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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2021-03-09-TAC-min Transportation Advisory Committee Town of Lexington Minutes for the meeting of Tuesday, March 9th, 2021 The meeting was held pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 order Suspending Certain Provisions of G.L. c. 30A, section 18, and the Governor's March 15, 2020 and subsequent orders imposing strict limitations on the number of people who may gather in one place. Members present: Elaine Dratch, Vinita Verma, Sally Castleman (chair), Shefali Verma (LHS representative), Sara Arnold (7:14), Pamela Lyons Liaison: Sudhir Jain, Council on Aging, Mark Sandeen, Select Board (8:25) Susan Barrett, Transportation Manager The Committee voted 4-0 by roll call vote (Sara Arnold arrived after the vote) to approve the minutes for the meeting of February 2,2021. There were no liaison reports. Melanie Thompson will be the new liaison from the Planning Board. Susan told us about Lex Lights the Night coming up on Friday March 12th. There are 575 people registered. The purpose is to build a culture of active transportation across a broad spectrum of people. This is in collaboration with Friends of the Bikeway. There will be various goodies for bikers and pedestrians. FISH is still not operating— Susan receives the FISH requests and she arranges for them to be filled by taxi paid for by the MAPC Taxi Grant. The META will be rolling out a next generation Charlie Card. The META is working on making bus stops more accessible and plans on restoring 93% of bus service by summer. The combined 62/76 is not likely to go back to separate routes in the near future. Susan reprimanded a Lexpress driver for having his mask down on multiple occasions. Susan is planning on hosting a ridership meeting— always trying to improve service. She will be meeting with Amanda Loomis regarding the comprehensive plan. We have a Mass DOT grant: $200,000 for Lexpress operations and $35,000 for the Regionalization Action Plan and marketing/outreach activities. The timeframe for expenditure is extended to June 30, 2022. Regionalization Action Plan is to create an actionable plan to regionalize transportation services, and the marketing/outreach activities are specifically for Lexpress. We then turned to the three candidates for appointment to TAC. Sally spoke to each of them. It turns out that, after discussion, one did not seek appointment (but wanted to help with marketing when we work on that), one understood he did not fit our criteria, and one does have current mass transit experience but it is not Lexington based. This candidate was invited to attend the April TAC meeting. We determined that we would ask the Select Board to do one more round of advertising for the vacancy, stating specifically that we would like the applicant and/or someone in his/her household who regularly uses public transportation beginning or ending in Lexington. If a more suitable candidate does not apply, we will likely go forward with the candidate at hand. Sally debriefed us concerning the March 2nd, transportation meeting. (The minutes of that meeting were sent to TAC.) Elaine urged the committee to engage in more correlation with land use, housing, parking and transportation. We are going to discuss this with Melanie. There are public meetings on the comprehensive plan coming up in April through June. Susan suggested, again, that we look at the 2003 comprehensive plan. The new plan is intended to be complete by fall. Sally noted that we need to look at sharing vehicles and contracts. We circled back to Dawn's suggestion that the Liberty Ride trolley be used on Sundays to do an incoming ride from Alewife to Lexington before starting the Liberty Ride and then do an outgoing ride to at the end of the day back to Alewife. Lack of public transportation to and from Alewife on Sundays has been an issue for residents and tourists. Then we discussed E vehicles. Is our infrastructure ready? We don't go out to bid for Lexpress until 2023. How much more expensive will electric Lexpress vehicles be? Sally suggested that we zero in on our priorities. For the next meeting we should look at the 2003 Comprehensive Plan and think about what we would like to see. Sara urged us to keep track of other boards and committees. We need to check agendas. Mark discussed municipal fleet management—how to maintain vehicles and how do we use them. This issue goes to the Sustainability Committee. We are trying to look at the entire fleet of Town vehicles together. Sally suggested that maybe TAC let go of that issue, if others are dealing with it. Mark quoted Peter Drucker: "What is the business you want to be in?" Mark directed us to contact the Select Board concerning the candidates for appointment and our request that one more round of advertising might flush out another candidate.