District 14 Town Hall 10.27.2021 - Department of Transportation

Last week's District 14 Virtual Town Hall

Department of Transportation

We had a great town hall last week! Director Sharkey and team from the Department of Transportation talked about Complete Streets and traffic calming in general, and discussed some specific projects in our district. Click here for the video on Facebook, here for the video on You Tube.

Director Sharkey provided an overview of all the activities of the department, including snow removal, repaving streets and alleys, rebuilding bridges and roads, parking and traffic enforcement, traffic calming, street lights, and the Circulator. He also mentioned that Baltimore owns its conduit system and DOT maintains it. Director Sharkey came to DOT after being the Director of the Baltimore City Department of General Services.

He laid out the new Complete Streets model - this model came to Baltimore via the City Council a few years ago. The standards for streets when they are repaved and redone are tiered - first priority are pedestrians, next are bikes and buses, third are cars. This is a complete turn around from just a few years ago when the work of DOT was to get cars from north to south the fastest way possible. 28% of all households in Baltimore do not own cars, which is significant.

We talked about the funding needed for DOT to complete all the projects in its pipeline - including the tremendous amount of requests from the 14th District. They need $1.3Billion more to ensure all the projects can get done in a timely manner. This includes the bridge replacements which can be done through federal funding. Baltimore maintains all of our roads (in other jurisdictions the State Highway Administration maintains the state roads). So in the past Baltimore received the highest level of Highway User Revenues (this is the gas tax). Over the past several years, state funding from the Highway User Revenues have declined significantly. Baltimore used to get 15%, and now we get 7.3%. There will be legislation in the General Assembly to change this, which could yield $150million. Not as much as we need, but more than we have. Other funding sources are also being explored.

Specific projects we talked about in District 14:

—Harford Road Bridge - now opening closer to April to ensure that all of the traffic calming and striping is properly done before opening. I stressed to DOT the need to have the intersection of Erdman and Harford redone prior to opening and our bike lane we have wanted for a long time on Harford Road south of Erdman.

-28th and 29th street corridor - I asked for the same treatment on 29th Street that we have on 28th street and St. Paul. And we talked about re-timing the lights.

-The Alameda between 33rd and Loch Raven - in the past 5 months there have been 25 crashes in that area. The engineers have this and are working on a plan we should see in 30-90 days.

—33rd and Hillen - you will see a lot of changes to the lanes. There will be pedestrian signals on the south intersection. And the lights will be changed as well.

-Stop Signs on 1400 Block of Gorsuch and 38th and Beech - need the stop bar and I’ve seen that these have been done.

-Argonne Drive between Greenmount and The Alameda - engineers are working on it.

-Argonne Drive between The Alameda and Loch Raven - Camera was requested and is still being evaluated.

Another advocacy point, the speed limit lowering bill will be in the General Assembly this year again, and we need your help. We’ll send out action alerts as the General Assembly progresses.