Priorities: Spending Millions on Central Avenue for More of the Same

This is the second in a series of posts highlighting present—and flawed—planning priorities in Baltimore City.

Portions of Lancaster Street, Central Avenue, and Aliceanna Street are being closed as construction begins on the Harbor Point Connector Bridge. This bridge seeks to accommodate the anticipated increased traffic from the many mixed-use construction projects underway in Harbor Point, including the new Exelon headquarters.

The reconstruction of Central Avenue has been underway since 2012. Phase I, which spanned from Madison Street to Baltimore Street, was completed in 2015. Phase II began several weeks ago and will cost $47.5 million, $10 million of which is from the Harbor Point TIF.

Phase II also represents the City's first design/build project. Design/build projects award both design and construction to the same contractor in an effort to expedite project timeline. In this case, the request for proposals was issued in March of 2016 and awarded in July of 2016. Construction is beginning just six months later, and folks could be driving across the new bridge by the end of this year.

Baltimore City needed to move quickly to address the transportation challenges created by moving thousands of jobs to a peninsula with limited access points. As a result, this project has numerous missed opportunities, and has highlighted dysfunction within the Baltimore City Department of Transportation.

Ignoring Complete Streets: Planning for Cars, Not People

The Phase II project area of Central Avenue currently has two lanes of traffic in each direction, a center turn lane, and substandard, unsafe bike lanes. After a $47.5 million rebuild, it will have the exact same configuration.

Too wide, too dangerous: Central Avenue retains prior configuration after $47.5 million rebuild.

The new Central Avenue bridge will feature a mixed use path, and narrow standard bike lanes, but no protected bike infrastructure alongside 4 lanes of car traffic.

We know that developments without real infrastructure to encourage people to shift from driving will result in more of the same: more cars, more congestion. It's unclear why large scale developments in the most traffic-choked parts of Baltimore are allowed to move forward without robust investments in multi-modal transportation solutions. 

Bikemore requested a more adequate Complete Streets treatment during Phase I construction in 2012. Instead, automobile throughput was prioritized, and "sharrows" were installed against Department of Transportation's own policy. Now, the failure to design adequately in Phase I is used as an excuse to make the same mistakes in Phase II in the interest of "promoting continuity."

The Central Avenue project website describes Phase I "Sharrows" as Dedicated Bike Lanes.

Cities across the country recognize that adding and retaining travel lanes for private automobiles induces demand and leads to more congestion. Baltimore must join them in moving away from road expansion, and instead invest in meaningful improvements that actually remove cars from the road.

Our 2010 Complete Streets Resolution, and subsequent Department of Transportation policy, says as much. Why, over six years later, do these two policies continue to be sidestepped? Why has no system of accountability been put in place and enforced? 

Why are we spending $47.5 million to force people to unsafely walk and bike alongside traffic that will attain speeds in excess of 40mph in one of the densest areas of our city?

A simple fix could provide protected bike lanes and 10 feet of additional pedestrian refuge.

Not every street needs a state-of-the-art bicycle facility. But every street that receives federal and state funding should be evaluated to safely include all road users. It's the law. There was a way to make Central Avenue do more for the city, but for now, we're getting a highway offramp to Harbor Point.

Project Inequity

Bikemore spent four years fighting to get the Maryland Avenue protected bike lane installed, a project roughly 2% the cost of Central Avenue Phase II. Throughout that fight we were told that long project timelines are par for the course. In meetings with Department of Transportation, Interim Director Frank Murphy is adamant that the capital process cannot be shortened. But here we are, in wealthy Harbor Point, where design and build of a major bridge may happen in 12 months.

People of color and older adults are overrepresented in pedestrian deaths. Pedestrian deaths are also correlated with median household incomes and rates of uninsured individuals. - Dangerous by Design, 2017

Inadequate design has deadly consequences, and disproportionately impacts those that can least afford to be injured. Yet in large capital investments, Baltimore continues to prioritize accommodating cars from outside of the city. Decision-makers continue to double-down on the myth that in order to grow, attract, or retain business we must make it convenient and fast to get into Baltimore by car.

