January 10th Meeting A Huge Success

Green Streets Meeting Notes

January 10, 2009

Thanks to

• extremely generous donations from Pemberton Market, Iggy's Bakery, and and the new Zing Pizza for providing delicious food for the meeting!

• Cambridge Cohousing for opening your doors to Green Streets!

• generous raffle donors: Urban Adventours, EMS, Sam Davis, and Bonnie's Landscape!

• And to Nicole Rioles for these notes.

Attendees

Aviva Argote
Pixie Christy
Bob Cowherd
John Cuetara
Nicole Rioles
Hilary Celentano
Lucy Edmondson
Paul Elwood
Mark Gottlieb
James Gray
Tamar Haber-Shaim
Lauren Hefferon
Trish Hogan
Jane Irwin
Janie Katz-Christy
Molly Katz-Christy
Sam Katz-Christy
Bruce Kulik
George Lynde
Trish Marti
Katie Matthews
Alan Moore
Patty Nolan
Madhvi Patil
Rob Riman
Laura Smeaton
Amy Tighe
Peter Traversy
Anita Yip

Discussion

Green Streets is growing: new activities in: West Bridgford, Nottingham, UK; Portland, ME; and in regional cities in MA, including Stoneham and Newton. Many other towns also quite interested.

Walk/Ride Day is growing in communities tied to Safe Routes to School funding; Stoneham and Newton represent 2 of the 4 funded communities for this work.

Unofficially, there are members of congress who are planning to start Walk/Ride Day participation in Congress. Stay tuned!

Jan. 30^th Walk/Ride Day celebrated in Harvard Sq. with a hot breakfast from 7:30-9:00AM in Holyoke Center. Breakfast is sponsored by the Harvard Sq. Small Business Association

Idea: host quarterly breakfasts that can draw in commuters, shoppers, students into a dense square or neighborhood hub for a nice grassroots collective. W/R participants will feel part of an event or happening and local small business owners can potentially glean new/future customers through the events.

Group recommended that the Jan. 30 Walk/Ride Harvard Sq breakfast be promoted through all the schools with posters, flyers, and information. Janie promises to email flyer and poster to the group for distribution and dissemination.

Group recommended advertising in the Gazette and the Crimson- two locally circulated papers in Harvard Sq.

Janie showed the group the new decal and card designs, which everyone loved. All were designed by Colin Barr, who is fantastic to work with.

Green Streets buttons: 6 buttons have been designed with active commuting themes. Suggestions ranged from selling the 6 buttons as a group for $10 to selling the buttons online through Green Streets page and/or other sites like Cafe Press and others. They will be for sale at the January 30 breakfast.

Mayor of Cambridge has promised an award for people who participate in all 12 Walk/Ride Days throughout the calendar year. Any prizes are still undetermined, but the Mayor's office has said she'd like to have a reception honoring those who do! There was some talk about designing a t-shirts for people who participate in all 12 Walk/Ride Days.

Pete said he could produce 15-20 posters at work that could be used/reused with the dates changed for schools and others. He also said he would look into putting Green Streets stuff, including pins, onto CafePress website.

George is making a game/quiz about Cambridge's bike parking for this coming Walk/Ride Day. He made a design for bike parking display / Ferris wheel design, that he wanted to integrate with Walk/Ride Day. He was also in touch with architect Keith Moskow who designed another one, estimated at $750K and remains "theoretical." George was considering making a cardboard mock-up of Keith's design.

George is contributing to an art show (beginning April 9, 2009) at the City Hall Annex in Cambridge (Broadway at Inman) George is designing a game/poster for both events, which will look at Bike Parking.

Janie is looking for a Cambridge coordinator to take on Green Streets Initiative work 10-15 hours per week.

There will be bike parking events in Davis Square in May to promote biking and Walk/Ride Day. Theme will include prominent bike racks in key square areas, including a few on street car park spaces.

Arlington would like to participate in Walk/Ride Day with the schools but is facing challenges including the fact that biking is not sanctioned by the administration and bikes are not accommodated on school property. Arlington is looking to built political support and goodwill towards biking.

Please review these notes and let us know if you have anything to add or change. Thank you.