinion, um the speed limit, which is 25 miles an hour, is excessive. Um I work to get it from 30 to 25, but I I think it should even be reduced to 20. But driving 25 miles an hour around this neighborhood um is a recipe for disaster in my opinion. You practically can't stop at any intersection if you're going that that fast. But I do think there is an obligation for the Boston Police Department to be more aggressive on speeding vehicles and and dealing with traffic enforcement. This isn't the wild west. We can't allow someone I think councelor Pepin 70 miles an hour going down High Park Avenue. That's what someone would go on the highway system. Never mind never mind a a street in the city of Boston. But until we address traffic enforcement and be aggressive about it and have zero tolerance, uh, no exception, um, we're not going to make much progress. And if that means unfortunately locking people up that are going 75 70 m an hour down a street like this, then then we have to lock them up. But driving to endanger should not be an option in the city of Boston in my opinion. Um, and that's what's happening and that's what's going to continue to happen unless we enforce the current laws. We can continue to have more laws on the books um and and put more laws in the books, but if they're not enforced, they're meaningless. Um, my second point is there's there's something called concurrent signaling, which means that the vehicle is able to take a a right-hand turn and at the same time the pedestrian is able to cross the street and both have the right of way at the same time. I don't know if that's the specifically the case here, but it is in my district. Um my colleagues and myself went on record 13 to nothing to change that. It should be the pedestrian has the right of way and then after a certain period of time the light changes and then the vehicle has the right of way. But under no circumstances should both of them have the right of way because the vehicle will end up hitting someone that's crossing the street. Chief, as you know, we've worked on this issue for a long period of time. When is that change going to be implemented? Um, so I know we have had some conversation about this, um, counselor. So, at no point do cars and pedestrians ever both have the right of way in the city of Boston. Um, that is that is that is that's not accurate, Chief. Chief, that is that's not accurate. Both both Hi, sorry if he could just not discuss it in the crowd and and hear his answer. I'm happy to to clarify that. So vehicles that are turning are obligated under Massachusetts law. They to they must yield to any pedestrians who are in the crosswalk. That is what the law says. So when we talk about right away as a legal concept, right? What that says is you as a driver may not turn in front of a crosswalk that is in active use by a pedestrian. So that having been said, I understand that like many of our traffic laws, as we've been discussing, that law is not always followed uh and is not, you know, and we have places where the city looks at when we decide whether or not to allow for a concurrent turn. What the city is typically looking at is the volume of vehicles making the turn, the volume of pedestrians in that location in areas with Can I counselor, you asked a question? No, I I did. I did, Chief. if I asked a question, but I do want to follow up though, Chief. Um, but I I do I do want to correct you. They do have the um the rightway at the same time, and I have seen it when a car is taking a right turn and someone's crossing the street. Um, a lot of times the vehicle can't see the person that's crossing the street. It could be an elderly person. It could be a a parent with their with their little kid taking them to the school. There could be a van in the way blocking it. My point is both of them can't have the right away at the same time. We need to we need to enforce that and change it. Give pedestrians the opportunity to cross the street and then the light will change. Chief, I'm I'm concerned about that. I've said that to you. I want to see that change happen tomorrow. We can't keep continue taking chances like that. Chief Counselor, I will tell you if we made that change citywide tomorrow, every single person on this stage would be out of a job because nobody No, that's not true. That's not true. That's not true. That's not true. I want to make sure for once that I have time to ask my question. So, I just want to um So, I councelor Flynn, thank you so much. Um do you have anything else to say? No, I I just I just want to advocate on my position because I I do think it it's an important issue and I think it impacts a lot of residents and I am concerned about it and we need to make that change. The Boston City Council voted 13 to nothing for that change and we still haven't made that change. Thank you madam councelor. The Boston city council voted without even a discussion or the opportunity for the experts who accurate to come and testify. That is not accurate. That is what happened. And I think before before you or other counselors decide what unilateral traffic policy changes should happen in the city, there should be an opportunity for some expert discussion, for public testimony, for public discussion to explore the trade-offs associated with it. That's not That's not accurate though, Chief. We had a a hearing on that and we specifically talked about that for a long time. My team was not invited prior to that vote. You're always invited, Chief. Okay. Um I I want to make this about the issue that we're here to discuss. Um, but councelor Flynn, I want to thank you for your advocacy. I was actually um for once, I don't own a personal car, but I was driving um on election day delivering pizzas and donuts for once and I noticed at the corner of Massav and Boilston that I as a driver was being encouraged to turn at the same side at the same time as pedestrians. Massav, that intersection in particular is one of the most pedestrian, you know, I mean, there's there was like a hundred students crossing at once. And I was being encouraged in the driver's seat for once um to turn at that same time and to wait obviously wait till there was a break, but when there's so many people traveling, you're encouraged to almost like make someone feel uncomfortable. you're you're encouraged to encroach upon a pedestrian's um personal space. So, I know how important this issue is for you, Councelor Flynn. I understand the chief's position because if we wave a magic wand and change anything like we have in my district, many times people react and if they didn't know about the process, they feel like, oh my goodness, you know, now there's traffic on my street. So, um I want to make sure that we do have that discussion and I I'm only I we don't know what will happen, but if I'm chair of this, um you know, and we have the chance to have that discussion, I think we absolutely should because it's a question of traffic, but I want to make sure that we are centered on what we're centered on here. Um but I do want to thank councelor Flynn for his advocacy because I did notice that in my district and I want to make sure that we keep pedestrians safe. So, I'm going to ask just two quick questions um to the administration. What impact does Trump administration cancelling trail and bike lane grants deemed hostile to cars have on our transportation future? And I'm just letting you all know that I chaired two hearings this year for grants that no longer exist for the city of Boston, over $20 million. Um, and what we found is that the Trump administration cited EV chargers as one of the reason they took away the grants. They also cited that they were trying to make cars move at a fast speed, which obviously is counter to what we're discussing today. So, I just find this question to be incredibly relevant because with limited resources, I want to know how we can move in a positive pedestrian friendly, bike friendly direction when we have less resources. Yeah. So the good news councelor is that um most of the changes that we make in our street, most of our state of good repair work is funded through city capital dollars or uh state dollars, uh state aid dollars or federal formula funds. And those formula funds are distributed uh as block grants to the states and then divvied out through the metropolitan planning organization. And so they typically are not subject to the kind of politicized um you know grant decision-m that we've seen with those two grants. That said, unfortunately, we did receive cancellation notices on uh three grants uh that the city has uh been awarded totaling uh in excess of $30 million. And uh it's very unfortunate. It's very unfortunate that they use sort of a pretext of a $25,000 EV charging component to cancel a $20 million grant to improve bus transportation and safety in Roxbury. Um it's unfortunate that they took a program called Safe Streets for all and declared that curb extensions because they might reduce vehicle travel space were incompatible with the purpose of the Department of Transportation. Um, we're clearly up against a very hostile federal administration. We will continue to do the good work that needs to get done with the dollars and the resources that we have. Where there are opportunities for federal support and competitive grants that we think uh we have a chance of being awarded, we will continue to apply. But I think we are in a mode right now where it is largely uh you know we we are on our own as a city and as a