Responses for Somerville Alliance for Safe Streets Questionnaire

 Responses by Christopher Ryan Spicer

This is an excerpt from the SASS questionnaire:

Do you support the SomerVision 2040 goal of reducing vehicular traffic so that 75% of work commutes are made via non-car mode by 2040? Please explain your answer.*

Yes, I do support the SomerVision 2040 goal. My Nigerian neighbor grew up taking out lifestock, goats, sheep, into the pasture, now is a renter and a devoted driver, attached to his car to the point he says it's his favorite thing about living in America--but then, months later--he's completely flipped--I see him coming off of the MBTA line--he loves it. His whole world has changed. About these goals--some say that "micromobility facilities" are just a white issue--and that bears out in my experience. That is the challenge to this movement, to widen our circles and find intersectional points--which brings me to why I support the goal. I am concerned about the fact black and brown families are most impacted by pollution and more likely to be idling in a car on a business call. So while I want to produce a walkable or glissadable city, public transit-predictable so Somervillians can live car-free, I want us to remain a Welcoming City to our temporary resident car-addicts--replicating streets like Somerville Ave with its low-design speed--and end-route congestion-pricing like in San Francisco (SFParks is fifteen years old). We've come a long way from the 1970s when nickel was in gasoline, and when local politicians had a role in allowing communities of color to be most impacted. But the backslide makes many concerned that these goals are not a priority. I think that improved communication that these goals are actually going to happen would offset our community hostility to seemingly random construction. I won't be surprised if the Congress for the New Urbanism selects Somerville in a few years. Until then, whatever the administration change, we should all reject a north star goal to dramatically "mode shift" by 2035, the way Colorado announced last year when it failed to meet its pollution prevention goal. Of course work commutes will remain a way of life--our essential workers will still matter. I do want my neighbor who is a Haitian immigrant home nursing assistant to continue serving throughout Greater Boston. Work commutes made via non-car mode can include motorized scooters, bikes, but transportation is an equity and access issue, and we need public education campaigning to continue centering the least able-bodied so that our goals align with ensuring the piloted buse lanes are permanent, that, trains, and historically, trolleycars, made Somerville a working city of 100,000. I won't support every carrot and stick action imaginable such as capping expenditures serving non-emergency roads, tolls charging user fees to non-residents, and I don't believe in legislating utopia. As you know, Somerville has already changed zoning that has abandoned the "right to a car in every driveway," thereby reducing vehicular traffic.

As a child I recall my father running outside because of a fatal accident involving teenage driving. I stood with Safe Streets and fellow Human Rights Commissioners for the Rally on the McGrath Highway and I attended a Davis Square Rally--part of the amazing coalition with guidebook of Vision Zero. I think legislating non-car mode is ten years away, but even then, Somerville could be the first City to make this happen. I was born in Seattle, two years after a major transportation bill failed to pass--one that would have revolutionized the glotted North South I-5 corridor. I think it's most likely that the changes will happen through Home Rule petitions, and then, putting it before the voters. We're gentrifying, but I do think local government has an important role to play in safeguarding or 'grandfathering in' our longtime residents. The State does this despite support for increased excise taxes by providing exemptions of multiple stripes, but there is hope I think to say perhaps that precious Americana, the car, could become the luxury item of tomorrow.

Somerville has passed the Safe Streets Ordinance. How will you work to ensure that this is implemented for both short-term and long-term projects?*

To increase ridership I prioritize protected lanes on every major arterial, which encourage 1.8 times as many riders than standard bike lanes. In addition to on-demand crossing lights, we need how many installed accessories e.g. route tool ‘library’ stations and wayfinding signs? I will encourage adherence to equity plan of implementation, increasing the quantity and quality of the network during planned repaving and/or speed hump installation.

I bring a beginner’s mind to supporting the Safe Streets Ordinance: for some parts of the City population biking is like math--both activities need surrounding supportive culture. I want my kids to perform better at math than I did, but I can communicate well-being with bikes. Seeing biking as the evolution from ridership advocacy, I’m digesting the bad news that Federal funding cuts could disrupt timelines and prevent the roll out increase from 3 miles to 29 miles of bike lanes. Regardless, I will work with creativity to implement the Ordinance and the City’s stated Vision to have regardless of age or ability the to ride a bike anywhere in the city and feel safe and comfortable. A few years after mountain biking became an Olympic sport, in 1996, I became a mountain bike instructor for a summer camp. Now I have three daughters who I want to see enjoy the implementation of the Safe Streets Ordinance. The older two just had that amazing “click” learning to ride their bikes, their molecular layer interneurons encoding electrical signals leaving the cerebellum--the part of the brain that controls co-ordinated movement--into a language storeable as memory into other parts of the brain. Soon we’ll be using the bike path to get to Winter Hill and East Somerville Unidos Program. We’ll join the bike parade on Fridays. Yet, without further push for a Pearl street protected lane, the June 30 McGrath Highway and Fellsway report indicates my kids won’t be safe there for some years.

I would work to encourage equity in the process of linking geographically isolated, socially and economically disadvantaged environments. We need to poultice the injury of food insecurity with mobility solutions. I would seek companion legislation to prioritize protected lanes thru food ‘brown zones’ improving access with corridors to local grocery and authorize spending on creating ADA accessible storefronts. Twenty years ago, many would have said the time had not yet come for an antiracist approach.Today, though well tested elsewhere, the City to co-produce a bike shareability program to mitigate the construction of racially identified “white” space.

I would champion community-led benchmarks within areas below household median income. In partnership with the Bicycle Advisory Committee and Pedestrian & Transit Advisory Committee subgoals are on the record: neighborways for local access, the idea allowing counterflow biking; proposals bolstering construction of North-South routes; enforcement of blocked bike lanes; converting historical crash zones Highland, Holland, Elm and Central into protected bike lanes. Protecting bikers thru underpasses was achieved for Washington Street but Highway 28 transforms beginning in 2028. In the underpass conversation, I-93,  biking community and mental health advocates recall homeless encampment.

Fifteen years ago the $250 sharrow stencils were predicted to work for the network, now they are proven to guarantee an increase of injuries by 34 percent (Thomas Adams and Rachel Aldred, a London 2020 study of 2,876 morning-commute cyclists found).

The paradigm of human rights is helpful. How can we reckon with the fact the City has been complicit creating “urban sacrifice zones”? Yes, I join those claiming such neighborhoods must be stitched together--but what do we mean to do by attracting economic development (the leading cause of poverty)?

I am hearing pushback against bike lanes. The sympathy is for local business. The reliance on car parking to support owners, employee transit is coming from white, working-class homeowners, an unorganized group of supposedly bike-friendly citizens. And then there is lack of legitimacy for counterflow biking, a communication issue resulting in backlash. “That’s an embarrassment” says one pointing at a father biking wrong-way up Hudson. Is this a bike-hating NIMBY troll? All are helmeted, the father transiting his two kids in a front-loaded bucket seat back from camp. And there is no traffic to speak of, so what does this resident find so offensive? It’s the fact the city has no contingency for liability when the inevitable accident happens. Thinking with his MBA, this resident sees the City’s progress on implementing bike lanes without a plan in place to deal with the lawsuits from fatal accident or terrible injury.

Re-upping the 2021-22 citywide mailings to educate people to both celebrate the victory of lower crash numbers thanks to protected lanes on Beacon (26 crashes in 2021), Somerville Ave (30 crashes in 2021). Materials can recruit to the annual ridership count as well as promote safety and the use 3-1-1 for example to report blockages of bike lanes. The May 20, 2025 City Council was proactive with city officials whose contingency plans to address potential funding shortfalls and resident groups and to increase ridership.

The Somerville Safe Streets Ordinance, one of seven ordinances passed in 2024, mandates an increase of 3 miles of bike lanes to a network of 29 miles of bike lanes. What buffer is in place to protect implementation of the Safe Streets Ordinance? Ridership advocates are the best guard against a leadership reducing City plans to triage.  

Ridership can show that these improvements bring well-being and deliver improvements that help everyone. It all goes back to the mid-1880s, the UK Cyclists’ Touring Club, with a membership of 20,000 were a powerful force, through which, the idea that roads were good, became a national concern. Planned maintenance will require that cost information is not siloed with planners or engineers, accounting or engineering. In determining connected network using data, not just crash data, to determine how elevation change, traffic volume, traffic speeds. A network of thirty miles is a fraction of our street stock. For comparison we have a network of 180 miles of Sewer and storm drainage pipes beneath our streets.  All the factors and more will be in play as Highway 28 transforms beginning in 2028.

 

What do you see as Somerville’s most pressing needs to improve accessible pedestrian infrastructure, particularly for those who are visually impaired or improvements?*

If elected I will authorize funding sound corridors for safe crossing. And if removal of stoplights is proposed I will insist the City install audio beacons. October 15 is white cane day for commemorating the accomplishments of the blind recognizing champions in our community such as Robert Dias, a Somerville resident and Massachusetts Office of Disability information specialist.

 

Some of the most dangerous roads in Somerville are controlled by state agencies, including McGrath Highway and Mystic Avenue. How do you plan to work with state agencies, such as MassDOT and DCR, to make much needed changes to improve safety along busy corridors? What corridors would you prioritize, and why?*

A few months ago a police officer was injured in a motor-vehicle accident at McGrath and Broadway. September and October alternate as holding the highest average motor-vehicle crashes. I have subscribed to MassDOT for updates to 28/38 intersection, the I-93 Viaduct Bridge Preservation and McGrath Boulevard project.

If elected, I will submit public records requests, make appointments to establish contact and advocate equal access to ensure our historically impacted residents have a place with decision makers at MassDOT and Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR).

What can Somerville do to improve bus service for residents?*

Although T7 North-South route was opened by MBTA in 2022, and T101 extended, a pilot micro-transit project recently confronted Somerville’s topographic challenged north-south ways. Long dreamed to be served bus routes, I would favor micro-transit service servicing a circuit from Temple Street--School Street into Union Square. Somerville Public Schools has a responsibility to its students and families to continue busing students impacted by the closure of Winter Hill.

 

Do you support permanently closing Medford Street to motor vehicle traffic in the section behind the high school, as presented at the Gilman Square Community Meeting on November 22, 2021?*

I haven’t seen the presentation. I would like to know what the implicated shutdowns are as Hwy 28 is grounded beginning in 2028. The closure experienced in that section due to construction was aggravating pre-GLX but the adjustment now does strike me as something I would support. Just in terms of process: If Gilman Square would comport along the lines of a neighborhood association and carry that motion, I predict it would bring along more support city-wide.

 

Do you support reallocating curbside parking to create safe bike infrastructure, bus lanes, green stormwater infrastructure, and pedestrian improvements in order to achieve the stated goals in Vision Zero and Somervision 2040, What would you do to work with the community to resolve issues of constrained street space?*

I am open to proposals for reallocating curbside parking. Street parking, street-sweeping and snow-removal amenities all converge here with implications for local businesses. In general, there’s a misperception that scholars like Donald Shoup have widely communicated: no free parking. Parking is commonly accepted as a neutral good. In fact, local history reminds us of the opposite. The advent of the car brought an end to Somerville as a trolley suburb, and we still have the arterials to show for it, but the cars clogging our neighborhood business squares just as quickly took business further. Walkable city principles will do more to stimulate business, or so I want to believe, but employees can’t afford to live here. I want to avoid contributing to commercial displacement, listening to businesses who may report a reliance on employees who commute and need car-mode transit.

