Surviving a COVID-19 Winter

Community engagement for 8 80 Cities’s Wintermission in Saint Paul, MN

All evidence is showing us that Baltimore is coping with COVID-19 by spending more time outside. Our parks are full with people walking, running, biking, playing sports, and lifting weights. Bike shops are sold out of bikes and have weeks-long waiting lists for maintenance. And our restaurants and retail spaces have rapidly adapted to COVID-19 by building outdoor dining spaces and sales floors.

Winter is a threat to all of these things, unless Baltimore City begins planning right now. Our businesses must be able to continue using outdoor spaces throughout the winter. While indoor spaces are reopening, many people still prefer the vastly lower risk of shopping, dining, and recreating outdoors. And until we have a widely distributed vaccine, reverting to closure of indoor spaces due to increased transmission is possible. Our citizens, many of whom lack access to a car, must have safe pathways to access public transportation, schools, recreation, grocers, healthcare, and worship. Luckily, cities to our north have long been working on plans to keep the outdoor spaces alive through winter.

Edmonton, Alberta first launched their Winter City Strategy in 2012. In November 2018, 8 80 Cities launched Wintermission: Bringing Public Life to Winter Cities, a competitive grant awarded to three cities (We encouraged Baltimore to apply). Both of these programs aim to safely activate public space through winter. While they are not COVID-19 specific, many of the strategies are directly applicable to our present environment. A few weeks ago, we shared these strategies and Winter City resources with Baltimore City leadership, and are summarizing them below.

Strategies

Re-Prioritize Snow Removal

With the introduction of work-from-home, automobile commuting patterns have changed significantly. Many of the commuters previously entering the city for jobs now work from home, while essential workers continue to commute within and across the city on public transportation. Traditionally, Baltimore City Department of Transportation has prioritized “gateway routes” for snow removal, which are the main arteries for car commuters to enter the city in the morning. This can no longer be the priority.

Baltimore City Department of Transportation should focus on improving winter transportation for pedestrians, bicyclists, public transit users, and local automobile traffic.

• Instead of beginning snow clearance on “gateway routes,” full-size plows should prioritize bus lanes and curbside lanes on our most frequent transit routes.

• City and contract snow removal using smaller equipment should focus on shared use pathways and bike lanes.

• The city must take on and prioritize clearance of snow on public sidewalks adjacent to transit hubs, high ridership bus stops, and on sidewalks along urban main streets and downtown.

• The city should pilot residential sidewalk snow clearing in high-density neighborhoods.

Activate our Parks and Play Spaces

Baltimore City Recreation and Parks should make it easier to play outside and provide more opportunities for outdoor activity.

• Prioritize snow removal along city trails, park paths, recreational loops, and at playgrounds and skate parks.

• Increase commercial vending opportunities at parks and facilities.

• Work with new and existing recreational partners and rec centers to encourage multi-season equipment use and outdoor recreation and lesson opportunities.

• Run the department’s hiking, biking, and other outdoor recreation programming through winter.

Keep our Businesses Alive

A multi-agency approach should focus on encouraging four season restaurant and retail patio culture.

• Building off of Design for Distancing, host a virtual summit with leaders from northern cities with robust four season restaurant and retail patio culture to learn best practices for implementation in Baltimore City.

• Simplify and remove regulations to increase year-round use of outdoor space for restaurant and retail patios.

• Create easy opportunities and develop clear, simple parameters for the use of fire in outdoor public spaces (fire pits, bonfires, heaters, etc.)

Support Safe Community-Building

The Mayor’s Office of Neighborhoods, the Baltimore Planning Department, and Baltimore City Department of Transportation should work together to help neighbors program outdoor community spaces.

• Similar to use of fire for restaurant and retail patios, create easy opportunities and clear, simple parameters for community use of fire in outdoor public spaces like parks, community managed outdoor spaces, and slow streets.

• Reconsider the ban on outdoor residential fires, instead creating a guide to activating and heating outdoor residential spaces including clear safety standards.

• Work with community associations to distribute information on safely activating outdoor community and residential spaces with physical distanced programming through winter.

This winter could be one of the most difficult seasons many of us have ever lived through. With looming public transit cuts, an uncertain and dangerous political climate, the pandemic still devastating our nation, and many families and businesses barely keeping their heads above water financially, Baltimore City must do everything it can to make life a little more livable for residents and give our businesses every possible chance to stay open.

While the challenges cities to our north typically face every winter pale in comparison to the challenges before us all right now, following their best practices to survive winter will make everything just a little bit easier. We strongly recommend Baltimore City move quickly to adopt winter city strategies, prioritizing those we’ve listed above.

Big Jump Detour for Druid Hill Reservoir Construction

Background

The ongoing Department of Public Works construction project in Druid Hill Park to install tanks to store treated city drinking water is moving to a phase of pipe construction to connect the two tanks our water system. The pipe will cross Druid Park Lake Drive at Linden Avenue, and follow the roadway along the median east to the JFX on-ramps. To make this connection, DPW will need to dig a trench in the median of Druid Park Lake Drive.

