Your Monthly Update: Fire Access, Our Legislative Agenda & More

Missed our Members' Meeting last week? Here's what you missed! Plus, we've heard that you want more regular project updates, so this is the first of our new monthly advocacy update series.

And the Q&A from the members' meeting will be published later this week!

Advocacy Updates

Baltimore Greenway Trails Network

• Preliminary outreach and engineering work on

  • Gwynn Falls Parkway-Connecting Druid Hill Park to Leakin Park

  • Middle Branch-Connecting GFT, Westport, Port Covington, and Inner Harbor

• Develop designs w/ BGE regarding connection between Herring Run and future Highland Town Rail-Trail

• Working w/ Planning Dept to integrate Green Network Plan

• Developing project name/branding

→ More about this project.
→ Rails-to-Trails staff is available to speak at community meetings to learn more: contact jim@railstotrails.org

Big Jump: Druid Park Lake Drive

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Big Jump is a national 5 year program to expand biking in neighborhoods from PeopleForBikes. Baltimore was awarded for Remington and Reservoir Hill, to improve the biking and walking connection across the 28th Street bridge. Councilman Pinkett is advocating hard to use the maintenance-of-traffic agreement from the Druid Hill Park reservoir project to implement this solution, but the city is currently not agreeable.

→ More about this project.

Bike Share

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Planned stations. Last column is current status, with community, contractor, MTA, developer, legal indicating the reason for a hold up.

• 27 live stations (32 by next week)

• 220 bikes in system (not all on street due to weather)

• 300+ bikes by mid February

• Theft no longer an issue, BUT vandalism due to attempted theft still ongoing but manageable

• Bike app accuracy issues resolved--95% accurate

• Significant sponsor coming on in February--with specific goal of increasing membership

• Baltimore being considered for Bewegen US bike manufacturing site

→ More about this project.

Downtown Bike Network

• Maryland Avenue (construction hold)

  • It's 95% done, but on hold for fire access issue. Maryland Avenue has been deemed non-compliant by the Baltimore City Fire Department per Baltimore City DOT, though no documentation to that affect has been provided from our Public Information Act request.

• Preston and Biddle Streets (construction hold)

  • These lanes are standard bike lanes that do not affect fire clearance, but they are also under construction hold because of the fire access issue.

• Madison and Monument Streets (construction hold)

  • We're currently working with Hopkins to leverage their power, with the goal of a fully protected facility here that makes it safer and more comfortable to ride on these streets that are better lit and have more activity. The city currently plans for these to only be partially protected, and that protection would need to be removed to make them compliant with the fire access issue.

• Potomac Street (completed)

  • This is done! Hoorah!

• Inner Harbor Jones Falls Stain (construction hold)

  • The plan calls for staining the inner harbor route green to be more clearly a bike route, but this is on hold because the Fire Department wants to review it even though it does not affect the width of the road.

→ More about this project.

Fire Access Issue

For more on this, read our latest blog post. But the short of it is that the city is choosing to apply the International Fire Code clearance rules to repaving projects with bike lanes on them, but not on any other roads. 

Mt Royal

Our last update on Mount Royal and the Midtown Streetscape project can be found here. In short, nothing has changed. The city broke its promise to hold construction until stakeholder concerns were addressed. The project is currently under construction, and will spend millions of dollars while making the street arguably more dangerous.

Miscellaneous Projects

• 28th and 29th Street Traffic Calming (beginning neighborhood organizing phase)

  • Neighbors from GRIA, CVCA, and Harwood have formed a committee to advocate for calming traffic on these highway connector roads. Bikemore is helping facilitate. → Next meeting is 1/22.

• 41st Street Road Diet (in progress)

  • Neighbors organized around the too wide and too fast 41st St. Graham Young from DOT advocated for taking away one of the travel lanes and adding a protected bike lane, serving as a connector from Woodberry across Falls Road to the new Union Collective. So far the lane reduction and bike lane are in place, with flex post installation to protect the lane scheduled for this spring.

• 39th Street Road Diet (planning)

  • Road diet and traffic calming project on 39th and Argonne that was supposed to be in the form of protected bike lanes, but Councilwoman Clarke and constituents are advocating for parking and turn lanes. Advocacy will need to begin on this project shortly.

• Covington Street Lane (planning)

  • Bike lane was supposed to be installed in 2016, is due to be installed in 2018, will serve as a neighborhood connector from Rash Field to Federal Hill to Riverside Park.

