Narrative Questions
Describe your vision of a healthy, safe, equitable transportation system for the Baltimore Region and the roles walking, biking, and public transportation play in that vision.
Affordable and convenient transit is crucial for the long-term vitality of any economy. In and around Baltimore, we face mammoth transit challenges that require truly visionary and collaborative thinking to solve. We need a metro area where cars are an option, instead of a necessity. Buses and rail need to be affordable, frequent and on schedule.
I support free public transportation. On-time bus service is in Baltimore is crucial for student attendance. And I believe whether students are getting the service they need to arrive at school on time needs to be closely examined. Routes need to be integrated with infrastructure for residents using any mode of transport—wheelchairs and mobility scooters, strollers, bicycles, and electric scooters to name a few. We also need sidewalks that are safe—not broken or pitched upward from underground roots.
Modes of transport should not become proxy wars for race or class. Smarter road designs and incentives accommodate everyone in ways that reduce so many of the frictions that commuters see today. There is no zero sum game. The ability to safely travel by foot, pedal, or wheel is a basic freedom that many Baltimoreans don't have. We must change that.
The fastest and most economical way to address climate change, improve public health, and create equal access to opportunity is to reduce dependence on private automobiles. What are the biggest barriers to getting people to choose walking, biking, and public transit instead of personal vehicles for daily trips, and what would you do to address these impediments?
The biggest barrier to getting people to choose walking, biking, and public transit truly depends on the family or individual. Many families have young children under age 5 or children with special needs. Some families care for aging parents or ailing family members. It may also depend on physical ability, personal confidence, or one's sense of security. The most important element of designing smart transit is empathy for the personal circumstances that may dictate one's choices.
To address impediments, we need to bring amenities to every neighborhood. These include grocers, restaurants, dry cleaners and other essentials near where people live. We need roads that calm traffic, instead of encouraging speeding. We need sidewalks that are well lit and additional safety infrastructure near schools and neighborhoods with many children.
Many Black neighborhoods in Baltimore lack the basic amenities that would invite any mode of transport other than driving. I would ensure every residential street had abundant pedestrian level street lighting. I would ensure that every school was surrounded with appropriate traffic calming devices and well-painted cross walks. I would fund bridges for students crossing busy highways.
Maryland and its jurisdictions continue to spend money on road and highway widening despite overwhelming evidence that it actually increases traffic and congestion through induced demand. Justification for widening is often that it will improve road safety, which is also discredited. What is your position on Maryland and its jurisdictions spending money this way, and would you support a moratorium on road and highway widening?
In general, I am not inclined to support road widening. If road widening were for building mass transit (very different from new car pool lanes, which I would not be inclined to support), then that could be an exception. That being said, I have rarely seen moratoriums work as intended. Typically, to be most effective, moratoriums need to be strictly limited in scope and duration; otherwise, they can freeze innovation. Mass transit can also improve road safety.
Describe your understanding for the need of a Baltimore Regional Transportation Authority. Do you support creation of a regional authority, and if so, how would you legislate or guide the state’s role in creating and sustaining it?
I support establishing/re-establishing a regional transit authority to ensure local input into regional transit decision-making. After the red line debacle, there is a serious concern about the powerlessness of Baltimore's representation in making transit decisions. In this circumstance, the past is prologue.
I believe it is necessary to understand and learn from how the past regional transit authority functioned and what its strengths and opportunities for improvement were. The legislation should arise from a comprehensive review that includes:
What did and did not work previously
How the regional transit authority would best promote fairness across communities today
What approaches could the regional transit authority use to make Marylanders their most productive, at home and at work
What is a sustainable path toward a free public transportation system.
Since the 1990’s federal surface transportation authorization laws have set the rules and formulas for federal transportation funding flowing to states. Two of the largest categories, the Surface Transportation Block Grant program and the National Highway Performance Program, can be used for many forms of surface transportation including highways, transit, bike, pedestrian, and ADA infrastructure. However, state departments of transportation, MDOT included, have used them almost exclusively for highway projects and much of its new capacity. That has resulted in growth in traffic volumes, travel times, and carbon pollution. In your view, why have those trends continued?
Following World War II, we built the U.S. economy around automobiles. This was an explicit policy choice. It ultimately reinforced the consumer preferences that we see now in a self-perpetuating cycle. The auto has many advantages, but greater traffic erodes those advantages in ways that impose costs and time loss on a community. The only way to challenge this is to provide superior alternatives that save people time and money relative to autos. Few people will switch to buses or rail if the commute inside Baltimore exceeds 45 minutes.