state to uh make smart choices with the transportation resources we have. Thank you. And this is a really tough question for my district, so bear with me. Um, what I see here today is people asking for transportation improvements. They're asking for roads to be slowed. They're asking for crosswalks. They're asking for just a safer hide park. A in my district, um, people have asked for the opposite. In many public settings, they have asked for people to be less safe riding their bike. Um, I am a multimodal person. This work is really emotional for me as um a friend of a friend passed away on a bike uh right before I became a city counselor. Um, and you just see people that I mean I did see, you know, uh, signs pop up during the mayoral campaign like bike lanes mean that I arrive alive. And I think I saw those and I think um, that advocacy is so important. It's not advocacy I usually see in my district. So when we have a nearby community that's asking for these changes in times when my community was not asking for changes those changes were made how do how do we reconcile that? I think what we have learned is that any change we make if it affects people's daily lives will engender a strong reaction one way or another usually both at the same time. Um there are projects, you know, in your district that were, you know, loudly opposed by some residents. There are also residents who have thanked us and said how much better it makes them feel. And we see the statistics, you know, the changes that the city made adding a bike lane on Beacon Street, reduced injury crashes there by more than 50% over, you know, an 8-year analysis. Um that said, right, these are always controversial and you know there's still some people who won't look me in the eye though. So it's true and and and these these challenges are these projects are controversial. The question of what change is the right change. uh you know there are people uh at this on this table including your colleague at the end who have you know loudly opposed some of the safety changes that we have tried to do in places in the city and this is always what our process is ultimately we what we hope to do is to have space where we can hear people we can hear about their experiences we can incorporate that into our planning we can look at the trade-offs together as a group understanding that there will be trade-offs no matter what we do or if we do nothing that is also O comes with trade-offs and come to a place where at least we have consensus on what the problems are, what the opportunities are and ultimately the city needs to make a decision informed by all of that recognizing that not everyone is going to be happy with the outcome. Okay. And just a last question. Um we have a Fenway transportation action plan that is being worked on. I'm hearing through this process you're either proposing or have started on a Southwest transportation action plan. is I mean I know that the Fenway Transportation Action Plan was funded with developer funds. How was the Southwest Transportation Action Plan funded and do you when do you see sort of that moving forward in terms of the next step and what step is it at for Fenway or or South? No, no, for for the Southwest Cor I know about the FTAP. Okay. So, uh so for this project, I think you know our next step is the short-term improvements that were made on the southern part of the corridor. Some are still in progress. Next year we will be doing uh a repave uh on the northern end of the corridor and potentially making changes as part of that. Uh this team has is going to continue the discussion uh with the community about the rest of the corridor, exploring some of the ideas that we've heard about today, looking at the sections that are uh potentially candidates to have, you know, whether it's bus priority or pedestrian safety improvements or bike infrastructure. All of these are on the table, but hide park a is long. It has many different sort of faces to it depending upon where along the corridor you are. And so we wanted to make sure that we're taking it uh thinking holistically but also working piece by piece so that we can tackle some of the most challenging places like Forest Hills, like the area north of Clearary Square first and then continue to work on a holistic vision for the corridor. So that will that engagement and design and planning work will continue into 2026. Okay. And is there any um so what we're going to do is we're going to go back to public testimony. Um I just wanted to give you the chance um to all of you to give sort of a closing statement if you had any like sort of we may go back to questions. So I don't want to let you leave immediately but um okay. So maybe I'll we'll come back to you with that. Okay. Um, okay. So, um, let me see where we are. So, we're going to do two minutes. I want everyone to line up. We have a lot of public testimony left and I do want to make sure that everyone gets equal time. Uh, Ronnie Schllo is next and Trevan Langford. And then on deck or I forgot what the things Dan Trotton either Totten or Tooffen. Okay, Ronnie, you have two minutes. Thank you. I am a JP resident who walks and bikes and takes buses on Hyde Park A. You've all heard from me over the years. I'm sorry. Um, we have established commitments from the city for GO Boston 2030 and for vision zero. I'm asking you all to adhere to those commitments and climate goals and make this road safer. Before the plans were scrapped, as we've heard, we were presented with options for this corridor. Everyone who was in the room supported the option that was less bad because it had physical barriers in the road, forcing drivers to merge down to one lane and to actually slow down. We all know, we've seen it. Paint signs and lights do nothing. We need physical objects in the road to slow drivers down. a standard painted bike lane, we call them door zone bike lanes because they are just a an opportunity to get doored and they are just used as a double parking lane. The times that I've braved biking on Hide Park A instead of going the wrong way through the neighborhood, I've been close past at high speed by drivers who had plenty of room to not do that, I've had to navigate around double parked cars who were in the right lane when there were open spaces a few feet away. And I felt the wind shake me because drivers were going whizzing by me at 50 miles an hour. Of course, it's not all the drivers and of course it's less bad during rush hour because they're not moving. But it only takes one impatient driver to end a life. And the subset of impatient and aggressive drivers here are doing whatever they want to do with impunity. As you've heard, if we're going to protect people who are outside of metal cages, we need to physically slow down all of the drivers and separate cars from bodies. I live in fear that all of these people here and the ones who couldn't make it tonight, my neighbors, my friends, my partner and I, I live in fear that we will not make it home because of this road. You have an opportunity to take something dangerous and make it safer. If you don't take it, the next time a person is hit on this road, their blood is on your hands. Those statistics that we've talked about are people with families and people who care about them. They are not just numbers. Thank you so much. Um Trevan and then Dan. On Hide Park Avenue, children are killed, pedestrians are mowed down, and even drivers are maimed on a stretch of road that the city of Boston has classified as one of the top 3% of highrass streets. This is not a new problem. How many more meetings will we have to attend while High Park Avenue continues to destroy lives and livelihoods? Community engagement starts to feel like a stall tactic when after five years, nothing happens. The complete streets effort that the city started in February of 2020 or 2019 seems to be long forgotten now. And even just the restriping of a small section of Hide Park Avenue to improve safety is delayed and eventually passed over against the expressed wishes of residents and users of the corridor. We know how to make streets safer. We know how to increase bus throughput. We know how to protect pedestrians and cyclists while improving access to businesses and services along a stretch of road. Bike lanes, bus lanes, cast inplace barriers, hawk signals, lane narrowing, advanced pedestrian signals, road diets, the list goes on and on. We have so many tools in our toolbox. Why are none of them being applied? I say this as a resident of the area. When I ride my bike to pick up dinner from Achelitos, I fear for my life. When I'm cat-sitting for a friend who lives off of Canterbury, I have to take one-way streets the wrong way just to get there safely. Why are so many people killed on Hyde Park Avenue? Every time it happens, I mourn with my community. My question to the city is, when will we start taking the death and harm caused by this street seriously? Why are we as a community and a city okay with the status quo that kills children and adults alike? When will we make Hide Park Avenue a complete street for all? Thank you, Council Larus Weber and Pepin and Warl. Thank you, Dan Tottton. Hi. Uh my name is Dan Totten. I'm an organizer for the Boston Cyclist Union. Um and I just want to state that moving forward with this project is a top priority for the Boston Cyclist Union. Um, I urge the city to move forward with a redesign of Hide Park A that is safe and pleasant for people who walk and bike, not just those who