OnFootBlog.com

With Washington adding another circulator route, the fine people at Greater Greater Washington have posted a composite that adds selected bus lines to the well-known metro map.

An added side benefit of this is that it will likely get more people to MARC stations — meaning more constituents putting pressure on lawmakers for weekend rail service between Baltimore and Washington. I’m not holding my breath, but it’s always a nice thought.

Baltimore City Paper’s Michael Byrne this week highlights the status of the ICC as one of America’s seven “highways to nowhere,” as recognized by Infrastructuralist. Byrne makes note of the project’s budgetary impact. From the article:

A key piece of evidence is a report released by the Coalition for Smarter Growth, which examined five alternatives to the ICC, ranging from completing the proposed Purple Line and adding bus service along the corridor to adding express-bus services and creating High Occupancy Toll lanes on highways. Three of those options were found to reduce traffic on existing arterial roads in the corridor and cost less money.

( Read full article >> )

I have to wonder whether the studies took contractual obligations into account. Closing a project after a massive construction project starts (as some advocate for the ICC)  is rarely cheap, assuming failsafes were correctly put into place.

Oranges are for eating.

http://www.instantriverside.com/riverside-ca-news/trio-suspected-of-throwing-oranges-at-pedestrians/2009/03/26/

Here are some choices for this week:

What I’ll be doing: Nothing too active. I did something stupid this week, and now my foot is recovering.

Other options: The Baltimore Bicycling Club is holding rides for four different ability levels on Saturday, with another four on Sunday. It looks from the site like the Saturday session might be the more beginner-friendly of the two. In addition, there’s a slew of footraces and walks from 5K to 30K in length.

In the future: Another dozen, including the Credit Union Cherry Blossom Ten Mile & 5K.

As always, you can see a full list of upcoming road races, transit events, training rides, walks, and runs via the on-foot calendar of events.

The Baltimore Sun’s Michael Dresser writes today about bike parking in an old car parking spot by Johns Hopkins:

The city has replaced one parking space for cars in the 3100 block of St. Paul St. with racks that can accommodate 10-12 bikes. Mayor Sheila Dixon, whose administration is seeking to encourage bicycle use, is expected to take part in the opening.

The article goes on to mention that more conversions are planned. It also says that focusing on bike parking is especially popular in cities like Portland, New York and Seattle. View the whole article here.

No word yet on whether the endposts on future conversions will be in interesting shapes.

Here are some choices for this week:

What I’ll be doing: Perhaps cheering people on at the Suntrust National Marathon. That sort of depends on whether anyone I know is running in it.

Other options: Races in Walkersville and Hampstead, among other places.

In the future: Another chance to race on the NCR trail.

As always, you can see a full list of upcoming road races, transit events, training rides, walks, and runs via the on-foot calendar of events.

I’ve finally been dragged onto Twitter.

Read my updates here.

Here are some choices for this week:

What I’ll be doing: Too early to say yet, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to resist a run that promises pi. Mmm … pi*.

Other options: There are at least five 5K races in the area this weekend, which means we must be getting into spring. Those include the KELLY Shamrock 5K here in Baltimore. I’m sure a lot of people will be making a day of it by swerving their way in and out of Fell’s Point bars afterward.

In the future: National marathon? Yeah, we have one of those.

As always, you can see a full list of upcoming road races, transit events, training rides, walks, and runs via the on-foot calendar of events. Quick reminder: We really do have bike events on our calendar as well, despite the relative lack of them in recent weeks. I encourage you to e-mail me any upcoming events that I may have missed. We’ll usually be happy to link to them.

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*I know I’m probably the 8,000th person to make that joke this year. I don’t regret it in the slightest. The world can always use more middle school math puns.

There’s a new FAQ page up. You can view it from the site’s top menu bar.

Enjoy!

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Edit: While we’re talking about housecleaning stuff, here’s an updated feeds page to munch on.

The city council has backed Sheila Dixon’s proposal for a city land bank.

This could have a strong impact on both land use and transportation patterns within the city of Baltimore. Based on a similar setup in Detroit, the plan aims to cut red tape, making it easier for rehabbers to buy city-owned vacant properties via interactions with a single, streamlined agency. One blogger at the Urban Patriot throws out the number $3 million as a baseline yearly cost for the current acquisition process, which is spread over several agencies.

While I think that there is a lot of potential benefit to be derived from this idea, I hope that if pursued, it gets the resources it needs. As of this (Friday) morning, the Detroit version’s information page still said “contact information coming soon,” and the auction site for the surrounding jurisdiction of Wayne County was returning a server-side “runtime error” page.