Midtown Streetscape Update

A person riding a bike crosses Mt. Royal. Photo Credit: Fern Shen-Baltimore Brew

Last week, construction began on the Midtown Streetscape project, which includes significant changes to Mount Royal Avenue. Last night, Baltimore City Department of Transportation held a meeting to update the public on the project.

Background

We have been long advocating for improvements to this project, beginning with advocacy to include bike lanes, as they were removed early in the project due to opposition from MICA's former president.

Revised plans included a segment of two-way protected bike lane that ended prematurely before North Avenue and dangerously at the Mount Royal JFX offramp, where bicyclists were encouraged to transition to sidewalk. Baltimore City's Bicycle Friendly City status was renewed on a commitment by then DOT Director William Johnson to make design changes to extend the protected facility for the entirety of the Mount Royal Corridor, and make changes to the offramp to improve safety.

After years of these discussions, leadership transitions, and project delays, last summer Baltimore City Department of Transportation held a 95% design meeting. No changes discussed in the prior near-decade had been implemented. Our summary of that meeting is here.

Bikemore immediately coordinated with Councilman Eric Costello to organize stakeholders along the corridor to advocate for further study and redline changes to the 95% design plans. These stakeholders included Mount Royal Improvement Association, Mount Vernon Belvedere Association, MICA, UB, and the Lyric. In those meetings, held in August and September of 2016, DOT committed to study the following, and report back before the project was awarded:

1. A road diet, meaning removing one of the car travel lanes in each direction, either a) the entirety of the corridor, b) from Guilford to Maryland, c) from Maryland to North Avenue. This would allow for an on-street protected lane or no loss of parking, and no reduction to medians, saving millions of dollars in concrete work and the need for tree removal.

2. Closure of the I-83 off-ramp at Mount Royal and Saint Paul Streets entirely, and at minimum closure of the Mount Royal slip lane of the offramp.

3. Extension of the bicycle lane to Guilford Avenue and to North Avenue.

No report back ever occurred. All stakeholders continuously followed up requesting updates, and those emails and phone calls went unreturned. The project was awarded this past winter, in violation of the agreement, and again emails and phone calls requesting comment were unreturned.

Last week, the project broke ground without notification to stakeholders.

Last Night's Meeting

At last night's meeting, the same project boards were presented, showing no changes to the design. However, the power-point was updated, showing a slightly redesigned bicycle facility, and former DOT Interim Director Frank Murphy acknowledged that a DOT staff meeting had occurred just an hour before the public meeting to discuss implementing the red line changes stakeholders had been advocating for the past five years. 

We will be working with Councilman Costello's office to participate in a re-convening of stakeholders again to reiterate these requests, and demand that any redline changes that are possible to make at this stage are made.

We will likely end up with a project nobody is happy with, but we still must advocate to make it safe and adequate. There are a thousand larger questions surrounding this project: Why we are moving forward with a design nobody likes? Why was over 5 years of direct input ignored? And how we can change our city's transportation planning culture to prevent things like this from ever happening again, by passing robust Complete Streets legislation and empowering our city council members with tools to get real answers from agencies and be able to hold them accountable?

Potomac Street Victory Lap

With our policy director away on vacation, we are going to skip writing a longer post analyzing the final design for Potomac Street and what it means long term for Complete Streets and bike infrastructure in Baltimore today. But know that it’s coming.

We did want to share our perspective on Department of Transportation’s decision and share the final design. DOT hosted an Open House to share the feedback received from the latest round of community input on a design meant to address Canton residents’ and BCFD’s concerns around fire access.

The design that will move forward will be the one presented at the last community meeting. The revised design retains a two way bike lane, removes street parking from the West side, and changes East side on street parking from parallel to rear angle.

Bikemore has maintained that with a few tweaks to improve emergency vehicle access, the existing design that is currently in the ground would work. But we also believe in compromise when possible, and while we still believe that 20ft clear access for emergency vehicles is not necessary or always appropriate in urban environments, it was important to move forward. This design addresses concerns around fire access by creating 19ft of clearance. Additionally it addresses neighborhood concerns around parking loss by maintaining roughly the same amount of parking as the original design by changing it to rear angle parking. Most importantly the revised design maintains an all ages, high quality two way bike facility--which was the original intent of the project.