Legislative Agenda

• Complete Streets: Delay due to racial equity focus through disparity study. Want to get it right, even if it takes more time. → More.

• Parking Cash Out: Gives people option to take parking subsidy from employer (if provided) in form of cash payment. Starting with city employees first. →More.

• Parking Minimums: Parking is expensive to build, harms affordability, harms walkable, dense neighborhoods.

• Dedicated Pot: We’ve added revenue streams and will add more, we should dedicate to active and public transport.

North Ave Rising

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The top is the current proposed design, but we're advocating for the bottom design.

• The TIGER grant will improve operations for buses but won’t be great. We think the street should be great. We think great looks something like the bottom image to the right. Councilman Pinkett is leading the effort, in coordination with the Greater Baltimore Committee, to advocate for more money to build a better street.

→ More about this project. 

Trail and Bike Route Safety

• 500 people signed our petition for safety improvements along JFT

• We met with Rec and Parks to discuss our demands

• Next steps:

  • Rec and Parks are creating an estimate for installation of light poles (Spring 2018)

  • Trees will be tagged for removal, will need volunteers (with chainsaws!!) to come help remove (Winter 2018)

  • Section of fence on north side being removed to serve as bail out

  • Continuing to work with partners like Public Defender's Office, Community Conferencing, City Agencies, BPD, and business to create a comprehensive safety and restorative justice approach

→ More about this.

Program Updates

 

Mobile Bike Shop

• Pilot project started in 2016

• Have hosted 10 “shops” to date

• Currently seeking funding to bring project to scale

→ More about this. 

 

Growing Bikemore

• We’ve reached staff capacity

• Will likely hire more staff in the next 12-18 months

• We will outgrow our co-working space with additional staff/programming

• On the hunt for a permanent space, likely in the next 1-2 years

  • Transit/bike accessible

  • Hub for all volunteer run bike programs to have meeting space/ access to resources to grow

Financial Snapshot

• FY18 Budget $225K

• We are about 75% of the way toward our fundraising goal for the year. About $50K more left to raise to meet our budget.

• We are currently spending slightly under budget — 46% of total expenses — a little more than halfway through the fiscal year.

• 35% of our income is individual gifts

• Our average individual gift size is $123

Midtown Streetscape Update

A person riding a bike crosses Mt. Royal. Photo Credit: Fern Shen-Baltimore Brew

Last week, construction began on the Midtown Streetscape project, which includes significant changes to Mount Royal Avenue. Last night, Baltimore City Department of Transportation held a meeting to update the public on the project.

Background

We have been long advocating for improvements to this project, beginning with advocacy to include bike lanes, as they were removed early in the project due to opposition from MICA's former president.

Revised plans included a segment of two-way protected bike lane that ended prematurely before North Avenue and dangerously at the Mount Royal JFX offramp, where bicyclists were encouraged to transition to sidewalk. Baltimore City's Bicycle Friendly City status was renewed on a commitment by then DOT Director William Johnson to make design changes to extend the protected facility for the entirety of the Mount Royal Corridor, and make changes to the offramp to improve safety.

After years of these discussions, leadership transitions, and project delays, last summer Baltimore City Department of Transportation held a 95% design meeting. No changes discussed in the prior near-decade had been implemented. Our summary of that meeting is here.

Bikemore immediately coordinated with Councilman Eric Costello to organize stakeholders along the corridor to advocate for further study and redline changes to the 95% design plans. These stakeholders included Mount Royal Improvement Association, Mount Vernon Belvedere Association, MICA, UB, and the Lyric. In those meetings, held in August and September of 2016, DOT committed to study the following, and report back before the project was awarded:

1. A road diet, meaning removing one of the car travel lanes in each direction, either a) the entirety of the corridor, b) from Guilford to Maryland, c) from Maryland to North Avenue. This would allow for an on-street protected lane or no loss of parking, and no reduction to medians, saving millions of dollars in concrete work and the need for tree removal.

2. Closure of the I-83 off-ramp at Mount Royal and Saint Paul Streets entirely, and at minimum closure of the Mount Royal slip lane of the offramp.

3. Extension of the bicycle lane to Guilford Avenue and to North Avenue.

No report back ever occurred. All stakeholders continuously followed up requesting updates, and those emails and phone calls went unreturned. The project was awarded this past winter, in violation of the agreement, and again emails and phone calls requesting comment were unreturned.

Last week, the project broke ground without notification to stakeholders.