drive. When you walk or bike down this road, you have to hold your breath and hope you don't be become a statistic. Safe infrastructure should not end at Forest Hills. Mobility justice should not end at Forest Hills. That's not what equity looks like. Being out in the community nearly every day this fall, I've heard from so many people who desperately want this. That's a big ask for working people to give up their night, often with kids in tow. And why should they come when we ask them over and over to come into this gym and change doesn't come even though we're talking about the tiniest stretch of road? I very much appreciate the sponsoring counselors for holding this hearing. But how many times do we have to pack this gym before the administration decides to be brave and prioritize the safety of our most vulnerable users over the convenience of people in their their cars? And we've heard tonight we need to make a change, but this is the trade-offs are tremendous. Space is the challenge on High Park A. We can't have a bike lane because we have to maintain four car lanes. We have heard from plenty of people who use the corridor and live here, but we haven't heard from people who don't live here. That's a new one. I never heard that one before. Um, respectfully, those statements are putting the lives of people in this room in danger. Putting the lives of the children in this room in danger. The city says we need to listen to the experts, but the people who use this road and hold their breath and hope they don't become a statistic every single day. Those people are the experts. Their trade-off is safety verse convenience. And we need the city to be brave and prioritize safety so that nobody else is killed on this road. Thank you. Thank you, Dan. um Carmen Carmen Biden and Marco Rodriguez. And then on deck, um Wendy Schiller. So, just introduce yourself when you go. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Carmen Biden. I'm a Matipan resident and a community organizer for the Boston Cyclist Union. Um, I live in the Madapan High Park area and I get around mostly by car and bike. However, I prefer biking not only for commuting but for my mental health and well-being. I hold my breath and say a prayer while biking while biking on High Park A trying to make it to the southwest corridor. There's no bike lane. The sidewalks are worse than the streets cracked and uneven. and I often find myself in traffic with drivers who aren't patient and most and most times extremely hostile towards bikers. I do it anyway because it's the most direct way to get around and to get to work, but it is very risky. What scares me the most is this is my son's safety. He loves biking to school at the brook and he should have that option and feel safe doing it. Every morning I picture him crossing High Park A at the same intersection where someone was just hit by a car. I hold my breath some more and waiting for a text that says, "Mom, I made it to school." We've been promised safety improvements on this road for years. But while we wait, we keep living with with these conditions. Each delay means more parents worried about their children, more bikers forced into traffic, and the risk of more accidents. I want to believe that Boston is the best city in America for families, like the mayor says. But families can't thrive if we're scared to walk or bike on the streets that run through our neighborhoods. I'm asking you tonight to make pedestrian and mobility safety a priority. Please fund and move forward with the redesign of High Park A. Thank you, Marcos. Hi, I'm Marcos. I live in uh JP. Um and a few years ago I was uh biking to work on Trammont Street in the south end uh where the really nice bike lanes are now. Um but before that they were uh not there. Um and then um as I was biking I guess a car driver got mad and basically pinned me with his car to the um when there was plenty of space to pass. No traffic. It was like 10:00 a.m. on Friday. Uh pinned me to the parked cars. I couldn't move. Uh he starts yelling, random stuff. I couldn't even react. Um and then he comes out and he punches me in the face as I'm trying to leave. Um he punches me like under the eye first. And as I'm leaving, he punches me in the back of the head. Um and since then, and before then, I've been called like fs slur how countless times out the window of people just passing me on on my bike, me just existing. Um uh so yeah, I I don't really like I've been really disappointed with the administration this year because of the removal of the bus lanes. Um the bike lane barriers and calling flex posts ugly when they're certainly better than nothing and replacing them with something that's worse than them. I don't see value in. Um and uh I mean I urge the city to try and do make I I don't understand asking more residents to see what their opinion is when the inevitable conclusion is that they agree that they just want to speed through hide park a and then it's so you're basically saying we're agreeing with what's happening so we're complacent with what's happening. if we cared about bus drivers or bus riders, sorry, and bus drivers, too. But the if we cared about them um and we didn't talk about them as some an obstacle to get over for pedestrian safety, we would give them the bus lanes. I know I'm a bus rider. I don't have a car. I take the tea and I bike. Um we wouldn't be saying that they're the we wouldn't talk about them first. We all know it's drivers that want to speed through Hyde Park a that are impeding traffic flow and bus riders. Thank you, Marcos. Wendy Schiller. Um, and Josh Hawky is next. And then Matt Schuman. Okay. Uh, good evening everyone. I've My name is Wendy Schiller and I've been a Boston resident for 12 years. I just moved to this neighborhood from Alustin Brighton. So although I am used to cars, bikes, buses, and heavy traffic, this is really different because the cars drive 20 20 miles per hour on average faster here. I commute downtown via this stretch of Hide Park A almost every day from Florian Street to Forest Hills. My arrival time can shift on average by 20 to 40 minutes entirely depending on the 32 bus and general traffic conditions. My bus stop return trip requires me to leaprog across from Florian Street to a very narrow median and there is no crosswalk and it feels very unsafe with all the speeding. In the face of these issues with the 32, I sometimes make a game time decision to blue bike to Forest Hills, but the drivers often push me to the sidewalk where there are pedestrians I'm inconveniencing or broken glass or other obstacles. I stopped commuting by bike in Alustin years ago after breaking my arm in a hit and run. And I feel like without a bike lane, I'm almost assuredly risking that happening again or worse. I have sympathy for the drivers in this situation because my fiance often drives and has had a few narrow misses himself with cyclists biking the wrong way against traffic or pedestrians not looking both ways. A projected barrier lane would solve for both problems. I've heard a lot about driver commutes tonight and as a car owner myself, I don't think positioning the needs of cyclist safety as counter to the needs of drivers is fair or reasonable. Hide Park in its current state feels like a lose-lose lose by foot, bike or bus and I urge the council to implement more safe crossings, a dedicated lane for the 32 and protected bike lanes along Hyde Park. Thank you. Thank you, Josh Hawky. Okay. And if folks can line up. Okay. Josh Oxy, Matt Schuman, and next is Brian Jordan. I'm gonna make this too tall for Matt on purpose. Um, thank you all for coming. Thank everyone for coming. I just want to co-sign what we've heard so far. We've heard a lot of passionate speeches about how dangerous the street is. One of them was my wife talking about our kids. I don't want to talk about my kids. Uh, I want to talk about something Chief Yasha said, which I agree with most of what he said, except for the part where he said, "We've heard from people who live along the corridor, but we haven't heard anything from the people who use the corridor but don't live here." And I would I would argue with my my good friend uh from Jamaica Plan here that uh we have heard from those people. Uh we just had a preliminary election for mayor in which one candidate decided to make bike lanes his like entire reason for running and he got smoked and the people voted and the people said Yasha you're doing a great job give us more bike lanes more. So, I hope that you take that support and bring it back to your boss, aka the mayor, who I really strongly support, and I want to see bike lands on hide park. Thank you, Matt. Matt Schuman. And then, uh, we have Brian Jordan on deck and um, Adrina Murray, I think, or Andrea Murray, sorry. Andrew, Andrew, sorry. Matt, go ahead. Good evening. Thank you all for being here and for the counseling. I mean for the sponsoring uh counselors for putting this together. So it does feel like counseling. It does. It does a lot. Um I want to share two quick anidotes. I uh I too of course am in support of um making High Park AB safe for people who are walking and biking. I feel so I live on Winnham Street. Um I bike to now the Croft School. I used to bike to the southwest corridor three to five times a week. Um, two Mondays back I was I actually took came home got my son and then biked with my son to the crop school playground and was biking back as you know it's very unsafe to bike anyone but especially with a toddler on the bike. So