by Mat Edelson – Urbanite
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The signs—or to be more accurate, the sharrows—are everywhere. Ask any cyclist about these international road lane markings—usually two forward-pointing stripes sitting atop an outlined bicyclist—and they’ll tell you that they amount to a two-word battle cry: "We belong."
While Congress wrestles with the idea of "Complete Streets"—a 2009 bill by that name, aimed at making all streets accessible to cyclists and other non-motorized users, ultimately died in committee—policymakers are still targeting bicyclists as key players in transforming neighborhoods. Last March, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, perhaps caught up in the moment, eschewed the speaker’s podium and jumped on a table at the packed National Bike Summit in Washington, D.C.; he was there selling the Livable Communities Initiative of 2010 by announcing that President Obama planned to set aside federal money for bike paths. (The bill never got to the floor, but Obama hasn’t slashed those funds in his proposed federal budget.) [B’ Spokes: Just to note Complete Streets is not dead in congress just the issue has become very polarized.]
LaHood told the assembled D.C. biking advocates that he and his wife spent every nice weekend cycling on the 200-plus-mile-long C&O canal. "We ride [the canal] as far we can," he said.
"Pittsburgh?" called out some of the seasoned riders in the crowd.
But in truth, it’s not going to be the hardcore, spandex-clad, 3-percent-body-fat cycle hounds that lead this extreme urban makeover. While these lean, mean, veering machines prove, by sheer persistence, that people-powered vehicles can breathtakingly navigate even the most car-coveted thoroughfares, if there’s to be a biking revolution in Baltimore—or anywhere else in this country—it’s more likely to take place at space-normal speed, among waistlines as accustomed to donuts as Diet Pepsis.
Think of it as the bell curve of potential ridership. On the far left side of the bell, representing perhaps 10 percent of cyclists, are the hale and hearty sorts. "We call them the ‘Kamikaze Cyclists,’ the bike messengers, and, frankly, people like myself who’ll ride no matter what the conditions are," says Greg Cantori, executive director of the Knott Foundation and former president of Bike Maryland. On the other end of the curve is a group, Cantori says, "who won’t ride no matter what." But between those two groups, there’s a large group—perhaps 60 percent of the population—who will ride if the right incentives and safety protections are in place. [B’ Spokes: If my memory is correct the Baltimore Metropolitan Council did a survey in the early 2000s that came up with this 60% of the population would like to bike which is rather startling considering we have 80% car ownership, that’s not a huge difference.]
Experience has shown across the world that if cities create a solid infrastructure, biking can catch on extremely quickly in a populace seeking alternative forms of transportation. Call it the sardine effect: The little critters, before they end up in those tin cans, like to swim in one direction, but studies show that just 15 percent moving against traffic can cause the entire school to shift en masse.
In Baltimore, Bike Czar Nate Evans (his official title at the city’s Department of Transportation is Bicycle & Pedestrian Planner) has done a quarterly ad hoc riding census, standing on relatively busy bikeways such as Falls Road and Maryland Avenue. The citywide numbers speak of a small but growing ridership, up 35 percent in 2010 over the previous year, according to Evans, who puts the total number of daily commuters at "maybe a thousand." That’s progress, but as a percentage of total commuters that’s pretty paltry: The much-maligned Light Rail draws, at last count, 36,300 daily riders; Metro pulls 56,800; and buses 232,857, according to the Maryland Transit Administration. [B’ Spokes: Just to note, I would love to see those numbers by dollar spent (I’ll assert over the long term in real dollars supporting cycling costs less per person then other modes) but even more importantly we still have no way of capturing daily bike riders like they do for riders of mass transit or even cars.]
As an aggregate, one wonders what bicyclists’ numbers have to be to achieve some kind of critical mass.
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It’s been a long time since anyone in Baltimore had that kind of unifying force. Former Mayor Sheila Dixon, renowned for her biking forays around town, didn’t have the time—or perhaps the desire—to make cycling a central focus of her administration. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is considered middle-of-the-road on the issue. The results? There’s no doubt that biking in this town has suffered, relative to the rest of the country, because it lacks a single, high-visibility advocate. In a very real sense, Baltimore’s just beginning to kick off its training wheels.
Given Mobtown’s notoriously fractious nature, it seems only de rigueur that the push for biking here is coming from many small but determined voices, as opposed to a shout from on high. Like free-floating ions, these biking proponents aren’t always the most cohesive lot, but it’s not for lack of trying. And there’s a chance—just a chance, mind you—that they could coalesce into a mighty powerful front.
The pieces are nearly all in place: From the growth of cycling competitions to the recognition (and city funding) of infrastructure improvements, the consciousness for the potential of biking in this town has probably never been greater. More than 1,300 riders participated in last year’s thirteenth annual regional Bike to Work Day, a 30 percent jump over 2009. Other regular events such as Tour Dem Parks and the availability of some 39 miles of off-road trails and 77 miles of city bike routes are drawing greater numbers to local cycling clubs and regional organizations such as Bike Maryland.
