Category: Biking in Maryland

Let’s see, the Recreational Trail Program (RTP) that gets $1,158,618 annually can only afford $30,000 per project. While Transportation Enhancement (TE) fund has over $25,000,000 of unobligated funds, enough to fund this $109,000 project 229 times. I think funding this thing in full will still allow for “many counties” to participate. I really can’t believe no one else sees a problem here.

The $30,000 grant is the state’s maximum award for recreational trails. The aim is to allow funding for as many counties as possible, SHA spokesman Charlie Gischlar said.
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The State Highway Administration wants to expand more environmentally sound forms of transportation, and bike trails are great for that, Gischlar said.

“It is something that we are really very excited to help local jurisdictions with,” he said.

The problem with TE is that Maryland has the highest local match in the nation and Maryland has incredibly difficult rules to qualify for that funding that other states do not have to put up with. While Maryland’s RTP major draw back is the $30,000 limit (again something that only Maryland has.) I find it difficult to believe that SHA is really that interest in helping the local jurisdictions.

Even with the money, the project won’t be complete, because the city is still looking for funding to build the underground link beneath U.S. 15, “the critical connection,” Alderwoman Kelly Russell said.

In terms of car centric highway improvement projects, the money unspent in Federal programs cannot be used for anything. But in terms of bike/ped projects the remaining balances are huge! We need to get the State to rethink their policies in funding bike/ped projects.

State Law:
§ 2-602. Public policy.
(i) Ensure that there is an appropriate balance between funding for:
1. Projects that retrofit existing transportation projects with facilities for pedestrians and bicycle riders;

What do you think? Is having 229 projects of this nature that go unfunded despite having the funds for these projects that can be paid for in full with no local match a “balance of funding?” We zero out all transportation funding pools to the nearest extent that big car centric projects will allow. Shouldn’t we also try to zero out all funding pools for bike/ped projects to the nearest extent possible or would it be better not to spend that money and just give it back to the Federal Government? And yes it seems that Maryland would rather do the latter then accommodate bicyclists.

Maryland has a below the national average obligation rate (they spend very little of their Federal money) for all Federal programs that can be used for bike/ped sans the RTP. Personally I don’t think that’s well balanced way to do things. Anyway, Alderwoman Kelly Russell you have email as I think I found your funding but we are going to have to fight for it.
Continue reading “Frederick hiking/biking trail link gets financial boost with $30,000 grant”

I’ll take any incentive to discourage aggressive driving and over use of the automobile. The basic deal is they install a device in your car and they monitor your driving for six months. Depending on how you score will determine your discount, with no penalties for scoring badly.
I think its kinda sad/funny the old program flopped because people knew they were being monitored to get a safe driving discount and still drove like jerks and got penalized for it. Are we really that clueless what constitutes safe driving / low risk driving behavior?
Continue reading “Progressive will offer up to 30% discount for low risk drivers”

This article from the Harold Mall really bothers me. Besides the fact that they treat some random caller as an expert in the field it’s how we look at motorists here in Maryland. It’s like they are the mafia, above the law and out to do harm to anyone who gets in their way. Why do we accept such tolerance of uncivilized behavior?

Who can fix it: The police! We need to crack down on speeding, aggressive driving, distracted driving and enforce all traffic laws in general. To many people look at the above picture and say to themselves, “Cyclists are going to get killed there so no one should bicycle.” rather then saying “That motorist really should be driving better then that or they should not be allowed to drive at all.”

But shouldn’t we have tolerance for minor infractions, after all we all make a minor mistake from time to time? Well there is two problems with that; 1) We have evolved to the point where only “serious” infractions are enforced like driving drunk and going 25mph above the speed limit, anything less then that we tolerate, 2) What the heck is wrong with giving warnings? Don’t get me wrong as a cyclists I would love to see some drivers in jail for harassing me or my kids or maybe just impound their car for a month so they realize that driving is a privilege and the whole point behind licensing and insurance is because people need to be held responsible for incorrect handling of a machine that kills way too many people. It is not an American right to drive irresponsibly and put other lives in jeopardy, to that end at the very least the police should give warnings.