I was biking on the sidewalk on let's say on the on the part of high park that touches the train. Um there was a guy wearing headphones walking ahead of me. I rang the bell. I rang the bell. I rang the bell. I rang the bell. uh because we don't have a culture of this, he just eventually just moved to um his left, which is the opposite of what I thought he was going to do. So, I moved to my to his right, thinking I would just kind of squeeze by on the right, he without turning around, then moved to the right, which forced me to kind of throw on my brakes because there was like one of those electrical utility boxes there. So, I threw on my brakes and kind of veered to the left, which just to try and stabilize the bike, which meant that I was at that point because the sidewalk's relatively narrow, um at risk of kind of tipping into High Park A. So, whatever bus was heading down High Park A. So, I'm I'm kind of in this awkward position where I'm trying to like catch the bike, stop it from falling over with my son on it, but also prevent myself from like tipping into High Park A for the oncoming bus. Um, I guess it just feels insane to me that we can't find a better solution for like a 300 yard. I mean certainly all of Hyperarkav, but like especially the walkill to Ukraine to Arbor Way that kind of like it just feels wild to me that with like the highest concentration of like urban planners and intellectuals in North America, we can't find a way to fix this. Um after 6 years and just like massive community support. Um I also the other day walked with 21 kids from the Croft School, whatever. We got beeped at like three to five times for walking on the sidewalk as people sped into the lights at we like conservatively like 50 m an hour. Like that's just crazy. Thank you so much. Um Brian Jordan and then um Andrew Murray and then Stephanie Lee. Hi. Uh thank you counselors for uh holding this meeting. Um I'm Brian Jordan. Um, I moved to uh Jamaica plane 19 months ago. Before that, I was a uh constituent of uh Council Durkin. Um, I am a car owner. I'm also a commuter on the Orange Line. I walk around the Jamaica Plane neighborhood. I periodically bike. Um, I can tell you that having lived here for only a short time, the worst part of biking in the Forest Hills neighborhood is all of the cars on High Park Avenue. The worst part of riding the train on in the Forest Hills neighborhood is all of the cars on High Park Avenue. The worst part of driving in the Forest Hills neighborhood is all of the cars on High Park Avenue. And whenever I ride the bus, the worst part of that commute is all of the cars on High Park Avenue. So, how about we, you know, deal with this problem, which we've known about for six years. Um, we've been talking about it for a very long time. I think we have some very smart people in the administration. We have some very smart people in the council with a lot of great ideas on how to address this problem. you know what to do. Thank you for calling us smart. Um, Andrew Murray and Stephanie Lee. And then Michaela Thompson. Uh, hi. My name is Andrew Murray. I am the founder of Residents for More Residents and a proud board member of Walk Up Roslandale. Um, I live just off Cummins Highway, smack dab between Hide Park Avenue and Washington Street and I commute primarily by bus or bike to Forest Hills. Um, being situated between these two streets, I get to experience daily what I call uh the tale of two cities here in Roslandale. Um, on Washington Street side, I can bike and marked lanes, catch a bus in a dedicated lane with real connections to Forest Hills and Southwest Corridor. Uh, feels like the city in that section has really invested in safe, sustainable options. Uh on the hide park hide park avenue side as we've heard tonight it's the complete opposite. Um biking inches from cars going 40 or 50 miles an hour waiting for a bus without um a dedicated lane and uh crossing four lanes on foot uh feels like taking your life in your own hands. I don't have kids. I have two dogs. I take them to Metrovet just up here. I take them on the bus and crossing with them I've had close encounters. Can't imagine if I geez got emotional. Um, so the results predictable, right? Washington Street has become a vibrant multimotal corridor. Hide Park Cab is a car dominated, unsafe and isolating space, especially for people who can't afford to um, you know, afford a car with the rising cost of car ownership. Uh, this inequity needs to be corrected and it requires courage from you, our elected officials. I know change can be uncomfortable, but as has been said tonight, the preliminary may mayor race results should be seen as a mandate for safer streets and transportation sources uh choices. Boston cannot be a city for everyone, as the mayor likes to say. If we keep prioritizing cars over people, um please do the brave thing and move this redesign forward. Every delay means more danger and more lives put at risk. Boston voters will support you. Thank you. Thank you. Um, Stephanie Lee, Michaela Thompson, Katarina Scarmelly. Oh, I think she already went. Okay. And then, um, Ruben. Oh, sorry. I think you wanted to be off the list. And then Izzy Esman, if you guys can all be ready. Okay, go ahead. Hello. Um, my name is Stephanie Lee. I live on Wenham Street and I have since 2017. I work in Cambridge. I don't have a car. Um, so I need a walk to get anywhere. Um, I'm a member of the Arburedum, so I frequently visit the Arburedum for for walks. Um, I go to Planet Fitness to go to the gym, get my workout. Um, that's across the Arbor way. Um, and I like to eat on Center Street, lots of restaurants that are great. Um, so first off, I want to emphasize that I don't think that we should need casualty to prove the need for implementing safety measures. And yet, we haven't seen much change despite a ton of dialogue. Uh, it's been one year since I've started attending these meetings. Um, and a lot of that was um, uh, started uh, because uh, the day that Glenn was hit, um, I was walking up Weld Hill Street just finishing a walk in the arboritum when I heard police sirens and I later found out that was what happened. Um, so yeah, this is very important to me. Um, but there really hasn't been so much change despite all this dialogue. The the website for the High Park Avenue multimmo corridor project website doesn't list even any timeline updates after 2024. So, this to me feels like um a lack of priority of our safety and and the pride of this project. Um the traffic light changes uh have just made driver behavior worse. I feel uh drivers speeding through the red lights, turning on the reds, blocking the box, driving in the opposing traffic lane to turn into the Forzo's parking lot. Uh double parking in front of aos. Um and but being the only safety improvement, it's hard to be critical unless we lose even that like we're we just have crumbs right now. feels. Um my personal plan uh for the future is to be able to buy a home in the neighborhood the neighborhood that I live in right now because I I really love it despite um these safety issues. Um but alternatively like I have looked into um living in Rosundale down the road of High Park a and down Washington. Um and like looking at that and um looking at commute times for uh getting to Cambridge I it makes sense to take a car to have a car and drive there instead because it is faster. But in the end, um I really want to um emphasize that I hope that the city council can prioritize res resident safety over the commute time of people who don't even live in the city. Thank you. Thank you. Um Michaela Thompson and then Izzy Esman is next and then Diane Ferguson. Okay, go ahead. Hi, my name is Michaela Thompson. I've lived in the Forest Hills Woodborne area for close to 20 years. So, I am acutely aware, as councelor Weber has said, that this is not a new problem. We have been asking you for decades to be dealing with the unsafe conditions on Hyde Park Avenue, and you've done nothing. When the overpass came down in 2015, we asked for people to fix the feeder streets and you did nothing. And now someone's dead and you're still doing nothing. These three over here reshuffleling the deck chairs on the Titanic. I can tell you my own personal experience. A few years back, I suffered a serious injury. I was not very mobile. I was moving very slowly. And it became immediately apparent that I couldn't take the tea anymore. Not because of the train, but because of the walk half a mile to the station, over broken sidewalks and across intersections that I could not safely cross. And it made me think about how the elderly, the disabled, people with mobility issues navigate this neighborhood every single day. And if I choose to grow old here, which I probably won't because I'll be trapped in my house. This is my future. To be stuck in a house, to be unable to use public transportation half a mile from my house. Again, we have been asking you for so long to fix these problems. It is shameful and inappropriate that you continue to privilege convenience over safety because that is exactly what you're doing. That's all I have to say. Izzy is Izzy Asen is next. then Diane Ferguson and then Era Caro. Go ahead, Izzy. My name is Izzy Esman. I am a JP resident. I have lived in JP for three years. For the past 15 months, I have lived directly on Hide Park Avenue. I'm not sure how many people here can say the same. Um, I walked a quarter mile to get here. I love that this is my neighborhood. I also have a front row seat to absolute tom foolery and shenanigans between Ukraine Way and Tower. every day at all hours. It is the noise. It is the reckless driving. It is the speeding. It is the gridlock. It is just the worst of humanity coming together on four lanes of road. Um I I just hate it. Um I am also I'm also a teacher and I have the delight of riding a school bus to the school in the suburbs where I work with my kids every morning and every afternoon. And uh a week and a half ago, I was nearly smooshed on Arbor Way by someone who disregarded the stop for a school bus sign and zoomed past me. And once I got passed over to the other side of the street, I said, "Oh my god, what if that had been one of my kids?" I'm a small adult, but the kids getting off the bus are even smaller than me. I don't know, and I don't want to know whether I would rather be hit by a car or watch one of the students at my school get hit by a car. I beg that that never has to come to it. Um I am so moved by being here in community with all the parents and the educators feel the fear too. Um so I am so glad to be here. I am happy that everyone agrees that we really need to change. Please you have the information, you have the opinions, do something. Do not wait. Do not wait until winter. Just do something please now fast before another person gets hurt. