A City Built For People: Bikemore Impact Stories

This Giving Tuesday, Bikemore invites you to support our ongoing work. 

Your contribution will enable us to continue advocating for improved biking infrastructure, promoting safety education, and building a more connected and equitable Baltimore for everyone. 

On November 7, 2025, Ibrahim Auguste, 32, spoke to Bikemore after a star-lit ride beneath the Baltimore night sky. We stood beside Southpaw in Fells Point after riding with Chris Broughton’s Bike Social Baltimore, leaning against our bicycles chained to the green U-bike stand, speaking through the chugging sounds of passing cars. 

Our Bikemore representative, Cora Karim, met Ibrahim in February of 2025 during a Valentine-themed alley rat race here in Baltimore named “Lovers Rat Race” after bonding over their shared love of the Japanese anime “Naruto.” Since then, their admiration for cycling in the city has grown tenfold due to their ability to constantly reconnect with each other. 

“There are so many people you can meet or network with. One guy in our group is the maintenance guy who owns our section of Lime bikes in the city.

The community is a very tight knit but eclectic group of people. You’ll never know if you don’t ride with them.”

Auguste first started riding on his dark emerald-green ISEO bike named “Rayquaza”, named after the legendary dragon-type Pokemon with the same emerald-and-gold scales on the flying serpent beast. It was 2018, and he had left New York City to return to his home city of Baltimore. He found biking to be a better convenience than public transit, and he recognized there was lacking attention to those who use biking as a necessity rather than something for pleasure. 

“Biking infrastructure can be improved. It has been slowly improving since I started cycling because there [are more] repaved and protected bike routes than there were years ago”, Auguste said. “Growing up off of Hartford and Hamilton, there used to be a Blockbuster and beauty supply there. My family and I got hit by a tractor-trailer three times while in a car. Imagine if a cyclist or pedestrian were there. They wouldn’t be here right now.”

Throughout our conversation, Auguste held a passion in his eyes. He smiled with each word professed, and he felt genuine in his love and admiration for the city. Unlike many of the lesser privileged folks in Baltimore, Auguste could drive a car if he wanted to. But he recognizes the ease and content a bicycle provides him and chooses to cycle instead. 

“You also get to see a different side of people because some of them do have cars, and their thoughts on how people should be nicer to cyclists and not try to run them over ‘cause they’re in the road, well, that will shift, too, because you might make your best friend in the cycling community.

If you’re in the car being a dickhead, you may have just hit someone who could’ve elevated your life or just helped you get deeper into the community.”

Auguste is proud to call Baltimore his home. He recognizes how far Baltimore has come and how much it has changed, and his love for the city shows in how he is able to want more. He’s seen increased bike initiatives pushed forward by Bikemore, such as the Big Jump or the planned lane on Eutaw Place, a stronger need for public transportation for those who don’t or can’t use a bike, and he defines his life on the affluence Baltimore provides for its diverse city. 

“You can ride. You can still get to point A and point B and experience the whole city in a whole different way,” Auguste said with a wide smile on his face. He spreads this wild joy towards everyone, regardless of how quiet that sidewalk can be, however deafening the street becomes with the ear–shrieking honks and plumes of exhaust sitting beneath our necks. It was helpless not to smile with Auguste. 

To some, Auguste’s perspective on life may be considered beneath them because he uses a bike to move. To him, it’s a spark of happiness. 

“Being in a car pushes the need to speed. People become blurs as you race past them. We become smudges on a canvas. You forget who a person is because you become so disconnected when in a car.

You get angry, and that anger is pushed onto people who seem so happy on a bicycle or a sidewalk.

Everyone deserves to be happy, and no one deserves to die because of it.”

We asked Auguste what his perfect Baltimore is. Like many, he had his thoughts and opinions on certain facilities who privatize the wealth of Baltimore and take it from the very folks who live here and deserve more.

To Auguste, a perfect Baltimore is one that is embedded in the factual reality of what Baltimore is rather than an exaggerated fiction: “It’s not just ‘The Wire’. There’s danger everywhere [in the world]. But there’s danger when you have disenfranchised people, a strong poverty line, and people from out of the country just treating Baltimore like a tourist attraction and the people like zoo animals,” Auguste said with a flair like many others in contemporary history.

“My perfect Baltimore would be a central hub for culture, connection, growth, diversification of everything. That would be my perfect Baltimore. Downtown is beautiful. Fort McHenry is beautiful. The Inner Harbor is beautiful. It just gets a bad rap because of one single experience rather than tons of people who know the city and love it.”

We asked Auguste if he had any words for us:

“Bikemore, keep doing what you’re doing. Don’t stop. Keep doing it.”

Ibrahim's vision for a "perfect Baltimore" — a central hub for culture, connection, and growth — is one that Bikemore shares and works toward every day. 

Our initiatives are designed to connect diverse communities and elevate the experiences of everyday Baltimoreans who rely on sustainable and accessible transportation options.

This Giving Tuesday, Bikemore invites you to support our ongoing work. Your contribution will enable us to continue advocating for improved biking infrastructure, promoting safety education, and building a more connected and equitable Baltimore for everyone. 

