In 2010, Baltimore passed a non-binding Complete Streets resolution. Recognizing that the resolution did not have the intended impact, Baltimore delivered a strong and binding Complete Streets ordinance in 2018, showing their commitment to implementing Complete Streets. The updated ordinance included important requirements such as the development of a new Complete Streets Manual, regular staff training to build internal capacity, and publicly available annual reports assessing transportation projects and investments through an equity lens.
While our Best Complete Streets Policies Report recognizes the best, most recent policies, what happens as the years go by? In these profiles, we look back at strong policies that Smart Growth America recognized in previous reports and hear from advocates and city leaders about what worked, what didn’t work, why, and even more lessons they learned along the way.
Background
Baltimore, Maryland, is a city of about 600,000 people and houses almost 3 million people in the metro area. The Inner Harbor, which was once a busy seaport, is a landmark tourist destination today and is cited as one of the great examples of post-industrial waterfront development that supports commercial activity. In 2017, Baltimore City had one crash every 30 minutes, one traffic-related injury every hour, and one traffic-related fatality every week. The city is working to change preventable outcomes with various initiatives, including a Toward Zero philosophy that features programs for quick builds and neighborhood traffic calming, amongst other things.
In 2018, Smart Growth America featured the City of Baltimore’s 2018 Complete Streets policy as one of the top 10 policies passed in the country in the Best Complete Streets Policies Report (2018). The updated policy received a strong score due to a variety of factors, including its stringent, binding requirements to improve community engagement, project delivery, and performance measures and reduce disparities in Complete Streets implementation overall. Since passing the policy in 2018, the city has wasted little time putting the policy into practice. As seen in the graphic below, the City of Baltimore picked up its momentum on all of the following implementation steps in the last couple of years. The Baltimore Complete Streets Manual, which was released in 2021, outlined and established crucial new processes for prioritizing, designing, and delivering Complete Streets projects on different types of streets.
Baltimore’s Complete Streets journey
The Baltimore City Council passed its first Complete Streets resolution in 2010, but the policy was non-binding, had no enforceable steps for implementation, and didn’t address equity in any capacity. Motivated to get a much stronger policy on the books, in 2017, Councilman Ryan Dorsey, in collaboration with the advocacy organization Bikemore, drafted a groundbreaking Complete Streets ordinance (18-197) that would require the city to significantly change its approach to transportation planning. Specifically, it required the release of annual reports assessing transportation investments to increase transparency, regular staff training to build internal capacity, and the development of a new Complete Streets Manual to outline new processes for prioritizing, designing, and delivering Complete Streets projects on different types of streets. This ordinance, which was adopted in 2018, was the result of a yearlong stakeholder engagement process that built a broad coalition of supporters to oversee the adoption and implementation.
Following adoption, a change in administration slowed progress, and in August 2019, they recognized that they were not going to meet the originally proposed deadlines for producing and enacting the Complete Streets Manual. Councilman Dorsey introduced legislation (19-303) amending the 2018 Complete Streets Ordinance (18-197) to revise the timelines for the development and adoption of a Complete Streets Manual and the Community Engagement Plan that would support the process, which was approved by the council and signed by Mayor Scott soon after. While they’d failed to meet the original deadlines, they maintained and updated timelines in their reporting, and creating amendments shows Baltimore’s commitment to increasing process transparency and accountability (Article 26, p. 123).
The ordinance emphasized the importance of building key pieces to move the work from paper to practice. One of those key pieces was the development of a Complete Streets Manual, which would be supported by a Community Engagement Plan. Despite plans for robust community engagement, the outcome was not as comprehensive as initially intended due to a variety of factors, including staffing and funding constraints. Limited flexibility in government processes also posed a challenge to exploring alternatives. For example, if community members were paid for their participation, these volunteers would have to go through arduous steps similar to city employees, like background checks and drug tests, making the process more cumbersome for both the volunteers and city staff.
Despite challenges along the way, the manual was released in 2021 and established a citywide modal hierarchy, which was recommended by the Complete Streets Advisory Committee and endorsed by BCDOT to put the most vulnerable populations first when considering any new transportation projects. Baltimore’s modal hierarchy established prioritization as – 1. Walking, 2. Cycling / Public Transit / Micro Mobility, 3. Taxi / Commercial Transit / Shared Vehicles and 4. Single Occupant Automobiles.
The ordinance also established an annual reporting requirement of various data separated by race, income, vehicle access, and location, which the City of Baltimore has successfully produced in 2021 and 2022 through its Complete Streets Annual Reports. These reports set a great example for a digestible and easy-to-understand format for publicly reported data.1
To ensure that underserved communities are prioritized when choosing which projects to fund, the ordinance also mandates an equity gap analysis that examines how proposed projects will impact vulnerable communities. While the city has done a great job of reporting the data using an equity lens, they have not significantly used that data to shape their project prioritization and funding decisions. If the city is able to increasingly use a data-backed project prioritization approach, Baltimore’s ordinance could create a Complete Streets program where equity is consistently at the forefront throughout the project selection, development, implementation, and evaluation processes. (Check out the National Complete Streets Coalition’s Complete Streets Policy Framework that outlines 10 elements of a strong policy.)
“I think we’re starting to propose better projects and locations that make sense. If you look at some of our past streetscape projects before the Complete Streets ordinance manual, you would wonder why they chose the locations they chose.”
