A truck with bikes offered free rental bicyles to Bike Blast attendees.

Bike Blast promotes sustainability initiative

By: Sarah Tan

Posted: 4/30/09

As a city with industrial roots, Baltimore has recently changed its focus from smoke-stacks to sustainability.

The city, led by Mayor Sheila Dixon, has been working to promote "A Cleaner, Greener Baltimore," which includes the addition of more bicycle trails around the city.

The Baltimore Bike Blast took place on Saturday, April 25 in Druid Hill Park, and was held in order to increase biking awareness among children, families and others who do not consider themselves cyclists.

Since Dixon started Baltimore's Sustainability Plan this past fall, many city-wide programs have sought to promote environmental awareness. The Bike Blast was one of the many biking programs and events that the city has held since.

The event kicked off at nine in the morning with a biking tour around the park reservoir, led by Dixon.

Afterwards, a number of bike vendors set up stands to educate people about the benefits of biking. In addition, many non-profit organizations, such as the Velocipede Bike Project of Baltimore attended the event and offered a "build your own bike" program, as well as general information about street biking safety and preparing for a biking trip.

In addition, the Bike Blast had a truck filled with bicycles set up at the event, so that people who had not brought their own bikes could borrow a bike for the day for free and join in on the fun.

At Hopkins, Sustainability Initiative has also been running a series of biking workshops to increase awareness about biking on the Homewood campus. The program has run workshops on bike repair and bike commuting. In addition, the program has also been looking to increase biking safety on campus.

Davis Bookhart, manager of energy management and environmental stewardship, said that they have surveyed all the campus storm grates to make sure that they are safe for bikers, and that they have also tried to set up more bike racks in more convenient places for students.

Bookhart also mentioned the addition of Baltimore's first bike "parking lot" on Charles Street in front of Eddie's Market. The city removed one parking space that used to be for a car, and replaced it with a bike rack. Bookhart felt that in addition to this being a practical move for the city, it was also symbolic.

"It's very symbolic: It shows that bikes are part of the road too, and that they shouldn't have to be locked up way on the sidewalk. They deserve to be parked on the street, just like a car would," he said.

According to Bookhart, more graduate students bike around Homewood than undergraduates, due to their proximity to the Homewood campus. However, he said the promotion of biking on campus is something that is important to Baltimore, and the program is considering creating a free rent-a-bike program for Hopkins students in the future.

Bike Blast volunteer David Shapiro said that he thought that promoting biking in Baltimore was a very important step in making Baltimore a more environmentally friendly place.

"It's better for the environment, and it's also just a much more pleasant way to get somewhere besides a car," he said.

Beginning in June of this year, Baltimore will be putting in a free bike rental program that will set up in Druid Hill Park every Wednesday at 6 p.m. to further promote biking. People will be able to take out a bike for free and ride it around the reservoir.

About 350 people attended the Baltimore Bike Blast throughout the day, and Rosita Rennick, one of the public relations officials for the Department of Transportation, felt that it was a fairly successful first-time event.

Nate Evans, the bike pedestrian planner for Baltimore, agreed that it was fairly successful, but that the event might have suffered slightly because of its lack of publicity.

"Hopefully we can get some more advocate groups out to support the event for next year. Since we were limited in our budget this year, we weren't really able to make the outreach that we could have," he said.

Rennick felt that the promotion of biking was important in promoting sustainability in Baltimore.

"Not only will it help prevent traffic congestion and pollution, but it will also make the population healthier," she said.

Rennick also said that the city had been making large efforts to spread bicycle awareness through its many events. She mentioned the many people who attended the events initially said that they hadn't ridden a bike in many years, only to find that it was very easy to begin to ride again.

"People had mentioned to us, 'I thought I was too old to ride, but now I feel confident I can do this.' Changing the mindset of the citizens was a really daunting task, but now that the city is doing things, people are changing their minds and we're seeing a lot people saying, 'Hey I can do this,'" Rennick said.

Chief Spokesperson of Public Relations for the Department of Transportation, Adrienne Barnes, hopes that in the future, biking will become more widespread.

"I'd like to see families becoming more engaged in outdoor activities, and we really want people to get out of their cars," Barnes said.

Baltimore will be hosting its next biking event, Tour Dem Parks, on June 14. The event will be a tour through a few of Baltimore's parks that have newly established biking trails.

"I hope that in the future, people will take advantage of all the wonderful scenery around Baltimore through biking on our bike trails," Barnes said.