The above bicycle accommodation is recommended by AASHTO and I really like it as well. It reinforces that bicycles are vehicles and we need to yield to motoring traffic just as much as motoring traffic needs to yield to us. No one has the right to travel totally unencumbered by other road users. We all need to follow the standard rules of the road and no that does not mean it’s bicyclists responsibility to get the hell out of the way of cars. It means we all need to treat each other with respect and courtesy.

Please comment on this article if you support this kind of bicycle accommodation as I would like to say “thank you” to SHA for their efforts in accommodating bicyclists and I would love to see at least as many positive comments as the below referenced article has negative.
Continue reading “OMG You are going to die if you bike there”

from Stop the Maryland Unsafe Driver by Driver
This website [https://stopthemud.org ] was created to give Marylanders a place to vent, to discuss, to express their opinions about unsafe driving in our state. It was also created to call attention to the senseless loss of life, the mayhem, and the injury on our highways by referring readers to articles at various news organizations. I hoped that creating a site that highlighted unsafe driving in Maryland that the site would attract readers that would participate and encourage comment and debate.
The site is useful in that it does alert Marylanders to some, but not all, of news stories documenting the carnage on Maryland roads and highways. StoptheMUD wants to encourage readers to create an account (it is free) and join the discussion. Our Mingle interface gives you a “Facebook like” user experience that includes a StoptheMUD.org with your chosen username.
Public awareness of unsafe driving is important. By acknowledging we have a serious problem we can each individually make the effort to change our driving behaviors. The state will not do it for us. We, each and every Marylander must make the choice to drive safely. Hopefully by creating a place where we promote individual responsibility we might notice a difference.
I created this site after my wife was involved in a high speed collision that cold have killed her. Two drivers turned in front of her on the highway. One blew a stop sign making a right turn and another made a left turn in front of her without looking for oncoming traffic. Both drivers admitted as much. She crashed into both cars deploying her driver’s side airbag.
Because it was dusk, the MSP officer cited my spouse for failing to turn on her headlights. The following day we met with our insurance adjuster at the accident scene as dusk came upon us. The other drivers COULD have seen my wife’s car if they had bothered to look, but it was just dark enough that the law was not on our side. The egregious behaviors of the unsafe drivers were not even considered.
We learned a couple of things after that collision. In Maryland, there is no contributing responsibility law. The other is that you cannot trust a police a office to tell the truth in court. The officer that cited my spouse for not having her headlights on claimed he was at the accident scene, at dusk, the day after the crash to determine whether the other drivers should have seen my wife’s car. Well we know he was not there because we were and he wasn’t. My spouse was so shocked when the officer made his claim in court that she was afraid to tell the judge that the officer was not telling the truth.
So you see that if we are going to eliminate dangerous roads we have to count on ourselves to make the behavior changes. We cannot depend on the police.
Please join the discussion at StoptheMUD. Comment on the articles or create your own account and Mingle with us. Let’s deal with a problem that is causing loss of life in our state.
Continue reading “STOPtheMUD: Join with us to end the madness.”

Another great article from Greater Greater Washington which I will highlight:
"Our pick for the top threat of 2011: Location decisions made in a vacuum, as highlighted in this Post story. These decisions include BRAC, Science City, and other government, corporate, university and hospital location decisions that lack adequate transit, increase traffic, and are simply unaffordable and unsustainable. Couple this with the push in Maryland and Virginia to spend billions more on highways that don’t reduce congestion, and we have a recipe for more sprawl."
https://greatergreaterwashington.org/post.cgi?id=8674
And a highlight from the Post Story:
"1. BRAC, the Base Relocation and Closure process. "I think it’s the worst land-use decision the federal government has ever made, at least in this region. They’ve taken 20,000 to 30,000 jobs out of the core of the region, away from transit-accessible locations, and put them in non-transit-accessible locations at Fort Meade, Andrews, Belvoir, Quantico and Charlottesville. They’ve created billions of dollars of transportation infrastructure demand that we don’t have funding for. The state and local governments in this region are going to spend years trying to fix the problems created by this BRAC move.""
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/11/AR2010061105756.html
I encourage all of you to keep an eye out for local road projects this upcoming year and make sure our current bike friendly roads stay that way and new improvements include being bike friendly. Just because mass transit is getting the shaft in planning does not mean bicycles should too. It should mean that making sure the needs of bicyclists in transportation projects is even more important.
Having transportation options is critical for the quality of life. Bicycles can turn a congested road into one with free flowing traffic (at least for the cyclists.) Bicycles can extend, enhance any mass transit system. Destinations just over a mile from a transit stop? That’s 5 minutes on a bike, turning something that was generally not assessable by mass transit into being accessible.
The State can cut corners on a lot of things but in light of what’s mentioned in these referenced articles bicycling should not be one of them. Accommodating bicycling is cheep and usually offers ancillary benefits to motoring traffic (why do you think the interstates have extra width in shoulders while bicyclists are prohibited?)

