FILL THE ROOM!
Make sure the Midtown Streetscape Project's protected bike lane on Mount Royal Avenue is actually safe and useful!
Bikemore was founded around advocacy on the Midtown Streetscape Project, which includes a major redesign of Mount Royal Avenue. Originally, this project contained no bicycle facilities. Through advocacy by Baltimore residents (forming Bikemore) and MICA students, bicycle facilities on the project became guaranteed.
But, the project is still flawed. Over the past two years, DOT met with Councilman Costello, Bikemore, UB, MICA, the Lyric, Mount Royal Improvement Association, and Mount Vernon Belvedere Association on our joint concerns.
DOT committed to exploring the following recommendations, and reporting back with definitive answers before the project was awarded:
1) Consider a road diet to slow traffic, preserving medians and making room for protected bike lanes, and saving millions of dollars in expensive concrete work. Traffic data supported this possibility
2) Extend protected bike lanes the entire Mount Royal Corridor to North Avenue and to Guilford Avenue.
3) Close the dangerous I-83 offramp onto Mount Royal at Saint Paul Street, which was always intended to be a temporary offramp during I-83 construction.
On Monday, we learned that project construction had begun, despite our requests over the past year for updates since our last meeting with DOT.
We do not know if any of these requests have been honored or if changes have been made.
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