It’s been a very busy couple months for the Guilford Safe Streets Task Force (SSTF). Formed in the wake of heated controversy around the proposed Nut Plains Pathway and Shoreline Greenway Trail—a process that town officials characterized as ranging from chaotic to disastrous—the SSTF stayed relatively quiet until last October.

That is when it came forward with a proposal to bring in Milford-based consulting firm Schmidt Design Group at a cost of about $300,000, to bear down on the issues it wase formed to address: pedestrian and cycling safety, efficiency, and accessibility for all forms of transportation in town.

Garnering a whole host of public input using a specialty mapping tool and surveys, the “Complete Streets” process, which is eventually intended to deliver comprehensive plans and recommendations to improve town transportation, is moving into a dialogue phase with a walking tour of downtown on Tuesday, April 27 followed by a trifecta of workshops that will hopefully allow residents to coalesce around solutions to both broad and hyper-specific issues.

“There’s definitely a lot of energy around this,” said SSTF Chair Sam Gerritz. “A workshop is really the first chance we have to really engage directly with the public about some of the ideas that are floating around. We’re well aware that some of these problems are really tough nuts. That’s why they’ve been problems for literally 100 years.”

The biggest misstep that the SSTF and the town generally want to avoid is failing to involve and inform people as they go forward, creating a contentious scenario in which proposed changes are unvetted and people are surprised by last-minute proposals.

That has driven what Gerritz and Schmidt associates have characterized as a deliberate process meant to build ideas from the ground up, which they promised will be evident in the upcoming workshop events.

“We want to be focused on the fact that we’re trying to connect people to places in the best way possible,” said Holly Parker, one of the consultants working with Schmidt on public outreach. “[Using] people’s preferences, obviously. That’s why we’re asking them.”

So far, the data gathered, including more than 900 responses to two surveys, an independent review of every street and sidewalk in town, and about 100 geographically tied comments on the Mappy tool, are being used to prioritize issues as well as being passed on to town officials for their own use, according to Tom Tavella, another Schmidt consultant.

But starting soon, the project will begin molding these ideas into viable solutions that will be supported by townsfolk, continuously shaped by what the consultants and town officials hear.

Starting in the afternoon on April 27 with the in-person walking tour downtown, residents will be guided through conversations at subsequent workshops meant to build on each other, according to Parker and Tavella. This will include general questions about areas of town already identified as problematic, as well as pulling people into smaller break-out groups based on neighborhood and sparking more granular conversations, they said.

Each subsequent virtual workshop, beginning at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, April 27, 28, and 29, will build on what residents bring to the table as far as recommendations or concerns in the previous one, Tavella and Parker said, meaning ideally people will attend multiple sessions.

“It’s called ‘feedback loops,’” Parker said. “We understand it’s a big ask to get people to put aside three nights in a row to devote to this. But it’s also super efficient, because we’re going to be very intensely focused on people’s thoughts and ideas, and refining them into something that people agree on.”

Tavella clarified that residents shouldn’t expect instantaneous, massive fixes based on the upcoming workshops, but promised that there would be plenty of immediate and actionable solutions emerging from input received.

“It might be as simple as restriping a road so the shoulders are a little bit broader and the lanes are a little bit tighter,” he said. “It might be a full blown bike lane, [or] different other treatments we recommend for these roads so then when the town has some funding, they can...implement it onto [the road] so it becomes a safer street for everybody.”

In the two completed surveys administered by Schimidt, a plurality of residents said biking infrastructure and improved sidewalks would encourage them to use alternate forms of transportation around town. Route 146, Route 1, and Long Hill Road were most identified as problem areas in need of bike lanes, walking paths, or some other kind of accessibility improvement.

Most—68 percent—also said they felt “unsafe” biking or walking in certain places in town.

Parker said an initiative to have people sign a pledge to be safe and respect cyclists and pedestrians may or may not be circulated through the workshops, which could eventually involve an incentive and a bumper sticker handed out to those who choose to make that commitment.

Also coming soon are “quick builds”—temporary but functional mock-ups of road or sidewalk improvements that residents can experience firsthand without investing large sums of money up front. Gerritz said the SSTF plans to seek approval from the Board of Police Commissioners this month, and hopefully drop them in May or June.

Some of these will be based on what people express the most interest in at the upcoming workshops, he added.

One of the most important functions of the workshops is to help people who have legitimate fears or concerns or who are just outright opposed to certain initiatives understand the reasoning behind them. Knowing that it will be impossible to make sure everyone is happy, Gerritz said the goal was to make sure no one is excluded from the dialogue.

“The dialogue is the piece that has generally been missing in the way the town has proceeded in these types of projects,” he said. “Hopefully...the master plan phase will present no surprises.”

Parker said that in the first community input session, even people who remained opposed to certain specific proposals were at least able to have some of their questions answered, and town officials simultaneously discovered some of the reasoning behind objections.

She used the example of adding sidewalks, which Schmidt considered an uncontroversial “slam dunk” improvement but at which some residents balked due to more snow-shoveling responsibilities.

“People can start to understand, to layer on top of their ideas and opinions, some of that counterpoint, some of that hard data that helps explain why a certain thing would be proposed,” she said.

For more information on Guilford Safe Streets initiatives, including survey data and the interactive map, visit www.guilfordsafestreets.org/home.