Both DC and NYC cyclists have been experiencing a backlash from motorist to which Richard Layman has an excellent response here: https://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2010/12/advocacy-process-bicyclists-and-road.html

I really recommend reading the whole thing but under the theory that some will not read the post till the end I’ll jump into the middle of his article:

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But they will never be happy with a paradigm of balanced mobility (“complete streets”), because anything less than complete dominance of the mobility agenda by the automobile is seen as a significant loss of privilege and status.
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An ideal and complete road safety agenda would include:

– recognition of the connection between higher operating speeds for motor vehicles and traffic fatalities, especially of pedestrians and bicyclists, and a re-engineering of road design and traffic enforcement to bring actual and desired operating speed of motor vehicle traffic into balance — REMEMBER THAT IN DC, MOST OF THE STREETS HAVE A 25 MPH POSTED SPEED LIMIT.

– recognition that motor vehicles, because of of their weights and speeds bear disproportionate responsibility for a safe road network

– recognition of how the rules of the road are written to favor motor vehicles and are often unfair to other users and therefore, traffic safety laws need to be rewritten to better balance the safety needs of all users, particularly those who are most vulnerable (pedestrians and bicyclists) (ALSO RECOGNIZE THAT IN DC AND OTHER CENTER CITIES, A SIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF HOUSEHOLD TRIPS ARE TAKEN ON FOOT OR ON BICYCLE AS WELL AS PUBLIC TRANSIT, AND LAWS IN SUCH PLACES SHOULD RECOGNIZE THIS.)

– enactment of Idaho Stop for bicyclists. This allows bicyclists to treat stop signs and red lights as yield signs WHEN THERE IS NO ONCOMING TRAFFIC, which specifically means stop when there is oncoming traffic — that means no weaving!

– driver responsibility for ped and bike crashes comparable to the Netherlands. This recognizes that motor vehicle operators, because their vehicles are significantly heavier and faster, much exercise a great deal of caution and responsibility when driving, unlike the passive system of motor vehicle safety in place in the U.S., which takes negligence and death for granted (see “Wrong Turn: How the fight to make America’s highways safer went off course” from the New Yorker).

– serious penalties for motor vehicle operators for causing injury and death

– insurance and registration systems for bicyclists

– better training for police officers wrt bicycling as traffic, including traffic investigation

– posting in real time traffic accident data

– and the implementation of a Pedsafe/Bikesafe accident investigation and response system for the resolution of structural-design issues contributing to accidents

– refresher tests upon drivers license renewal on ped and bike issues

– mandatory training/complete curriculum developed in K-12 at the early and late elementary levels, in middle school/junior high, and in high school on pedestrian and cycling safety, maintenance (this is something I recommended in the Western Baltimore County bike plan) — only by creating and delivering a complete pedestrian, bicyclist, and road safety curriculum throughout childhood and adolescence can we be assurred that we all know how to be safe, regardless of transportation mode.

– changes in the driver education curriculum to increase awareness of/safety pedestrians and bicyclists

– requirements on organizations operating heavy vehicle fleets so that their drivers are required to take and pass additional driver education with regard to operating heavy vehicles in areas with high pedestrian and/or bicycle traffic.

The problem that WABA faces is the classic one of the boundary spanner, where they have multiple stakeholder groups to satisfy, in this case at least four groups:

– elected officials who pass laws and who are lobbied by WABA
– appointed officials who enforce laws and also provide funds to WABA for technical training purposes
– members
– the general public, who the advocacy organization also seeks to influence.

Automobilists are quick to complain about loss of privilege and their seeming noticing of flagrant bicyclist road safety transgressions. They call and complain to both elected and appointed officials.

On the other hand, bicyclists rarely complain in a straightforward manner about flagrant road safety violations on the part of motor vehicle operators, especially speeding, failure to yield, failing to stop at stop signs, running red lights, reckless driving and road rage, verbal assault, etc.

