Bikes are taking a front seat in Howard County

Maryland’s Howard County is taking serious steps to become a more bike-friendly community. With a new bike master plan and a pilot bikeshare system, the future is promising for people who want to get around on two wheels.

Howard County, which lies between Montgomery County and Baltimore County, recently published its first-ever bicycle master plan. It outlines ways to make more than 500 miles of road and pathways more bike-friendly, and suggests 200 projects for making it easier for people of all ages and abilities to get around by bike in the county.

The county council unanimously passed the plan, along with a complete streets policy (PDF), after receiving broad support from bike advocacy groups, recreation groups, businesses, health organizations and others.

One key project in the bike master plan will launch by summer 2017: A new bikeshare system with seven stations and 70 bicycles in Columbia, one of our country’s iconic planned communities. Locations will include Howard County General Hospital, Howard Community College and the Mall, each of which sees heavy traffic and are in biking distance of each other in one of the denser parts of the county.

“If we make it easier and safer for people to get around by biking or walking,” County Executive Allan Kittleman recently said. “More people will choose to do so. This brings health and economic benefits to the entire community.”

On one hand, parts of Howard County are classic suburbia: wide streets, retail strip centers, and low-rise office buildings. Like residents of most suburbs, people in Howard County have grown accustomed to driving, and it remains the default choice for most people most of the time. For instance, many of our community’s neighborhood schools struggle with car traffic, at dropoff and pickup, because parents choose to drive their kids.

The county does have some urban redevelopment projects taking place—in particular, in downtown Columbia and along the corridors of Route 1 between Laurel and Elkridge and Route 40 in Ellicott City— but most would call those exceptions rather than the rule.

There is, however, already a lot of bike infrastructure in Columbia. The central part of the county has a huge system of off-road foot and bike paths from the start— today, it has over 100 miles of paths (Arlington County, by comparison, has 36).

Encouraging bike riding means using space differently

Several community groups, businesses, residents supported the bike master plan and complete streets policy. The challenge, really, isn’t public resistance or a lack of political will. It is something more fundamental: the physical and cultural structure of a suburban place.

But as the bicycle master plan and the efforts required to make it happen make clear, retrofitting a landscape to accommodate an active lifestyle is certainly possible. Wide roads mean there are often opportunities to narrow travel lane width to allow for more bike lanes, and well-placed crosswalks and spot improvements can create long-missing connections.

With time and investments, the bicycle network the new master plan envisions is certainly achievable. At my organization, the Horizon Foundation, we’ve begun working to encourage more people to choose active transportation for shorter trips. Last summer, Horizon hosted an Open Streets event, temporarily re-designing a road with expanded facilities for walking and biking. More than 1,000 people took the opportunity to experience how, with the right roadway design, short trips through the neighborhood can be safe, enjoyable, and convenient.

But there’s more to be done, and it starts with the idea that an active lifestyle is not solely available to city dwellers. While much of the focus on active lifestyles nationally centers around commuting, we are working to show that even in places where traveling to work is largely done by car, people can incorporate active transportation into other parts of their lives.

Riding a bike should be just as easy as driving a car, whether to get kids to school or soccer practice or to meet friends at a restaurant.

After all, suburbs weren’t actually built for cars. They were built for people. How we get around them is our choice. And more and more, people are asking for healthier choices. The question remains: If we change our community to make these options available, will we change too?