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay. Diane Ferguson, Eric Caro, Steve Dudley, Christy Rogue, Hillary I think Hillary already went. Um, Barbara Rice. Okay, that that's the ordering. If you hear your name, just stand up. Okay, go ahead. Uh, hi everyone. My name is Dan Ferguson. I also live along High Park Avenue. I work in the Longwood medical area and I uh bike commute to work or I take the bus when it stops if it's not full. So every day I'm pretty much coming down this stretch of road row from the soccer field down the road up to Ukraine way and across to the southwest corridor. I've been a bike commuter for almost 20 years and this is the scariest bit of road that I've ever had to consistently bike down. The number of times where I'm cycling up this road and I'm passed by cars within an arms length going 40 to 50 miles an hour like people are saying is absolutely terrifying. I'm constantly scared that I'm going to get pushed into the parked cars or even worse where the the road narrows coming up to Walkill Street and it changes from the parked cars to almost people double parking down the side of the road that I'm going to get smooshed in by people who are impatient um in their cars. So that's my first thing. The other thing being a resident on High Park Avenue, especially across from the soccer field, I'd like to take a minute to talk about is the pedestrian crossings. I definitely also have a firsthand view of how unsafe it is for pedestrians to run across the road, which they often do. Uh we have painted pedestrian crossings on the road, which absolutely zero. Well, actually one truck stopped for me today, which is maybe the first time in my two years living here that somebody stopped for me at a crosswalk. The number of times I've stopped at the traffic lights and they've skipped the pedestrian signs is just innumerable. Or you're just waiting five minutes for the pedestrian lights. And I often see kids running across the road to get to the soccer field. So it's not just me on bikes, it's not just pedestrians wandering around. like we create a really horrible situation and it's just a matter of time before something again terrible happens. So please please actually take the opportunity to make changes and and not just call another meeting. Eric um Eric then we're going to hear from Steve Dudley, Christy Rogue, Barbara Rice, Christopher Armstrong. So if you hear your name, stand up. Go ahead. Uh my name is Eric Herro. Um I am a resident of Hyde Square. So not directly abuing this neighborhood, but uh as a frequent um and actually as somebody who uses a bicycle as my primary mode of transportation around Boston, um I'm very aware of the fact that uh this corridor is basically offlimits to me. Um I don't go places by bike that I have to use this road to get to. Um, I have friends that live in Hyde Park and I drive to visit them because this road isn't accessible to me. Um, I want to thank uh Councelor Weber and Council Durkin and Pepin for hosting this hearing. This is an incredibly important issue and it's frankly offensive that we're back here in this room again. Um, we've heard from the community. I think it's actually pretty unanimous that people want this road dealt with and for it to be made safer. Um, and I want to echo the comments about the the mayor's race, not not just this one, but the last one. There was essentially a mandate. We've had multiple rounds of elections, mostly where biking and safe streets were a major issue, aside from housing. Um, and the public has spoken pretty definitively that they are concerned about street safety and it is a priority over getting more cars through the area more quickly. Um, I don't think it really behooves anybody to continue to talk about it. Just build the thing. Um, Christy Rogue. Okay. Barbara Rice. Barbara Rice. Uh I live in the Rosendale section of the Woodward neighborhood and I have lived there for 34 years. Um and I bike and I walk. Um recently I work in Mission Hill which means that I have to take from walk from here I have to take to get to that Ukraine intersection that everybody's been talking about going up before I can get to a bike lane and it is really a hazardous as so many people have said coming back I don't even try to make the turn onto walk hill I keep going on hide park a on my bicycle But that's really taking your life into your hands. There's the parked cars, there's the there's the buses. Um it so it's dangerous. I just want to uh reinforce what everybody has said tonight that I've had those same experiences and that I've been in meetings. There have been too many meetings and too little has been done. Thank you. Christopher Armstrong, Daniel Dwire is next. Then Anna Abuya is after that and then Jessica Mend. Okay, go ahead. Hello, I'm Chris Armstrong. I'm a resident of uh Woodborn neighborhood, live on Wuset. Been there for about four years now. I want to start off with a little anecdote. So, I I rent and recently we had a turnover in roommates and someone asked me, someone looking at the apartment, what's the worst place? what's the worst thing about living here? And I said hide park app and specifically the Ukraine way intersection and Arbor Way and all of that. And I think Chief, you used the right word there when you said moat. Forest Hills is surrounded on all sides by four lanes of traffic. It needs more bridges. It needs more connection to the place that people want to go. And then as part of that, I want to talk about kind of the isolation and also the hope. Like I want to be able to visit the people in like on on Washington Street in Roslandale Square in Clearary Square actually using Hide Park A as a bike lane. I do not go south of Hide of where I live on my bike because there is no safe way to do that. I love my the parts of my commute. I I work downtown as a teacher. I love Causeway Street. I love the lands on Commercial Street. I love Tmont Street. I am so so relieved when I get there. I love getting to the Southwest Corridor Trail. It's my favorite part of my day coming home in the trees with the sun and it sucks when I get to Forest Hills and I get to Arbor Way and I see the ghost bike and it's the end of my day. I want to be happy. I want to be like celebrating whatever. And that's what I have to see. So, I'm excited for change. I was so hopeful when we presented the different options last year. It felt or I don't even remember when it was at this point. this year, but I was just so hopeful. I don't want to speak to that hope and losing it in July and like how much that was just so frustrating and disappointing and I hope that this can kind of rekindle it and refocus us on doing something for this project. Thank you so much Daniel Dwire, Daniel and then an Annalia and Jessica and Dorothy Fennel. Okay, go ahead. Thank you. And uh thank you all so much for uh having this uh hearing here in the community. Um so I live about a block or two that way. My name is Daniel Dwire and uh my daughter is currently a third grader at Curly. Uh so we commute from here to there and uh you know we we've been doing that since she was in K1. So at first uh we tried doing it by car and I thought you know this this will be easy. It was about halfway to my job in Longwood. I'll drop her off by car. Um, and you know, after a month of uh a 30 minute uh drive from here to the curly to drop her off with a very very uh hates being in a car, four-year-old at the time, um I think I I checked the car and my average was 2 miles an hour. Uh I realized, well, uh high park absolutely is terrible as driving. Uh let me try bike commuting. Uh so I bought a bike, got a bike seat for her, and I thought, I'm going to do this by the rules. I'm just going to kind of follow follow the rules of how one should ride a bike in traffic. Um, so from here to Ukraine is basically gridlock in the morning. So if you're going to do that by the rules on your bicycle, you hop in at the end of this line of traffic. Uh you're going, you know, that 3 400 uh yard stretch. Um, and let me tell you, uh, cars really love it when they are caught behind a bicycle going at bicycle speed with a child there uh while the traffic is moving at traffic speed. Uh, so that was