Baltimore Circulator, still alive:
After the contract extension with the previous Charm City Circulator Transdev expired, the free Baltimore City bus service hit some bumps. (see here).
This week the service has resumed on all routes with 8 buses which is about half of the optimal fleet. 3 buses operate on the Purple Line, 2 on Orange and Green and 1 bus on the Banner route. The fleet is a mix of two city owned buses in the traditional colors, two are leased and four are owned by the new operator RMA which currently works on a three months "emergency contract" according to BCDOT spokesman German Vigil.
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| Charm City Circulator livery (Photo: BBJ) |
About the service level the City DOT Director Pourciau says "We believe the current service is comparable to what past vendor had at the end". This is maybe a bit rosy, the website still displays all services to have "major delays".
The buses currently run on a schedule and cannot be located via the NextBus app that was used by Transdev in the past. Pourciau says that the Transit App currently shows the scheduled runs and that she is hopeful that buses will sometime during the emergency contract period be able to show their actual locations.
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| Stopgap measures to keep the service running |
The City will enter a three year contract with RMA, a very short contract allowing the City to bring service and allocated funds in alignment and make adjustments to the routes. "We will be working closely with MTA, Pourciau says, "to ensure that the service is complimentary to MTA" and not duplicative. The current buses are temporarily serviced and maintained at a facility at BWI airport.
The promise of a new contract and operator is that the Charm City Circulator could regain its original stature as an innovative, clean, reliable and simple to use service and that funding and cost can finally be brought back into alignment.
Scooters are a hit in Baltimore
Matt Warfield, a City DOT planner shared some exciting scooter statistics: Since Bird and Lime were officially launched in the summer of this year 250,554 rides were taken on the scooters for a total of 324,534 miles. The total number of different users is 84,266. There are between 800 and 1,400 scooters in the streets each day. The city has established a maximum of 1,000 scooters for each vendor plus a 1,000 dock-free Lime bicycles which have not yet been launched.
Scooter operators aim for a minimum of three rides per scooter a day. According to Mr Warfield Baltimore's average is about 8 rides a day. A "heat map" of where the scooters were used showed a concentration downtown with a fairly good spread into the neighborhoods. Several rides on the map showed trips along arterials reaching to the outer edges of the city.
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| Electric Scooters landed in Baltimore: They are a success (SUN photo) |
The city operates under a 6 months pilot with the two dockless operators in which they pay $1 for each deployed scooter per day on top of a one time $15,00 base fee. Pourciau admitted that those money currently go into the general fund but promises that accounting is set up to delineate this income and eventually steer it into bike facilities.
The City requires that 25% of the fleet is dispatched in low income census tracts. The operators have to share their use data with the city, an ongoing issue across the USA. Cities are coordinating through the transportation organization NACTO to provide a uniform data request platform across many cities to avoid that individual administrations are getting the run around from Bird and Lime when it comes to data sharing.
Complete Streets legislation on path towards Council adoption
Ryan Dorsey's Complete Street legislation is moving through the legislative process and was passed in the City Council this Monday in the second reader. It will need one more pass in the Council to become law, provided the Mayor signs it. (Baltimore SUN). DOT Director Pourciau who had a fairly rough start with councilman Dorsey stated that she is excited about the Complete Streets policy and is now looking for "complete funds" to pay for it. Somewhat unique to Baltimore, the legislation has a strong equity component. The legislation requires that the City Department must “to the greatest extent possible, promote walking, biking, and public transit" and “ensure equity by actively pursuing the elimination of health, economic, and access disparities.”
MTA plans many improvements
MTA Administrator Kevin Quinn announced a slew of current MTA activities aiming to improve Baltimore's transit. The agency is currently ramping up to be the lead in the preparation of the new Baltimore Regional Transit Plan which was legislated in the last session. The agency introduced a mobile app that allows ticket purchases on all its modes via smart phone. The app has been downloaded 9,000 times since its introduction in late September. There is now also a 90 minute window for a free transfer, a step which used to cost extra.
Quinn reported that MTA is studying priority corridors for improvements on the current Link Bus service. All buses are now equipped with sensor that allows them to communicate with the City's traffic signals. In a phase two the transit signal priority (TSP) will be expanded to additional intersections. MTA received a $5.5 million grant "beyond the bus stop" allowing more real time bus signs, more operator bathrooms and some other improvements. The current 400 bus shelters will be expanded by 50% to a new total of 600 shelters. A new "cool" bus shelter design will be unveiled downtown shortly.
In addition, the MTA is improving the Camden and the BWI MARC stations with new facility buildings and is going to run a BWI area "microtransit" pilot which will alow dispersed businesses around the airport to get access to transit service.
Bike Network finally being constructed
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| Construcion between now and summer 2019 |
A new design negotiated betweenBikemore and BCDOT creates a fully-separated, two-way bike lane along Centre and Monument Streets from MLK/Eutaw to Washington Street. West of Guilford Avenue, Madison Street is planned to have a combination of separated lanes and buffered lanes, the latter in response to the fire code. There has also been opposition by the Director of Baltimore School for the Arts. As anybody familiar with the area knows, the zone around the school becomes very congested when school lets out because so many students are being picked up by parents and there is never any good way for them to park or do the pick-up.
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