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What’s the strangest place you’ve seen Winchester residents leave their bikes? Flopped over on the sidewalk? In a doorway? How about the rotary downtown?
All those places — and more — have seen their fair share of bikes temporarily parked by residents who have nowhere else to leave them. And Walk & Roll aims to change that.
What’s Walk & Roll? The group is an offshoot of the Climate Action Advisory Committee that is looking to make changes to walking and bicycle safety in Winchester.
The group started in October 2025 and has been meeting monthly. There are about 30 people who have been in attendance at various meetings.
“Our main objective is to get as many people out walking and biking as possible — safely,” said Damien Thiery, who is a member. “Since we started, we’ve had a few actions we’ve undertaken.”
Such as getting students from Winchester High School involved in the group, as well as organizing the town’s first Bike Rodeo during Town Day in June alongside the state’s Safe Routes to School program. The event was undertaken by volunteers, including a 10-grader who was very involved in making it happen.
A look at the many different places Winchester residents have left their parked bicycles in the downtown area. COURTESY PHOTOS/EMILY PRUITT
The group also submitted a “Six Fixes” list to the Winchester Committee on Community Preservation (WCCP) for “the Tri-Community Greenway that totals $15,500 and includes the purchase of seasonal guide posts for snow plowing, distinctive painting for crosswalks, pavement paint and signage at Ginn Field, replacement of steel bollards with safer alternatives, relocation and restoration of a historical sign at Mill Pond Dam and installation of paved aprons on some overly tight right angle turns.”
The School Committee recently voted to support the WCCP application by Walk & Roll, but only as it pertains to the Muraco School. The swapping out of steel bollards and replacing them with barrels for a new crosswalk affect the Bates Road school.
“The Morocco community is supportive of it, and it would make that space safer for our students,” said School Committee member Stefanie Mnayarji during a recent meeting. “So I’d like the committee to consider supporting the Tri-Community Greenway improvement project that was submitted by Walk & Roll.”
What’s the goal?
Thiery said one of the goals of the town’s Climate Action Plan is transportation. That doesn’t just mean the clean energy chargers for electric vehicles found throughout the community.
“It’s also things like walking and biking,” he said. “We have to do that by 2050 so we need to get people moving and riding.”
According to Mass.gov, the state is looking to decarbonize by 2050 and “to achieve long-term emission reduction goals within the Commonwealth, the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs is undertaking a planning process to identify cost-effective and equitable strategies to ensure Massachusetts reduces greenhouse gas emissions by at least 85% by 2050 and achieves net-zero emissions.”
“Two months ago, we decided to see if we could make Winchester the most bike and walk friendly community in Massachusetts,” Theiry said. “The question is how do we make that possible?”
And that brought together other like-minded people, including WHS senior Katherine Plosky, Emma Pruitt, Jared Richardson and Nicolai Rottball.
Plosky was already a member of the Climate Action Advisory Committee, having wanted to become involved since she was in middle school. Last July, the Select Board named her a voting member of the organization.
“I’ve been doing environmental advocacy since I was in seventh-grade,” Plosky said. “I worked with the Sierra Club and then became involved locally.”
Plosky has been involved through the Environmental Club at the high school, where she has surveyed students about what they’d like to see in Winchester when it comes to safer streets.
Thanks to Safe Routes to School, she and Theiry’s daughter, Emily, have given safety education talks to middle schoolers. They plan to do it again sometime during the next school year.
Safe Routes to School is a program funded in 2005 by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation aimed at bringing safe streets to communities across the state. All of Winchester’s schools are signed up for the program and have received grants (Vinson-Owen), a silver level award for Walk to School (Muraco) and recognition, such as in 2024 when crossing guard Sue Minnehan was named a Crossing Guard Champion.
Pruitt, who is the daughter of Winchester Sustainability Director Ken Pruitt, said she got involved with Walk & Roll because she wanted to make a difference in her community.
“I looked around to find something to get involved in, in person,” she said. “I wanted to find community in my own community. When I mentioned that to my dad, he mentioned Walk & Roll and I thought that was perfect for me.”
Pruitt likes to bike as a way to stay active, but she said she’s found it’s difficult to get around Winchester. While biking and walking are more environmentally friendly, she said there also needs to be infrastructure so people can take part in those activities and be safe.
For example, there’s a lack of bike racks throughout the community.
“We’ve been collecting photos of the places people park their bikes,” Pruitt said. “There are some really weird places, like the middle of the rotary downtown!”
There’s also a lack of bike lanes.
“There are no protected bike lanes,” Pruitt said. “It’s one thing to have a bike and get out there to ride it, but you have to be able to be safe. I’d like to see lanes with barriers.”
It’s something she and Plosky agree on.
“Some bike lanes would be great,” Plosky said. “There really aren’t as many as there should be.”
Pruitt said the group has plans in the works to bring bike lanes to the community. She said Walk & Roll is working with Town Engineer Matt Shuman about bike lanes and parking spots for the downtown area.
With so much on its plate, Walk & Roll is hoping to attract more people to join their mission. Theiry said the group is open to anyone and would definitely welcome more residents from a breadth of the community, including a school representative and business owners.
“We would love for anyone to get involved,” he said. “We’d like to get a bike survey out, we want more people to know about us and we welcome more ideas so we can move on to the next step.”
If you would like to become part of Walk & Roll, you can reach out to Theiry directly at thiery.damien@gmail.co
Winchester News reporters Chris Steves and Will Dowd contributed to this report.
Nell Escobar Coakley has been a journalist for more than 30 years. She is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Gotta Know Medford and editor of Winchester News. She can be reached at editor@winchesternews.org.
