Prince George’s County Advocacy Update
For WABA Advocacy in Prince George’s County, community engagement is job #1. Below you’ll find updates and upcoming activities to support safe streets and a bicycle-friendly community.
WABA Prince George’s County Bike Summit, May 18
Start with an invitation: Please join us for the first Prince George’s County Bike Summit, taking place Saturday afternoon, May 18, 2 pm-5 pm in Suitland.
We’re excited for a great event thanks to our dynamite speakers and our partnerships including with event host Creative Suitland, a community arts space around half a mile from the Suitland metro station.
Register here. (It’s free!)
County Council Chair Jolene Ivey will deliver a welcome keynote – she’s a bike-lane ally – followed by a welcome from WABA’s Executive Director Elizabeth Kiker. There’s more on the program at the link above. Just one other note for now: WABA Maryland Organizer Seth Grimes will give a short presentation to launch WABA’s Complete State Roads–Prince George’s County safety initiative, focusing on remaking the county’s state roads, the most dangerous in the county.
We could use a few volunteers to help with setup, checkin, and break-down after the event. If you have questions or would like to volunteer, please get in touch: seth.grimes@waba.org.
FY25 Prince George’s County Budget Advocacy
And we have an easy advocacy opportunity for you. Please sign on to ask the County Council and County Executive to make our streets safer and boost biking in Prince George’s, by funding several key priorities in the county’s Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25) operating budget and six-year capital plan.
Visit this page to read WABA’s budget advocacy letter and add your name.
We plan to share the letter with council members on Monday, May 13, so please sign-on by Sunday, May 12. We have 67 sign-ons as of when this update was written. We’d like to top 100!
Learn more about WABA’s approach to the next budget: WABA organized an April 25 budget briefing featuring Councilmember Eric Olson, who chairs the council’s Transportation, Infrastructure, Energy & Environment Committee (TIEE). View a recording or check out WABA’s presentation slides. The most important point to know is that Prince George’s County experienced 129 road deaths in 2023 including 39 pedestrians and three bicyclists. We’ve seen too many tragedies like the deaths of 5-year-old Sky Sosa and 10-year-old Shalom Mbah, killed in November walking to school in Riverdale Park and we’re calling for changes that will keep vulnerable road users safer on our streets.
Also on the agenda for the next couple of months…
- Public-sector employees shouldn’t miss a Tuesday, May 14 webinar, Pedal Power for Public Servants: Building Government Workplaces for Better Biking. It starts at 4 pm and will discuss how to create bicycle friendly workplaces within federal, state, regional, and local public agencies. Panelists will include State Department, League of American Bicyclists, and PeopleforBikes representatives, and Kalli Krumpos, WABA Senior Organizing Manager. Sign-up here.
- Bike to Work Day is Friday, May 17. There will be eleven Prince George’s County pit stops. Look for the WABA table at the Largo / Kettering/ Perrywood Community Center pit stop, the College Park City Hall Plaza pit stop, and the Hyattsville Driskell Community Park pit stop. Visit biketoworkmetrodc.org/ to register and choose your pit stop.
- The next Prince George’s Active Transportation Advisory Group (ATAG) meeting will be on Monday, June 3.
- Rhode Island Avenue Trolley Trail Day is June 8 this year, 8 am to 4 pm, featuring a “Fun Run, Bicycle Ride, Local Music, Kid Activities, Food and Drink, and more!” The Trolley Trail is a 3.8-mile-long trail linking College Park, Riverdale Park, and Hyattsville. Look for WABA’s Kalli Krumpos, who will be tabling for the Capital Trails Coalition.
And bicycling/related news from the last couple of months…
County Bike and Pedestrian Network Plan
The County’s Department of Public Works and Transportation (DPW&T) released its Bike and Pedestrian Network Plan that “identifies projects to address missing links in the existing pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure. The plan prioritizes pedestrian and bicycle network improvement projects within High Incident Areas (HIAs), downtowns, along corridors, and within local and regional transit centers.”
The plan isn’t complete; we’d characterize it as a continuation. The $4.5 million cost to bring those projects—actually, 14 of them, with the 15th independently accounted for–to 30% design is funded, which means the county will need to come up with design-completion and construction funding in future years. But also, if you look at the project map, you’ll see segments rather than a network. Building out a connected, complete Prince George’s County bikeway network will take decades. The current plan covers a small amount of what would be, if funded and completed, a very large effort.
To advance bike-network build-out, WABA actively works with DPW&T and with the county’s municipalities and with the State Highway Administration (SHA) to urge them to apply for federal and state project funding. This is a significant part of our advocacy efforts.