Traffic congestion does harm business, but only when it's allowed to reach a certain degree. When you design public spaces that allocate too much space for private vehicles, everyone loses. When you don't push forward on projects that seek to improve the lives of residents that need it the most, you hold back the entire city. We must reject anecdotes from CEOs stuck in moderate traffic, and rely on the volumes of environmental, public health, and transportation data that tells us there is a better way.

Countless improvement projects are awaiting design, approval, or signatures to inch closer toward construction. The pace at which these improvements are being implemented, compared to projects like Central Avenue, is maddening, harmful, and inequitable.

The future of Baltimore is dependent on a Department of Transportation that is willing to put forth bold, innovative ideas that begin to address the most pressing transportation challenges of our residents.

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Priorities: Southeast Transportation Vision Wrongly Puts County Residents First

This is the first in a series of posts highlighting present—and flawed—planning priorities in Baltimore City.

According to the Harvard-based Equality of Opportunity Project, every year a child spends growing up in Baltimore City lowers their household income by .86%. This means that by adulthood, a child who grows up in Baltimore City faces a likely earnings deficit of 17% compared to the national average.

We know from the same study that access to transportation—specifically commute times—are the #1 factor in upward mobility. 

Armed with this information, cities across the country have been investing in bicycling, walking, and public transportation options that provide safe, reliable, and efficient access to jobs and opportunity for city residents.

Despite incremental improvements like launching bike share and the construction of the Downtown Bike Network, Baltimore has yet to make the level of investment necessary that could truly transform how people travel inside the city. 33% of Baltimore City residents lack access to a car. That number climbs to almost 80% in East, West, and North Central Baltimore. Despite these figures, Baltimore has historically invested in promoting automobile throughput for county commuters at the expense of city residents, disproportionately, and at times deliberately, damaging communities of color.

As a result, it's often easier for a resident of Baltimore County to drive to work in Baltimore City than it is for a city resident to get to that same job by walking, biking, or taking public transit. This reinforces Baltimore's segregationist, racist history.

Unlike many other seemingly intractable problems Baltimore faces, this one has an easy fix: it simply requires the political will to stop spending money on wasteful road projects that benefit county commuters over city residents. 

Let's take the Southeast Strategic Transportation Vision as an example. This study began in coordination with the Red Line to address transportation challenges in Southeast Baltimore. When Governor Hogan canceled the Red Line, Baltimore City Department of Transportation was tasked with updating the study to offset the loss of a rail transit line.

View fullsize

View fullsize

The result can be seen in the screen captures of the plan above. Between June 2015 (left) and present (right), a $150 million viaduct around the railroad tracks on Boston Street and a $50 million widening of less than one mile of Boston Street were added to the plan.

Let's map that out.

Here's what $50 million spent on less than a mile of road widening looks like:

Here's what $50 million spent on protected bike infrastructure for Baltimore City residents could look like:

Here's what $150 million spent on a viaduct around the Boston Street railroad tracks looks like:

And here's what that same $150 million spent on providing high quality, dedicated bus lanes for the proposed CityLink frequent bus network could look like:

This isn't a joke. A $200 million investment could build paint dedicated lanes for our entire frequent bus network, build our entire bike network envisioned in the bike master plan, and provide bike share for every neighborhood in Baltimore City. Or, it could build one mile of new, expanded roadway.

The latter is slated to become official transportation policy with the passage of the Southeast Strategic Transportation Vision.

We can change these priorities. We're making progress.

Bikemore's #ibikeivote campaign brought transportation to the forefront of political campaigns for city council and mayor, and prompted discussion about equity in transportation funding. We are partnering with Councilman Ryan Dorsey on passing stronger, equity focused complete streets legislation that will make proposals and decisions to fund roadway expansion at the expense of other transportation options much more difficult. And Mayor Catherine Pugh and her team are seeking a new Director of Transportation with a background in complete streets and livable cities.

