Joint Statement on the Leadership Change at the Maryland Transit Administration

We want to congratulate Tony Bridges on his appointment as Administrator of the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA). He brings extensive experience to the role: service as Chief of Staff at the MTA, sponsorship of transit-related legislation as a member of the House of Delegates, chairmanship of the Baltimore Regional Transit Governance and Funding Workgroup, and roles at the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) and in the Governor's Office that give him an awareness of the agency's value, potential, and challenges. He also brings a personal connection to the workforce: his father served as President of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1300, which represents many of the people who make the MTA run.

Mr. Bridges inherits an agency transformed under Administrator Holly Arnold. She rebuilt the MTA's capacity to deliver major projects and assembled an experienced, talented team that is actively advancing the Red Line, the BMORE BUS plan, and the Light Rail Modernization Program. That team — and the momentum it has built — is the MTA's most valuable asset, and retaining it is essential to delivering these projects on time.

This is a pivotal time for the agency. The FY 25-30 and FY 26-31 Consolidated Transportation Programs (CTP) finally bring down the backlog of the MTA's state of good repair needs after more than fifteen years of chronic underfunding. However, this progress may be in jeopardy.

Despite revenue increases passed by the Maryland General Assembly in 2024 and 2025, MDOT is rumored to be proposing funding cuts in the FY27-32 CTP, even as the DMV Moves Coalition seeks significant additional funding for WMATA, county governments and Baltimore City seek restoration of Highway User Revenues, and the roads lobby continues to push costly highway expansions despite a substantial backlog of maintenance needs. Baltimore's transit riders have waited through decades of disinvestment. They must be prioritized first in the coming CTP.

The MTA's initiatives cannot come soon enough. The Light Rail Modernization Program is urgently needed as the agency struggles to keep existing cars, tracks, and power systems in working order. The Red Line and BMORE BUS would bring real service improvements to Baltimore transit riders after decades of fighting simply to maintain what we have. Advancing the Red Line toward a full funding agreement, launching BMORE BUS improvements, and keeping Light Rail Modernization on schedule must proceed without pause during this transition.

We applaud Governor Moore for moving decisively to name Mr. Bridges as Administrator upon Administrator Arnold's resignation. We will measure the success of this transition by whether these projects stay on schedule, whether the experienced team advancing them is empowered, and whether the coming CTP funds the work.

Mr. Bridges knows this agency, and he knows its riders. We stand ready to work alongside him and to advocate forcefully on behalf of the people who depend on transit to get where they need to go every day.

Brian O’Malley, President and CEO
Central Maryland Transportation Alliance

Jed Weeks, Executive Director
Bikemore

Build the Washington Street Protected Bike Lane NOW

On June 20th, Brandon McMurrin, a Morgan State freshman, was hit and killed scooting home from work along Washington Street by the driver of an SUV.

Washington Street was identified in the 2015 Bike Master Plan for a separated bike lane and prioritized in the 2017 Separated Bike Lane Network Plan for installation by 2019. It took until 2025 to approach final design. In May 2025, community members were told the project could break ground in late 2025. The Mayor's Bicycle Advisory Commission was told this January the project would be under construction by January 2027. By May's budget hearing, the project had slipped to a "goal" of Spring 2027 construction.

Brandon was 9 years old when this project was proposed. He was 13 when it was supposed to be built. His whole future is gone because of Baltimore City's inaction.

Tell Mayor Brandon Scott and Baltimore City Department of Transportation to redirect resources from the Repave Baltimore program to fix Washington Street NOW.

Join Us March 31st to Honor Those We've Lost

On March 12th, 28 year old Daniel Davis was killed riding a scooter just south of Orleans Street on North Collington Avenue when he was hit by the driver of a box truck.

Daniel worked at BGE and was a colleague of our board member Kyle Harrer. He loved biking and frequently rode his bike to work.

We are joining Baltimore Families for Safe Streets in honoring Daniel and other victims of traffic violence at a vigil on Tuesday, March 31st at 6pm at the intersection of Orleans Street and North Montford Avenue, where we will demand safer street designs to save lives.

Box trucks are a frequent killer of vulnerable road users. In addition to better designed roads, Bikemore and Baltimore Families for Safe Streets advocate for affordable design improvements to vehicles. Direct vision cab design dramatically improves visibility. Intelligent speed assist limits speeding. Vehicle side skirts and blind spot monitors with pedestrian detection are available as options on many new trucks, and are affordable retrofits to existing vehicles.

Traffic violence is not an accident. It is a systemic public health crisis that we have the power to solve through changes to street and vehicle design.

Please join us to remember Daniel and all those we have lost, and help us fight for a vision of zero deaths on our roadways.

Protecting the Jones Falls Valley from Future Industrial uses

In August, we asked you to share opposition to plans to relocate the Sisson Street Convenience Center to the Jones Falls Valley.

As a result of your advocacy, the Sisson Street Task Force was formed, and Bikemore was asked to join to advise on traffic safety and represent the interests of bicyclists and pedestrians.

