It’s a race for space between bikers and motorists in Maryland’s fastest growing municipality. Frederick City officials are working to make the city more bike friendly, but as a result, motorists may soon find it harder to find parking.
According to the National Institute of Health, riding a bike can help to lower the risk of cardiovascular disease and type two diabetes, as well as improve mental health and well-being.
David Edmisnon, Transportation Planner for the City of Frederick, said that many residents benefit from current biking infrastructure. Yet, accidents between motorists and cyclists can really put the brakes on those benefits.
“We’ve seen a lot of crashes at corners,” Edmondson said. “We’ve had issues where people have been killed, but a mistake should not be fatal or life changing in that kind of way.”
Edmondson said the city is working on a new transportation plan called Let’s Move Frederick. It seeks to lessen the frequency and impact of accidents by narrowing roads to slow traffic and introduce designated lanes for cyclists.
“Let’s Move Frederick is what it would take to make Frederick a world class bicycling city,” Edmondson said.
Susan Churchill has served on Frederick’s Neighborhood Advisory Council, better known as NAC, for over a decade. It gives residents a place to make their voices heard by city officials.
As a Frederick City resident, Churchill is worried that Let’s Move Frederick will leave many of her neighbors without a place to park.
“There are many people who own more than two vehicles and the townhouse developments do not have guest parking,” Churchill said. “So once you use your two spaces, everybody else has to park on the streets, and that all will disappear.”
Edmondson says that Let’s Move Frederick is a plan that is built around the people who will use it. He says the city has already tried working with residents.
“We’ve done questionnaires and surveyed,” Edmondson said. “We’ve sought input for individual projects, and we’re trying to build a network that makes sense.”
Despite Edmondson’s statement, Churchill is concerned at what she sees as a lack of communication from the city. She says that city officials don’t interact with the NAC enough.
“I’ve been on the NAC board for a long time, and it’s been probably eight years since the last time an elected official showed up,” Churchill said.
Alyssa Boxhill is the chair of the Frederick City active mobility advisory Committee. The AMAC advises City officials on how to best create a safe, equitable transportation network. Boxhill says as a resident of Frederick City, she can understand the concerns of others.
“I’m actually one of those people who would lose my parking space,” Boxhill said. “However, I’m also a regular bicycle commuter, so I’m sort of looking at this from both sides of the coin.”
Arthur Anderson is a resident of Downtown Frederick and isn’t just concerned about having enough parking spaces. Having ridden a bike for over seventy years, he was confused when a bike lane was put in on the right side of market street.
“I thought, ‘No, I don’t want to be there on my bicycle, because I’ll be cutting directly across in front of traffic, and I don’t know if they know that I’m going to be doing that,’” Anderson said. Anderson suggested that cyclists should be given diagonal crossing lanes that allow them to move with traffic.
Edmondson, of Let’s Move Frederick, said that comments like Anderson’s are what the city needs to hear.
“What serving the public means is listening, and what trade off we have to take a look at as planners,” Edmondson said. “To provide us with direction, and to have a dialogue between us and people who have to live with these choices in terms of their everyday life.”
Edmondson hopes to be ready to present Let’s Move Frederick to the Frederick City Council by march.
