It's Past Time to Close Some Streets

Oakland Slow Streets will close 74 miles of streets--10% of the city street network--to through traffic to promote social distancing.

Berlin, Bogotá, Brookline, Burlington, Calgary, Charleston, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Duluth, Edmonton, London, Louisville, Maumee, Minneapolis, Montgomery County, Montreal, New York City, Oakland, Ottawa, Philadelphia, Portland, Saint Paul, San Francisco, St. Louis, Stuttgart, Vancouver, Victoria, Vienna, Washington, DC.

These are just some examples of cities actively closing streets in parks or adding space on streets for people walking and biking to promote safe physical distancing.

Baltimore has come together in many amazing ways in the COVID-19 response. Inter-agency collaboration to get meals to residents is just one success. We need that same level of collaboration and vision from the mayor’s office on transportation. The mayor’s office should instruct Baltimore City Department of Transportation to coordinate with other agencies on a plan that reorganizes street space.

We live in an old city with narrow sidewalks, park paths, and other structural issues that make physical distancing as a pedestrian or bicyclist difficult. Physical distancing must be taken seriously, and the city must take steps to add space for pedestrians and bicyclists in our parks and on our roads to keep residents safe.

30% of our city lacks access to a car. In our formerly red-lined communities, lack of access to a car can be over 70%. 39% of our transit riders are essential workers, folks who must go to work during the pandemic and are walking to and from their transit stops every day. The number one origin and destination for scooter trips right now is Johns Hopkins Hospital. And, our parks are filled to the brim with people just trying to get out of the house for healthy exercise.

Based on these statistics, the plan should prioritize pedestrian and bike routes to job hubs and recreation, utilize the Baltimore Complete Streets equity assessment for route selection, and include input from hospitals, unions, and other essential employers as well as organizations distributing food and other essential goods. And, we must pay careful attention to what enforcement looks like, as no street closure should involve policing.

The National Association of City Transportation Officials agrees. They have released a COVID-19 Rapid Response Toolkit for cities, detailing actions in the transportation sector that should be taken right now to help prevent the spread of disease. 

The NACTO recommendations call for pop-up bike lanes, conversion of signals so pedestrians don’t need to push buttons, adjusting signal timing to slow cars, and most importantly, closing or limiting through traffic on select streets for physical distancing. 

We hope to see the mayor’s office instruct the Department of Transportation to coordinate with other agencies to implement NACTO’s Rapid Response Toolkit. The life safety of Baltimore City’s residents—a population particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 due to high rates of asthma, obesity, and other underlying health conditions from lack of access to exercise and poor air quality—is depending on their swift action.

Action Alert: Send a quick email now!

Email your Senator TODAY to pass HB368 - The Transit Safety and Investment Act!

The Maryland House of Delegates has passed this critical legislation that will provide funding to MTA Maryland to keep trains and buses from breaking down. 

If the State Senate doesn’t pass this legislation by Wednesday, we will need to wait at least another year to increase funding for our transit system.

In the meantime, we can expect reliability of our transit system to decline as buses and trains continue to break more than almost any other transit system in America. 

COVID-19 has made the urgency to take care of our most vulnerable even clearer. Our leadership needs to take action to provide resources to everyone, like a reliable source of transportation. 

You have to tell your Senator TODAY to pass HB368, or it may be too late to save the MTA.

Action Alert: Support the Transit Safety and Investment Act

In 2018, advocates and legislators passed a bill requiring the MTA (Maryland Transit Administration) to figure out the cost of repairs needed to keep Baltimore public transit running.

We got the results this year. It’s bad. The MTA system has a backlog of more than $2 billion in critical needs just to maintain our current infrastructure.

We’re working with advocates across the region and the MTA on a new regional transit plan, setting the stage for improvements over the next 25 years. But none of that will be possible without first fixing what’s broken in our current system.