You can click through the boards and slides presented at the meeting here to get all the wonky facts surround the new design:

Potomac Street was the biggest fight we’ve ever taken on. Our small staff and dedicated volunteers and attorneys put in many long hours. We sued the city. We stopped the arbitrary removal of a bike lane based on nothing more than a handful of resident complaints (loud ones, but not in the numbers they reported to have). We forced stakeholders and the city back to the negotiating table to think through a thoughtful redesign. We stood firm in our stance that we cannot go backwards, that Baltimore desires and deserves high quality bike infrastructure, and that we cannot allow every public project to improve mobility in this city — whether it’s bike lanes or bus stops — to become derailed when some neighbors don’t want to see change in their neighborhood.

In this latest round of community input to respond to the redesign, DOT received 560 emails. Of those 447 supported the Potomac Street redesign. 113 did not. What’s more, what became the rally cry for redesign — emergency access — received only 16 comments out of a total of 560 emails. Concerns over parking loss received 75. It confirmed what we always knew. That backlash to bike lanes is about nothing more than people placing their personal convenience over public safety and mobility.

Community input is important. No community should ever feel as though a project is being placed upon them without listening to their concerns. But after multiple meetings, and a litany of press, Potomac Street has arguably received the most attention of any eight blocks in the city. The concerns around safety were addressed. Other concerns like parking were accommodated as best they were able. We are satisfied with the outcome. We are looking forward to being able to focus our policy work on Complete Streets that looks at how to prioritize the safety and mobility of people on all city streets, in every neighborhood.

This was a decisive win for people who bike. Not because Bikemore is some inside influence with tons of resources to bring to the table like some would claim, but because of you. Our members. Your letters were inspiring to read. You showed up when you were called to, you were bold in your position for safe streets for all users, and gave generously to allow us to focus all our efforts on the issue at hand.

We have a long way to go before Baltimore is truly safe and accessible for people of all ages and abilities to ride a bike. But we are closer today because of your support. We need your continued support to keep us moving forward.

Please consider making a recurring donation to Bikemore. Whether it’s $10 each month or $1000 a year, you can be certain that your dollars are helping to build a force for biking in Baltimore. We look forward to having you join us as we continue to #fightforbikes.

Email Comments on Potomac Street

Last night, Baltimore City DOT presented a revised design of the Potomac Street protected bike lane at the Canton Community Association meeting. The majority of the room was in support of a protected lane on Potomac, because people like you showed up and spoke out. So, thank you!

The revised design maintains a two-way, all-ages, high-quality protected bike lane. It addresses any emergency vehicle access concerns. It adds loading zones. It maintains parking. You can view the redesign on the Baltimore City DOT website here.

DOT has launched a 30 day comment period on the revised design, and we are asking you to email comments in support.

DOT will disregard template emails, so make sure to customize the subject and write your own comments in the email body. Please be sure to mention the importance of the lane remaining an all-ages, high-quality, protected design.

We'll provide a longer update on the meeting at a later date. Thanks, and keep up the #FightForBikes!

The Necessity of Showing Up and Speaking Out

This summer we spent considerable time and resources ensuring that a high quality, all ages bike facility championed by residents was not removed. That was only possible because you—our supporters—were galvanized and took action.

Next Tuesday marks an important next step in ensuring the success of our action. The Department of Transportation will present the revised design to the community at the Canton Community Association meeting. We are asking you to turn out. And most importantly, be vocal during the meeting of your support of the project.

As part of our settlement with the city, we have been instructed to not to share the design in advance of the meeting. The public—including our members—still needs a chance to be involved in the process. What we can say is the new design has taken into consideration the concerns raised by some folks who live in the neighborhood, received the approval from the Fire Department, and has the support of the Mayor’s office and DOT.

