Category: Biking in Baltimore

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Grand Prix won’t fully pay its way; Pratt joins Young in opposing race

The city will foot about $500,000 for police, fire and other overtime pay for the upcoming Grand Prix.

https://www.baltimorebrew.com/2012/02/22/grand-prix-wont-fully-pay-its-way-pratt-joins-young-in-opposing-race/
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B’ Spokes: I just wanted to note a major obstacle in getting Baltimore’s Sunday Streets programming going is the amount of money the city charges for over time police while they give the same service free for an event for people that don’t live here, that does not seem right to me. I read about city closing pools and rec centers, certainly indicators that the quality of city life for residents is on the decline yet the vibe from City Hall is let’s focus on tourism, again, this does not seem right.

The other thing I want to mention for our Sunday Streets the City insists that there is a police officer at every little street and that the event organizers pay time and half for someone to pick up the slack the barricades might miss, just in case (you might read that as having to pay top dollar for someone to do (next) nothing.) We need the option of just barricades and signs where appropriate, volunteers with reflect vests where appropriate and finally police officers just where needed. And please let’s start charging the criminals time and half for their use of the police force and work to remove unnecessary financial barriers for wholesome events that benefit the city residents.

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The Road to Complete Streets in Baltimore and Beyond

by Stu Sirota, Envision Baltimore

If you haven’t heard by now, a remarkable thing has just happened in Baltimore. If it stands, it will long be remembered as a turning point in local transportation history: Baltimore City transportation officials have selected a “Complete Streets” configuration for Boston Street in conjunction with the planned Red Line light rail line.

What this means is that the current configuration of Boston Street – which became a fast moving 4-lane, suburban-style arterial roadway about twenty years ago – will eventually be transformed into a 2-lane urban waterfront street with exclusive space for the light rail, bike lanes, and enhanced pedestrian facilities and landscaping. The new configuration will calm traffic along Boston Street by discouraging speeding, while encouraging more walking, biking, outdoor lingering, café dining, and transit use along the corridor.

A New Day

Selecting the Boston Street Completes Street option is a testament to the courage and leadership of the Baltimore Department of Transportation (BDOT), which, in recent years, has been willing to take some chances on progressive initiatives aimed at making the city more livable and less traffic-dominated.
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Emerging Advocacy amid Stumbling Blocks

A key factor that has fostered BDOT’s ability to take a more progressive approach is the increasing support among the general public for complete streets and sustainable transportation infrastructure, particularly for things like bike lanes and attractive surface transit that become an integral and visible part of the public realm. New advocacy groups like RedLine Now, The Downtown Baltimore Family Alliance, and a newly formed Baltimore cycling advocacy organization, are all prime examples of the growing interest in urban living that relies less on driving and creates more hospitable environments for walking, cycling, and transit.

Despite its good efforts and intentions, BDOT can’t implement these innovative projects without broad public support. This was starkly illustrated last year when BDOT installed a bike lane on Monroe Street in West Baltimore by removing one of the travel lanes. Despite the street having a relatively low volume of car traffic, the bike lane was met with vocal community opposition and the lane was subsequently removed.
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Continue reading “The Road to Complete Streets in Baltimore and Beyond”

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People in car crashes vs. people in bike crashes for Baltimore City by age.

The question came up just how safe is it to bike in Baltimore? So I thought some graphs were in order:
Crashes:
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Background: It has been observed the more people drive (Vehicle Miles Traveled or VMT) the more traffic crashes there were and conversely the lower VMT (as has been observed in recent years) the fewer traffic crashes. So this has lead to the notion of “exposure”, that is to say the more there is of something out there the more accidents there will be. This works fine for automobiles but not so well for bike/ped issues.

There are some stats that show when VMT goes does down bike and pedestrian crashes go down as well and there are stats that show despite increasing the number of cyclists (increasing their exposure) the crash and fatality counts remain near constant.

Comments on the charts: So the way I look at things are the charts on the left, which is just comparing raw counts. I supplied the charts on the right for those who insist there is no such thing as the safety in numbers phenomena and insist that the more cyclists, the more crashes. So if there where the same number of cyclists as drivers at the current crash ratios per mode share were maintained, this is how it would look.