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It falls upon the city’s Nate Evans to help ensure riders can get there safely. Buried deep inside the City’s Department of Transportation data cloud is Baltimore’s Bike Master Plan. Evans has the unenviable task of trying to connect the dots, and he’s been forced to take an entrepreneurial approach. Three years ago, Evans became the first (and to date, only) full-time city employee (he has a part-time assistant) whose primary responsibility is getting bikers on city streets and getting them home in one piece. His budget on day one was $1.5 million; since then it’s been slashed (hello, recession) nearly in half.
To stretch his bucks, Evans has learned to play piggyback. Whenever a road-resurfacing project is on the transportation department’s book, Evans tries to get, at a minimum, some bike lane striping and sharrows laid down. (So if you’re wondering why bike lanes suddenly appear and then disappear, well, there you go.) In theory, given enough time and enough lane resurfacing, the city’s bike lanes will eventually knit together to provide riders with some sense of continuity.
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While one can’t blame Evans for working with the hand he’s been dealt, the lack of political will to create completely segregated lanes at least along some major north-south and east-west routes is distressing to many riders. City Hall’s response could best be characterized as good intentions but, to date, incomplete (to be kind) follow-through. Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke, a biking enthusiast, introduced seven biking bills in 2009 either enacted or adopted by the city. These included a Cyclists’ Bill of Rights, a "Complete Streets" approach to road planning, requirements to install bike-friendly storm grates on city streets, and "BMore Streets For People"—Baltimore’s official adoption, according to the bill, of Bogotá’s Ciclovia program, which had been tried on a small scale in Roland Park earlier in 2009 (and again in 2010), attracting some 1,000 participants.
The initiatives have been battling inertia or downright resistance from the start. Despite the police department’s pledge to work with the city on BMore Streets, it reportedly wants to slap a $35,000 fee on coordinators who wanted to expand the event to include a 12-mile loop from Lake Montebello to Druid Hill Reservoir. "That’s just not sustainable; you’re not going to be able to have that kind of event every few weeks," says Bike Maryland Executive Director Carol Silldorff. "Other cities have allowed crossing guards or trained volunteers [to control intersections] so it almost costs nothing. We want to work with the police, and I think they want to work with us, but until their fear of liability is diminished, the price will be too outrageous for us."
Switching storm grates would seem to be a simple enough fix: Turn the grates 90 degrees, perpendicular to the lane, so a rider’s tires won’t get stuck in them, destroying the wheel (and sometimes the cyclist) in the process. And yet, when Public Works was initially approached about changing or adapting the storm grates, they threw up their own roadblock, requiring the Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Committee to produce documentation showing that the new grates would conduct water. "We said to them, ‘Every other city in the country is putting in this newer design’; and our Public Works was saying, ‘Oh, no, that doesn’t have sufficient water flow,’" recalls Greg Hinchliffe, who chairs the committee. [B’ Spokes: A note on liability and storm grates, a bit of an oversimplification but just as a pot hole can be a hazard but as long the City has a procedure for fixing them there is no liability. But if the City decides to stop fixing pot holes to save money it will open itself up to lawsuits. The same goes with storm grates, the City has received notice that they are a hazard and there is no procedure to fix them in place (yet.) While I am not a lawyer there have been successful multi-million dollar lawsuits elsewhere by cyclists who have gotten injured by these things. To close the liability gap the City needs to start a procedure to fix these things.]
Biking in Baltimore is clearly at a crossroads. The opportunities are there (as are the bike racks—some three hundred of them since Nate Evans showed up), but so are the impediments. The deciding factor may ultimately be found in the distinction between livability and survivability. Eventually those terms, when relating to the city’s viability, might become synonymous. If the future of any city is, arguably, its youth, then catering to those aspects of city life they desire—and being bike-friendly certainly ranks up there—could economically sustain a city such as Baltimore, which currently is seeing its best and brightest prospects leave, post-college, in rates higher than comparable cities.
"Companies, if they decide to move to or stay in Baltimore, are looking at who is here that’s educated, young, talented, and available," says Mary Pat Clarke. "A lot of young people commute and get around on bicycles. If that’s the case, let’s become a bike-friendly city, encourage this as a city for young people."
Maybe what biking comes down to is a two-wheeled prescription for health, for both Baltimore and its citizens. It may well be a ride worth taking.
—Urbanite contributing writer Mat Edelson’s first bike was a banana seat Schwinn on which he learned to ride wheelies and skid to a perfect, rubber-burning stop.
Continue reading “Can Baltimore become a truly bike-friendly city? Can it afford not to?”
