May Day Roll sites around Baltimore:
Baltimore Brew and Bicycle Works present the 3rd Annual May Day Roll. Falls Road switchback from Wyman Park Drive.
Continue reading “cyclosity’s photostream”
Pedestrian dies in N. Howard Street hit-and-run
By Liz F. Kay, The Baltimore Sun
A pedestrian died after being struck by a vehicle while crossing the 1200 block of N. Howard Street early Thursday morning, according to Baltimore Police.
Two people were walking east to west in the crosswalk at about 1:54 a.m. when one was hit by an unknown vehicle, police said.
The vehicle left the scene.
The victim, who has not yet been identified by investigators, was transported to the Maryland Shock Trauma Center in serious condition, according to police, and was pronounced dead at 2:37 a.m.
Continue reading “Pedestrian dies in N. Howard Street hit-and-run”
BALTIMORE BIKE MAP
by Nate
After years of demand and years in the making, the first Baltimore Bike Map is here! This map shows the city’s bike infrastructure (both existing and soon to be completed) as well as routes commonly used by cyclists. The flip side is packed with information on safe cycling techniques, securing your bike and using your bike with transit.
Free maps are available from Baltimore Department of Transportation (410-396-6856) and pdfs will be available soon on the Bike Baltimore website (www.baltimorecity.gov/bike)
Within the coming weeks, we’ll have this map on its own Google Maps page where the public will be able to comment: where do you ride, where are bike improvements needed, etc.
Big Thanks go out to
Victor Miranda for all the cartographics!
Paula Simon at Highmeadow Design for the overall design and artwork!
Toole Design Group for the proofing and odds & ends!
Maryland called ‘worse than Texas’ for bicyclists
by Michael Dresser
Seth Guikema of Timonium sentGetting There an email that makes some uncommonly good points. Here it is in a slightly edited-down form:
I have been a bike or bike/train commuter for at least the last 17 years living in 4 different states (including other cities bigger than Baltimore) and 2 countries. My current commute involves biking in both the county and the city with a light rail ride in between. Baltimore City drivers are some of the worst I’ve seen when it comes to giving appropriate respect and space to bikes on the roads, even worse than Texas.
County drivers seem better. I applaud the new rules, but rules are only as good as enforcement. The police force needs to step up and enforce the rules of the road, for both drivers and cyclists. In the couple of years that I’ve lived in Baltimore, I’ve had cars try to run me off the road, spout profanity-laced tirades at me because I "should not be on the road," and chase me. I’ve contacted the police with the information, and I have not yet received a single follow-up.
I know Baltimore police are stretched thin, but what is the point of passing new rules if they can’t be enforced? It’s good for public education I suppose, but that only lasts as long as it is covered in the news.
Of course, this goes both ways. There are a lot of idiots on bikes that choose to ignore the rules of the road too. They give the rest of us a bad name. They should be ticketed for running red lights and stop signs, biking the wrong way on one-way streets, weaving through traffic, and riding on sidewalks in business districts. The police need to step up and enforce those rules too.
If we want to have any hope of achieving energy independence or of seriously addressing climate change, we need to address our collective addiction to automobiles. Bikes can and should be part of that solution, along with real, meaningful transit options. But until the roads are safe for cyclists, those of us making it our primary form of commuting will be a small minority.
The new rules are a step in the right direction, but they need to be backed up by meaningful enforcement. Thank you for helping to shine a light on this problem. Hopefully people are listening.
Continue reading “Maryland called ‘worse than Texas’ for bicyclists”
A painful brush with distracted driving
By Julie Mercer
At 2 a.m. on a quiet spring weekend, my family was abruptly awakened by the ear-splitting sound of crushing metal and broken glass just three stories below our bedroom window. As I frantically dialed 911, my husband descended the stairs of our urban dwelling to investigate what sounded like a fatal car accident. ( "A total loss", as our insurance report would later describe it).
That night we did, in fact, have to say goodbye to two family cars, a chunk of our perennial garden, 15 bricks on the wall of our 160-year old home and a six-foot segment of wrought-iron fence. Our neighbor fared only slightly better, suffering a gash to the driver’s side of her borrowed sports car.
As we examined the scene, the perpetrator sat calmly in her car texting incessantly to some unknown recipient. There was no acknowledgment of the incident, no communication with the responding officer, no apologies extended to us; just fingertips racing across a keyboard — as they obviously had done just prior to the event.
To my astonishment, no breathalyzer was administered; it isn’t required of someone who is addicted to a cell phone.
