Existing bike lanes remain unprotected and dangerous to use, and Baltimore's progress on improving bike infrastructure has slowed in recent years. Your voice can help make this city safer for all by calling for more protected bike lanes around Baltimore. Paint is not infrastructure!

Maps published by the Baltimore City Department of Transportation paint a bleak picture of biker accessibility. When compared to the most common biker routes, Baltimore’s bike lane coverage is woefully inadequate. These maps don’t make distinctions between protected bike lanes and limited signage sharrows either, meaning that a protected bike lane and a yellow sign are denoted as the same amount of bike protection on the map. For example, according to the map, the street I live on has on-street bike facilities. I wouldn’t have known it if the map hadn’t told me that was the case! The bike lanes that do exist in our city also tend to fade in and out of existence in an unpredictable way like at the intersection of Charles Street and West University Parkway, creating an environment where bikers have to diligently preplan their routes or ride on dangerous roadways with limited protection.

Not only is the coverage inadequate, but even the attempts at protecting bikers in Baltimore fall short, and this isn’t because we’ve just started trying to make our city more bike accessible. The Bicycle Master Plan was established in 2006 to make our city more bike accessible, yet still, we fail to see protected bike lanes in large quantities. I say protected because to echo what many bikers say, “Paint is not infrastructure.” While paint and signage will alert drivers of bikers on the road, it doesn’t actually do anything to protect bikers. Until the City of Baltimore takes on the fiscal responsibility to protect its citizens who choose to use a more sustainable and cost-effective mode of transportation, bikers will remain at risk.

If this petition gains the required amount of signatures, I will submit it to the City Council to ask them to put more funding into creating new bike lanes and protecting new ones.