In between the original plans for this construction and today, Baltimore City Department of Transportation received a grant from People For Bikes called The Big Jump, to install a temporary shared use pathway along Druid Park Lake Drive and across the 28th Street bridge, a road diet and protected bike lanes on Huntingdon Avenue and 25th Street, a bike boulevard on 27th Street, and bike lanes on Remington Avenue.

Of those grant funded projects, only the most important one—the connection across Druid Park Lake Drive and the 28th Street bridge—has been constructed. The shared use path, installed in June 2018, allows people to walk, bike, skate, and use a wheelchair or mobility device to safely cross from Reservoir Hill to Remington for the first time.

The Detour

The trench work for the Druid Hill Reservoir will require detour of The Big Jump for approximately one year, and work will begin as soon as September 28, 2020. Motor vehicle traffic will move to the existing travel lane utilized by The Big Jump from Linden Avenue to the Mount Royal Avenue slip lane. Water filled barriers along this portion of roadway will be replaced with concrete barriers. The Big Jump will be relocated to an adjacent 8 foot sidewalk, which DOT is working to clear of weeds and debris.

The existing Big Jump route is shown in red. The detour route is shown in green.

The Big Jump will follow an 8 foot sidewalk from Linden Avenue to Lakeview Avenue. DOT is working to mow and clear debris.

At Lakeview Avenue, The Big Jump will move to the northern side of the street adjacent to Lakeview Towers, repurposing an existing parking lane. It will then cross over to the existing pathway on the 28th Street bridge through a newly created curb cut underneath the existing non-ADA accessible pedestrian overpass from Druid Park Lake Drive to 28th Street. To facilitate safe crossing at this location, the Mount Royal slip lane will be closed to motor vehicle traffic with physical barriers—a huge safety improvement.

The Big Jump detour from Lakeview Avenue past the Lakeview Towers to the Mount Royal slip lane.

The Big Jump detour will connect back to the original Big Jump path through the Mount Royal slip lane, which will be closed to motor vehicle traffic.

What’s next

While the sidewalk element of this detour is not ideal, there are very encouraging opportunities that the trench work unlocks. Since the existing water filled barriers are being replaced with concrete barriers through the duration of the detour, it’s possible we could keep the concrete barriers in place when The Big Jump returns to the street, improving safety and reducing maintenance. It’s also possible to reconfigure and resurface the motor vehicle travel lanes along Druid Park Lake Drive. This will further reinforce The Big Jump as a semi-permanent pathway.

Also coming up is the release of the Big Jump evaluation report. It’s exciting in that it reveals The Big Jump had almost no effect on traffic conditions—one of the major vocal complaints from drivers.

Long-term, Baltimore City Department of Transportation has committed to a corridor realignment study to propose a complete redesign or removal of the highways that separate Druid Hill Park from communities. None of this work would have been possible without community partners and the leadership of Councilman Leon Pinkett. Neighbors and advocates are organizing around the corridor realignment study under the banner of The Access Project: Druid Hill Park. You can read more at TAP Druid Hill.

Will you join us?

Neighbors biking and walking alongside Lake Montebello and the closed street around it, taken this summer.

Being Bikemore looks different in a pandemic. First off, we miss you. It felt strange to go a whole summer without programs that get us out in the community connecting with all of you. That part of our work temporarily went on hold, but our work to make Baltimore a better place to walk, bike, and take transit remained constant. 

The pandemic has put into relief why access to transit and safe places to bike is essential for public health. How do you get to a place that is distributing emergency food? How do the 40% of transit riders that qualify as essential workers continue to get to their job when the State threatens to eliminate whole bus routes?

The pandemic has also led us to examine public space. Can we help keep businesses open if we turn a parking space into outdoor dining?  What about places you can play and stay active? Are there enough in every neighborhood?

These are policy issues that demand consistent advocacy. Every day we work to ensure that the policy decisions that determine our quality of life during the pandemic take into account the people impacted the most, but who are often considered the least. 

One bright spot in all this is witnessing so many people biking. We see it everywhere. New faces in the bike lane. People from all walks of life biking around Lake Montebello. Parents trying out biking with their children for the first time. It’s been inspiring to see folks starting their own bike movement. 

We want to ensure that you can remain connected to Baltimore through safe streets, trails, intersections, and public transportation - during and beyond this pandemic.

You can help build streets for people. Whether it’s a one- time donation or committing to $5 a month, your donations make up a third of our operating budget. We are ready to fight. Will you join us? Please consider a donation to Bikemore today. 

What Slow Streets Can Teach Us

This summer, in response to legislation introduced by Council President Scott and unanimously supported by Baltimore City Council, the Baltimore City Department of Transportation started its Slow Streets program. Yellow barriers began popping up around town discouraging through traffic and encouraging slower speeds on neighborhood streets. This concept is being implemented in cities across the country due to an ever increasing demand for public space. People are home more. Our usual gathering spaces have been limited. So what better way to increase places to be than activating the largest amount of public space the City of Baltimore owns--our streets?