…
Continue reading “A painful brush with distracted driving”
Driver Revved Up Engine To Hit Cyclists a Second Time
Bicyclist Says Woman Tried To Run Him Over
Witnesses Corroborate Cyclist’s Story, Saying Driver Revved Up Engine To Hit Man Intentionally
By Vince Gerasole
CHICAGO (CBS) – She hit him with her car, backed up, and went after him again. That’s how a local bicyclist describes what happened to him when he got into an argument with a woman on the road. Tonight, his bike is just a warped pile of metal. As CBS 2’s Vince Gerasole reports, police have a license plate number, but the driver’s still out there.
His bike may be in pieces, but Tim Heath is lucky he’s not.
"When someone is clearly, intentionally revving up to run you over, that’s really intimidating," said Heath.
As Heath tells it, he got into a spat over lane space with a female motorist at the corner of Milwaukee and Diversey.
"She had already tried to cut me off earlier," said Heath.
The twisted story of what happened next seems classic road rage.
"At that point, she got really aggravated, and started yelling and screaming, and threatening that she was gonna run me over," said Heath. "She came blasting forward, and luckily I had this bike between me and her, and the bike took the beating."
…
Continue reading “Driver Revved Up Engine To Hit Cyclists a Second Time”
Um, bike infrastructure is a funding priority….right? So please attend.
Baltimore City Council Taxpayers Night
will be held on
MONDAY, MAY 10, 2010
6:00 pm
at the
War Memorial Building
(Enter from Lexington Street, just east of Gay.)
Citizens are invited to sign-in and speak-up
about your funding priorities.
Sign-in usually begins at 5:30 pm.
(Please be sure to have picture ID.)
Metered parking is available “under the Expressway,”
at Gay & Saratoga, where the Sunday Farmers Market is held.
Thanks.
Mary Pat
Baltimore cyclists at City Hall applaud bills, tell horror stories . . . and search for bike racks?
via Baltimore Brew
Bike locked to handrail outside Baltimore City Hall during Thursday’s bike bill hearing.
story and photos by FERN SHEN
Baltimore bicyclists packed City Council chambers Thursday afternoon to support five pending bills designed to make Baltimore friendlier toward bikes . . . and to tell them some grim anecdotes to illustrate why city cyclists need such help.
“A couple of drivers were yelling and so angry at me — they were threatening to get out of their car and physically push me off the road,” said Rachel Wilkinson, who said when this happened she was riding her bike on a presumably safe stretch of 33rd Street, a place where there was a “sharrow,” one of those cyclist silhouettes on the road surface.
“They were screaming and hollering and pulling their car up, as if to hit me,” Wilkinson said, outside the hearing. “It was terrifying. If I hadn’t been a woman, I think, they would have beaten me up.”
The hearing itself was a good illustration of how far Baltimore has to go before it is a bike-y city: there were so few bike racks outside City Hall that bikes were locked to park benches and outdoor stairway handrails.
Thursday’s meeting of the Community Development Subcommittee was chaired by Council member William H. Cole IV and prominently featured the bills’ chief sponsor, council member Mary Pat Clarke.
The bills are:
• Bike-safe Grates (09-0431) – This would require that any street projects involving new drainage grates use bike-safe grates, ie., the kind with openings set at an angle so bike tires won’t get stuck in them.
• Bike Lanes (09-0430) – This would standardize the lane size and surface markings and signage for bike lanes and establish a $50 fine for parking in a bike lane.
• Parking for Bicycles(09-0429) – This requires bike racks in new developments and allows developers to reduce the vehicle parking spaces in return for installing bike spaces.
• Police Issues (09-0175R)- A resolution calling on city police to work with the council to improve relations with the cycling community, including encouraging them to file reports on bicycle-involved crashes.
• Complete Streets (09-0433)- A resolution calling for the city to adopt a nationally recognized set of principles for urban planners known as “complete streets,” which means designing for pedestrians, public transportation and bicyclists, as well as cars.
During bike bill hearing, the two racks like this outside City Hall were full…….
….so cyclists had to park like this! (photo by Fern Shen)
Clarke said she was glad to see a big turnout from the bike community; they have collected more than 1,000 signatures in support of the bills. Bicycle advocates have made gains lately, with the passage of the three-foot bill in Annapolis during the past legislative session.
But Clarke was none too thrilled – and some cyclists’ jaws dropped – at the news that Segways and motor scooters might, under state law, have to be allowed to use the bike lanes. Clarke asked a representative from the city law department to try to draft language of the bike lane bill so that it does not explicitly allow Segways and scooters.
Jamie Kendrick, the city’s deputy transportation director, said encouraging bikes was part of his department evolving to be more “multi-modal” and cited their establishment of a new position for a “pedestrian and bicycle planner” (Nate Evans), their installation of 42 new bike racks around the city this year and progress on a bicycle sharing program.
Spokes-people spoke
Bike advocates were generally eager to applaud the bills and convey to all how committed they are to a bike-powered lifestyle.