WRT the above “master list” of a more complete and balanced road safety agenda, public officials aren’t in the position of being able to call for most of those provisions, because it challenges the dominant paradigm concerning automobility.

I know that when I was the bicycle and pedestrian planner in Baltimore County, I only felt comfortable mentioning four of those provisions (curriculum, heavy equipment operator training, changes in driver education and licensing), and as it was three were eliminated from the draft between the time I submitted the draft and the posted version. I needed advocates to help me push the envelope.

Advocacy organizations have the luxury and responsibility for laying out full and complete agendas so that the process of building and passing and implementing new paradigms can occur.

WABA, in a follow up entry, “Resolve, to set the stage for even stronger advocacy in 2011” claims that the responsible biking pledge is a necessary foundation for stronger advocacy in the new year.

I hope that is true and that we will see advocacy for a rebalancing of responsibility on those with the most power (motor vehicles) and greater protection for the most vulnerable, in our policies, laws, and actions in 2011 and beyond.

Continue reading “The advocacy process, bicyclists and the road safety agenda”

38.5% of all traffic fatalities in Wicomico are pedestrains, second only to Baltimore City.
"We’re not out to generate revenue. We have to use 21st century technology to protect kids in our school zones," Lewis [Wicomico County Sheriff] told council members.
Continue reading “Wicomico sheriff advises: Check your speed”

One of my theories of where road designs have gone wrong is the use of expressway like features (where bike/peds are prohibited) on roads where bikes and peds are allowed and the result is a mixed message of who has the right-of-way as well as encouraging "creative" use by the classes of users not really accommodated in the design.
Here we have the designers of the roadway saying "If I was a pedestrian, I would walk a mile just to cross the road." Of course the reality of this is very few people would be willing to do this but there is a tendency to think as long as we require this people will do it, totally ignoring the human factor. Additionally the problem is compounded by putting local road designs on an expressway. This intersection from a pedestrian point of view is not much different then crossing any other major arterial: Street continues on the other side of the crossing street, check; pedestrian refuge triangle to the left of a hot right turn lane, check; pedestrian refuge area on the median, check. We have a major failure in distinguishing expressways from local streets, they are looking more and more identical and that plain and simple is not complete streets.
My point of this post is to go beyond just pedestrian error and look how we are designing public space.
Continue reading “Man Killed While Crossing Route 50”

from Getting There by Michael Dresser
In June 2009, the Getting There column recounted the story of lead-foot lobbyist Bruce C. Bereano, who had amassed a startling number of traffic tickets during his driving career.
At the time, the colorful Bereano had been ticketed 22 times in the state since 1996 — though the disbarred attorney won not-guilty verdicts in about one-third of those cases.
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The tickets follow an April 30 citation in Queen Anne’s County for going 70 mph in a 50-mph zone. Though Bereano frequently contests speeding tickets, in this case he pleaded guilty and the judge knocked the convicted speed down to 59 and let him off with a fine and court costs amounting to $60. Had he paid by mail, the fine would have been $160.
It’s puzzling why any judge would give a break to Bereano at that time because he had a guilty finding on another speeding ticket in June 2009 and a probation before judgment on another ticket the previous month.
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On one hand, it’s pretty funny how this guy keeps getting off or getting slaps on the wrist despite a record of speeding convictions. But all it would take is one crash in which someone is hurt, and the humor would quickly go away.
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Continue reading “Lax on speeding”

from Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog
In the past, I have written on the value of fractured and broken legs. Now, in a relentless, unyielding effort to cover the settlement and trial value of every single bone in the human anatomy, let’s thin slice broken legs a little thinner: femur fractures in Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Virginia.
This month’s Metro Verdicts Monthly graph on the front of their publication compares verdict and settlement amounts for femur fractures in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia. Since 1987 the median verdict or settlement amount of a femur fracture case in the District of Columbia has been $250,000.00, and in Virginia it has been $200,000.00. However, the median verdict or settlement in a femur fracture case in Maryland has been $75,000.00. The national average is $167,000.
Why are Maryland femur fracture cases valued at roughly 35% of the value of a femur fracture case in D.C. or Virginia?
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Continue reading “Value of Femur Fractures”