You may have noticed, based on previous posts, that we like public transportation. If we can make it without a car, we will. So we were delighted to see that bikers way out in Portland, Oregon were calling Baltimore the “next big bike city.” It gave us hope. And then we started to look around and realized that, hey, maybe those crazy Portland types have a point. In some ways, we’re set up well as the biking city of the future.
This new focus on biking in the city starts, surprisingly, at the top. Mayor Sheila Dixon is a big proponent of cycling in the city (she even wears a helmet at press conferences!) and has implemented a Bicycle Master Plan and made bicycle use a major piece of the Baltimore Sustainability Plan. Nate Evans, Baltimore’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Planner, predicts that by 2010, two percent of city residents will bike to work. And all of this is backed up by the recent creation of 42 miles of bikeways throughout the city and 70 new bike racks (made from converted parking meters!) in downtown.
We also have a slew of bike-loving activists, and some of them have blogs. If you’re itching for cycle-centric news, we recommend Baltimore Spokes and the North Baltimore Bike Brigade.
We’re happy to see this progress for pedal pushers in our city. Do you have any favorite places to bike in the city? Are there any bike routes that you’d like to see added in Baltimore?