Last night, the engineering firm tasked with developing the Midtown / Mount Royal Streetscape project revealed 95% design plans at a community meeting hosted by Baltimore City Department of Transportation.

This project has been in the works for four years, and the last project meeting was hosted in 2014. In fact, Bikemore's first major advocacy push as an organization was back in 2012, for inclusion of bike facilities in this project.

In January 2016, we provided a detailed overview of this project, and stated that "red-lined" design changes (changes added once construction has begun) are critical to making this a safe and worthwhile project.

None of these major recommendations have made it into the project, nor have the recommendations of other key stakeholders and community members.

We need to reconfigure the I-83 off-ramp.

A reconfiguration of the I-83 offramp onto Mount Royal Avenue must be considered. Currently, the design asks bicyclists and pedestrians to cross a highway offramp that will only be signaled with a flashing yellow warning beacon. This highway offramp was never intended to be permanent, and it should be closed as a part of this project. At minimum, the offramp needs to be reconfigured where it interacts with the cycle track.