Hello,


I’m interested in getting involved in getting safer streets in my city (Everett), however we don’t have an organized local advocacy group per the planning department. I want to see if I can help start one but I’m not sure where to begin, I was wondering if MassBike has any advice or resources I could draw on?


I presently live in two bedroom apartment together with my boyfriend, and neither of us drive — we both walk, bike and take public transit. Everett, outside the Northern Strand Trail, is pretty hit or miss when it comes to bike infrastructure or traffic calming generally. There’s plenty of places it becomes outright dangerous to try and get too, and we’d both like to get involved in making the city better.


My impression (as a ~1 year resident) is that there are actually a good number of bikers out here even if they aren’t organized:

- As stated plenty of people bike near the Northern Strand trail. This is helped by things like grocery stores and subway stations being fairly close by as well.

– Walking about the city you can see plenty of kids biking to school and even a few adults in areas with poor infrastructure. Everett is pretty small, distance-wise there’s no reason kids can’t bike to school. Safety can be rather questionable outside smaller residential streets though, and people usually keep to the sidewalk.

- It also looks like a decent number of people commute to Chelsea by bike (per https://mass.streetsblog.org/2022/10/10/eyes-on-the-street-chelseas-produce-distribution-corridor-gets-much-needed-bike-and-ped-upgrades) and there are also into Boston across the Malden bridge (which I also do fairly frequently). Notably both of these routes cross city boundaries and have quite dangerous sections.


Appreciate any advice/resources you could offer, but also understand otherwise!


Best,

Connor