Young Ideas, Backed by Experience
One of the main areas of concern that people have raised in the Gardner area during recent years is the lack of taxi or ride-share (Uber/Lyft/etc.) services available in the region.
To help meet this need, Mayor Nicholson met with the ownership of Woods Ambulance Company to create a new locally owned ride-share program, known as SwiftRide.
This on-call service provides non-medical, non-emergency transportation services to anywhere in the City for a flat fee of $10 per ride. This allows individuals who do not have cars or do not have the ability to travel around the city to be able to get where they need to go at an affordable rate from a local business.
The Advisory Board for the Montachusett Area Regional Transportation Authority is made up of representatives from the municipal government of the 24 member communities that MART services. This board serves as the governing body for all of the Authority’s operations.
Mayor Nicholson was elected to serve as the Board’s chair in 2022 and re-elected to this role by the membership of the Board again in 2023.
In this role, Mayor Nicholson works with the Administration of MART to help improve areas of public transportation in the region and help modernize the services provided by MART to the public to make sure they are meeting the current needs of the area.
During a survey issued by Mayor Nicholson’s Office and MART in 2022 of resident satisfaction with current public bus operations, one of the deterrents from using public transportation that was sited in responses were the lack of shelters at bus stops in the City. Of the 18 bus stops in Gardner, only 5 are shelter facilities to wait under while waiting for the bus to arrive. On days of heavy rain or snow, or of extreme heat, people find the roofed shelters more accommodating when waiting for busses rather than being exposed to the elements.
MART was able to obtain grant funding from the Commonwealth to install an additional six shelters at stops throughout the City, more than doubling the existing amount available.
Shortly after being elected to serve as the Chair of the MART Advisory Board, Mayor Nicholson called a meeting with the top officials of MART to see what areas of service could be improved across the MART district. Gardner was then used as a study sample of the MART catchment region to see what needed updating and what work could be done to improve service and customer satisfaction.
As part of this study, it was discovered that of the 18 bus stops only 5 were marked as such. This created a situation in which many residents may be unaware that most of the bus stops around them even exist.
Working collaboratively between MART and the City’s Department of Public Works, new signage for all bus stops in the City will be installed by the end of 2023.
This also led to a new initiative district wide in which MART will be installing over 100 new signs across its member communities to ensure every bus stop in their district is marked as such.
As both Mayor of Gardner and Chair of the MART Advisory Board, one of the transportation policy based initiatives that has been at the forefront of Mayor Nicholson’s work this last term has been updating the public bus routes within the City. Prior to the addition of the South Gardner Prospect Street stop in 2022, the last time there was a full comprehensive study of the effectiveness of the MART Bus Routes in Gardner was in the 1980s.
In 2022, Mayor Nicholson and the Administration of MART issued a City wide survey to obtain input from residents as to if the current routes are meeting the needs of the people who live here. This survey was issued online and mailed to all residential mailing addresses within Gardner.
Based on those results, Mayor Nicholson and MART’s team are looking to shorten routes in Gardner, update bus stops to more targeted locations that are seeing increases in demand, and preemptively plan for future population centers with the large housing growth expected in the greater downtown area.
The goal of this initiative is to cut down commute time for busses to arrive at stops from one hour to thirty minutes and to increase the accessibility to allow for greater ridership from area residents.
Beginning in 2020, Gardner undertook a more concerted effort to construct travel lanes in the most highly trafficked areas of the city with Complete Street Standards.
These are federal standards in which roads a constructed to accommodate not only increased vehicular traffic, but also bicycle and pedestrian travel as well. This was seen in the construction of Rear Main Street and updates made to the Timpany Boulevard-Route 2 rotary.
This work continued this year in the area of Monument Park and Park Street with a new larger travel lane added for bicycles and pedestrians, extending the North Central Pathway bike trail from where it had previously ended at the Veterans Memorial Skating Arena, down Park Street, behind the Greenwood Pool facility, and to the entrance of Crystal Lake Cemetery.
In a time where people are transitioning the ways they travel they utilize, Gardner is doing everything it can to proactively plan for these increased methods of travel in our projects now to be better prepared for the future.
In December of 2021, Mayor Nicholson put forward a plan that was unanimously approved by the City Council to create an airport manager position to work with the City’s Airport Commission in overseeing the operations at the Gardner Municipal Airport to make sure the facility is being used to its highest and best use. This position was created and filled in early 2022.
Since then, Gardner’s new Airport Manager has worked tirelessly to update the facility, bring in new grant funding opportunities, and increase efficiencies in its operations. In doing so, the City has created a way to ensure that the Gardner Municipal Airport does not stay stagnant as a hidden amenity in the City that is only available to a handful of people who utilize it, but rather takes a more active role in the community’s overall planning.
In August of 2023, the City of Gardner undertook a full reconstruction of the runway at the Gardner Municipal Airport for the first time in over 50 years. This project includes the full excavation of the facility’s current runway, as well a new drainage system, new runway and taxiway edge lighting, new runway end identifier lighting, new airfield electrical faults, and reconstruction of all of the runway’s ancillary taxiways.
This $5 million project is being funding 90% through grant funding from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), 7.5% by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, and 2.5% by City funding proposed by Mayor Nicholson and approved by the City Council.
With the recent attention and investment being put into the Gardner Municipal Airport, one of the items proposed by the Nicholson Administration was to high a consultant to create a full master plan for the airport to help guide improvements that can be made in the future. Having a master plan on file for the facility, also opens the Gardner Municipal Airport to a vast amount of additional state and federal grant funding earmarked specifically for projects outlined in these plans.
This report is being done utilizing $150,000 from federal grant funding, $8,900 from state grant funding, and an additional $8,900 matching portion from City funds.
As part of the Nicholson Administration’s Airport Revitalization Initiative, the main administration building of the Gardner Municipal Airport is being renovated. This includes new flooring, paint, asbestos removal, restroom upgrades, and more.
The goal with this portion of the project is to make the building suitable for future use by coffee shop or breakfast/lunch diner to accommodate those utilizing the airport for families wishing to watch the planes.
In early 2023, Mayor Nicholson and City Council President Elizabeth Kazinskas jointly proposed amendments to the City’s ordinances to allow for greater flexibility for ride-share services (such as Uber, Lyft, and SwiftRide) to operate in the City.
Prior to this work, the City ordinances required that any individual operating ride share services within the City be treated in the exact same manner as taxi cab services, requiring full registration and medallion awardance by the City at a very high cost. This made it so several of these services refused to operate within Gardner because it simply was not cost effective. This also negatively impacted the City financially, as by state law, the City receives a small portion of the amount collected on any ride-share ride initiated within the borders of the City.
Since this ordinance was adopted and signed into law in Gardner, officials have seen an increase in these services operating in the City and a new locally owned service has opened its doors to users.
With the increased interest in electric scooters and electric bicycles being seen across Massachusetts and the nation, and with the City beginning preliminary conversations with bicycle share companies to come to the City, Mayor Nicholson put forward legislation that was adopted by the City Council to allow and regulate the use of dockless mobility devices (e-scooters, e-bikes, and bicycle share programs) within the City. This not only proactively allows the City to be ready for when these businesses eventually came to Gardner, but also set up a system that regulates them to the appropriate places of travel for them to operate in a safe manner, respectful of areas where they are in use.