Street overhaul: Des Moines beats Baltimore

As a keynote speaker at Transit Choices  meeting this Friday Baltimore's new  transportation Director Michelle Pourciau who comes from private consulting after 22 years with DOT in the District of Columbia including a brief stint as acting director stressed the need for a comprehensive transportation plan and a systematic asset inventory. She characterized herself as impatient, a planner who can think beyond the pavement, on the job 24/7 and described "her house" as including the largest piece of real estate in the city: the streets.

Baltimore bike lane challenges (Bikemore)

After Pourciau, Bikemore's Executive Director Liz Cornish took the stage. Her topic was much more mundane: An update on bicycling in Baltimore. With Porciau and her key staff (Frank Murphy, Valorie Lacour) still in attendance, Cornish started with a quiz: Which US city has recently announced the most aggressive street overhaul? The guesses included all the usual suspects, Portland, Seattle, New York and Washington, all cities which made big strides in redistributing their streets. The answer which Cornish revealed surprised everybody: Des Moines Iowa. What moved this town in Iowa to the top of the heap was a decision of its city council on Monday of this week to adopt a new mobility plan for downtown Des Moines which calls for eliminating nearly every one-way street, reducing the number of vehicle lanes and growing the city's network of bike lanes. The plan had been conceived with the help of  the Urban Land Institute, ULI and the Des Moines business community.

Pourciau speaks at Transit Choices
(photo: Edelson)

"This isn't just an exercise to add bike lines. "The purpose of the project is to really focus on safety of all users, including drivers, by slowing traffic to the speed limit, and to encourage economic development." Larry James, chairman of the Urban Land Institute of Iowa.

The plan has “Short term” components for 2018 and 2019; “medium term” for 2020 and 2021; “long term” for 2022 and 2023 and is supposed to cost around $33 million. This is pretty fast. The secret: Des Moines isn’t proposing to rebuild any of its streets and, instead, is just reallocating existing road space. The bulk of the overall modest cost isn’t even for paint, signs, curbs or posts  but for adjusting traffic signals when one way streets turn into two-way streets.

Des Moines pilot project for street overhaul (People for Bikes)

Maybe Des Moines' plans wont happen as fast as they plan to implement them. But they won't have any difficulty beating Baltimore as Cornish proceeded to show next. Baltimore's progress in realizing its own bike masterplan, not to mention conversion of one-way streets, is so sluggish, one could call it a standstill. The once projected rate of 7.5 miles of bike facilities per year has been missed by a wide margin and one-way street studies and other risky proposals such as closing roadspace next to McKeldin Plaza sit on the director's desk on the pile of undecided matters. As Pourciau wistfully noted, many things had been put off because the Department was "waiting for her", leaving her with a big backlog of matters ranging from the Circulator that continues to cost more than its funding sources provide (we won't cut any service next year, Pourciau promised) to postponed decisions about eliminating certain rush hour parking restrictions. That unprocessed load is large even before the transportation plan and the inventory will take up additional resources. The plan is supposed to be started early next year with the help of one of the on-call consultants and be completed within six months, a record time for these types of plans.

Bikemore proposal for North Avenue

A good starting point for demonstrating how an aggressive overhaul of Baltimore's streets could look is North Avenue Rising, a project based on a federal TIGER grant that is supposed to increase transportation equity, enhance economic development and make the 5 mile corridor a friendlier street. The project recently made its official debut at a series of community meetings which didn't satisfy Liz Cornish who tweeted:

"We can afford a project that gets North Avenue right the first time. We can't afford to spend $27,330,000 on the existing project. North Ave + the people deserve better" (Liz Cornish on Twitter)

Cornish points to a  Bikemore survey about the North Avenue project where she suggests separated bike-lanes and dedicated transit lanes in the center. At Friday's Transit Choices meeting founder and chair Jimmy Rouse topped Cornish's assessment with his own vision: A streetcar running from Hilton to Milton. " What better way to tell the communities in east and west Baltimore that somebody cares" he asked.

It looks like Pourciau will have her hands full.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

People for Bikes about the Des Moines plan