that was really fun. Um, a couple weeks of uh, you know, getting buzzed by drivers, getting shouted at, and again trying to do this with the child in the back of the uh, of the bike, I realized this is complete madness, right? There there's no way to do this. So, I'm just going to ride on the b on the on the sidewalk. I'm going to dodge all the kids that are coming to school here, all the people going another direction with their earbuds on because that was frankly the only way to do it. Um, and that was five years ago and nothing has changed. This is madness, right? There's there's no way to do this. This this system is completely broken. Uh nothing has changed. Please do something. Thank you, Anna. And then Jessica Mint, Dorothy, Fennel, Alex. Alex, go ahead. Hi, my name is Anna Alb Buha. I want to thank you all for having this meeting here, but I also want to take a moment to thank the neighbors for coming out again. I think many of us have been in this room before. It feels a little bit like there's a war of attrition coming from the city. uh if they have enough meetings that maybe they'll wear us down and we'll be quiet. And so I really appreciate everybody not giving into that hopelessness and not giving in and continuing to show up. Um it sounded tonight like we heard that if you live in this neighborhood, your voice matters less. Um I encourage us to keep using our voices. So I live on Wuset Street and I commute every day on Hide Park A. I take either my own bicycle, a blue bike, I walk to the Orange Line or I run. We've already heard a lot about what's awful about Ukraine. It's impossible on a bike to turn left. You have to turn into the left lane. If I can't make that left on my bike, I have to go straight um further north on Hideorggav and then I'm often encountering um cars that are double parked which forces me into a really dangerous situation of needing to go around a car into another lane of traffic um where cars are already going really fast. I also own a car and I want to share my perspective as a driver because I think that perception that um cars drivers and bikers are completely opposing camps is misguided. So my experience as a driver on high park a is also bad. So it's going um south cars are constantly blocking the the box turning left into your craneway. So you're stopped there waiting for that. As a driver, I'm also concerned that I'm going to get t-boned by cars running red lights. Um the the double parked cars are big problem. Even as a driver, it's unsafe to have to turn into another lane when cars aren't expecting you. And I also feel for the the bikers. I don't want to have to go past them. But I have to keep up with the speed of traffic where you get honked at to go right on red. So there's a lot of pressures that make me feel unsafe. even the f further south on high park A when cars whiz by you super fast it's unsafe as a driver too. So I think a lot of these ideas that anything will bring a strong reaction is a little bit misguided. Thank you. Um Jessica Jessica Mint. Okay. Dorothy Fennel. Okay. Alex. Alex. Hello all. My name is Alex. Alex and I'm offering testimony as a lifelong Boston resident who mostly gets around as a pedestrian. That's on foot, transit, and biking. Um, I'm diagnosing the issues in Hyde Park as symptoms of larger city failures. I spent this entire summer back since the forum back in May raising critical issues in the city's infrastructure and governance. Um, both city hall and city council have ignored me. I've carried runover traffic signs, blown out tires, and mangled flex post to city hall. I've submitted and tagged the city council and city government in hours of traffic dysfunction and dangerous infrastructure designed over social media. If you scroll through the videos sent to the city of Boston, the Boston streets cabinet, to the Boston city council, and to the Boston police, you'll begin to grasp the extent of motor lawlessness destroying the city. Multiple videos of city employees flagrantly violating traffic laws, and one where a BPD employee blows to a red light and almost hits me. The volume of research and data I've collected does not fit with the city's official reporting mechanisms, and I think that's by design. I'm not asking for radical new laws as uh councelor Flynn mentioned. I'm asking that the public safety budget mayor Woo and the city council have boosted to 800 million for 2026 be put into bare minimum enforcement. Councelor Durkin opened with the context the city needs to be strategic with limited resources. Catering to the auto lobby and reckless drivers in the way city officials have costs exponentially more than funding transit, pedestrian and bike infrastructure. Cars will speed by police. Breaking noise ordinances and nothing is done. muscle cars and motor dirt bike gangs terrorize the cities at all hours and nothing. Cars blow through pedestrian signals, block buses and EMS block intersections and nothing. I've also tagged you all in hours of videos documenting hundreds of thousands of dollars in car damages to city infrastructure. I'm frustrated by all the time and taxpayer money wasted on endless community input and research. When will the city implement any of it? We're six years into collecting collecting community input on Hide Park app. Hide Park is a microcosm of the damage vehicles cause all over the city and officials inability to deliver deliver popular, necessary, and useful city services. Compare what the city has delivered to the time and resources sunk here. Then projected out to the rest of the city. Is this a sustainable, responsible use of public resources? You give a definitive timeline for when we can expect the completion of safety improvements such as raised crosswalks, exclusive bus lanes, speed depressants, or consequences for reckless driving. I am disappointed and vindicated by the administration publicly admitting here tonight that city city leadership values job security over common sense and public safety. I've submitted 50 printed copies of one page flyer detailing I mean the rest of you guys went over time so I go over time as well. So I submitted 15 printed copies of a one-page flyer detailing immediate midterm and long-term traffic mitigation strategies the city should commit to implementing it. I'm sure you all will get it by the end of tonight. Thank you. Okay. Carly Burton. Carly Burton. Okay. Kurt Newton. Scott Jones. Matias Ralard. Cardi. Um, Dublu Manian. Zachary Yaro. Okay. Go ahead. Hi, I'm Kurt Newton. I'm a six-year resident of the Woodbornne neighborhood, a bike commuter to Cambridge. Uh, without a doubt, much of my commute is wonderful. The Emerald Necklace and so forth. The moat I have now, the terminology, it's a moat filled with sharks and you name it. You know, that that one block to get from Walkill to Ukraine Way is hell. Absolute hell. And it's it just makes no sense to me why that can't be addressed. Um, I've raised the issue when we've had the planning meetings before. I sure hope that Ukraine way can be dealt with holistically as part of the Hyde Park A situation. Uh, because I don't think we'll be able to deal with the the intersecting issues. The the way that that stuff ripples onto Hyde Park is uh I feel it every single day. In addition, you know, the coming north from Walk Hill, trying to get to Hyde Park A, um, you know, the, uh, trying to navigate that left turn, uh, the traffic that's on Ukraine way, I have to ride the sidewalks. Many days, there's no way around it. Coming the other direction, the rocket out of the bottle effect from southbound traffic when they see that space start to open up after you clear Ukraine way is frankly terrifying. So, you know, we've heard it, you know, from everybody here tonight. I'm just right on board. Please, please, please fix this. Thank you, Scott Jones. Just gonna hold this a little tall. Um, hi, my name is Scott Jones. I'm a resident of Woodborne. I bike every day with my two-year-old daughter down Hide Park Cav in a cargo bike. Um, excuse me. It's pretty emotional to talk about this today and going to do my best, but uh every day is a harrowing experience biking down that street. Um we've heard a lot about uh enforcement today. Uh while that is very needed, uh sometimes I feel like that's just another way for you all to kick the can down the road and avoid the hard discussion about making infrastructure improvements to that street. Uh one day I was um doing my best to cross that intersection. We have to uh bike down Hide Park A and wait for a lighted cross um so that we can get through. We wait for all the cars to run the red light and then all the traffic jammed up there and then still have five seconds to scoot across. Um one day uh as I was going uh three cars passed, there's a parked cop across the street with his with his window rolled down. After three rolled through, I yelled to the cop. I I say, "Yo, there's cars going through." The fourth and the fifth car go through the light. He sees it happen and does nothing. So, we need enforcement, but that's not enough. You guys need to act on the infrastructure improvements we we already talked about. And again, I feel like this is a feat and you guys kicking the can down the road after so many meetings, so many meetings. It's really imp it's it's like honestly impressive. Um, and it's just it's just maddening. So, please please do something. Thank you. Thank you, Matias. Then Cardi, then Zachary, then Marne. Hi, my name is Matias Remlard. I'm a homeowner on Hide Park A just