Support Zoning and Land Use Reforms for More Accessible and Affordable Housing

Earlier this summer, the Housing Options and Opportunity Act was introduced in Baltimore City Council. It is a part of a package of five bills aimed at making it easier to build more (and more affordable) housing in Baltimore City, three of which will be heard by the Baltimore City Council Land Use and Transportation Committee this month. 

The five bills would:

• make permissible single-stair apartment buildings, which would allow for easier creation of family-sized apartment units and make it easier to ensure every bedroom in an apartment has a window,

• allow for both smaller and larger units in more areas, and adjust yard requirements to make buildings fit better into the urban fabric,

• move the Zoning Administrator under the Department of Planning, which would, amongst other things, help solve a longstanding zoning enforcement challenge with bike parking,

• eliminate off-street parking minimums for the few remaining categories where they apply, allowing for more affordable construction and more pedestrian-oriented design,

• legalize smaller multi-family homes where only single-family homes are currently permitted, allowing more families access to opportunity in more neighborhoods.

Legislation like this has been incredibly successful in other cities.

“Reform lowered housing cost growth in the five years following implementation: home prices were 16% to 34% lower, while rents were 17.5% to 34% lower relative to a counterfactual Minneapolis constructed from similar metro areas.” - Zoning Reforms and Housing Affordability: Evidence form the Minneapolis 2040 Plan

“Single-stairway four-to-six-story buildings with relatively small floor plates cost 6% to 13% less to construct than similar dual-stairway buildings. They can also fit on smaller infill lots, potentially increasing the supply of apartments in high-opportunity urban and suburban neighborhoods. And to the degree that these modern buildings replace older, riskier buildings, or enable residents to move out of older housing, single-stairway apartments will actually increase fire safety.” - Small Single-Stairway Apartment Buildings Have Strong Safety Record: Revised building codes could encourage construction, boost supply of lower-cost homes

Bikemore in Action is supporting this full package of bills, and we encourage you to support them as well. 

You can help right now by sending an email in support of bills being heard this month.

Keep the Jones Falls Valley Safe for Everyone

A map of the proposed relocation site with the floodplain overlay

Baltimore City is proposing relocating the Sisson Street Transfer Station to the Jones Falls Valley. There are numerous concerns around this proposal from adjacent neighborhood residents, stakeholder groups like Friends of the Jones Falls, and environmental advocates concerned about the overlap with the floodplain.

At Bikemore, we believe the Jones Falls Valley can and should be realized as a world-class linear park. We don't believe relocation of a waste transfer facility fits into that vision.

But if the city is insistent on relocating the facility despite the conflict with this vision and community concerns, the corridor must be safe for people of all ages and abilities walking and biking. Safe access for these users must increase.

In fact, that's a vision the Mayor's Office and Baltimore City Department of Transportation has long promised adjacent communities, a promise they have not made good on. Now is the time to make good on that promise, regardless of the outcome of the relocation proposal.

Below is a letter to send to your elected officials. It focuses on the bare minimum safety improvements required for a walking and biking corridor to safely exist with relocation.

To be clear, we think the proposed relocation site is a bad one. So if you have opinions on the relocation proposal itself, please customize the letter to include them.

Bikemore Files Maryland Supreme Court Amicus Brief in Support of Vulnerable Road Users

For decades, Maryland's Boulevard Rule has played a vital role in protecting pedestrians and cyclists by reinforcing their right-of-way when crossing or entering major roads. But a recent appellate court decision (PDF) threatens to upend this longstanding precedent, opening the door for drivers to shift blame onto vulnerable road users, even when those individuals were lawfully asserting their rights.

This shift has serious implications. It risks making our legal system more hostile to the very people Maryland is trying to encourage to walk and bike through increased investments in complete streets infrastructure. If pedestrians and cyclists cannot count on legal protections when harmed by negligent drivers, the promise of safe streets remains out of reach.

That's why Bikemore is standing alongside Delegate Embry to advocate for a legislative fix, specifically, a contributory negligence carveout for vulnerable road users. And it's also why we filed an amicus brief urging the Maryland Supreme Court to hear the appeal filed by the legal team at Kramon & Graham.

Kramon & Graham's attorneys are leading a vital fight to restore the Boulevard Rule and ensure it continues to serve as a meaningful safeguard for people walking and biking. Their appeal asks the Maryland Supreme Court to reverse the lower court's ruling and reaffirm the principle that those entering a boulevard must yield to traffic, including pedestrians and cyclists, already in the intersection. We are proud to support this effort through our amicus filing, which underscores the broader public policy implications and the real-world risks that vulnerable road users face every day.

This is a crucial moment. As Maryland works to reduce traffic violence and make our roads safer for all, the law must reflect the reality on the ground: people outside of cars face disproportionate danger and deserve legal protections that recognize that imbalance.

To better understand how this legal precedent affects injury claims and accountability, we recommend this excellent explainer from Bikemore board chair Juan Carlos, an attorney at Saiontz & Kirk, P.A.

We believe that legal doctrine like the Boulevard Rule must evolve to protect—not endanger—those who are most vulnerable when traveling along our streets and roads. They deserve nothing less.

Read the full brief below: