Arica Gonzalez doesn’t want to talk about bike lanes.
To her, they represent people passing through her West Baltimore neighborhood — people with no vested interest in the residents nearby.
What she does want to talk about is how her children and elderly neighbors are supposed to navigate their car-dependent neighborhoods.
One of Gonzalez’s former neighbors in Panway-Braddish is a 96-year-old woman who stays active and healthy through her daily walks. But infrastructure in the neighborhood isn’t always safe or conducive to a walking lifestyle — Gonzalez worries about her taking a fall.
The teenagers she works with at The Urban Oasis need safe ways to get to school. Building a better future and city for them has become her livelihood as executive director of the community-building organization.
And, for that reason, Gonzalez knows how important it is to make her voice heard as the city’s transportation department embarks on their plans to complete the 35-mile Baltimore Greenway Trail Network, which would connect residents to more green spaces, jobs, schools, shopping centers, and other city amenities.
After delaying development of the Gwynns Falls Parkway portion of the Greenway Trail due to complaints about not enough community engagement, the city’s Department of Transportation is planning to renew their efforts to reach out to the public later this summer.
Trails, unlike bike lanes, are designed to be used by people on foot, scooter, bike, or mobility device.
“I’m hoping that this might be a new opportunity for our community, where not just the city, but whomever… that they would understand that we need to operate and think about infrastructural development from a people’s perspective,” said Gonzalez, now a Hanlon-Longwood resident.
“How is what we are trying to implement going to impact the people who call this place home? And not hypothetical people, not people that you hope will come here, not people that you think might want to come after you’ve made changes, but for the lives that currently occupy the space.”
“How is what we are trying to implement going to impact the people who call this place home? And not hypothetical people, not people that you hope will come here, not people that you think might want to come after you’ve made changes, but for the lives that currently occupy the space.”
Arica Gonzalez
Bike lanes have come to represent much more than just an avenue for transportation in Baltimore. To some legacy residents in middle class Black neighborhoods, they can represent the encroaching of younger, white newcomers who could price them out of their homes.
Their mistrust is rooted in history. Baltimore has displaced tens of thousands of Black residents in the name of new development like in Poppleton or expressways like the Highway to Nowhere — projects that ended up abandoned and left the neighborhoods with scars in the form of vacant housing and scattered communities.
But whether they bike or not, some West Baltimoreans feel the conversation has shifted too far away from the tangible impacts that slower traffic and safer alternate modes of transportation would have on their neighborhoods.
Gonzalez and other residents are thinking about this trail as not just a bike lane for outsiders. It represents a different future for the younger generation, one where their neighborhoods are more connected and they’re able to traverse the city without a car.
“Me as a grandmother, I feel I have a responsibility to the youth,” said Monalisa Diallo, a Mondawmin resident and fifth-generation Baltimorean. “I have to really think about how this earth is going to be for them.”
Since around the birth of her granddaughter 14 years ago, Diallo has been car-free. She moved to her house in Mondawmin because of the proximity to the Metro station that would take her to work in Owings Mills.
More than 36% of households in Greater Mondawmin don’t have access to a car either, according to 2022 Census Bureau data.
Right now, Diallo doesn’t feel like her neighborhood is safe if you’re not traveling by car.
She’s seen residents of a senior home nearby struggle to cross the street to get to Mondawmin Mall without getting hit by speeding cars on Gwynns Falls Parkway. It’s why she’s such a strong advocate for what she calls “alternative pathways,” another name for a trail that welcomes multiple modes of transportation.
“I want my children to remain here, I want them to have jobs here, I want them to go to school here, I want them to flourish here and have the opportunity to be in a world-class city,” Diallo said.
“World-class cities have good transportation. And they also accommodate people that don’t have cars.”
“World-class cities have good transportation. And they also accommodate people that don’t have cars.”
Monalisa Diallo
A 2020 report on the Greenway Trail Network published by Rails-to-Trails Conservancy notes that speeding on Gwynns Falls Parkway has been “consistently ranked as a major nuisance and hazard by the community” and that the corridor has one of the most dangerous intersections in Maryland according to data from National Highway Travel Safety Administration.
On 28th Street in Remington, residents have been asking for traffic calming for more than 10 years. They’ve seen fiery crashes into homes and businesses as cars exit the Jones Falls Expressway directly onto residential streets.
