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:

Another Council Hearing Against Complete Streets and Bike Lanes

On Monday, January 22nd, City Council Vice President Sharon Green Middleton is announcing yet another hearing requested by the Fox45/Sinclair backed Anti-Complete Streets group, who are using this momentum to try and repeal Complete Streets, halt bike infrastructure construction, and rip out existing bike infrastructure.

Send an email to City Council now telling them enough is enough. Please customize it with your own story of why continued investment in Complete Streets and all-ages bike infrastructure is important to you.

Full Details

Across the nation and in Maryland, fatal crashes involving pedestrians and bicyclists are on the rise. Here in Baltimore, they're dropping, evidence Baltimore's Complete Streets ordinance and the investments being made in traffic calming our high-injury network are working.

Baltimore is also in the top 10 cities for growth in bicycling since 2019—seeing a 56.4% growth in ridership—thanks to our city's investment in all-ages bicycle infrastructure. 

These statistics are gaining national attention, with the federal government recently awarding the city tens of millions of grant dollars to double down on these investments, increasing access to opportunity and reducing injury and death.

Despite these obvious successes, our City Council leadership continues to cave to a small group of Fox45/Sinclair Media backed individuals, hosting investigatory hearings on Complete Streets and Bike Lanes.

The opponents calling for these hearings have stated they want bike lanes and bus lanes removed citywide. They want Complete Streets repealed. 

City Council Vice President Sharon Green Middleton is introducing yet another hearing at tonight's council meeting. 

We're asking you to send an email saying you're tired of this nonsense, and that you want your elected officials to spend time and resources on implementing proven Complete Streets and bike infrastructure treatments, not opposing them. 

Please customize the email. Tell them why this is important to you.

Our Comments on the FY2024-2029 Capital Budget

Today Bikemore provided testimony to the Baltimore City Planning Commission on the FY2024-2029 Baltimore City Department of Transportation Capital Budget. You can check out the budget yourself by clicking here. Our formal remarks are pasted in their entirety below, and we will update this post with answers to additional questions we sent in as they are answered.

Chairman Davis and members of the Planning Commission:

Over the years Bikemore has testified in CIP hearings critiquing Baltimore City Department of Transportation’s spending priorities and ability to execute, while also advocating that despite this, they need more money. 

Last year Bikemore worked with fellow transportation advocates, MACo, Baltimore City, and peer jurisdictions to advocate for increased Highway User Revenue shares for the city. One critique we heard in Annapolis was a fear that Baltimore City would ultimately redirect increased funds away from transportation. Despite this critique, we were successful, and DOT is supposed to be armed with significantly increased funds to spend on the massive backlog of deferred needs presented by Interim Director Johnson today.

Yet Finance is not issuing bonds this year for Baltimore City Department of Transportation, and are allocating Highway User Revenues for non-transportation purposes, ultimately resulting in a budget decrease over prior year. We urge the Planning Commission to condemn this approach. We can't stress this enough: this is money for transportation and the city is poised to completely embarrass itself in Annapolis by doing exactly what critics claimed it would do with these increased funds in diverting them elsewhere.

Looking at this year’s CIP, as in years past, we are concerned that legacy streetscaping and bridge division projects may be overbuilt and require subsequent extensive safety retrofit once constructed. The opportunity is now to fix those things before these projects go in, or even consider canceling projects that we can't fix and directing those funds to better projects. Retrofits of Harford Road and Central Avenue were expensive, and had our stated concerns been incorporated during 15, 30, 60, or 90% design, these concerns could have been addressed more affordably.

We are also concerned that the Baltimore City Department of Transportation continues to bear the burden of all ADA retrofits in the city, which is in part a product of their own unfortunate street cuts policies and franchise agreements. 

But largely, we are impressed with this CIP. It continues a trend of shifting investments toward ADA, Transit, and other critical complete streets safety retrofits. It preps us for large scale, transformative infrastructure changes on some of our most dangerous corridors that are barriers between disinvested neighborhoods and parks, jobs, and opportunity, with the existing Reconnecting Communities Grant Application and planning projects in the CIP for a subsequent application for Druid Park Lake Drive. We encourage the commission to prioritize these complete streets projects in ranking, specifically those advancing transit.

This brings us to the matter of execution. This year's departures of the BCDOT Director Steve Sharkey, Chief of Staff Adrea Turner, Data Analyst Brian Seel, Capital Planning Chief Lysh Lorber, Complete Streets Manager Graham Young, Lead Bike Planner Matt Hendrickson, and Interim Transit Bureau Chief and Shared Mobility Coordinator Meg Young are deeply concerning, and many of these departures are related to the lack of political will to execute projects. The short summary is, we're at a tipping point. There's a lot of good here. But will it be executed? 

We’ll give an example. The Eutaw Place separated bike lane is in this year's CIP. Funds have been banked for this project in the CIP for years. It was in the 2017 Separated Bike Lane Network Plan adopted by this commission, at the time slated for priority install within two years. Today, four years after it was supposed to be installed, we're finally at the finish line with a funded project for installation as soon as the weather warms.

Yet this week we've learned it's on indefinite hold–despite broad community support–over concerns from a vocal minority about mild parking loss, something that can't even legally be prioritized under our Complete Streets Ordinance. This decision may force us to return Maryland Bikeways grant funding, and affect millions of dollars in potential future awards. 

We fear transit projects that will require significant parking sacrifices to be truly transformative, like our North-South and East-West RTP corridors, could suffer a similar fate, negatively impacting hundreds of thousands of transit riders. 

This example shows we have a choice to tip forward, but it looks like we may tip backward. Even if we fix the money problem, we need real leadership and adherence to our laws to see these projects cross the finish line. 

Thanks for the opportunity to comment.

Sincerely,

Jed Weeks
Interim Executive Director