In a November task force meeting, Bikemore Executive Director Jed Weeks motioned to remove the Falls Road site from consideration, and the task force unanimously voted in favor of that motion.

While we expect the mayor to accept the recommendations of the task force, this vote was only advisory. And even if the city never planned to relocate to the Falls Road location, there was still a huge risk: the sites are zoned industrial and owned by Potts & Callahan. In theory, nothing could prevent them from selling or leasing the property to another industrial use, including a private waste facility.

Today, Seawall Development announced that they are under contract on 2801 and 2701 Falls Road, both of the active Potts & Callahan industrial sites.

If their purchase is successful, Seawall Development has committed to advocates and neighbors, including Bikemore, Blue Water Baltimore, Friends of the Jones Falls, and the Greater Remington Improvement Association that they will prevent industrial uses on these sites, and instead work collaboratively with us to re-imagine both sites to meet the desires of Baltimoreans to see the Jones Falls Valley realized as a world-class linear park, flanked by walkable, mixed use development in Remington.

Challenges to protecting these sites remain. The financial viability of this sale is likely predicated on the ability to re-develop the existing Sisson Street Convenience Center, as connectivity between Remington and the Jones Falls Valley between the two sites would only be possible through that re-development. The industrial zoning is still in place, and a comprehensive rezoning of both the Falls Road and Sisson Street sites to allow appropriate human scale redevelopment (and restrict uses like big box stores and parking lots from the Sisson Street sites) would likely be necessary.

If the Sisson Street Task Force moves toward Option 2, the phased closure of Sisson Street Convenience Center, Bikemore will advocate for the report to include these recommendations.

If realized, these efforts would take the largest remaining industrial uses in the lower Jones Falls Valley off the table permanently, protect the site from a potential future convenience center, eliminate dumping and runoff concerns from the existing Sisson Street facility, and facilitate a much stronger connection between communities and the Jones Falls Valley.

Seawall Development will be hosting public visioning sessions for Baltimoreans to share what they’d like to see these sites become, and we will share that information as it becomes available.

FY2027 Baltimore City DOT Capital Improvement Program Testimony

Last week, Bikemore’s Executive Director Jed Weeks testified at the Baltimore City Planning Commission on the FY2027 DOT Capital Improvement Program - which is the capital budget that funds construction and retrofit of our roads and bridges.

“I want to start by saying I see a lot of good things in this year's CIP - critical safety projects that have been long paused now advancing, and a focus on hardening quick build infrastructure into permanent installations - reducing maintenance costs and eyesores. I want to especially thank DOT's planning chief and team for the progress we are seeing here - and I truly think they're the best thing happening at DOT right now. And I know we have a director that knows the stakes and is a believer in designing streets to save lives.

Since the adoption of the Complete Streets Ordinance in 2018, I have testified before this commission concerned about other divisions' seeming inability to follow that ordinance and since 2021, I have pointed to work that goes explicitly against the 2021 Complete Streets Manual guidance. 

My concerns continue today.

Specifically, the agency has been unable to lawfully execute resurfacing and continues to advance expensive, legacy streetscape projects that have no impact on safety and overbuilt bridges that still don't comply with the law. 

I have flagged projects like Belair Road Streetscape to this commission for years - this project directly undermines the goals of MTA's bus prioritization for the corridor and entirely contradicts the recommendations of the ULI study from which the project supposedly originated.

As I shared the past two years, the Sisson Street bridge in this year's CIP is engineered to accommodate double stacked freight - despite CSX lowering the tracks so that is not necessary. It has 15 foot wide lanes for truck traffic for a walmart that doesn't exist, and no shared use path or bicycle facility as required under adopted city plans. 

We are paying millions more than we need to for an outdated design that's not compliant with complete streets, and we will pay even more to later retrofit it into compliance, just like we've had to do with the Harford Road and Wilkens Avenue bridges. 

Have the other bridges in the project pipeline been designed in compliance with ordinance? We don't know, because despite asking this question every year, we've never been given an answer.

Of the 58 TEC Division resurfacing projects scheduled for 2025, 25 required retrofit to include all-ages bicycle infrastructure or shared use walking and biking paths under ordinance. As resurfacing began this past spring, zero of those plan sets were designed, and the city admitted that to achieve their resurfacing goals, they'd have to break the law.

Every single other resurfacing in the city this year broke the law in some way. Just look across the plaza to Lexington, where the city striped illegal travel lane widths and stop bar setbacks. It's literally in view of the agency office and city hall.

DOT needs more money. 

We have and will continue to fight for new revenues for the agency and a larger share of transportation dollars from the state, as we have successfully advocated in prior years alongside members of this commission, other advocates, and city and state elected officials.

But it makes that fight for resources hard when we have seen no meaningful reform of the broken divisions at DOT that are lighting that money on fire. 

DOT has an opportunity to change that - with new leadership and key positions out for hire.

Moving forward, I hope that the Planning Commission can help DOT ensure projects are only funded when they are generated from the agency's planning team, based on a goal of advancing adopted city plans, and demonstrably in compliance with ordinance. 

Thank you, and please let me know if you have any questions.”