 

The current price for residential parking permits in Somerville is approximately $3.33 a month, while the market rate for off street parking is much higher. Would you propose changes to Somerville’s parking permitting costs, billing, or eligibility, and if so, what changes?*

Door knocking has profoundly changed my perception of our streets. If you had asked me straight after viewing the parking report issued last year that included information about other cities cost of parking permits I would have found the case for a median increase relatable. At the time, Trull Street was engaged in something of a parking war with a renter who stashed multiple motorcycles in the street before street sweeping day as placeholders for multiple other vehicles. Sixteen months of appealing to our local City Council to no avail, and notwithstanding constant ticketing from Inspectional Services, the owner-occupier at last persuaded the renter their manner of presence was unwelcome. Having said that, and witnessed for myself that many of the highly prohibitive parking permit costs are in cities of the west that have culture wars around the car-mode of transit, it almost seems stereotypical that urbanites here rely less on the car. My experience on this close-walking tour of streets it’s possible to see the cultural conflict in terms of overspill from crowded housing, where a car is an office, a comfortable personal den. And while some portions of our neighborhoods have off-street parking residences, whole residential sectors have no drive-ways. Then looking back at a proposal, I do scale back. Already I would have wanted to factor in escape hatches based on need and held discussion of eligibility for sliding scale permitting.

 

Do you support free bus service on the MBTA, and a low- income fare option for other public transit options?*

The Council for Aging does have a free taxi ride for residents over-60 to grocery and farmers market. But even mutual aid freegans put out jars with naming a suggested donation or good will offering. The RIDE transit currently charges $1.25 for flexible on-demand service within 30-miles radius. My sample size isn’t much but a Cobblehill Apartments resident reported satisfaction using it attending Sunday church services in Cambridge. I applaud the Somerville Public Schools efforts to distribute low-income fare passes for the MBTA. When my child had a broken leg, we rode the T everyday to her school, a burden our family was grateful to be offset by qualifying for that option.  

 

What connections do you see between transportation and housing, and what synergies would you pursue if elected?*

So the synergy of neighborhood matters most to me. Encouraging long-time homeowners incentive to find value in one’s street like here on Trull Street where we invest care in each other by rotating block parties with nearby streets, embracing fluid neighboring despite eye-bulging pressure for capitalizing on property investment.

My very first time coming to Somerville was by walking to my fiance’s condo from East Boston where I was a live-in au-pair for friends and grassroots canvasser. GLX has added tremendous asset value to this block, a selling point for us three years before it came fully on line. I’m amazingly privileged to have that perspective of the connection. Historically, the SomerVision 2040 acknowledges “Communities of color, seniors, people with low-incomes, youth, and persons with disabilities are disproportionately impacted by transportation decisions but are often not at the table when those decisions are made.” Again, who is at the table making decisions about City transportation and housing managing demands of growth and density? Most glaringly for me is the decisions regarding the anticipated sale of 90 Washington property, held by the City adjacent the East Somerville stop. I would lean heavily following abutters input, ranking heaviest the weight of residents at Cobble Hill Apartments. Second, from an environmental and racial justice perspective, pollution from the I-93 corridor is proven to impact the health of residents living in it’s vicinity. I supported the latest step in a decade long effort to address this at the June Budget meeting, seeking to extend the pilot for air purification in nearby homes.

Finally, I want to focus on the economy of care that connects these two goods. One of the lesser talked about nexus of transportation and housing is childcare. As a stay-at-home dad, my observations are general. It’s no secret that people pay a premium for provider location. Gentrification continues to evolve in a work-from-home economy, but young parents on my street and vicinity had a double walking shed to and from a childcare provider and then started their commute to work. Other neighborhoods are predicated on the possibility of a single motion commute. I would like to see more support for child-care providers period, because Covid made everyone see this invisible work that is actually a public good. I think of two small-size in-home providers near Magoun Square, and two very proximately located in Davis Square, one similarly at Assembly Row; less proximate, in Union Square, roughly about three blocks walk from the station, and with Sullivan Square having a provider on Broadway. Porter Square, Ball Square, Gilman Square and East Somerville T-stations all have proximity to schools.

 

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