across from North and I've lived in JP for years, which means I have spent so much time walking and biking on the loud, noxious, stinking highway of Hide Park Avenue. Biking in Hide Park Avenue traffic is a harrowing experience. Like everybody else has said, I'm a very confident and experienced road cyclist and I take the whole right lane when I bike on High Park Gap because that's the only way to do it safely. That means I still have drivers passing me within inches at speeds much higher than 30 m an hour, honk aggressively, roll down their windows and scream verbal abuse at me and swerve as if to hit me to deliberately scare me. Those experiences repeatedly wore me down. So I started biking on the sidewalk because I was literally risk risking my life riding in the street where I'm legally allowed to be from my living room. I can watch the speed sign on the high park median. I regularly see speeds in excess of 50 mph. I have watched drivers speed towards parents with children in crosswalks blaring the horn so that the parents have to sprint across the street with their children to save their lives. I have had to cork. And if you're not familiar with corking, it's a practice where a cyclist physically uses their bike to block car traffic. I've had to cork hide park to marshall pedestrians across because cars will not stop. The city needs to redesign the whole corridor. I am beyond disappointed that the city is not making safety improvements any further than Ukraine way. The city knows this corridor is deadly. Failure to improve safety on this whole road, not just a tiny stretch, feels like negligence. You must fund this project for safety and slow cars down. At this point, I'm beyond having sympathy for drivers of private cars passing through getting inconvenenced. This is our lives. Protect us. Thank you, Cardi. Okay Zachary. Uh, hello. My name is Zachary Yaro. I'm a multimodal traveler. I walk, I cycle, I take the bus in the tea, and I own a car. I am painfully familiar with Hide Park A because my partner's place is just down the street. Uh, and as you've heard, it feels awful to walk along, let alone to cross it or cycle in it. And the hard data of EMS responses back that up. The level of stress makes the same length walk feel twice as long as it would in downtown or Cambridge where the speeds are slower. Just crossing the street in a marked crosswalk to catch the 32 feels like playing Frogger on a highway. Hide Park AB claims to be a 30 mph street. It's designed like it's for 45 m hour and the SL you can don't take my word for it. Look at the signs and watch them show speeds in excess of 50. Again, uh we see from rampant double parking that traffic can absolutely flow through here with a lane blocked in each direction. So, let's reallocate that space, please, to the people who walk, roll, and take the bus. Extend micro a safe microobility connection to the southwest corridor path. Add floating bus stops and other improvements to help people get ride the 32 safely and on schedule. build protected intersections and narrow the roadway down so drivers drive at safe speeds and pedestrian crossings aren't so hazardously long like the one just down here at Walk Hill and Hide Park A. And of course for the people like the Trump administration who are focused on cars, safer speeds are also proven to reduce caroncar collisions. This benefits everyone. We keep showing up to these meetings that have been going on since 2019 before I lived here and the city keeps making decisions like the recent one to keep Hide Park A in the same dangerous configuration. Please this time make the choice to make the improvements that cities around the world have demonstrated will make Hide Park AB safer for everyone. Thank you. Thank you, Marne. and then Eve. And then if you have signed up to testify but you have not yet been called, just go ahead and line up because I did call a couple people that didn't get up when I called. So go ahead. Hi, I live in Roslandale um off of off of Walk Hill past American Legion and I um now I bike to the seapport in the morning uh to take the ferry to the airport and then I come back uh through through Hide Park A, you know, from downtown. Um and I and I did that commute both ways um for three years before that. So, um, Columbia Road now seems like a a great road to bike on in comparison to Hide Park A and and as everyone it's been very validating. I haven't been to any of the previous meetings to hear about how everybody else hates Hide Park a between Rock Hill and and Ukraine because that's also my worst and so many I mean I see people in wheelchairs almost get run over. They can't go on the sidewalk because it's so bumpy. Um, and I I hear people talking about how there's not enough connections between, you know, over the train tracks. And I I wonder if as part of this or as part of the development that's going to be happening on Washington, if you could add pedestrian crossings over the tracks. Apparently there's, you know, apparently there's one that's out of use that comes out where that lumber yard is. I read about it on Universal Hub. Um, just anything to take to to give us different options. Um, and then also if you're going to repave, I suggest just leaving those castings there and just don't just leave them. Have raised castings and that would be a great repaving and would make people go slower. Oh, thanks. Okay. Thank you, Eve. My name is Eve Boltax. I live across the street on the corner of Walk Hill and watchit. And I am one of those people who would be a biker except it doesn't feel safe. So, I am adding to a car on the road. Um, I also want to just say ditto to everything everybody said tonight and give a um out ofthebox idea that I've had for about a a year or so, which is to make Forest Hills the the tea station the center of a roundabout and to um yeah, so have oneway traffic going around from uh Downhide Park and then around uh Arbor Way and then Washington in the Ukraine and just I think it, you know, we could have more space for the things we need for a bus lane and bike lanes and um it would just shake things up and um yeah, that's all. Thank you. So, it looks like we are done with public testimony. Um so, okay, perfect. Go ahead. Then we'll be done with public testimony. No, it's good. We're almost at 40. So, you're adding. My name is Dahi Blair. I'm a cyclist for like 35 years in city of Boston. Um, and I bring that up because I come to this school with my daughter Matilda. He's nine years old and is six years old and drop them off here by bicycle every day of the week. And the way that I do that is I come around through the arboritum down across Arborway and then I take the hide park out from Arborway up to Walkill and take the harrowing ride that everyone here says the disaster is a terrible idea to do. But I do it partially because I'm stubborn but also because I want to believe that I live in a city that's going to be really really advocating for us and providing a safe way for us to travel around the city. Um I wanted to make a couple observations about uh High Park between Harborway and Ukraine. That is these. One is that yes, it is four lanes right now. Uh and on the best of days, it's congested. Uh to the point where it's stifling, you can't get through. The lanes are tight together. The curbs are high. Uh there's little room for any error or any correction if there is an accident about to happen. If it's going to happen, it's going to happen. Um, and then also when you're sitting in traffic, you can't get through, you're just sucking on diesel fumes with your daughters and your bike waiting for your chance to get to Ukraine, which as we've done before, becomes a launching pad to take out all the frustration from being stuck in traffic that all the drivers take from there. And from there, it goes from being congested to downright hostile. Um, and it's just not acceptable to happen there. Um, in these conversation, I I did hear a lot about preamble about limited funds being taken away from the city of Boston and not necessarily have find ways to be more resilient with funds that we do have. And I've also seen kind of what alluded to, two options, a three-lane and a fourlane option. Uh, but I don't think anyone here has seen anything beyond that yet. Uh, but we are hearing that the repaving pro program is supposed to happen in the spring of next year. And my fear would be that it ends up being just that, that it just ends up being a repavingment and we don't see the improvements that people are advocating for here. And that would be a huge lesson catastrophe to create another environment on High Park app that is equal to what it is now and not available to all users. Thank you so much. Okay. Okay. Hi, I'm Chris. I just want to ask one question. Why is having a lane for parked cars a sacred cow? So, um, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry, I just I don't buy the argument that that it doesn't make sense that all those businesses really need them that you could maybe make an argument or you could do some study that more pedestrians and bicycles would frequent those businesses if there were if the car situation was better. I mean, it's no one even ever seems to talk about it. Why? Thank you for sharing. Okay, perfect. Thank you. So, I I always hate to be the bad guy, and anyone who knows me and the ways I've operated my district, I have been one of the most um fervent advocates for multimodal transportation, if I do say so myself. So, um so I really appreciate