The Transit Safety and Investment Act will add an additional $132 million a year over the next four years into the MTA to be spent on critical maintenance. This bill was introduced this session by Team 46 Delegate Brooke Lierman and backed by the new Annapolis Transit Caucus.

Governor Hogan has failed Baltimore through a willful neglect of our public transportation system. This bill is an opportunity to begin repairing that damage.

Tell your Senator to get this bill passed now before it’s too late. Without this additional investment, we risk further disruption and reduced reliability of MTA service.

We must build streets for people.

Today construction began to modify a half block of the two way protected bike lane at the intersection Monument Street and Central Avenue. This modification was prompted by neighborhood stakeholders that requested 12 parking spaces be restored on the north side of the street. This is a clear violation of the Complete Streets law.

This modification was opposed by the Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Commission through a motion at the meeting this past Wednesday, May 29th. It received the attention and advocacy of State Delegate Robbyn Lewis, who pursued all avenues available and met with key stakeholders, including church leadership. It also garnered 744 letters of opposition to Mayor Young and Frank Murphy, Interim Director of the Department of Transportation. Many alternative designs were suggested that would retain the current design and increase parking near a place of worship, who wanted to ensure their elderly congregants can safely get from their car to the church.

It’s important to note that there were opportunities for compromise that precluded this change in the lane, and even restored additional street parking. Efforts are even underway to assist with negotiating use of a parking lot next door to the church. These alternative solutions were declined by both neighborhood stakeholders and city officials. This was a unilateral decision that did not allow additional stakeholders like Bikemore and the thousands of constituents we represent to have equal consideration.

We are sensitive to the challenges these changes to public spaces face. We understand and want to be respectful and acknowledge that these changes intersect with many other challenges that Baltimore faces, most notably race and class. But these complex issues demand deep reflection and intentional discussions, not knee jerk reactions. Not decisions that leave out the people who stand the most to lose, their safety. That is what occurred here. While this change is small, it has much broader implications. It signifies that that the people that rely on safe places like this bike lane are less important than cars. It puts Baltimore City in jeopardy of losing state and federal funding for transportation, funding that is necessary to continue to design streets for people.

It also sends a clear message to other institutions or groups of people with power who want to oppose changes that make streets safer for everyone, including people driving cars: in order to undo years of planning, millions of dollars of investment, and facilities that serve thousands of residents — all you need to do is call power brokers in city government.

We spent hours at the facility this week observing its use. And we want to make something clear. The loudest voices in bike advocacy aren’t currently representative of our majority black city and certainly not representative of the diverse groups of people that benefit from these lanes. That is something that is problematic and something we are actively working to address. Today we posted three new opportunities of employment at Bikemore, the first time we have had the resources to hire new staff since 2016. Two of these positions will be actively focused on community organizing and outreach across the city in order to lift up the voices often left out of the discussions around Complete Streets. They create an opportunity to build a more diverse workforce. They will also allow us to deliver more programs that do what we feel is the best organizing tool of all, riding bikes together.

We have reached out to the Mayor to request a meeting. While this one section of road is being changed, continuing the conversation about how we move forward to build a city for people is more important than ever. The 744 people that have voiced their opposition to this change deserve an official response.

We also want to make sure people realize our work is ongoing and so much more than the online chatter and news stories that always seem to accompany advocacy actions like this. Tomorrow we will be at the Boundary Block Party in Penn North fixing bikes to get people back on two wheels. We are coordinating with neighbors in Cherry Hill to offer ride support on an upcoming event. We are continuing to work with neighbors in Reservoir Hill and Auchentoroly Terrace to ensure they have the resources available to engage in the traffic study process that will dictate the future of Druid Park Lake Drive. Last Saturday we celebrated the installation of a public art project that was created by artists who reside in Reservoir Hill, artists that were selected by residents of Reservoir Hill.