The program has had its challenges, challenges that have been seen in implementations across the country. these interventions need to be paired with widespread public communication so people understand their purpose, and programmed in ways that invite people to see the streets as a new front yard.. Local neighborhood champions have also been critical to success, and it has been encouraging to see neighbors step up in their communities to steward the program. 

For Bikemore, Slow Streets has helped us explain the benefits of calming traffic on neighborhood streets. Too often Complete Streets advocacy is full of jargon that is hard to relate to. No rendering or sketch can do as good a job explaining the benefits of traffic calming than when folks can stand outside of their house and experience it themselves. For that reason alone, the Department of Transportation should be commended for investing in this program. 

This became evident last Saturday while spending time in Curtis Bay. South Baltimore is so often overlooked when it comes to investment. But the City Council and the Department of Transportation have been intentional to ensure each council district receives a Slow Street. 

We were spending time with neighbors at the Filbert Street Garden, getting feedback on the Slow Street recently installed on Filbert Street and discussing future programming to activate the space. In between falling in love with Ed the Goat and Marshmallow the Chicken, and marveling at all the late summer crops that neighbors have nurtured, I walked across the street to meet a neighbor mowing her lawn. 

Over the years she’s put a lot of effort into her home. Her lawn, flowers and trees are beautiful. She proudly displays a sign noting that she won second place this year in the Curtis Bay yard competition. As we stood there chatting, multiple cars drove through the intersection where the Slow Streets barriers had been placed. We noted how even while speeding to the intersection, each car had to stop and look carefully before going through the stop sign. We both sighed at how it both worked to slow down cars there, but did little to prevent speeding just a few car lengths up the road. We brainstormed different ideas about how it could be better. What struck me was that after asking a simple question, “What do you think of these barriers?” Her insight spoke directly to the purpose of the program. She noted how kids are out playing in the street more now that we are all at home. And that the barriers make it safer for them to be outside. And she said she wanted to see more traffic calming in her neighborhood. 

Before the barriers I know that conversation would have gone differently. I would ask about traffic on someone’s street. They would agree that traffic could go slower. But it was hard for them to imagine interventions beyond speed humps--something that is costly and not always appropriate for the street. And too often that is where the conversation would end. Any other solution would inevitably be seen as intrusive and not something that the community requested. Not because they don’t want traffic to go slower, but because the community input process is designed to fail. 

Citizens shouldn’t be responsible for dreaming up solutions to problems the City already knows how to fix. The City shouldn’t create impossible thresholds of community support before we try something new to make a street safer for people who walk, bike, and take transit. What the City can do is double down on what Slow Streets has demonstrated works really well. Install temporary ways to calm traffic. These experiences should be the beginning of the community input process, not the end result. Prioritize providing neighbors with experiences to make informed decisions. 

Neighbors are the experts of what they need in their community. And for too many streets in this City, the need is for people driving cars to slow down. Allowing neighbors the ability to experience a variety of solutions first-hand means that whatever the solution is, people understand what to expect. Fear of change and the unknown is often the biggest barrier to make our streets better. 

It’s unrealistic to believe that every Slow Street in the city will lead to lasting change. But my hope is that it has provided a better starting point for that change to occur. It demonstrates the best of what DOT has to offer--equitable distribution of resources, low cost solutions that are easily replicated, and changes to the street that help people reimagine what is possible. It begins to answer the question, “How do we build streets for people?”

by Liz Cornish, Executive Director

Endorsement: Franca Muller Paz for 12th District Baltimore City Council

Bikemore has endorsed Green Party candidate Franca Muller Paz in Baltimore City Council District 12. Franca is a proven community organizer, union leader, and champion of young Baltimoreans, teaching Spanish at City College and advising student activists.

While Bikemore had not initially considered endorsements in the general election, Franca followed our process for endorsement consideration and more than met our criteria. 

Franca will fight for the 12th District and for all Baltimoreans--supporting a regional transit authority that will be better positioned to fight drastic Republican transit cuts, advocating for policies that make housing more affordable for working people, and ensuring hardworking Baltimoreans have safe ways to walk, bike, and take transit to work, play, eat, and pray.

The 12th District is home to both some of the largest re-development projects in Baltimore City and neighborhoods where the vast majority of residents lack access to a personal vehicle. Despite the 12th District’s champions at the state level for public transit that serves working people, the district’s current representation at City Hall has been missing at the table for conversations that affect whether or not these residents will have a reliable way to get to work, or even an affordable home they can come back to.

With Franca in office, the chair will no longer be empty. She will show up and fight for us.

To read Franca’s candidate questionnaire click here. To see a comparison of her answers with answers from the incumbent, click here.

Follow Franca on Social Media

Twitter: @francamullerpaz
Instagram: @francamullerpaz
Facebook: @FrancaMullerPaz1