OnFootBlog.com

I’m going to stop posting on here for a long while. Possibly forever.

When I first started this site, my employer was the Annapolis Capital, a wonderful paper that (at the time) had no running or transportation blogs. Now, however, I work for the Baltimore Sun, which within the last year has launched both a wonderful transportation blog and, more recently, a very nice running section. Since these vastly outdo my blog in terms of quality and quantity, I’m happy to say that it’s now quite redundant.

That said, I’d still love to see you at a Friday meetup, as those will continue.

The team, led by TND Planning Group, will release its plan for area around the proposed red line stop on Monday at the Southeast Anchor Library, according to the Baltimore Sun. The Highlandtown area is located between Patterson Park and  Greektown. The most popular red line proposal involves light rail running from Woodlawn to the Johns Hopkins Bayview campus.

I was ready to sign up. Really.

Altcar.org, the home of Baltimore’s new car-sharing program, shows well enought that it isn’t the same system everybody else uses, but it nonetheless has some neat features — card-swipe entry, reserved spots, low rates and an apparent lack of extra charges for gas/insurance. It’s even got an all-electric fleet.

It’s that last bit, however, that burst my bubble: Tesla motors this ain’t. Unlike George Clooney and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Baltimore’s program didn’t opt for high-voltage roadsters that go 0-60 in under 4 seconds. The program didn’t even opt for reasonable electric sedans.

No, altcar decided that there’s nothing sexier than trundling along in a lightly disguised golf cart. Maximum legal speed: 35 mph. Many experienced bike commuters can literally pedal faster than that, and with all MTA buses now sporting bike racks, altcar doesn’t give them much reason to switch modes.

It’s not a big surprise that this is partially funded by ExxonMobile, (which has been way cooler since they started using a CamelCase name). They get free touchy-feely press for their role in the organization, and at the same time, they can continue to tacitly push the idea that electric cars are best left to carrying circus clowns dressed as firemen.

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One extra note: Lest I leave out a relevant detail, Johns Hopkins and zipcar have their own deal, independent of the rest of the city.

Along with the usual onfootblog Baltimore Friday running groups, there’s something special happening tomorrow in the city.

Check out this site for more information on biking to work in Baltimore for bike-to-work day 2009.

For people who live in the Hampden, Station North, Roland Park or Druid Hill areas and work somewhere near downtown, it’s pretty easy.  The Jones Falls Trail and an abundance of bike lanes (plus some shared, hashed bike routes) get rid of a lot of the hassle. Other areas of the city can be spotty, though I know that the Pigtown/Carroll Park/Gwynns Falls Trail corridor is also developing nicely for bikes.

As usual, dress safely and don’t over-exert. Good luck!

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One more note: This is the first yearly iteration of bike-to-work day for which all MTA buses will have bike racks.

NOTE: This post has been edited extensively as details have changed.

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Summer is starting. With that comes a move to Calvert and Franklin. As before, all runs are at noon.

As with past months, here are links to our meetup group (which basically just links back to this post), a printable set of handout slips (for recruiting friends while they run) and a pdf for hanging on bulletin boards. Share them around!

The “weekend options” posts have stalled because of a technical error — and because priorities have been on a really cool project (which readers can see part of if they come back on Friday).

While I can’t give a specific time that the weekend summaries will be back, I can say that it is extremely likely they’ll return before the end of the year.

Meanwhile, keep an eye out for that other project.

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FOOTNOTE: Since we’re discussing weekend options anyway, I strongly recommend checking out the Sandymount Four Miler. It’s an interesting distance, and at $2 for the public, it’s about as cheap as anything out there.

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.

The Obama stimulus package is due to give the MARC system more than $10 million for improvements, the Baltimore Sun reported today. From the article:

The projects, to be announced today by 2nd District Democratic Rep. C A. Dutch Ruppersberger, include $3 million to improve elevators and the heating and cooling system at the station at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. The congressman also is expected to outline plans to spend $4 million for new canopies and windows at Penn Station and $400,000 for work at the MARC storage facility at Martin State Airport … More >>

Not all is happy this week in Charm City Transitland, however.

