While many office workers hunkered down in their home office a movement swept across the United States like wildfire. Its name: "Slow Streets". What would take years in the normal bureaucratic grist mill of local traffic planning was churned out within weeks of the initial lockdown last spring. Before motorists or residents could think twice, they faced makeshift barricades on their local streets that looked like some tactical urbanists would have nailed them together overnight. This isn't far from the truth.
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| Slow Streets at Perkins Homes (Photo: Philipsen) |
Baltimore was on the ball with a City Council bill matching the approach of other cities: Introduced on May 11, the bill passed a week later as an ordinance that mandated a minimum of 25-miles of Slow Streets in Baltimore City. The temporary program is intended to discourage residents and visitors from driving on all “Slow Streets” unless they are necessary to reach their final destination and provide residents more space for "social distancing". The ordinance expires when social distancing is no longer needed. City DOT established a website where the program is explained:
The Slow Streets program is intended to support safe, essential physical activity by creating more space for social distancing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. DOT has implemented the 25-mile goal mandated by The Baltimore City Council. The program is now in its “Evaluation Phase”. The public comment period ended on January 24th. We appreciate your feedback and will publish the results soon. Check back here for updates.
"Slow Streets" urges all people driving to drive slowly and safely to respectfully share the road with people walking and biking. Mayor Jack Young was in support of it and expanded it around Lake Montebello, a popular bike and hiking spot. Soon Baltimore City had the full 25 miles of designated Slow Streets in place.
Slow Streets in many cities: San Francisco
But soon the insight dawned that a simple street barricade won't change behavior much. When the wooden barricade showed up on Paca Street, just north of Franklin Street, presumably to protect the residents of Seton Hill and provide better access to Seton Park, it was obvious that the heavily traveled corridor wouldn't be calmed by this simple contraption. It was soon pushed aside and then disappeared altogether.
Per the bill City DOT had made an effort to apply the Slow Streets evenly and include more distressed communities as well. Barriers along the Perkins Homes on Gough Street were simply ignored by drivers traversing on this route and it was not obvious what the residents of Perkins Homes would do with the barren and presumably calmer street, even though they don't have lots of open space.
A clear shortcoming of the fast roll-out was that residents had little say in it. This has been a problem in other cities as well. Some residents liked what they saw, others less so.
Residents of Hunting Ridg,e where an entire area was zoned as "Slow Street", took their kids on out for a small Halloween parade in the middle of Glen Allen Street, a perfect use, but just for a day. As DOT Director Steve Sharkey explains: The law requires people to use the sidewalk if there is one, the Slow Street designation doesn't change that. 50 years after the Dutch invented the Woonerf, (a small residential street with a shared surface in which the playing kids have the right of way and cars are only tolerated as guests), such regulation is still not present in the US traffic encyclopedia titled "Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices" or MUTC. Asked about the regulations and the prospects for shared streets DOT spokesperson Virgil German confirmed:
Woonerf sign in Europe: Kids first
"Current state legislation makes a woonerf or shared street more difficult with our existing infrastructure because pedestrians are technically required to utilize the sidewalk on an active/open street. However, this style of street is being designed/constructed in areas around the city with more dense activity, including Port Covington and the planned entertainment district on Warner Street." (City DOT, Virgil German)
As it stands now, DOT is in an evaluation phase. As Mr German informed me, "BCDOT is in the process of considering the placement of signs at key locations to deter “cut-through traffic,” where barriers were previously placed until we can procure new, more durable barriers". This is whats City DOT's website says:
During the evaluation phase, residents will notice short term changes to the Slow Streets program. As a result of our preliminary findings, BCDOT will remove the temporary street barriers to address ongoing community concerns and maintenance issues. BCDOT is currently working to secure funding for upgraded barriers that will enhance the Slow Streets program. The temporary barriers have been removed and Slow Streets signage and information will be reinstalled. (DOT website)
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| Outdoor seating carved out from Thames Street. (Photo: Philipsen) |
Other changes that Baltimoreans saw popping up, almost over night, are the outdoor dining spaces that were carved out from curbside parking or, at times, even from travel lanes.
Those type installations had been before only as one-day exhibits of creative "tactical urbanism" under the label PARKing Day, a movement that initiated in San Francisco.
Outdoor dining was for years something that was relegated to skinny sidewalks, some terraces and rooftops but generally much more rare in Baltimore than tourists know it from Barcelona, Paris or Florence or Mexican tourist towns. A few cities such as Montreal had developed the mini terraces in the street as a formal annual city program that expanded restaurant space during the warmer months of the year and gave Montreal even more of an old world flair.
It isn't clear what the long-term prospects of Slow Streets are and how this ad-hoc measure can fold into the longstanding "Complete Streets" program in effect in Baltimore, also based on City Council bill. That one, though, had been in the making for years and is progressing at a sluggish pace. The program's most visible pieces are a few protected bike lanes and about 5 miles of designated bus lanes. In spite of explicit language in the Complete Streets bill that specifically addresses equity, the concept of complete streets is eyed with suspicion by some who see it as a means of gentrification.
DOT's Virgil German expresses optimism how the Slow Streets can advance:
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| Children Halloween parade in Hunting Ridge Photo: Philipsen |
We believe that enhanced traffic calming measures that incorporate using traffic diverters or alternating one-way patterns can be an evolution of the Slow Streets Program, where streets would be calmed to decrease traffic volume and traffic speeds while increasing the opportunity for recreation. Our agency is also looking at opportunities to close streets to vehicular traffic entirely, like in the case of Lake Montebello, or other opportunities in and around parks. (City DOT, Virgil German)
As in many other instances, the COVID-19 pandemic has been like a magnifying glass. In the case of Baltimore's streets, it highlighted how important the streets are as a public space that can be so much more than just a conduit for traffic. The many new outdoor restaurant spaces will certainly be welcome even beyond the pandemic.
If the view of the street as a meaningful public space prevails even after the pandemic subsides, Baltimore will have become better for it.
Klaus Philipsen, FAIA
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