The Downtown Bike Network, previously on construction hold due to Baltimore City Fire Department's unique interpretation of International Fire Code, has been re-designed with that interpretation in mind by Baltimore City Department of Transportation.
The new design switches from one-way pairs of infrastructure along Madison and Monument Streets to a fully-separated two-way bike lane along Centre and Monument Streets. This is a major improvement over the original design, providing a fully separated corridor along the length of the project. A buffered bike lane on Madison in Mount Vernon is maintained to provide traffic calming long requested by the Mount Vernon Belvedere Association.
In no place are existing condition street widths being reduced, and in many locations clear widths are being increased, so there should be no issue with Baltimore City Fire Department approval. If approved by Baltimore City Fire Department, the project construction will resume and hopefully be complete by end of Summer 2018.
We thank Baltimore City Department of Transportation for their effort in this re-design, which manages to both address unreasonable fire access demands while improving the separation of the facility.