An illustration from Bike Snob’s new book. And please motorists stop make cycling feel this way.
Continue reading “Everyone Is Trying To Kill Me… Says BSNYC”
City to City Century
Man gets 7 years in fatal hit-and-run
Ran over woman who was walking to church
By SCOTT DAUGHERTY, Staff Writer
A Linthicum man was sentenced yesterday to seven years in prison on charges he ran over and killed a Glen Burnie woman as she walked to church last summer.
The sentence meted out to 27-year-old Matthew Evan Norwood ranks among the longest for an auto manslaughter case in county history, according to prosecutors.
Although most auto manslaughter sentences top out at 18 months so the defendant can serve the time in the county jail, Circuit Court Judge William C. Mulford II imposed a sentence long enough to ensure that Norwood serves at least five years behind bars.
"You had it all in this one," Deputy State’s Attorney William Roessler said, noting how Norwood’s record included four criminal convictions and six traffic convictions – including one for driving while intoxicated.
He also said 59-year-old Mary Bernice Collins worked with a greyhound rescue group and was killed while standing on a sidewalk across the street from her church.
"There was a traffic and criminal record, plus a nightmarish set of facts," he said.
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According to prosecutors, Norwood was driving a minivan north on Baltimore-Annapolis Boulevard about 6:50 p.m. when he jumped a curb near the intersection of Oak Lane. The van hit Collins as she stood on the sidewalk and continued without stopping.
The impact knocked Collins about 100 feet down the road into the front yard of a nearby home, Roessler said. She was on her way to attend Mass at Holy Trinity Catholic Church.
While paramedics were attending to Collins, county police found Norwood at a Royal Farms convenience store about two blocks away standing outside his minivan and looking at a flat tire.
Norwood told police he did not remember hitting Collins, only "clipping a curb."
But Norwood was not drunk at the time of the crash – only tired. A blood test found no alcohol, only two prescription drugs: the antidepressant Xanax and a narcotic analgesic, methadone.
It is unclear if he had a prescription for the drugs, but Murtha said his client knew they would make him tired and that he shouldn’t have been driving.
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Family members went on to complain that the state’s courts had been too lenient with Norwood in the past.
"This lack of punishment has enabled him to take the life of our beloved family member, Mary, and later my beloved brother Donald," James Smith Jr., one of Collins’ brother-in-laws, wrote in a letter to the court.
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New Report Tracks Urban Transit Emissions — Where Does Your City Rank?
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The emissions numbers get worse in less trafficked rail networks, such as the Baltimore Metro (0.919 pounds of CO2 per passenger mile, an average comparable to a car) and Cleveland’s rapid rail transit (0.805 pounds of CO2/passenger mile).
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[B’ Spokes: Seriously lets start thinking about “rubber rail” so we can put rapid transit where it makes sense rather then just where we have room for it.]
Continue reading “New Report Tracks Urban Transit Emissions — Where Does Your City Rank?”
Tree Baltimore/Bike Baltimore – THIS SATURDAY
Come out and make Baltimore
greener, while being green! We’re delivering trees by bike trailer!
Event starts 9AM at
Walter P
Carter Elementary School
– 820 E. 43rd St
If you can make it, please contact Nate Evans or Anne
Draddy
Nate Evans
Bike & Pedestrian Planner
Baltimore City Department of Transportation
417 E.
Fayette St, Rm. 555
Baltimore,
MD 21202
443.984.4094
BikePed Beacon — April 2010
| April 2010 |
IN THIS ISSUE |
| BIKE TO WORK DAY! |
| TAX BENEFITS |
| IN THE NEWS |
| NEXT ISSUE |
A Regional Bike and Pedestrian Newsflash
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Registration for Bike to Work Day opened earliier this month and already 400 people have registered! Outreach continues across the region with postcards and posters (contact us if you’d like to help distribute).
May is Clean Commute Month and National Bike Month. Celebrate by showing others how great it is to commute by bike or just ride for fun. With more of us out there enjoying the great riding weather, we may even be able to inspire others and surpass last years Bike to Work Day registration numbers!
The March edition of the BikePed Beacon reached over 1,000 readers like you, but we’d love to grow or list even further.
Please encourage someone new to sign up to receive the e-newsletter, get Bike to Work Day facebook updates to share, and register to ride on Bike to Work Day. Chances are if you find a co-worker to ride with, you are more likely to ride.
Thank you for all that you do to commute by bicycle.
Stephanie Yanovitz
Stephanie Yanovitz
BikePed Beacon Editor
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CAN YOU IMAGINE 2060?
Contribute your ideas to help make this region and our communities great places to live and work — for you, your children, and your children’s children.
Workshop participants will have an opportunity to share their values and ideas about how future transportation initiatives can make the region a better place to live. Later public workshops will deal more specifically with the planning process to achieve this vision. Attend one of these upcoming workshops!