A blog posting at Baltimore Inner Space highlights the recent choice of the Baltimore Development Corporation to build a development in East Baltimore that, in the words of the blogger, makes no effort to exploit the potential for a transit station.

Or ‘A good excuse to post a brief history of something that won’t exist for awhile’

I couldn’t help noticing over the weekend that there was a significant lack of happiness and joy in local media regarding the proposed casino at Arundel Mills. Witness:

Lovable, cantankerous writer #1 – Parsing things in terms of potential traffic jams.

Lovable, cantankerous writer #2 – Parsing things in terms of the Mafia. Or something.

Possibly lovable but anonymous editorial ‘we’ - Parsing things in terms of budget numbers.

So what can I add to all of this? I would hardly say that there’s much new material for me to suggest in terms of the casino debate itself (much more of which is out there if you care to look). No, it would be much better if I could put this in the context of some much larger regional development pattern.

I was just thinking along those lines (“What should I do today? Gee, I would love to write about a regional development pattern in the Howard / Anne Arundel area”) when a tasty can of expansion on Snowden River Parkway arrived like (canned) Manna from Heaven. Between that, the casino and a planned third lane on the BW parkway, there’s plenty of expansion to talk about in the region.

All of this is a great excuse to talk about what isn’t getting built yet — specifically, MTA’s planned Yellow Line.

The Yellow Line, a 28-mile route proposed construction between Towson and Columbia, was part of a larger plan originally set out in 2002 by the administration of then-governor Parris N. Glendening. This plan included the currently promising Red Line as well as literally dozens of miles of other construction. As with the Red Line, the Yellow Line did not have a specific type of train listed in its definition, with the Glendening team chosing to leave the specifics of train (or even rapid bus) technology to later studies.

The idea of serving this market with rail goes much farther back than the Glendening administration. MARC and Amtrak go through both counties, and commercial railroads have served the area for most of the industrial era. One of them even appears to have used the yellow look before. Since Columbia is a rather new community, however, the dense intraurban networks that served other parts of the area in the early 1900s never really seem to have taken root in Howard county, railroad museums aside.

Back to the modern era: When Glendening was ousted by Robert Erlich Jr., rail construction was at least temporariliy ousted by roads. The IHC became the more fashionable building project to talk about, and trains took a back seat for awhile. This focus away from expansion was probably a good thing, as it allowed some basic, much-needed fixes to be made on the original light rail line.

Meanwhile, yellow line fans patiently left it alone (or maybe played with it a bit on their fantasy maps) and didn’t think much about it, putting emphasis on plans that were more realistic in the short term — namely, pushing for the Red, Purple and Silver lines in Maryland and Washington (and Virginia), respectively.

Eventually, Erlich was in turn pushed out of office, supplanted by Martin O’Malley. While O’Malley’s role has yet to play out, the combination of a democratic governor and a stimulus-hungry president may well push certain projects forward.

The yellow line, however? Don’t bet on it being built anytime soon.

Just to put this project in its proper place on the timeline, the downtown loop that would make the Yellow Line functional is on the second tier of priorities, behind not just the initial Red Line construction but also any possible extension of Baltimore’s Green (Subway) Line to Morgan State University. As Spence at the BaltimoreFuture blog states, this would put the second part of the yellow line — the part that goes beyond Dorsey Station to eventually hit Columbia Town Center — very, very far beyond the calendar range of reliable forecasts.

And that’s my very short history of the Yellow Line, as it were.

Next week’s fantasy animal: The elusive North American tusked mountain shark.

The transit system in York County, PA will be running a new commuter bus for connection with Baltimore’s light rail system.

The Baltimore Sun has a description, along with a map of the Rabbit route here.

While I won’t be using this much myself, I’m happy to see it. At five dollars, it’s a pretty good deal — not just for commuters, but for tourists as well, as The Gettysburg Blog points out.

It comes just a bit late for my personal use: I had some family friends from Michigan who lived in York, and it would have been great to visit them more frequently. Being able to pay less and read a book on the way there certainly would have helped.

Oh well. Maybe I’ll take it up one of these days to visit the weightlifting museum.