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September 2022 Community Meeting Notes

Board Members Present: Corey Jennings Wynnona Engle-Pratt Matt Williams Pete Morrill, Mike Broida Michele Baskin, Samantha Solomon

Staff member – Amanda Rothschild

Total Attendees: ~33

  • Start: 7:07pm
  • End: 9:10pm

Votes:

Community Announcements

Agenda:

  • Update from Church of the Guardian Angel Food Pantry & Missionfit
    • Wes Jamison
    • Church of Guardian Angel could use food pantry volunteers, especially on Tuesday morning from 9:30 to 10:30. Weekly distribution on Wednesday, no paperwork requirements to receive food
  • Baltimore City DOT presentation on Sisson Street Bridge
    • William Haynes, Tiffany Walker Deputy Chief of Engagement, Christopher Brown, Bridge Project Engineer, Liam Davis, Matthew Hendrickson, Bike Planner
    • Current condition of Sisson St – closed to vehicular traffic. Sisson St bridge was on annual priority inspection track due to poor condition. Beams of the bridge were deteriorating. Repairs more extensive than is efficient to do based on current design project
    • Bridge is safe enough for pedestrian or bicycle traffic but DOT does not want to allow access – this has caused problems for pedestrians
    • CSX wants to utilize double-stacked trains on this corridor; this bridge is first out of North Ave tunnel. Prefer changing bridge profile than tracks
    • 2 sidewalks each side, two-way traffic. Originally to be two lanes, might change profile to shift vehicles over and add bike lane
    • Question/comment queue:
      • Needs protected bike lane in both directions (x2)
      • Prioritizing bike lane would be beneficial to community, currently have to cross Howard St to access available protected lane
      • Lower Remington has lower car ownership – current closure is cutting residents off from the rest of the community. Howard St very busy, many crashes, no crosswalks
      • Would like speed bumps on bridge (DOT is not looking at doing this)
      • Timeline? Difficult to determine because bridge is owned by CSX who will not execute original agreement. Legal dispute
      • GRIA has been requesting information for months; would really like the bridge to be pedestrian accessible in the interim
      • Barriers have been broken through again and people are walking on the bridge. This will continue to happen because this bridge is such an important connection; opening a pedestrian lane would help avoid injuries. Would like to be realistic – if this bridge project isn’t going to get fixed, let’s act accordingly and do what we can for non-car access
      • Is this work connected with work planned along 26th St corridor at Calvert? This is a pedestrian corridor for students at Margaret Brent Elementary. DOT presenters were not familiar with the details. List of all bridges part of CSX project: https://mpa.maryland.gov/pages/hst.aspx
  • Baltimore City DOT presentation on Traffic calming in Remington
    • Context: Community has made traffic calming requests for many years, some have been in queue for over five years
    • William Haynes
      • Went through historical file of requests. System can only go back to 2018/2019, but requests have been made repeatedly
      • No longer need to petition neighbors to fulfill requests
      • Don’t want speed bumps on every street. Looking at other options: lane narrowing, signal timing (planning a citywide signal timing project, will take several years)
      • Working on making DOT more efficient, e.g. consolidating multiple support requests to one staff member. Enormous backlog citywide
    • Question/comment queue
      • Light at 29th and huntingdon – need pedestrian light interval for those crossing 29th St. Would like timeline on this fix – probably this fall. Resident badly injured and frequent close calls.
      • Remington is blend of residential and commercial situated off two major arteries – both commuter and pedestrian village. 28th, 29th, Huntingdon, Sisson, and Howard all extremely busy major roads. Also have small residential streets; drivers try to cut through side streets to get around, cause additional crashes. Massive wreck on 27 th, would have had multiple youth fatalities but was on first day of school
      • Center-line hardening had helped but BGE ripped out a lot of it, would like to get that reinstalled. Usually BGE’s restoration work only includes striping and not physical elements.
      • Long ago had talk of allowing left turn on North Ave to allow easier access to 83 from North, and relieve some traffic getting redirected into Remington. DOT rep not familiar with this but will look into it
      • BPD data is bad, should not be basis for traffic calming decisions
      • Concern that DOT is prioritizing studies (using bad data) over residents’ lived experience and does not have a sense of urgency for a problem that is extremely dangerous, as basic as children being able to walk to school, parks, etc
  • Discussion of 28th St. Traffic calming and Big-Jump Extension.
    • GRIA has been working for many years to get this addressed; applied for a grant last year, did streetwide survey on 28th St, got LOS from DOT and $50,000. 
    • Business owner at 28th and Huntingdon, received multiple complaints about safety of that intersection. Flex posts have been run over and are now gone. Today two people almost got run over by a school bus. 
    • These streets may be technically considered arterial but people live on these streets. BGE work has often closed one lane and it has not caused much of a delay. Are speed light cameras working? DOT says yes, can get the data and will follow up
    • 28th sidewalks not ADA accessible, wheelchair users have to ride in the street
    • Timeline? Did not answer. Discussed problems of equity with how this problem would spill over into other neighborhoods.
    • This grant money is from BRNI and not executing the project will cut our community off from those funding sources for a long time afterwards
    • Need to have some kind of timeline from DOT to provide in quarterly grant report in October
    • Use 311 to make traffic calming requests – DOT uses this data in their decision-making process
    • Requested DOT come back in January
  • Community Announcements

Events:

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