Registration begins 30 minutes prior to each workshop. Additional details about transit access and driving directions, links to join the imagine 2060 e-mail list or the Facebook and Twitter online communities, and how to RSVP for an upcoming public workshop can be found by visiting the link below. |
Citizens and organizations from all around the Baltimore region are invited to take part in a groundbreaking series of public workshops to imagine the future of transportation. BIKE TO WORK DAY!Registration open and more rally details.  The 13th Annual Bike to Work Day (B2WD), hosted by the members of the Baltimore Metropolitan Council (BMC), will be held on Friday, May 21, 2010. Regional rally site coordinators are busy making arragements for bicyclists to party. At the rally site, riders will receive a free t-shirt, bicycle resources, and a Bicycle Commuter Guide for Employees and Employers, as well as be entered to win prizes (including a folding bike). If you are interested in being a sponsor for B2WD please contact BMC’s Stephanie Yanovitz at syanovitz@baltometro.org. You don’t have to wait until Bike to Work Day to start commuting by bike, transit, carpool, or walking! Information and help is always available on the B2WD web site.
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TAX BENEFITS
Since January 2009 a tax benefit for bicyclists has been available. If you ride your bike for a substantial portion of your commute, accept only the benefit for bicycling (not transit too), and use the fringe benefit for your bicycle then you can qualify.
Talk to your human resources department and your employer. Biking to work can improve productivity, build employee morale and reduce health care costs and monthly parking expenses.
Your office can start by appointing a Bike to Work Day coordinator and providing incentives and challenges for bicyclists. Ride as a group on Bike to Work Day.
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BIKE FRIENDLY BUSINESSES
Print out the Bike and Benefit Card! Bike and Benefit Card  |
Share information on Bike Friendly Businesses with your favorite attractions. Help build a benefit reward card to promote bicycling and businesses in your neighborhood.
>>Become a Bicycle Friendly Business
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In The News, Events, and Other Useful Links |
EVENTS
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IN THE NEXT ISSUE May’s BikePed Beacon will focus on Safe Routes to School and Street Smart Pedestrian and Bicyclist safety. With the good weather, longer daylight hours, and the end of the school year approaching our streets are used even more by the most vulnerable users. Send your stories and article ideas to syanovitz@baltometro.org. |
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 Stephanie Yanovitz
Senior Transportation Planner 410-732-0500 x1055 |
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ACT Sends Questionnaire to Planning Board Chair Candidates
[Baltimore Spokes: which I will highlight 3 of the 6 questions:]
3) Do you support the current growth policy which ties development to the movement of motor vehicles, or would you replace the "PAMR" and "LATR" tests with a growth policy that gives transit, pedestrian, and bicycle travel equal weight with automobiles?
4) Are minimum parking requirements, which make transit riders, pedestrians, and bicyclists pay for parking they don’t use and thereby subsidize drivers, wise policy in places with good transit service?
5) The Parks Department’s current policy is to clear snow only from roadways used by motor vehicles and not from roadways used exclusively by bicycles and pedestrians, even when the roadway used by bicycles and pedestrians carries far more people. Will you reverse this policy?
Continue reading “ACT Sends Questionnaire to Planning Board Chair Candidates”
BoltBus responds to St Paul bike lane issue
By cyclosity:
Reader Jed wrote in to let us[cyclosity] know about an update to the St Paul street bike lane / BoltBus parking situation. If you’ve ridden in the new lane, you might have encountered some large charter buses intruding into, or outright blocking the lane.
Their response is interesting to read for perspective, and is probably the best you could ask for short of “we will cease operations until we can stop blocking the bike lane” (I don’t think anyone wants that. BoltBus is probably the best way to get between New York and Baltimore, and I think there is a way Baltimore City can provide a good home for BoltBus and a safe lane for Baltimore cyclists. Oddly BoltBus did not reply to my email and those of a few others. No idea why Jed got the special treatment.
Thanks for your email. We have been addressing this issue with Nate Evans of the Baltimore City Department of Transportation. There wasn’t a bike lane on St. Paul prior to the recent street resurfacing project. Unfortunately, the taxi cabs staging in this area have made it difficult for us to pull on bus in completely parallel to the curb and that’s why sometimes the rear of our buses protrudes into the bicycle lane. We have asked the city for guidance on this issue and have recommended possibly moving the cabs stand back 10 more feet to alleviate this issue. We have also addressed this with our drivers operating from this location and our customer service staff to ensure that we don’t block the cycling lane while our vehicle is there. Hopefully you’ll see some improvement on this situation shortly. We are trying our best not to block this lane, however a 45 foot bus is not the easiest thing to maneuver in the limited space that the city has given us here.
I’ve only seen a few buses in the lane myself – but the times that I did, it definitely seemed like the taxis (or private vehicles) were not really blocking the bus standing zone, and the driver probably had the extra 20 feet needed to park flush to the curb.
[B’ Spokes: Has anyone thought about putting bike lanes on the left> side of the street on one way streets? It avoids problems like this and door zone bike lanes and it is in our tool kit for our bike master plan.]
Continue reading “BoltBus responds to St Paul bike lane issue”
In Dallas, a Community Transforms a Street [video]
With about a thousand bucks and some elbow grease, neighborhood residents transformed a rundown city block for two days, creating a vibrant streetscape — a truly complete street. They painted a cycle track, opened a pop-up café in an empty storefront, put up some outdoor seating and calmed traffic. It’s a brilliant example of how, with a minimal amount of money and a full commitment from the community, places can be transformed quite literally overnight, revealing a wealth of untapped economic and social potential.
Continue reading “In Dallas, a Community Transforms a Street “
People For Bikes: Why Do You Ride? [video]
One of my favorite lines: “If I ride the only oil I will need is for my chain and oil tankers will haul chocolate milk.”