TheWashCycle

Port Covington Bike Plan

A Baltimore developer is planning to develop an old rail yard on the waterfront and the plan is to make it bike friendly.

Sagamore Development, a private real estate firm owned by billionaire Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank, has proposed a plan to redevelop Port Covington, a mostly industrial waterfront area in South Baltimore. 

The bike plan element will encircle the area in shared-use paths, add protected bike lanes and other paths for connections and include something called "sidewalk streets". The last doesn't sound like much to me, but the rest is good. It would also add a bike/ped path to the railroad bridge across the West Branch to Westport, where it could connect to the Gwynn Falls Trail.

It looks pretty good. The bridge is a swing span, so I wonder how they'll manage that.

Speaking of Baltimore, here's a photo of the new protected bike lanes in downtown. This is Cathedral St & Eager St, Baltimore, MD.

Photo courtesy of M.V. Jantzen

Baltimore to build Downtown Bicycle Network with 2.6 mile long PBL

Kind of outside my service area, but...

[City officials] agreed [January 14th]  to help pay for the Downtown Bicycle Network, a $1.2 million grid of routes.

The network will include what is expected to be the city's best bike lane: a 2.6-mile stretch of Maryland Avenue called a "cycle track," [a.ka. a Protected Bike Lane (PBL)]  in which bicyclists will be protected from traffic by a buffer of parked cars.

On Wednesday, the Board of Estimates approved spending about $300,000 to help pay for the project. Money from a federal program will cover the rest.

[City Transportation Director William Johnson] expects construction to begin as soon as winter is over, with completion by the end of the year.

The spending approved Wednesday includes $240,000 for Toole Design Group LLC to help to create the Maryland Avenue Cycle Track, a north-south bike lane, and five connecting east-west lanes on Centre, Monument, Madison, Preston and Biddle streets. The project was initially slated for completion last year, but was delayed while city officials did additional traffic analysis. 

The board also approved $52,000 for McCormick Taylor Inc. to do other work on the network.

Baltimore has 100 miles of on-street bike lanes, though few are protected by buffers and many stretches are not connected. The city also has 39 miles of off-road trails. The city is working to create another cycle track on Mount Royal Avenue and to launch a bike-sharing program.