During this process, we were discouraged but not surprised by the divisive rhetoric put forward by those who wished to see the lane removed. It’s challenging moving Baltimore forward on issues regarding safety and transportation. When change happens, those opposed resort to a type of fortress mentality, a belief that only they should have input into changes in their community. What this ignores is the many people who are their neighbors that have been supportive of the project since the beginning. They paint Bikemore as some special interest group (their exact words)—as if improving the safety of all road users, and increasing opportunities of mobility is somehow nefarious and does not in fact have well-documented benefits on the community as a whole. Even throughout the legal process we had to constantly remind those on the other side of the table that this argument was not residents versus people who bike—but that the people who bike are in fact also residents who happen to have an opposing point of view. Yes, we organized and formed an advocacy group to champion that point of view—because as evident by how behind we are at achieving progress in multimodal planning—our interests were not well represented.

Opposition will also state that Bikemore engaged in some secret meetings to try and get the new design put forward. What they leave out is that the plaintiffs in the case were not Bikemore, but our members—members who live in Canton and Highlandtown and rely on the Potomac lane frequently. The secrecy? That’s part of the legal process, one Canton residents were a part of. Our settlement was negotiated under the terms that we would allow the City to engage in a public process moving forward. This was a design put forth by DOT. It did not meet all of our demands, but preserved key pieces that allowed us confidence that the City had taken our concerns into consideration. Anything else is conjecture and hyperbole. It’s about power and nothing more.

Next Tuesday it is critical that those who bike and rely on safe infrastructure to do so turn out and demonstrate a commitment to safe streets. We are especially encouraging our members who live in Canton to be represented. We will be following up with many of you individually. That’s how important it is you show up.

When you show up, we ask you to speak. Community meetings are tough. Opposition intentionally organizes to make it vitriolic so that it intimidates reasonable people from attending and expressing their views. But we can’t sit idly by and allow our needs to be shouted down. When the time comes to have input, we need you to raise your hand. Get in line to speak. You don’t need to have an eloquent speech prepared. Simply saying, “I’m a Baltimore resident and I support protected infrastructure on Potomac” is enough.

To rally supporters we will be out in front at 6:30, handing out stickers to demonstrate your support. We love our city. We want it to work for everyone—no matter how you choose to get around. We believe this design does just that. It’s time we demonstrate strongly that we want choice when it comes to how we get around. Simply planning and designing streets only for cars is something that does not work for the future of Baltimore. And neighbors creating a fortress mentality that believe they represent the whole of a neighborhood, or that those that live in the city and may use that street don’t have a say on what happens on the public right of way is wrong, and the least neighborly way to behave.

We can’t begin to express how grateful we are to your action thus far. The donations, the emails, and the phone calls have been what has kept us going. The time is now to demonstrate that we are residents and we believe in a future that provides safe options for all road users.  

Show up. Speak up. Your city leaders need to hear from you.

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FILL THE ROOM: Canton Community Association Meeting
Tuesday, August 8
7 PM - 10 PM
United Evangelical Church
3200 Dillon St, Baltimore, Maryland 21224
→ More info and updates.

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Potomac Will Be Saved

Even under construction riders of all ages have been out enjoying the protected bike lane on Potomac Street. 

We have good news - the Potomac Street protected bike lane will not be removed! We will not be going to court tomorrow. Instead we have entered into a settlement agreement and will be sitting down this week with the City to assist in finalizing new plans for Potomac Street. We are confident this modified plan will preserve a high quality all ages protected two-way bike facility on Potomac Street, as well as safeguard public safety and accommodate emergency vehicles.
 
Once the plans have been finalized, they will be shared with the public for a two week comment period. During that time the Potomac Street bike lane will remain intact as is currently constructed. Once the public comment period has ended, the City will take comments into consideration and begin construction. We are pleased to have reached this agreement with the City and are committed to being partners as we work to make Baltimore a safe place to ride a bike. 

Your support and advocacy during these past few weeks has been tremendous. Each one of you that donated, called, and wrote letters played a part in bringing us to this resolution. As a thank you, please join us at the courthouse tomorrow 6/28/2017 between 9-9:30 am. We will be hanging out at the Battle Monument serving up donuts and coffee as a thank you! Join us as we continue to #FightForBikes!