A woman exercising on Cathedral at West Eager Street in Baltimore MD by Elvert Barnes licensed under Creative Commons.

As recently as two weeks ago, Baltimore was lagging far behind cities like Washington, DC, Oakland, and Minneapolis when it came to closing all but a fraction of its streets to cars for exercise and recreation, even as the COVID-19 pandemic continued to bring most cities’ traffic levels to a halt.

But support for “Slow Streets” has picked up so much steam in Baltimore recently that a new bill passed by the City Council Monday, and headed to the Mayor’s desk for his signature, could close at least 25 miles of road, spread out across all 14 City Council districts in Baltimore, for exercise.

Temporary Street Space for Pedestrians and Cyclists (Bill 20-0532) would require the Baltimore City Department of Transportation (DOT) to close at least one mile of roads to car traffic in all 14 of the City Council’s districts for the duration of the coronavirus emergency in Baltimore.

The bill was introduced by Baltimore City Council President and mayoral candidate Brandon Scott, with some assistance from City Council Transportation Committee Chair Ryan Dorsey. 10 other Councilmembers co-sponsored the bill, including Council Vice-Chair Sharon Green Middleton, Council President candidate Shannon Sneed, and City Comptroller candidate Bill Henry.

“Slow Streets” movement speeds up

“Slow Streets”, as the rapidly growing international movement to close off some urban streets to auto traffic has become known, already had its advocates in Charm City, including local bicycle advocacy groups, Johns Hopkins University public health experts, and several members of the Baltimore City Council itself. But the city’s mayor, Bernard “Jack” C. Young, and the key agencies in charge of actually closing any streets, the Departments of Public Works, Recreation & Parks, and Transportation, hadn’t really moved to close off any roads beyond Whitman Drive, which occupies about half of the path surrounding Lake Montebello, a reservoir in Northeast Baltimore owned by the Department of Public Works (DPW).

Since the calendar began to turn to May though, it’s been an almost completely different story. On April 28, DOT and Recreation & Parks (“Rec and Parks”, for short) blocked off a lane of parking near the tennis courts in one of the city’s most popular green spaces, Northwest Baltimore’s Druid Hill Park.

Six days later, Young instructed DOT to close the remaining road surrounding Lake Montebello, Curran Drive, to traffic and officially start a “Slow Streets Pilot Program”, which at least judging from early reactions, appears to be a success so far, enough so that other Baltimore neighborhoods want in, as evidenced by a recent letter to DOT from the Downtown Baltimore Family Alliance asking for the program’s expansion.

“As the weather begins to warm up, I know it will continue to get more difficult for our residents to want to remain indoors,” Scott said when reached for comment on his reasons for introducing the bill. “This legislation puts us one step ahead in protecting Baltimoreans as we approach nicer weather and the prospect of reopening the City. I introduced this legislation to make it safer for our residents to practice social distancing and enjoy the outdoors, while also protecting essential workers traveling to and from their jobs that keep our city moving.”

What’s under the hood of the “slow streets” bill

There are a few caveats to the legislation. As currently written, the bill emphasizes avoiding “major medical facilities” like hospitals and “avoiding major truck routes wherever possible” in order to avoid interrupting deliveries to those businesses still permitted to operate during the current emergency. But more importantly, for the larger purposes of the legislation, it also prevents any one district from housing more than 15% of the total roads set aside for recreation.

That provision, along with one encouraging DOT to consider what the bill calls “creating space in neighborhoods with insufficient existing open or recreational space” and “increasing space in neighborhoods with heavily utilized parks,” is meant to ensure that less white or wealthy neighborhoods with fewer green spaces which might not necessarily benefit from these kinds of pilot programs as often are included in the Slow Streets experiment. That also includes neighborhoods like Penn-North, Auchentoroly Terrace, and Mondawmin, whose proximity to Druid Hill Park is complicated by the area’s wide lanes and frequent speeding and collisions.

Like many of the non-binding “resolutions” and more binding “ordinances” considered by the Baltimore City Council since the start of the pandemic, Scott’s bill has had a somewhat accelerated timeline compared to the usual schedule.

Where it might normally have taken weeks, months, or even years to make it through the legislative process, Scott’s bill was introduced at the City Council’s meeting on Monday, May 11, a step called “first reading”, where it was assigned a title, number, and committee, heard two days later before the three-member Transportation Committee, which unanimously voted favorably for it (“second reading”), and was voted on at the City Council’s next full meeting today, Monday, May 18.

Since it was approved unanimously by the Council, a step called “third reading”, it now heads to the Mayor’s desk for his signature. Because the bill was approved by all 15 members of the Council, it has well over the three-quarters majority needed to sustain a veto override, should the Mayor choose to go that route.

It’s a fast timeline for a bill which literally calls for at least 25 miles of Baltimore’s streets to be opened up to pedestrians and cyclists and closed to cars. But in a crisis which has dramatically altered the way Baltimoreans work, eat, travel, and exercise even faster than that, maybe not a surprising one.