Squinting in the dim light, holding up their cellphones in flashlight mode, Baltimore’s bicycle community strained last night to see maps from the 2015 Baltimore Bike Master Plan that had been pinned to the walls of the third-floor auditorium at the Enoch Pratt Library.

In some cases, even when they could make out the planned changes to their neighborhood streets, the participants found the categories a little vague: That a pink highlighted route means a bike lane or a buffered bike lane or a cycle track, one woman wondered aloud?

This was a crowd (of nearly 100 people) who knew the difference, and they wanted specifics.

Most stinging, however, were the comments about the way the plan was presented.

Here was the first update of the plan since 2006 – and last night’s meeting was designated as the “Final Public Review” of the plan – but the 94-page document still has not been released to the public on the Department of Transportation’s website.

And it won’t be posted, participants leaned last night, until Monday.
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The Brew published highlights of the unposted bicycle plan HERE.

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An angry Phil LaCombe said he had been checking the DOT website off and on for weeks to see if the plan link had been updated. Finding out now that there is to be a comment period of 14 days, starting February 2 and ending on February 17, angered LaCombe and others in the room .

“That’s not meaningful public participation,” the Waverly resident said with evident disgust.

“I do apologize the plan was not available before this meeting,” said Caitlin Doolin, the city’s bike and pedestrian planner. “We saw this as more of a kickoff.”

She said she and DOT staffers would take comments made during the 14-day period “very seriously” and encouraged the audience to fill in paper comment sheets or mark up the maps with felt-tipped pens.

“It should be an embarrassment to them that you guys had to write an exclusive story about obtaining the report with photographs of the pages,” LaCombe said afterwards, referring to The Brew’s January 15 story with plan highlights.

A young, car-free city

Doolin went over those highlights last night, beginning with the “overall vision. . . to implement over 253 miles of bike facilities and enable 8% of commuters [to] bike as their primary transportation option by 2028.”

She said encouraging bikes as a transportation mode makes sense in Baltimore, where 34% of residents do not have cars and 50% are under the age of 35.

“This is a young, car-free city,” she said.

As for the timetable, Doolin said they will submit “95% of the plans” to the State Highway Administration by March, award the contract in the summer and begin construction in the fall. The plan goes before the Planning Commission for final adoption on March 1, 2015.

Doolin ran through the projects in order, starting with the city’s top priority, the Downtown Bicycle Network Project, which includes the Maryland Avenue/Cathedral Street Cycle Track. Next in line, the Mid-Town Streetscape, the Roland Avenue Resurfacing, West Baltimore Bike Boulevards and the Pratt Street/Lombard Street bus/bike lane upgrades.

Greg Hinchliffe, executive director of Bikemore, said cycle tracks and buffered bike boulevards in the plan, even just as goals, are a positive steps.

“The important thing is the paradigm shift. They’ve got things in here that never would have been here in the past. They would have hit a wall at DOT because they would slow down traffic,” he said after the meeting. “If it ends up just lip service, at least it’s better lip service.”

UPDATE: Bikemore last night offered these suggested improvements to the plan.

Safety First

Several questioners pressed Doolin on whether the new infrastructure was going to be safe.

For example, how to protect bikes from cars coming off the I-83 exit ramp?

“Lots of signage” and other traffic-calming measures, she answered.

Another asked – “Any thought given to rumble-strips” – during the discussion of plans for Roland Avenue, which is being considered for a cycle track, with bikes traveling between the sidewalk and a line of parked cars.

Doolin never directly raised last month’s fatal Roland Avenue bike lane crash in which the driver veered into cyclist Tom Palermo pedaling in a wide, but unprotected lane.

Nevertheless, the Palermo accident loomed during the question session. “Rumble strips make noise when cars drift over into the bike lane,” one questioner observed.

Doolin said rumble strips had not been considered, but they only make noise at high speeds. She added that the traffic would be slowed due to narrowed traffic lanes (from 12 to 10.5 feet) and by curb bump-outs.

Shelley Sehnert, a founder of the Safer Roads for North Baltimore Coalition, assailed DOT for bike lane routes and designs she said were not were not well-thought-out. “There was no scientific, rigorous evaluation about safety,” Sehnert asserted.

“Safety is paramount,” replied DOT’s transit bureau chief Veronica McBeth, who was also in attendance. “It’s a scientific process that’s subjective and objective,” she said, noting that the city follows the guidelines of the National Association of City Transportation Officials.

Training 311 Operators?

Several speakers rose to ask whether other measures besides new infrastructure were being considered to make Baltimore more bike-friendly.

One asked about training city 311 operators and changing the reporting categories so that bike-specific complaints are easier to call in. (So the caller wouldn’t have to explain, for example, about the problem of parked cars blocking the bike lanes or tire-grabbing storm stormwater grates.)

That would be problematic, Doolin said, because 311 complaints must be resolved within 180 days and the city might not be able to replace a particular storm drain grate within that time.

“We recently did a full inventory of the bike grates,” Doolin said, assuring the group that the city is working on replacing them. (Our thought: To give cyclists a heads-up, how about publishing the inventory in map form in the meantime?)

Another asked about enforcement of existing laws that prohibit blocking a bike lane. “We cannot enforce that,” McBeth said. “It’s a police issue.”

“Knocked the Phone out of my Hand”

Several complained about MTA buses that ride in and block the bike lanes. “And the Hopkins buses that pick up students – they are dangerous!” another added.

Doolin said she was open to talking with MTA and other local bus operators about training drivers.

After the meeting, cyclist Nima Shahidi had a personal story to tell about MTA buses.

On St. Paul Street near Penn Station earlier this month, he said, a bus cut him off, honking, veering around him inches away and “nearly ran me off the road.” When the bus was parked at the Biddle Street intersection, he tried to photograph the bus number. “The driver got out and knocked the phone out of my hand.”

Shahidi said he sat for an hour-and-a-half on the curb waiting for an MTA police officer to take his complaint. After much back-and-forth, he said, MTA officials told him that they reviewed video of the encounter and are reprimanding the driver.

Shahidi said he wants something more personal.

“I’d like to meet with that driver and talk to him face to face,” he said. “I’d like to see how it is that he could consider me something less than human. I’d like to understand that.”