Bike lanes need connection
Iam so tired of hearing from Canton residents about the "useless" bike lane on Potomac Street (“Canton bike lanes appear to be useless,” Aug. 8) We are new-ish residents to Baltimore, having moved to Canton from Chicago three years ago. We lived on Potomac during the haphazard and poorly managed construction of the bike lane and are still in Canton today, although on a different street.
Having lived in Chicago for years, during which there were hundreds of miles of bike lanes built throughout the city, we still talk about how nice it was to bike downtown for concerts, to the North Side for Cubs games and parades, to the West Side for Mexican food, and to the South Side to tour the beautiful parks. We love Baltimore, but the complete lack of a reliable and extensive public transportation system and the dangerous hostility from drivers and unfriendly road conditions that bicyclists endure even on a short ride, keep this city from reaching anywhere near its full potential as a resident-friendly area.
Biking in this city, which we initially attempted in the months after moving here, means literally risking your life. Drivers swerve around you while accelerating and honking. They actively try to run you off the road. They display zero patience or even simple respect for other human lives. Until Baltimore drivers understand that it isn't bicyclists causing traffic jams, but all the individual drivers in all their individual cars, and show respect for everyone regardless of the size and type of vehicle, protected bike lanes are the only way forward. The Canton bike lane is an important step in this process.
The problem with the Canton bike lane isn't that it makes the street too narrow for firefighters — which is an absurd argument given how narrow many of the other streets in the neighborhood are — but that it is currently a road to nowhere. Sure, it'll take you to the Waterfront Park for the farmers market, and then seven blocks back north to Patterson Park for a softball game, but in terms of using it as a commuter lane to get to your job or the supermarket or the Orioles game, it is worthless. Until the city Workers painted lines on South Potomac Street in Canton in November for the new bike lanes. and its residents buy into the fact that a world class city deserves transportation options other than cars (and traffic jams and pollution and endless parking lots and parking complaints) and builds a network of protected bike lanes to connect the Canton lane to other parts of the city, rather than just the death trap of Boston Street and the insanity of Eastern Avenue, that gorgeous bike lane will remain completely underutilized.
To address the argument that we should "listen to firefighters, not bikers," I'd say: Why? First, if their trucks are too large for the streets of this historic city, maybe they should have smaller trucks. Why do we have to build suburban-size streets to fit oversized vehicles? Why do we have to listen to firefighters who, for the most part, live outside the city about what kind of conveyances should be welcome on our streets? I live in this city. I would love to bike all over and enjoy it with my family.
Listen to me: Build more bike lanes. The more there are, the less "useless" the one in our neighborhood will be.