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Roland Avenue will be car-free on Sunday October 25

September 30, 2009 at 12:16 pm 6

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Bicyclists, if you’re tired of sharing the asphalt with those four-wheeled fossil-fuel-burners, your day has come.
Baltimore city officials have granted a permit to allow Roland Avenue to be closed to vehicular traffic on the morning of Oct. 25., the city’s first experiment with a bicycles-only city street.
If you’re going to need to drive that day, you’d better steer clear. And if you get a kick out of life’s little ironies, click through to see the not-so-green ad that appeared on this event’s Facebook page.

Unlike the annual closure of the elevated Jones Falls Expressway for bikers, roller-bladers, skateboarders and pedestrians, this event takes place on a wide and shady avenue in residential north Baltimore. South-bound Roland will be closed to cars between Northern Parkway and Cold Spring Lane from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.

This first “Sunday Streets” event, sponsored by the Roland Park Civic League, is one of many envisioned by city bicycle advocates.  More information available at Baltimore Spokes, the city’s home for two-wheeler talk and One Less Car, which explains that the Oct. 25th event is part of a whole Roland Park Sustainability Weekend .

An odd footnote and, no doubt a weird coincidence related to the rolling ads that appear in Facebook these days:  the Facebook page set up for this environmentally-friendly event has an ad on it from . . . the coal industry !

clean coal advert

  • Lorraine

    Love the idea. Wish it had happened when I still lived on Roland Ave, but better late than never. Wonder how they’ll handle emergency vehicles since the strip of road in question is between two fire houses.

  • Greg Cantori

    Very Important – The Headline is incorrect – It’s NOT Bicycles only! It’s opening the streets for all people (except those in cars)to use for the first time. Kudos to this Community in taking the lead in making this happen.

    • Editor

      Greg, you’re right. . . note our corrected headline. Thanks for the comment!

  • John Hammond

    Your article implies both directions of Roland will be closed yet civic league site says only southbound.

    Can you please clarify?

    Thanks!

    • Editor

      Yup, it’s southbound only. That was not clear in our original post but it is now………Thanks, John!

  • http://baltimorespokes.org The Human Car

    Just to note on emergency access, people can clear a street a lot more efficiently then cars can. I was by Eddie’s on a typical weekday afternoon when an emergency vehicle wanted to get through the double parked cars and traffic. It took a good minute for the cars to clear enough space for the truck to get through. Me on a bike just rode between parked cars and waited on the sidewalk in a matter of seconds.

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