Last Night's Meeting

At last night's meeting, the same project boards were presented, showing no changes to the design. However, the power-point was updated, showing a slightly redesigned bicycle facility, and former DOT Interim Director Frank Murphy acknowledged that a DOT staff meeting had occurred just an hour before the public meeting to discuss implementing the red line changes stakeholders had been advocating for the past five years. 

We will be working with Councilman Costello's office to participate in a re-convening of stakeholders again to reiterate these requests, and demand that any redline changes that are possible to make at this stage are made.

We will likely end up with a project nobody is happy with, but we still must advocate to make it safe and adequate. There are a thousand larger questions surrounding this project: Why we are moving forward with a design nobody likes? Why was over 5 years of direct input ignored? And how we can change our city's transportation planning culture to prevent things like this from ever happening again, by passing robust Complete Streets legislation and empowering our city council members with tools to get real answers from agencies and be able to hold them accountable?

Mount Royal Ave Cycle Track Update

Last night, the engineering firm tasked with developing the Midtown / Mount Royal Streetscape project revealed 95% design plans at a community meeting hosted by Baltimore City Department of Transportation. 

This project has been in the works for four years, and the last project meeting was hosted in 2014. In fact, Bikemore's first major advocacy push as an organization was back in 2012, for inclusion of bike facilities in this project.

In January 2016, we provided a detailed overview of this project, and stated that "red-lined" design changes (changes added once construction has begun) are critical to making this a safe and worthwhile project.

None of these major recommendations have made it into the project, nor have the recommendations of other key stakeholders and community members.

We need to reconfigure the I-83 off-ramp.

A reconfiguration of the I-83 offramp onto Mount Royal Avenue must be considered. Currently, the design asks bicyclists and pedestrians to cross a highway offramp that will only be signaled with a flashing yellow warning beacon. This highway offramp was never intended to be permanent, and it should be closed as a part of this project. At minimum, the offramp needs to be reconfigured where it interacts with the cycle track. 

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1) Present 2) Ramp Closure 3) Reconfigure Ramp

We need to extend the project up to North and down to Guilford.

The protected bike lane currently ends several blocks short of North Avenue. This will provide an incomplete connection to the lanes we are advocating for in North Avenue Rising. The protected lane also currently ends just before Saint Paul Street, and should be extended fully to connect to the protected facility and lanes at Guilford and Fallsway. Federal dollars cannot easily be used to fund an adjacent facility to the Jones Falls Trail, so the city should step in with the red lined extra work funds to extend the facility here.

Connections to Maryland and Cathedral are not well defined.

The connection to the Maryland Avenue cycle track is not well defined. We have had instances in Baltimore where two separate engineering firms have worked on two separate projects, and failed to plan for overlap, leading to bump-outs being installed into bicycle facilities. No clear answers have been provided by the engineers about coordination between these projects. 

A bump out installed over a bike lane near Druid Hill Park

The intersection of the project with Cathedral Street is also concerning. Early project renderings installed a traffic circle that allowed for bicyclists and drivers to better navigate the intersection, but that has since been removed. Bicyclists in the current plans must dismount and cross the street from the protected facility on Mount Royal over a crosswalk to Cathedral.

Confusing intersection at Cathedral and Mount Royal requiring multiple dismounts

There's no reason to have two travel lanes on Mount Royal.

The project is cutting down median width, removing parking, and taking sidewalk space to try and accomodate two lanes of travel alongside a protected bicycle facility. This is one of the largest sources of discontent with community members. Removing a vehicular travel lane would allow for parking to be restored where it is currently lost throughout the project, while still retaining a protected bike lane and wider medians. These are wins for everyone.

These fixes are necessary before this project begins construction.

Bikemore will work with neighborhood organizations, Councilman Costello, and stakeholder institutions to advocate for these changes to be red-lined into this project so construction is not significantly delayed.

It is frustrating to see a flawed project brought to the table when feedback that could have made this project great was submitted over the past four years.

This is the challenge with projects in Baltimore taking so long to come to fruition--design standards for livable cities are constantly changing. We have a far more progressive DOT than we did four years ago. See the pop-up cycle track announced today on East Pratt as an example. However, when projects like the Midtown / Mount Royal streetscape take half a decade to plan, they are unable to meet the demands of an evolving city.

We will keep you posted on ways to vocalize improvements to this facility, and your support of Bikemore enables us to continue to advocate on your behalf.