Reducing the street from two lanes to one and using that additional space to put in a multi-use lane last August has resulted in a 96% decrease in people driving 43 miles or over on 28th Street according to Jed Weeks, interim executive director of Bikemore, a bike advocacy group.
The city as a whole has seen scooter usage drop about 28% since last May, likely due to one of the scooter companies shutting down its operations in Baltimore and other cities, but on 28th Street, Weeks said scooter usage is up 34% in the same time period.
In addition to slowing down traffic on 28th Street, Weeks said the new multi-use pathway has allowed for residents who live in Reservoir Hill and work in Remington to scooter or walk to their jobs more safely.
“It’s a big opportunity creator,” Weeks said.
Through Bikemore’s community engagement events over the years, Weeks said he’s heard from residents around Gwynns Falls Parkway that a trail would make them feel more comfortable walking to the recreation center or to farmers markets in or outside of the neighborhood.
“Right now it feels terrifying to do that, but if we had this trail under trees in the middle of the road that took us up there, it could be an opportunity to not have to have a car to easily access this stuff,” Weeks said, referring to the Olmsted Brothers’ initial vision to have walking and riding paths running through the medians of Gwynns Falls Parkway and 33rd Street in Charles Village and Waverly. The Olmsted Brothers were landscape architects who shaped much of Baltimore’s park system.
Those kinds of connections to amenities in their own neighborhood are what residents like Gonzalez are fighting for. She lives close to the Maryland Zoo, Mondawmin Mall, the Mondawmin metro station, Hanlon Park, and Druid Hill Park.
“In other cities, we would not be able to afford these properties, many of us, because they’d be million dollar properties with such proximity,” Gonzalez said.
She and other advocates don’t want to see their neighborhoods get left behind as other parts of the city receive investment and development.
The 2020 Greenway Network report shows that completing the last 10 miles of the Greenway could lead to an increase in annual local business activity of up to $113 million. The two miles on Gwynns Falls Parkway in particular could connect neighborhoods where residents have been isolated due to historic disinvestment.
“The communities are cut off because of intentionality, right? So we gotta be intentional about connecting the communities back,” said Shaka Pitts, a cyclist who leads bike rides around the city on Wednesday nights with his group Do The Bike Thing.
“The communities are cut off because of intentionality, right? So we gotta be intentional about connecting the communities back.”
Shaka Pitts
Pitts said his rides have taken him to corners of the city he would never have discovered if he wasn’t on a bike.
In the 30 years he’s lived in and around Baltimore, he’s seen how much other parts of the city, like Patterson Park and Canton, have changed with investment. He understands the wariness around a city agency coming into a neighborhood with a plan, but Pitts believes the only way the city can grow is through investing in sustainable transportation.
“It’s not just biking, you have electric scooters, you have mobility scooters, you have all types of things designed to get people to get out and about, to experience the city, to not be so fragmented as we are,” Pitts said.
He’s been able to build connections with people from across the city and all walks of life through his biking group — it’s one of the things he values about the biking community.
“Black, white, gay, straight, broke, rich, it doesn’t matter,” he says.
“A 75-year-old brother rides with me. I got young 20-somethings riding with me. I have doctors, I have lawyers, I have unemployed people, I have musicians. All types of people riding with us. Bikes are the equalizer.”
In the neighborhoods around Gwynns Falls Parkway, residents want to feel connected again.
Rails-to-Trails published poll results on June 12 that showed that 71% of Baltimore City respondents were in favor of the Greenway Trails Network. In the 21216 and 21217 ZIP codes, only 5% of poll respondents said they opposed the network.
More than 80% in both ZIP codes said they believe trails contribute to the well-being of a neighborhood, yet 58% of respondents in 21216 and 74% in 21217 said the nearest trail to them was one to five miles away.
“Right now, in the Panway community, the Hanlon community, the Greater Mondawmin area, we have all of these parks around us, but very few people are accessing these spaces,” Gonzalez said.
“It creates a disconnect when each person stays in their home and worries about their own plot of land and dwelling place, and we forget that we’re supposed to be connected.”
The post Transit for Us All: West Baltimore Community Members Say They Want More Connected Neighborhoods. appeared first on Baltimore Beat.