Of course what stands out is biking for kids in this city is dangerous (more K-12 bike education please), otherwise not really dangerous if you know the rules of the road. I’l agree there are some stinky driver’s attitudes out there but they don’t make the place unsafe, just annoying.

Injury
image

Again, I think the chart on the left represent relative risk of injury but even if we greatly exaggerate our small numbers to get them on par with the number of drivers, the chart on the right comes out near 50:50 with some wild fluctuation (due to the small sample size of cyclists.) Of course I am ignoring the issue for younger kids, which is more complex then what I can give it justice here.

Fatalities:
image

Again, I think the chart on the left represent relative risk of death. The chart on the right is what one cycling death to 28 that died in cars in Baltimore looks like with the same “exposure”. Over the years different aged cyclists have died so that age slot is not really representative of what to expect in the future but on average just one cyclist has died per year in Baltimore. Yes that is a tragedy but is it worst then the 28 that have died in a automobile?

So if I have failed to convince your relative risk is the charts on the left, the fatality chart on the right is the worse I can realistically contrive and even so there are a lot of empty age bands with no cyclists deaths but with people in cars deaths. Also bear in mind if we double the cycling mode share (with near the same crash counts) the red bars on the right charts would be cut in half. Baltimore is behind the curve for a major city bike lane miles as well as the bike mode share so I hope over time as we get more cyclists out on the streets even the charts on the right will look more favorable for cyclists.

In conclusion: If you are still feeling intimidated cycling in Baltimore, please see our collection of links Must read for bike safety
Continue reading “People in car crashes vs. people in bike crashes for Baltimore City by age.”

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Need Share the Road signs (almost two years old)

B’ Spokes: Once again I’ll ask for your help in getting to the front something that has fallen through the cracks.

The issue: https://seeclickfix.com/issues/27125

I have emailed everyone that could possibly help and well to be curt, all the responses have been closer to "Not my job" then "Let me make sure this gets the appropriate attention."

So to be frank, this "Not my job" attitude is not getting results. Hazardous storm grates still in place? Really??? That should be a big no, no but I queses it’s not anyone’s job to make sure the best engineering practices regarding the needs of bicycle riders are met during all phases of construction. Wait, don’t we have a law that says they should be giving cyclists due consideration? Oh ya, this: § 2-602. Public policy https://www.baltimorespokes.org/article.php?story=20111025010622931

So I am asking you email Michael Jackson <mjackson3@mdot.state.md.us> and Nathan Evans <nate.evans@baltimorecity.gov> and just get some "Share the Road" signs in place. Such a simple request should not require this type of action, getting share the road signs should be as simple as getting a pot hole fixed. Something is obviously not working and Michael is the only one in a position to fix this.

I hate writing things like this but if the State want to take pride in it’s bike friendly policies like § 2-602 they should also have some obligation to act and not to let things fall through the cracks.

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Study purports to equate NASCAR viewing with aggressive driving

[B’ Spokes: No doubt one of my pet peeves is people who call cyclists Lance Armstrong wannabees, like Ooo that’s a really bad character trait trying to better oneself. But more to the point is being a [NASCAR driver name] wannabee a better thing? The following article hints that no it is not.

We used to define "being into sports" as the physical activity we enjoyed doing but now our culture seems to define "being into sports" as "pass me a beer and the TV remote" as if anything short of pro level is detestable. This is in part why we have an obesity epidemic. We need to flip the current conversations so Lance Armstrong wannabees is a good thing and [NASCAR driver name] wannabees is a bad thing, a very bad thing.]
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AOL Sporting News

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The research found the number of aggressive-driving accidents declined on race days and hypothesized that might be attributable to race fans staying home to watch on TV. Five days after a NASCAR race, however, the number of aggressive-driving accidents and injuries spiked significantly.
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https://aol.sportingnews.com/nascar/story/2011-07-30/study-purports-to-equate-nascar-viewing-with-aggressive-driving