MDOT and SHA meetings
In addition to working with DPW&T, we interact frequently with state officials from the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) and the “modal administrations,” modes being a technical term for types of transportation.
We participated in the April 23 quarterly meeting of MDOT’s Pedestrian-Bicycle Emphasis Area Team (P-BEAT), and we’ll be meeting on May 16 with the SHA and the Purple Line construction team, under the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA). That latter meeting will focus on bicycle rail crossings – sharp-angle bike-rail crossings are dangerous for bicyclists – and on design improvements for an MTA project on a segment of Kenilworth Ave./MD 201 south of University Blvd./MD 193 that is associated with Purple Line construction.
And it’s the Highway Safety Office, part of the state Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA), that funds WABA’s Prince George’s County Vision Zero Youth Leadership Institute, run by WABA’s Joseph Hamd.
Youth Transportation Safety Town Hall
Joseph and WABA’s Prince George’s County youth leaders organized a fantastic Youth Transportation Safety Town Hall in Hyattsville on April 13. (Thanks to the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System, DPW&T, and other partners.)
The town hall featured guests including District 2 Councilmember Wanika Fisher, DPW&T Deputy Director Oluseyi Olugbenle, Hyattsville Mayor Robert Croslin, and Prince George’s County School Board District 3 Member Pamela Boozer-Strother in addition to the youth organizers.
Quoting Oluseyi Olugbenle: “It’s not a secret that Prince George’s County has the highest number of crashes and fatalities in the state. In my speech, I spoke about these challenges but also concrete solutions needed in policy, funding, meaningful roadway redesign projects, and inclusive public engagement.“
Joseph and the youth organizers have continued their work. A Central Avenue/MD 214 safety walk audit provided Central High School students an opportunity to document their walkability and safety concerns and bring them directly to State Highway Administration and MVA Highway Safety Office staff who joined them for the walk.
A recap of the 2024 state legislative session
We’ll conclude this update with bicycling and safe-streets highlights from Maryland’s 2024 legislative session, which ended on April 8.
The wins, Maryland bicycling/road-safety bills passed in 2024, included:
- HB 337/SB 315, the Sarah Debbink Langenkamp Memorial Act, addressing penalties for hitting a bicyclist in a bike lane.
- SB 345, requiring an MDOT Vision Zero Coordinator to collaborate with state agencies and local authorities and hold quarterly public meetings.
- HB 364, authorizing stop-sign cameras near schools in Prince George’s County, a bill written by District 22 Delegate Anne Healey.
- SB 943, the Better Bus Service Act, allowing bus-lane enforcement cameras, which should speed transit service, noting that bikes are allowed to use bus lanes.
On the revenue front, the Budget Reconciliation and Financing Act of 2024, SB 362, shores up the Transportation Trust Fund. Additional revenue sources that the state will tap include a fee on electric vehicles (whose drivers of course don’t pay gasoline taxes), higher registration fees on heavy vehicles, and a fee on Uber and Lyft rides. The FY25 revenue estimate is $257 million.
Several of our bills passed the House of Delegates but didn’t make it out of the Judicial Proceedings Committee (JPR) in the Senate:
- HB 111, making Bikes on Sidewalks the default statewide.
- HB 278, allowing the State Highway Administration to reduce urban state road speed limits by 5 MPH without an engineering and traffic investigation.
- HB 511, Bicycle Safety Yield, allowing a bicyclist to proceed past a stop sign without stopping, after yielding as required.
Other bills that didn’t pass in the House or the Senate:
- HB 156, Electric Bicycle Rebate and Voucher Program. The state transportation budget has a multi-billion dollar 5-year deficit so the General Assembly generally didn’t fund new transportation programs this year.
- HB 389/SB 514, addressing responsibility for maintenance of sidewalks and bike paths along state roads, a bill introduced by D22 Delegate Anne Healey and Senator Alonzo Washington (thanks!).
- HB 530/SB 645, the Great Maryland Trails Act, which would have established a state Trails Office.
We’ll try again to pass some of these bills in 2025, working with our allies at Bike Maryland.
Speaking out for bicycling and safer streets
We’d like to hear your thoughts about bicycling, pedestrian, and road-safety programming that the county should fund for the next fiscal year. Please send us a note at advocacy@waba.org and we’ll see what we can add to our advocacy agenda.
Finally, is your WABA membership current? If not, we’d love to have you (re)join. Just visit waba.org/join-2020/. WABA is member supported, and your contribution at any level – WABA membership dues are pay-what-you-can – will help us sustain our work and expand our community impact.