It only took about $20,000 — chump change as far as transportation infrastructure is concerned — to lay down some paint, drill plastic bollards into the road and put up a handful of road signs. But officials are hopeful that the small changes will have a huge impact on pedestrian safety.
A roughly ⅓-mile section of Washington Boulevard, a bustling and confusing section of Route 1 that cuts through eastern Howard County, debuted a temporary road adjustment last week. Transportation engineers used plastic flex posts and bumpers to convert a car travel lane into a separated bike lane for pedestrians and cyclists.
The stretch of road is largely a commercial corridor, lined with businesses such as auto shops and restaurants — many who work along the corridor agree that something needs to be done to curb aggressive driving and make it safer for those who walk and bike on and along the road every day. But not all are convinced that officials chose the best solution.
It’s one of three “quick build” projects going up around Maryland as part of a collaboration with Smart Growth America, a national policy and thought leader for sustainable transportation, that will help design, build and evaluate the changes. Two other projects, slated for Hagerstown and the town of Bel Air, will try to curb excessive speeding along main streets.
Each installation is temporary and will be up long enough for traffic engineers to collect enough data to evaluate their effectiveness. Evaluation data will vary across the three projects and will include before/after vehicle speeds as well as car, pedestrian and bike volumes, according to a state official.
The project is one of the first indicators that a new statewide Complete Streets policy is being put into practice. To some, it’s a tool that addresses a root cause of increasing roadway deaths; to others, it’s a misguided impediment to traffic flow.
Road safety strategies have historically focused on public awareness campaigns and police enforcement to curb behaviors such as distracted, aggressive or intoxicated driving. The idea behind Complete Streets is to physically change the layout of a roadway to give more space to non-motorists and, in some cases, make it harder for motorists to get away with bad driving habits — speed bumps, narrower driving lanes, and yes, those little plastic posts to show drivers where they aren’t supposed to go.
Quick-build projects can make a roadway immediately safer with minimal intervention, said Heidi Simon, director of Thriving Communities for Smart Growth America; those temporary projects can then help inform long-term infrastructure changes. Simon toured the installation last week alongside engineers from Howard County and the State Highway Administration.
“People have been walking in the grass or in the street along this very busy, noisy road, so let’s not discount the fact that we are improving lives and improving travel conditions,” Simon said during the tour.
There’s no sidewalk where the bike lane went in; foot traffic has reduced some of the grass next to the road to dirt, and many pedestrians walk in the road, according to several people who work along the road everyday. Nearby is the Laurel Park race track, where dozens of resident backstretch workers, many of whom are Mexican migrant workers, rely on bikes to run errands. People waiting at a lonely bus stop in front of one of the corridor’s auto shops have to do so from a parking lot.
Of nearly 2,900 pedestrian-involved crashes statewide last year, 72 — including six fatal — happened in Howard County. Route 1, part of the county’s “high injury crash network,” experienced 3.42 crashes per mile last year, including one fatal crash, according to state data. More crashes per mile happened on several county-owned roads last year, but state-owned roads had more severe crashes.
The county has eyed Washington Boulevard for such a project for years — the newly updated section is one of four focus areas along the nearly 11-mile road. The SHA originally wanted to do a project elsewhere, but Howard County officials were adamant about the Route 1 location, according to a state official.
“It was definitely not safe before … this does make it feel better,” said Michael Akasha, who has worked as a car mechanic along the roadway for five years. Akasha said he’s already noticed traffic slow down a bit. It’s routine, he said, to see people walking and biking next to or in the roadway.
Not everyone who works in the area is convinced of this approach. Barbara Jones, who has worked at a bakery along Route 1 for about eight years, thinks that the bike lane has created a new hazard for drivers. Before, motorists largely used the far-right lane to slow down and turn into the driveways along the road; now, drivers have to do so one lane over, where vehicles are typically driving at full speed. Jones said she’s almost been rear-ended twice since the change while slowing down to turn, enough to make her decide to take back roads to work.
“It’s a good idea … but maybe modify it to let drivers know it’s there,” Jones said. “We know it’s chaos out here all the time.”
Businesses’ rights-of-way jut right up along the roadway making widening the road for any new sidewalk or path impossible, a Howard County transportation official said during a walkthrough. One restaurant even has concrete bollards up to protect the building from the cars and trucks that used to fly by just feet away.
It means that traffic engineers have to work with what’s there and reallocate space; officials believe that three lanes for cars is enough to handle southbound traffic volumes without issue.
But do these installations actually make cyclists and pedestrians safer? There’s a fiery debate over the answer. Studies looking at Denver, Colorado and Cambridge, Massachusetts have armed advocates who say no; advocates in favor have poked holes in those studies or clapped back with others.
The installation relies on proven, data-driven methods for increasing safety, said Joe Moges, manager of the implementation of the SHA’s Complete Streets policy. He points to a federal study suggesting that separating an on-road bike lane with something like flex posts can decrease crashes by up to 53%, though the Federal Highway Administration recommends replacing them with stronger, permanent infrastructure like a curb.
There’s “zero commitment” to make this intervention permanent, said Moges. He hopes the temporary nature of the project allays any angst that drivers may feel about the sudden roadway change. “It’s really just an opportunity to observe, evaluate and assess the efficacy of various types of treatments and improvements for the safety of pedestrians and bicyclists,” he said.
Reallocating space on the roads has gotten contentious across Maryland and the country. It’s been the subject of special Baltimore City Council hearings and has sparked debates in larger cities like Philadelphia and New York over who — and what vehicles — should have priority on streets.
Moges stressed that the policy is not intended to “take away vehicles’ rights or vehicles’ mobility — it’s really to acknowledge and calibrate everyone’s perspective on safety and mobility, meaning, just because you are in a vehicle does not mean that anybody outside of the vehicle should not be considered,” said Moges.
“What was here before was incredibly unsafe for people walking and biking, and doing nothing is not the answer,” said Simon. “We have to be doing something. And if this is used to inform something better, I hope that’s the case, but we had to start somewhere.”
