The majority of Baltimore City Public School students don’t qualify for yellow bus service during the school year because they live less than a mile away. But advocates say it’s not always safe for pedestrians who walk, bicycle or take public transportation to class on city streets. A new law that went into effect over the weekend routes money collected from traffic violation tickets in the city to various programs to make streets more pedestrian friendly.
The Complete Streets and Safe Routes to School Programs law, known as HB73 during the legislative session, authorizes the city to direct funds from traffic enforcement cameras into the city’s Complete Streets Programs and State Highway Administration’s Safe Routes to School projects.
Ticket revenue collected from Baltimore City red light cameras, drivers who are fined for going over the school zone speed limits or blowing past school buses when the red stop sign is out are included. In 2018, the city generated $9.6 million in fines from its automated speed camera network.
Del. Robbyn Lewis, who represents District 46 in Baltimore City said the law is designed to “put pedestrians, rollers and riders first, in the hierarchy of mobility.”
Lewis added that “Streets and roads are designed to move drivers quickly through space at the expense of the safety of people walking and moving around in other ways.”
In 2018, Baltimore City passed its first Complete Streets Ordinance, with the goal of changing the transportation landscape of the city and prioritizing vulnerable populations.
Prior to the new law that went into effect on Oct. 1, Lewis said there was never money in the city’s budget dedicated to Complete Streets and Safe Routes to School Programs.
Now pedestrian safety projects and more infrastructure for bicycles can be funded.
Jed Weeks, Interim Executive Director of Bikemore, a non-profit that advocates for accessible transportation, suggested that the city improve infrastructure for all riders.
“Anyone from around eight years old to 80 years old feel comfortable using it alone, or with their family,” Weeks said about bike lanes separated from traffic either by parked cars or concrete barriers.
That means kids who live close to school can get there safely and school systems can create “biking or walking school buses,” he said.
That’s when a group of students get together and ride or walk to school on the same path.
“And that's just like a big pack of people that's very visible, and it makes it a lot safer,” he said.
In Baltimore, there are more than 30 traffic-related fatalities and 5,000 people injured on city streets each year, according to the city’s Complete Streets data released in 2021.
The Maryland Department of Transportation wants to reduce that number to zero by 2030.
Department of Transportation’s Lead Bike Planner, Matthew Hendrickson, said that while the city has made progress with creating safe and complete streets, many neighborhoods still face challenges because of high speed and traffic.
“A lot of those are impacting our youth and our kids being able to access school," Hendrickson said.
The goal for the city’s plan is to ensure safety and “prioritizing the school system within that network, so that kids can get from their house to and from school safely,” he said.
On average 29% of Baltimore households do not have access to a personal vehicle, according to the complete streets report. It's as high as 66% in historically disadvantaged and underserved neighborhoods.
Lewis said that the lack of complete streets is a matter of safety and racial justice in Baltimore.
