Proposed Ped/Bike Safety Commission

I am preparing a proposal for the Board of Selectmen to consider at their next meeting to create the "Westwood Pedestrian and Bike Safety Commission." You can read the proposal below and comment if you have suggestions. (see also my report on the workshop and the walkable westwood topic.)

Draft Mission Statement

To make Westwood a "Walkable" and "Bikable" community by engaging residents and town departments in a sustained and ongoing process of identifying needs, designing solutions, and implementing improvements.

Activities

The commission will meet once per month and report to the Board of Selectman periodically with updates and recommendations for action.

The commission will work to improve pedestrian and bike safety through the following approaches:

• Engineering
  • Identify problem intersections and recommend improvements such as sidewalks, crosswalks, bike lanes, paths and trails, and accessibility improvements.
  • Coordinate with planned and future engineering efforts to ensure pedestrian and bike issues are addressed proactively.
  • Work with MBTA, state, and county entities as responsibilities overlap to recommend solutions.
  • Identify external sources of funding for infrastructure improvements.
• Enforcement
  • Help identify issues that can be resolved through better awareness of existing laws.
  • Help pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists better understand their rights and responsibilities.
  • Help residents and police devise programs to more effectively ensure the safety of pedestrians and cyclists.
• Education
  • Promote information about safe practices as is currently done through the Safe Routes to Schools program.
  • Increase awareness of local resources and procedures.
• Encouragement
  • Conduct events and workshops to get more people walking and cycling.

A key theme of the commission will be to facilitate and coordinate existing programs, departments, and resources. The commission’s purpose is to take the good ideas that many already have, connect them with the people and departments in town that can implement those ideas, and ensure the best interests of the entire community are served.

Composition

The objective of this commission is to gather input from all parts of town and include town employees/departments in a way that make implementation of recommendations more likely. To that end, the commission will be comprised of 4 members from the following departments:

• Planning
• Conservation
• Engineering
• Police

The commission will also include 5 residents; ideally from geographically-distributed parts of town.

Initial appointments to the commission will be made in 2008 to serve for the remainder of FY 2008, thereafter nominations will be for 1 year terms.