Keith Bernard

Q1: How do you get around and what has your experience been?

I currently drive primarily, due to time constraints and work and family responsibilities. When able, I prefer to walk, ride or take the T to get to work. Malden is a very walkable city, but I have frustrations with the conditions of our sidewalks and pedestrian crossings. I love the bike trail, and would like to see more connections to other areas of Malden as possible.

Q2: What street or intersection would you most like to see improved for safety?

Better enforcement of our speed limits and traffic regulations, especially around our schools, is an immediate fix, given our current budgetary issues. Other options would be to set up bicycle “buses” or walking groups to get kids back and forth to school, implementing speed mitigations like clear signage and speed bumps, and I’d like to see an audit of curb cuts as a number of our sidewalks are not ADA accessible. If money were no object, I’d also like upgrades to our crosswalks and crosswalk signals, such as audible notification and moving towards walk symbols versus the red/yellow signals or “Walk/Don’t Walk” which might be tough for our non-English readers.

Q3: How would you support safe routes to school programs?

I have more of a concern around the heat islands that stretch down Eastern Ave, and the public housing. I’d like to see things like regular shutting down of streets, especially during festivals, or community celebrations like Porchfest, with shuttle buses running between sites. Wherever possible, I’d like to see more bike stations like we have next to Kierstead. We’ve had a mixed history with bike rentals, but the Blue Bikes have been a huge success, and we should have stations on or around our parks, bus stops, schools and commercial areas.

We also need to look at encouraging electric cars and build more charging stations outside of Malden Center. We have tons of renters who cannot install chargers at their apartments currently, so I’d like to incentivize small landlords into providing them or providing more public charging as possible. Finally I think we need to look alternative methods of increasing our green spaces, like encouraging roof top gardens or laws, or covered parking areas that also have something similar or solar panels. These aren’t thing the school committee can do, but I always try to advocate for better solutions.

Q4: How would you reduce drop-off and pick-up traffic at schools?

We don’t have school buses because we don’t have the budget to have buses. We need to continually advocate for people who prefer to walk or bike their children. For example, we had a city councillor who was on the fence about the bike lanes. We had to point out that lots of kids from our ward ride their bikes to Salemwood and Ferryway, and need a safe path to make the trip.

Do we need to have more bike lanes, crossing guards, and less parents driving their kids to school? Absolutely, but we need to get buy-in from everyone to make smart decisions as to location and investment. The bike lane on Willow Street makes complete sense as it is a safe pathway between the Ward 7 neighborhoods and Salemwood, plus access to three parks. The multiple bike/bus lanes down Center St, Exchange St, Dartmouth and Florence Streets do not and seem haphazard with no overarching plan. Future bike routes need to have public meetings and clear signage, and we need to encourage the MBTA to put more routes in that use the bus lanes. If need be, we can have commuter times when the bus lanes are exclusive, like Broadway in Everett and off times where cars can use them, during overnights.

Q5: Would you support walk/bike to school programs?

Yes. As I’ve mentioned above I want to encourage all alternatives to getting our students safely to and from school which can be, at times, the most dangerous due to the levels of traffic and congestion. We need multiple solutions, with buy-in from the entire community to successfully achieve this goal.