– Graham Young, former Complete Streets Manager, Baltimore City Department of Transportation
Another important measure the ordinance outlined was a new community engagement process, requiring the city to proactively identify and overcome barriers to engagement associated with race, income, age, disability, English language proficiency, and vehicle access and include a means of measuring success in overcoming these barriers. While there seems to be limited momentum to change current engagement strategies at the systems level, at the project level, the City is taking steps to conduct more robust community engagement, as seen during the West Baltimore United Project. This project will set the groundwork for the demolition and the redevelopment of Route US 40, known to Baltimoreans as the “Highway to Nowhere,” which was half-built 50 years ago but never completed. The portion that was built obliterated 14 contiguous blocks of predominantly Black middle-class families, businesses, and homes, subsequently displacing approximately 1,500 residents. In February 2023, Baltimore’s Department of Transportation (BCDOT) received $2 million through the new federal Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program to move this highway removal project forward.
Why Baltimore believes their policy matters
Based on our conversation with city staff, an elected leader, and a local advocate, below are some of the understood benefits and impacts seen following the adoption of Baltimore’s 2018 Complete Streets policy:
1. The Complete Streets policy has given advocates, city staff, and community members a document to lean on to push for a multi-modal approach.
Despite initial hurdles, the new policy led to the establishment of the new Complete Streets Manual and modal hierarchy. Advocates, community members, and city staff have leaned on these documents to drive progress.
Advocates and elected leaders are able to push the city harder and point to the legislation when championing equitable, accessible transportation policy. For example, the Central Avenue Project’s design pre-dated the ordinance and hence did not require it to incorporate Complete Streets elements, but advocacy from Brooke Lierman, a former state delegate representing part of Baltimore City, paired with the Complete Streets policy, helped transform it into a successful, highly lauded project.
Similarly, for community members, the policy helped establish the city’s commitment to Complete Streets and mandated new processes such as the requirement for annual reporting of various Complete Streets data using various equity indicators. Having access to this information empowers community members to track progress toward the policy’s goals and hold the city accountable when needed.
City staff use the Complete Streets policy and modal hierarchy in public meetings to explain the city’s prioritization of Complete Streets investments and project selection process. The modal hierarchy helps justify the prioritization of various modes of transportation, such as walking, biking, and using public transit, over cars and other single-occupancy vehicles. Additionally, the ordinance provides a big-picture framing of why the focus on Complete Streets is important to advancing more equitable transportation options and increasing Baltimore’s quality of life. (Check out this short video introducing the BCDOT Complete Streets Design Manual.)
2. There is an increasing focus on equity
The community applauded Baltimore’s Complete Streets Ordinance, which was passed in 2018, for its commitment to reducing disparities in transportation investments and requiring an equity assessment when prioritizing new Complete Streets transportation projects. The Ordinance states that “the equity assessment shall consider transportation disparity trends based on race, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, ethnicity, national origin, or income and recommend ways to reverse these trends. It shall assess and recommend ways to eliminate structural and institutional discrimination in transportation based on immutable characteristics.”
As we noted before, the city has done a great job of collecting and reporting data on the established equity indicators. The next step will be to start using this data to shape and inform the processes they use to select and prioritize projects—what gets built and where.
“We are starting to see a shift in where resources are being allocated and the annual reports show that. It’s definitely not perfect and nor do I think it’s totally consistent, but I do think there has been a deliberative shift toward focusing improvements more on the equity indicator areas.” – Jed Weeks, Interim Executive Director/Policy Director, Bikemore
3. The policy helped spur innovative work and initiatives that better serve the people of Baltimore
Achieving safer streets for all and reducing traffic injuries and fatalities requires a combination of efforts to reshape our streets and built environments, and Complete Streets is one crucial piece of that.
In Baltimore, the process of developing and passing the Complete Streets policy brought much-needed attention to the issue of traffic safety and prompted not just the work on Complete Streets but other innovative programs as well. One such program was the Bloomberg Philanthropies Asphalt Art Initiative. Through this program, the City of Baltimore installed “Bee Safe Art Crosswalks” at three intersections near Johnston Square Elementary School. By enhancing sidewalks, adding curb bump-outs, and shortening crosswalks, the redesigned space changed the way users moved and resulted in an increase of cars yielding to pedestrians by 41 percent.
“You get a safer neighborhood for people to walk, and you get artwork that people can enjoy and have pride in their neighborhood,” said Steve Sharkey, Director of Baltimore’s Department of Transportation. Check out this video to hear from residents about how this project has positively impacted the neighborhood.
Another noteworthy initiative is the Art in the Right of Way (ROWArt) Toolkit. The Toolkit, created by Center for Social Design in collaboration with the BCDOT Community Programs, is a step-by-step guide for Baltimore communities that want to install traffic-calming art in their neighborhoods.
What lessons can we learn from Baltimore’s journey
Complete Streets is a process, not just a collection of good, individual projects, and consistent reflection on what has been done so far is crucial for informing the way forward. Here’s what we learned when we took a closer look at Baltimore’s 2018 Complete Streets policy and its implementation:
Invest in robust community engagement at the systems level. Changing the city’s approach to community engagement from set practices and norms continues to be a challenge limiting effective implementation. While better engagement may be gaining momentum on a project-by-project basis, the city should prioritize hiring additional staffers with the expertise to support community engagement efforts. Although the Complete Streets Manual outlines specific policies related to community engagement (p. 158), including outreach methods, it may be valuable to establish standards and measures to report on community engagement in the Complete Streets annual reports.
Formalize a way for community members and advocates to report concerns. City staff should consider investing in communication channels between the city, advocates, and community members, especially to express concerns or ask questions through formal paths on the city’s website or other mediums. These efforts would double down on the increased transparency and accountability resulting from the updated Complete Streets policy. This not only empowers the citizens but can also ensure accountability from the city despite changes in staff and administration.