This is the long slow work of advocacy. It doesn’t make headlines. It doesn’t spark public meetings where emotions run wild. But it is the heart and soul of who we are. We fight because the people that use bike lanes are worth fighting for. They are affordable housing advocates, nurses, City employees, construction workers, restaurant employees, artists, parents shuttling their kids to daycare, senior citizens, the blind, people hauling grocery carts and pushing strollers. It’s a kid learning to ride a bike in a safe space. They are people we know. They are people who pay taxes. They are people that vote. And by way of just being human, they deserve the dignity of using our streets without fear.

We could not do what we do without the support of so many people. Let’s keep our heads up. Let’s keep fighting for streets for people.

ACTION ALERT: Monument Street

Tell Mayor Young to halt deconstruction of a half block of newly installed protected bike lane on Monument Street:

Background

Today the City plans to move forward with the removal and modification of a half block of the Monument Street two-way protected bike lane. Between Aisquith and Central Avenue, DOT will remove the portion of the bike lane dedicated for westbound bike traffic and force riders onto the sidewalk located on the north side, adjacent to Dunbar High School’s fields. This $50,000 change is occurring to restore 12 parking spots on the north side of Monument Street.

Bikemore strongly opposes this removal. For the past six months, when it became clear that the City was moving forward with this change, we repeatedly asked for the designs so we could give feedback. These designs were never made available to either Bikemore or the Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Commission despite the multiple requests. No public meetings were held about this change. We first learned of the design and removal timeline on the same day everyone else did: May 15th. Thirteen days ago, one day short of the required 14 days notice.

This is unacceptable, and puts advocates in a position that forces us to be reactive versus collaborative. It is an act of bad faith, and if we are to move forward as a City that values streets designed for people over cars, we need the Department of Transportation to do better.

This change on Monument Street is problematic for a variety of reasons. But the main ones are that it violates the recently adopted Complete Streets law and further prohibits the City’s ability to be awarded state and federal transportation dollars.

The Complete Street law requires the City:

1. Comply with State and Federal funding requirements. Alteration and removal of portions of Monument Street go against the state funded and approved design. Maryland Department of Transportation has said enough is enough, and will not continue to provide grants for complete streets infrastructure in Baltimore as long as we continue to remove or alter those facilities for political reasons.

2. Promote walking, biking, and transit to the greatest extent possible. By forcing bike traffic onto the sidewalk it makes walking and biking on that section of street less safe. It creates conflict between people walking and people biking, and places people biking in a position that makes them less predictable to people driving cars.

3. Ensure equity by actively pursuing the elimination of health, economic, and access disparities. We know that 33% of the city lacks access to a car, and according to census data over 75% of households lack access to a car along the Monument Street corridor where changes are proposed. Removing infrastructure proven to reduce access disparity and improve health outcomes to install parking is deeply inequitable.

Future State and Federal funding is on the line:

The majority of funding that improves walking, biking, and transit in the City comes from State and Federal money. Given the City’s current budget priorities it is unlikely, at least in the short term, that this situation will change. When the City destroys projects constructed with State funds, it is no wonder the State is now looking to other Maryland communities to support over Baltimore. This money doesn’t only fund bike lanes, it can be used to fund recreation trails, bike parking, traffic calming, and a variety of other infrastructure that improves the safety and quality of life of Baltimore City residents.

By deciding to remove this section of Monument Street, the Mayor is sending a message to residents that short term responses to a handful of people complaining about parking is more important than long term investment in transportation for the entire city.

If they care about improved community outreach, if they care about equitable investment in recreation and transportation across all neighborhoods, they will pause the planned deconstruction and respond to our concerns.

There are solutions available to the parking concerns that don’t cost $50K and threaten future state and federal transportation funding. It is a Mayor’s job to consider the entire city and make decisions that are strategic, not reactive. The decision to remove this portion of the bike lane to restore parking is short sighted. It doesn’t matter who put these decisions in motion or that they began prior to Mayor Young taking office. This is ultimately his decision. We believe there is a way for him to bring folks together on this issue. It starts with asking the Department of Transportation to stop the removal today.