Advisory Bike/Walk Taskforce

City of Norwalk Norwalk Bike/Walk Taskforce Meeting Minutes September 5, 2017, 6:00pm Health Department, 2nd Floor Library 137 East Avenue, Norwalk CT 06851 Attendees: Nancy Rosett, Peter Libre, Jud Aley, Peter Franz, Diane Lauricella, Colin Grotheer 1. The minutes from the August 7th meeting was approved. 2. The minutes from the August meeting with DPW and BWTF were reviewed. There is a concern about bike lanes at intersections such as Strawberry Hill and County Street, Strawberry Hill and Dairy Farm Road and Water Street and Washington Street. Some ideas were putting bike lane symbols at the intersections or replacing the single cat tracks with double cat tracks so it’s obvious a bike lane is crossing. It was also suggested that we point out to DPW that a smaller turning radius is safer for pedestrians. 3. The walking update: Kaitlin is heading to the National Walking Summit this month to present on the success of the NorWALKer program. Here’s a link to the conference program: http://walkingsummit.org/2017-program-agenda. If anyone has a particular interest in a session, let me know and I’ll do my best to attend or at least grab some information for you. Community walks:  Wednesday, August 30, 6:15pm at Calf Pasture Beach. Meet at concert stage.  Saturday, September 2, 8:00am in Silvermine. Meet at Silvermine School parking lot.  TENTATIVE, will update if date changes] Saturday, September 30, 8:30am in West Norwalk. Meet at Fox Run School parking lot.  East Norwalk and South Norwalk walks are on hiatus due to walk leaders being on vacation. Walks should pick up again in the fall.  If anyone wants to start up a community walking program in their neighborhood, please contact Kaitlin at klatham@norwalkct.org. 4. Nancy reported the Common Council approved the creation of the Bike/Walk Advisory Commission at its August meeting. The Mayor has sent his seven appointees (Peter Libre, Nancy Rosett, Kevin Kane, Peter Franz, Mike Heslin, Jud Aley and Colin Grotheer) to the Common Council for their approval at its September 12th meeting.  5. Based on the favorable response to the survey about bringing a bike share program to Norwalk, the committee has sent a questionnaire to the vendors we know about. The committee is meeting tomorrow to decide next steps. 6. Redevelopment is looking for a vendor working for the Board of Education to perform the fix on the bike trough. 7. It was agreed that France Street and West Rocks should be considered as a single road. Nancy will contact DPW to find out when West Rocks is scheduled for repaving. Peter Libre pointed out that if we don’t do something soon on France Street, people will get used to parking on the road and it will be more difficult to put bike lanes there in the future. Based on that information, we’ll decide what makes sense for that road. Since we were talking about West Rocks, Colin Grotheer pointed out that the crosswalk at Jarvis needs to be repainted as it’s very faded and school children walking to Tracey Elementary, West Rocks Middle and All Saints schools. 8. Jud Aley said crossing Wall Street at Knight is very dangerous. Nancy Rosett will put this on the agenda for our next Friday meeting with DPW. 9. Nancy Rosett reviewed the progress on our strategic plan. Colin Grotheer suggested we develop a card for bike shops to hand out to their customers based on the educational materials we’re developing for our website. It would be good to have one side in English and one in Spanish. The meeting adjourned at 7:49 pm.