everyone's testimony tonight. I want to thank the lead sponsor, Councelor Weber, um for asking me to host this in district, um because I um I had to use my off-site hearing through my committee and I wanted to make sure that everyone had an opportunity to actually testify and having gotten here um and realized how different the transportation environment here is, knowing that what you are dealing with on the daily. Just want to thank you for testifying. Um I do think that we got something out of this being in person and it being in the neighborhood. So I just want to thank councelor Weber for his advocacy. Um I want to give everyone a chance to um do closing statements. I'm going to start with the administration and then u my colleagues will do closing statements. So go ahead Chief Franklin Hodgej. Uh thank you Madam Chair and uh thank you to all your colleagues for being here uh for this hearing. Most of all, thank you to the community members that came. Uh, and you know, I know what a burden it can be to be out at 9:00 on a a school night to uh, have these conversations and it speaks to me to the seriousness and the urgency that you feel around these issues. So, um, I have heard what you have had to say here and I know my team has as well. I think you know we understand how important it is to this neighborhood to see change. Um, we have a period of time in the coming months to work through the questions of what change can look like and to find ways to make this a safer street to address some of the the issues that you have so uh clearly articulated affect you every single day and uh so you have my commitment that we will continue to do that work. Um I you know we we still have to uh come to a place where we have that clarity of how to best uh make this corridor a place that can serve you better and serve all of the people that use it. Um but that is the work to come. Uh and uh you know I hope that we'll be back here soon with uh specific ideas and uh proposals that we can talk through and and arrive at a at at a decision on. So thank you all very much. No question. Sorry. We're just doing closing statements. Thank you. Oh, perfect. Okay. Go ahead, Councelor Weber. Uh, okay. Uh, I want to thank everyone for coming out. Um, you know, I I before I the reason why we live in Jamaica Plane is because we used to live in Rosendale when we got daycare in JP and we worked my wife and I worked downtown. just getting through hide park a you know uh had us looking for somewhere else to live and so we moved to JP um so you know it's 17 years in this neighborhood and knowing how difficult this stretch of road is um you know and trying to figure out what we can do I just want to thank everyone for coming out because you know it it's helped set the priorities for my office on on what you know is what we're going to push for and we're going to push for pedestrian bike friendly change in hide park a before the last thing I want to say is um you know I just want to thank Chief Franklin Hajj for coming out. I know he's on the receiving end of a lot of vitriol. I represent district six which is J basically JP and West Roxbury. If there's somewhere where Chief Franklin Haj gets even more vitriol it is in West Roxberry for putting in bike lanes. Um, and so, you know, I want to thank him for his advocacy and for pushing for more street safety, for slowing down cars, you know, with speed humps, for putting in these things and for making the case. And I know, uh, he is going to do everything he can to, you know, and if he's not, I will be gently or strongly pushing him to do, you know, what he did in West Roberry, do the same thing here because we we we need it. Uh, but I just, you know, I have to acknowledge that, you know, he he he he's the he's the face of this and he gets he signed up for this. So, he he he didn't get anything he didn't expect tonight. Uh, but just so you know, a lot of people uh who, you know, have problems with him have problems because he's put in the same infrastructure that we're asking for here. So, uh, you know, he kind of gets it both ways unfortunately for him. But, um, I just want to, you know, I'm looking forward to working together and and getting this done. So, thank you the chief and thank you chair. Thank you. Um, and so we're going to go to councelor Pepen. I know Ben deserves his applause, but go ahead. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to thank all the residents for being here tonight. You know, I came into this hearing knowing where I stand on this, which is to definitely defend the safety infrastructure improvements on High Park app, but I think that I'm leaving here with a loud and clear message that this is what we need here. Um it's just there's no other way around it. In my own district, I'm currently facing through a other redevelopment project on Cumins Highway, which is the biggest transportation investment right now. And yes, there are people that are upset with it. But let me tell you that it is worth it. It is worth it because it's going to make that corridor safer. And it's going to make it safer not just for pedestrians, even for drivers and for cyclists as well. So I want to see that same type of investment coming into High Park app. And I'm going to be selfish. I'm going to say not just in this part of high parkav but the p the part of hypar gav that also gets to my district. So I want to see the entire stretch of high park. So thank you. Thank not done. Um I just want to make sure that councelor Weber, councelor Warell, um just get the get a lot of credit as well as we all represent Hype Park Avenue. And I I mean I'm going to speak for myself on this one, but I'm going to continue to push administration forward to make sure that we do put in the safety infrastructures into High Park. So, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. And I, you know, I'm just cutting people off because at 9:00 p.m. I've become a pumpkin. So, um, Councelor Flynn, do you have a closing statement? Thank you, Madam Chair, for conducting this meeting. to council Weber, to council well, to councelor Pepin for being the sponsors, for bringing us together, but especially to the residents. I learned a lot from you, listening, listening to your comments, listening to your concerns, although I don't represent the area. One way I could be helpful is continuing to advocate for uh Boston police to do more traffic enforcement of speeding vehicles. I think that's a a citywide problem. I also want to continue working on trying at least trying to reduce the speed limit from 25 miles an hour to 20 miles an hour um in the city. Um but I I do think we need to do more work on pedestrian safety. It's an issue I've focused on exclusively for eight years and um I think I think we have major concerns and challenges ahead of us, but it's about working together and respecting each other. Madam Chair, thank you for conducting a very professional meeting tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Um Councelor Flynn, I have a closing statement, but I want to give a little bit of time for No, thank you, Chair. I just I know we talked about and and Chief Hodge just talked about Franklin Hodgej talk about red light cameras. Uh so State Rep. Sam Montano is my state rep. Many of you are state has has really been the the at the forefront of this. Uh so I was just texting with representative Montano and who says that to support this you need to reach out to your state reps. Obviously if state rep say Montano is your state rep, you've you've already done your job. But if you you're represented by Rep. Holmes or or Rep. Consolvo or or someone else you want to reach out to other state reps. Uh get people in, you know, around Boston to really push for this. Obviously, we've got the support of the city. Uh and I think most residents here want to see that. Uh and uh so, you know, uh or we can help organize some action at the state house. Maybe we'll do some lobbying uh with my colleagues here because I think uh it's a good policy and we should be I think it's going to improve life in Boston. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Councelor Weber. And um I think we heard from you u almost 40 residents that um and and many more that were here. Um and I just want to to every biker or pedestrian that has felt like there has been hostility towards you on the streets. Anyone who has ridden a bike knows um that that hostility is happening. Um, I am the only person who has spoken about that hostility and then had 18,000 ma 18,000 MAGA people call me fat online a couple weeks ago. So, I just want to say that I feel you. I understand what you've experienced and I think we are really as a city trying to move in the direction where we are separating cars from people. I think all of those conversation come with a lot of nuance and I know for many of you it's you've been in this place talking about the same thing but this is my first time being here. So I would love to bike with one of you. Um a couple of you are biking to Longwood Medical Area which is in my district every day. So I'd love to bike with um you and see what you're experiencing. And with that I just want to thank you for your participation. And I want to thank you for um coming to the table and continuing to come to the table. I know that work is not easy. Um and I know we have a lot of work to do. Um so I'm grateful for all of you. And as the chair of planning, development, and transportation, the hearing on docket 0450 is adjourned. I feel