“I’ve lived here since 1994 and I commute to downtown every day, all year long, in every kind of weather,” said Joanne Stato, who estimated that her daily three-mile round trip commute saves her $100/month in parking fees. “It’s good to get exercise. It’s wonderful for my state of mind.”
What Stato doesn’t like, she said, are the people who do not respect the bike lane at the Inner Harbor: “taxis, police and emergency vehicles, motorists and clueless people who park in the bike lane.”
She also complained about a weird situation the Brew flagged back in November: the weird bike AND BUS lane on Pratt Street. “I don’t know who ever thought of bicycles and buses sharing a lane,” Stato said, “but it’s crazy, it’s scary, it’s dangerous!”
Amanda Meyers said she moved to Baltimore 15 months ago from New York City and sees making the city safer and easier to bike in as an urgent need for Baltimore “if we have any hopes of attracting young professionals.”
“I have so many friends who have moved to the city and are on the fence about staying here and bike lanes and things like that are actually important to them,” she said.
Bike people being used?
Perhaps the only person who came to the meeting with anything negative to say about the bills was Joan Floyd, of the Remington Neighborhood Alliance. Floyd buttonholed Clarke before the hearing and said the bike rack bill, 09-0429, “has big problems.”
The issue? Floyd was strongly opposed to the bill’s “offset” provision, the formula which would allow developers to reduce the number of vehicle parking spaces in exchange for bike rack spots.
“This bill looks like it was written by developers,” she said. “The bicycle people are being used.”
The issue never got aired out because, indeed — as Floyd said before the hearing, and Cole pointed out during the hearing — the bill essentially proposes a change in zoning law which means it must be advertised as such (it wasn’t) and approved by the Planning Commission (it hasn’t been. So it was yanked from consideration for the moment.
City Council to hear pro-bicycle bills
By Michael Dresser, The Baltimore Sun
 |
| Greg Cantori’s bicycle tire shows the dangers of a storm grate, which can pose a serious threat to bicyclist safety. Cantori hopes that Baltimore City officials can soon phase in safer grates to replace those that can ensnare bike tires. |
Storm grates might seem like an inconsequential matter to drivers, but for bicyclists their design can make the difference between a smooth ride and serious injury.
Grates are just one of the topics to be considered by the City Council Thursday as it holds hearings on a package of bills that seeks to promote bicycling in Baltimore.
Bicycle advocates believe the group of five bills on the hearing schedule is the largest ever brought before the Council on that topic. They say they have gathered more than 1,000 signatures on petitions in support of the bills, and they’re hoping for a heavy turnout for the 4 p.m. hearing before the Community Development Subcommittee.
“What we’re seeking is to make the city more of a bike-friendly place,” said Carol Silldorff, executive director of One Less Car, a group that advocates for alternatives to private vehicles.
The bills, whose lead sponsor is Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke, address such matters as redesigning storm grates, requiring bike racks in new developments, ticketing motorists who park in bike lanes and improving communication between bicyclists and police on safety issues.
Another Clarke bill would require the city to adopt a Complete Streets program, joining a nationwide trend of integrating the concerns of bicyclists, pedestrians and wheelchair users — and not just vehicles — into planning of transportation projects.
Bicycle and pedestrian advocates have enjoyed several years of favorable treatment from City Hall under the administration of former Mayor Sheila Dixon, an enthusiastic bicyclist and fitness buff. They see the bills as an early indicator of whether pro-bicycle policies will continue to thrive under mayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake, who has been largely preoccupied with budget issues since Dixon’s resignation in February.
Greg Hinchliffe, chairman of the Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Committee, said the members of that largely holdover panel strongly support the bills but said he cannot speak for the mayor.
“A year ago, I could have answered an enthusiastic yes, but, as we know, things have changed at City Hall, and [the mayor] has been too busy with the transition and the financial crisis to pay much attention to us,” he said in an e-mail. “That said, I know she is supportive of a greener city in general.”
Measuring support of the BALTMORE CITY COUNCIL BICYCLE LEGISLATION – The Petition Site
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Update as of this morning between Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Committee and One Less Car’s petitions we have 928 signatures! Lets slam dunk this support and spread the news, Baltimore has the support to be bike friendly!!!
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On May 6th, 2010, the Baltimore City Council is holding a hearing on several bicycle bills introduced by Councilperson Mary Pat Clarke. The Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Committee strongly supports all the bills and would like to get a reading on support amongst the public.
To indicate support you can sign a petition, either physically at area bike shops, or (even easier) at this site.
https://www.thepetitionsite.com/petition/853575826
Please feel free to further distribute this message. <<<
Greg Hinchliffe, Chair
Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Committee
Baltimore, MD
Continue reading “Measuring support of the BALTMORE CITY COUNCIL BICYCLE LEGISLATION – The Petition Site”