City completes part of multiyear streetscape project designed to protect Baltimore bicyclists
BALTIMORE – A main route on Baltimore City's 2015 Bike Master Plan is now complete along Central Avenue.
In 2021, the city started to explore options to provide protected bicycle facilities while a two-phase streetscape project was underway there, a spokesperson with the Baltimore City Department of Transportation said.
The first phase of the project was completed several years ago. However, the final phase near Harbor Point and Harbor East was completed this past December.
Baltimore City DOT takes advantage of opportunities to implement elements of the City's Bike Master Plan while streets are being reconstructed or resurfaced, according to a spokesperson.
In this case, the city's goal was to provide "safe and comfortable options to everyone getting around the city regardless of their access to a vehicle."
Drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists may have noticed the bright green paint outlining the bike lane buffer that now lines part of Central Avenue.
"I think it's going to take some time for them to get used to it, especially if they're not familiar," Hunter Seech said. "But I think eventually, yeah. They're getting the cues that other people are using the road."
The Bike Master Plan aims to increase the bicycle network by adding all proposed routes by 2030.
In 2015, Baltimore had more than 100 miles of bicycle facilities already in place, according to the plan. However, an additional 253.6 miles are planned to complete the citywide network.
The plan calls for an average of 17 miles per year be to added to the network in order to meet the completion goal of 2030.
"We just have to continue to be courteous," biker Loring Cornish said. "The driver, the biker and the pedestrian: we all share the road."