How do you typically commute to work or run errands? Describe the last trips you made by walking, biking, and public transit.
I drive to work because I do not feel that it would be safe for me as to cross the city by any other method. My husband was mugged and assaulted walking from the Howard Street back home to Bolton Hill in 2021. That experience led to a change in behavior for our family, out of concern for keeping everyone safe.
That being said, my first anniversary gift to my husband was to register him for a 450-mile bike ride through the Colorado mountains. I drove the water truck for the hundreds of cyclists. Our family value is to walk, bike, and use public transit when we can.
Additionally, I have a five-year old whom I have to drop off and pick up at day care. Unfortunately, if I did everything via bus in Baltimore, I would never be at work! I would lose the day in commuting for family obligations. However, if light rail were expanded to serve more parts of the city, our family would gladly take public transportation much more often.
Agree/Disagree Questions
Maryland and its jurisdictions should be required to “fix-it-first,” funding deferred maintenance of bridges and roads and safety retrofits like road diets, sidewalks, ADA compliance, and other infrastructure prioritizing vulnerable road users before spending on new roads and infrastructure.
Agree
Maryland should adopt a funding rubric for all transportation investment that follows a modal hierarchy prioritizing pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit riders over personal automobile use, and mandates that these investments prioritize racial and economic equity.
Agree
Provided that preference first be given to communities. Many residents in East Arlington, Ashburton and Druid Park are deeply opposed to bike lanes right now for a host of complicated reasons. That issue in my view is not actually about bike lanes. It will be important to continue pausing and listening.
Highway User Revenues continue to decrease as cars become more efficient, and semi-autonomous driving technology is allowing more comfortable long distance commutes. To address this, Maryland should introduce an income-based Vehicle Miles Traveled tax.
I do not know the answer to this question. I would like to learn Bikemore's position. I would need to examine how the tax could be regressive, even if income based. I am generally opposed to higher taxes, except on "sins".
Maryland should require and fund all-ages-and abilities bicycle infrastructure in retrofits of existing roads and construction of new roads, including fully separated infrastructure or side paths/trails on collector roads, arterial roads, state highways, and interstates.
Agree
I have experienced this infrastructure first hand. It truly is safer for everyone. However, preference still must be given to communities.
There has been a dramatic increase in car crashes that injure and kill people walking and biking, who are then frequently sued by a driver’s insurance. Maryland should move from contributory negligence to a strict liability model for crashes involving vulnerable road users.
Disagree
As a lawyer, I believe contributory negligence is a proper incentive for every person and vehicle to take great care in following the rules of the road.
Paired with a requirement for income-based fines, Maryland should authorize jurisdictions to utilize additional types of automated enforcement like bus lane cameras and stop sign cameras, remove geographic restrictions, and allow a reduced threshold for triggering speed cameras.
Agree
I agree, provided that this is not regressive.
Maryland should allow local jurisdictions to lower their own speed limits based on roadway typology instead of based on expensive engineering studies for each road segment, and should set a statewide upper urban speed limit of 25 miles per hour.
Agree
Maryland should require employers provide “Parking Cash Out,” valuing the cost of parking subsidized or paid for by employers and allowing employees the option of taking that benefit as a cash payout in the amount of the parking subsidy instead.
Agree
Maryland should require jurisdictions to eliminate parking minimums and institute parking maximums in new development, as well as require the cost of parking be unbundled from rent, giving individuals the choice to rent without paying for parking.
Disagree
Every community is different. I would need to understand better what additional costs this imposes on working class residents to have parking unbundled for rent. In jurisdictions where this happened, was there a net increase? In Baltimore City, I do not agree with eliminating parking minimums due to the disparate impact that would have on Black communities in West Baltimore in particular. There would be a greatly accelerated increase in congregant homes and more instability in home ownership. There are a number of anticompetitive issues in Baltimore's economy that need to be addressed before a ban on minimums could be successfully implemented in disinvested Black neighborhoods.
It’s widely accepted that single family zoning advances racial and economic segregation. Maryland should ban single family zoning at the state level, allowing both single family and multifamily residences to be built in all zoning areas.
Agree
I agree provided that this issue be closely examined for its application in Baltimore. In Baltimore, high taxes are advancing and preserving racial segregation. For example, Bolton Hill is a within-reach neighborhood for many families except for the $800 per month or more tax bill that many families pay. In other words, in Baltimore, it is possible to end single family zoning without greater affordability for families in white neighborhoods.