But citywide, from our elected officials to our planners to our residents, we must finally recognize that people who drive into Baltimore from the counties are not the saviors of our city, but providing safe, convenient ways to walk, bike, and take reliable public transportation can be.

→  Be sure you're subscribed to our email list for an upcoming update on how you can support Complete Streets in Baltimore! 

Baltimore selected as Big Jump city!

"For decades, road design has prioritized car commuting through the 7th district over residents' ability to access the assets and opportunities that exist both within and outside our district by foot, bicycle, or public transit. People for Bikes' Big Jump Project is an opportunity to re-focus our priorities on improving quality of life for people living in and around Reservoir Hill, making jobs to the east and our world-class Druid Hill Park to the north safely accessible to residents who choose to walk, bike, or take transit."

— Leon Pinkett, Councilman 7th District

Baltimore was selected as one of ten cities to participate in People for Bike’s Big Jump! The Big Jump Project is a three-year effort to help achieve a big jump in biking – a doubling or tripling of people riding – by building a network of safe and comfortable places to ride and engaging the community. The Big Jump will provide technical support to the city and community leaders, supporting on-the-ground infrastructure, smart outreach, community engagement, and measuring result. In total, Big Jump will provide $750,000 in targeted grants and technical support over three years. 

Big Jump specifically looks at ways to support neighborhoods that are already making strides toward increasing the number of people who walk and bike, and aims to build on that success in surrounding neighborhoods. 

Therefore, Baltimore’s project will focus on improving bike infrastructure in a swath of Central and West Baltimore, with the ability to connect a neighborhood of huge opportunity, Remington, to a neighborhood that would benefit immensely from increased connectivity, Reservoir Hill. The selected project area already has a higher percentage, relative to the city average, of households that lack access to a car; it has neighborhoods that already have high percentages of people walking; and it has neighborhoods eager to increase the number of people walking and biking if there was better infrastructure. 

"Innovation Village was pleased to support the City of Baltimore's application for the Big Jump Project. Removing barriers to mobility is critical to advancing socioeconomic and racial justice in our city, and a key component of raising the quality of life in a neighborhood – a key mission of the Innovation District." — Richard May, Innovation Village

We want to thank the organizations that lent their support for this application and look forward to working with them as the project unfolds. Those organizations include Beth Am, Central Baltimore Partnership, Greater Remington Improvement Association, Healthy Neighborhoods, Hekemian & Co. Inc., Innovation Village, Mount Royal CDC, Old Goucher Community Association, Reservoir Hill Improvement Council, Seawall, Strong City Baltimore and City Council members.

This project also has the opportunity to bring together developers that saw the potential of neighborhood development, in contrast to Baltimore’s standard procedure of placing all major new development along the waterfront. 

"In 10 short years, the community of Remington and Seawall Development have invested $100,000,000 in transformative projects in Remington. The JFX is currently a barrier to people without cars in neighborhoods along Druid Park Lake Drive and Auchentoroly Terrace who want to access jobs, shopping, dining, and entertainment just a mile away in Remington. We hope this project will jump that gap." — Thibault Manekin, Seawall Development

After years of advocacy, we have finally achieved the political will to begin imagining bolder projects that connect all residents to the benefits of active transportation, as seen in 2016 with the launch of Baltimore Bike Share and the construction of the Maryland Avenue cycletrack. With a new mayor and majority new city council in office, Baltimore is at a huge transition point. Participating in Big Jump is a critical next step to bringing new and bigger partners on board as we build a city that’s great for bikes.

“The Big Jump Project will be a catalyst that encourages the city to think in terms of whole bicycle networks versus one off facilities, fosters connections between areas of low opportunity and high opportunity through active transportation, and considers deeply the responsibility to provide transportation choice to residents at a time when things like public health inequity, environmental injustice, and economic disparity are preventing our city from achieving progress. We look forward to working with our public, private and nonprofit partners from Reservoir Hill and Remington as we use active transportation to overcome the deep divide caused by I-83.”
— Liz Cornish, Bikemore

Read the announcement from People for Bikes and Mayor Pugh's press release, and stay tuned for what’s to come!