Boston Street: DOT moving backwards

For years Boston Street hung in limbo after the Baltimore freeway wars were over and before the waterfront renaissance occurred. There still was an industrial rail spur embedded in granite cobble stone and occasionally a train came rumbling down the street. The only sign of what was to come was the Anchorage development and construction at Tindeco. The Sip and Bite served greasy food then as well, but little else looked like it does today when Boston Street connects some of the most desirable real estate in Baltimore.

When Boston Street was truly intermodal (1987)

There have been many discussions about the design of the street, from the initial community meetings leading to the initial conversion to the discussions about how to include bike lanes to how the street would function with light rail emerging from a tunnel at the American Can. The many previous studies of getting Boston Street right have not been lost on Baltimore's Department of Transportation which just finished yet another study:

Many previous transportation studies have been performed in the corridor and study area by the city, state, non-profit and federal agencies including the Southeast Strategic Transportation Vision, The Red Line and it’s Environmental Impact Statement, and strategic planning documents including the Bike Master
Plan, Water Transit Strategic Plan, Waterfront Partnership Transportation Task Force Strategy, Southeast Baltimore Complete Streets Plan, Citywide Truck Route Study as well as dozens of traffic impact studies for individual development projects. (BC-DOT)

Existing cross sections of Boston Street

With the entire country moving towards traffic calming, active modes, streetscape enhancements and "complete" multimodal streets, the general tenor of all these studies had been that the first conversion which had attempted to to do better than Key Highway, had still given the car too much space for Boston Street to be a real urban boulevard. With its 80' to 94' width and 4 lanes it was too wide to be comfortable for businesses, restaurants or walking along the street, let alone bicycling. The Red Line would have turned the predominantly four-lane section permanently into one with one lane each way, parking on each side and bike lanes over most of the length. Of course it would have also provided finally high capacity transit in the corridor.

It is a disappointment, then, that a few months after the new Director at BC-DOT, Ms Pourciau, was appointed her department comes out with a plan that isn't the fine culmination of previous efforts to tame the monster but goes backwards in time. The new plan gets it wrong from the first sentence on:

Plans for an east-west interstate highway for the corridor to connect I-83 to I-95 were canceled in the early 1980s. In it’s place, Boston Street was reconstructed into a four-lane boulevard between Conkling Street and Fleet Street. (BC-DOT)

This sounds as if not bulldozing a freeway through Fells Point was some kind of failure and not one of Baltimore's biggest victories ever. The four lane "boulevard" built ten years after the defeat of the interstate was in no way intended as its substitute.

Even with the Red Line there would still have been bike lanes and parking
as this 2014 presentation section shows

In spite of some fluff talk about bike stations, Zip cars and water taxi with a few zingers against MTA ("lack of frequent and direct transit service"), presumably to prove DOT's "multi-modal" credentials, the new report quickly makes clear what it sees as its main purpose: Efficiently moving high volumes of cars, the oldest and least creative goal of traffic engineering. The tired old metric of "level of service" (LOS) is trotted out for the intersections in the corridor grading them with letters gleaned from school report cards with F being the worst. But only one "failing" intersection was found (at Ponca Street), not to give this car centric metric any more credence than necessary, since it has long been discredited by progressive traffic planners for its definition (not getting the full line of cars through a light in one cycle) and for its single mindedness (capacity for cars).

With the emphasis on flow of traffic established, the proposed actions aren't surprising any more: Take ped crossing signals out, eliminate parking, restrict parking during rush-hour, add travel lanes, send bicycles to some remote side street: Overall a horror cabinet of failed traffic engineering out and as if Baltimore's traffic czar was still Henry Barnes and his chief consultant Robert Moses.

Eliminating parking on Fleet Street: from the DOT report

There is no talk about livability or pedestrian experience in the corridor, no mention of "complete streets" objectives, nor are objectives for a better modal split established. Instead, simply stating that the largest part of people found on the road are drivers from outside the city and reporting that polling showed that most people don't use transit is considered justification enough for the most tired set of transportation ideas this city has seen in years. Bikemore's assessment of the plan is right on target:

The Boston Street Multimodal Corridor Study is a plan to spend millions of dollars to dramatically boost the capacity on Boston Street for car commuters at the expense of safe walking, biking and public transit access for residents.

More car lanes, no bike, less parking 

It fails to take into consideration decades of planning for a more walkable, bikeable, livable Canton. It fails to follow planning-commission adopted city planning documents. It fails to meet standards in city’s adopted street design guides. It is a bad plan. (Bikemore)

Baltimore residents haven't heard much from Ms Pourciau since she took the lead at BC-DOT. Maybe it is time she hears from them!

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Bikemore assessment
DOT plan

From BC-DOT website:
This Study is now open for a 30 Day Public Comment period through September 14, 2017. Please Share your Comments regarding the report via this link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Boston30

Further inquiries regarding the planning study can be made by email to Ms. Gladys Hurwitz at Gladys.Hurwitz@Baltimorecity.gov or by calling the office at (410) 396-6856.