Blog Baltimore

For all those bicyclists in Baltimore (me being one as well) remember that even though you ride a bike, this doesn’t mean you’re above the law. Many bicyclists tend to forget that we have to abide by the same laws as cars and trucks.

This doesn’t give us the right to zip through red lights. This doesn’t give us the ride to fly across lanes cutting off cars. This also doesn’t give us the right to cut through pedestrians trying to cross the street. Just because we’re not covered by tons of steel doesn’t mean that we have the right to go anywhere and everywhere our bike will take us, including side walks, walkways, and pavilions.

At this time the police are lenient but if these sophomoric acts continue, we’ll start to see a crack down and I for one don’t want to get a ticket for riding on the sidewalk because some asshole decided to ruin it for the rest of us.

If you don’t believe me, you can read about it here.

http://www.sha.state.md.us/OPPEN/acom_bike_laws1.pdf

It’s long, its painfully legalese. You can read a summary of this information here for those who have a hard time with big words.

Ultimately, cars have horns and blinkers. We have our voices and our arms. Make sure to use every means possible to communicate with other bicyclists and vehicles. Don’t assume that they know you’re there. Don’t assume that they’re going in any specific direction. If you’ve got a voice, use it. Otherwise buy a bell damnit.

I was driving up Boston St. today and noticed that there’s bicycle lane designations on the right lane of the two lane street. Hopefully the signs will follow suite and provide safe travel up and down Boston Street. I know early in the mornings and at night, during the high traffic times, the street is definitelly not the safest to bike along. I’ll going to follow up with the Baltimore City Department of Planning about the progress. From what I can tell by the coloring on the plan listed here there’s a whole mess of new bike lanes that should be coming in to play.

Just an FYI out there for those that don’t know, as I’ve mentioned before Baltimore does have a bike plan. It’s somewhat lackluster and definitelly doesn’t support downtown all that much but here it is.

http://www.ci.baltimore.md.us/government/planning/bikeplan.php

I’d honestly like to see Baltimore do the right thing and take this opportunity to improve it’s mass transit, not only through bus lines and the light rail system (which it already screwed up royally) but also through bike and single stroke engine lanes. Granted there’s a lot of traffic in Baltimore but that doesn’t mean it’s going to get worse if the lanes were shifted to make them more bike friendly. The city is structured enough that those in the surrounding neighborhoods that do work downtown might actually take the opportunity to improve on their health by biking in to work. I know for one that there are many at the University of Maryland that are sick of paying the high prices for parking that might take this opportunity…I know I would.