Montgomery County Advocacy Update

November 4, 2024

Welcome to the Fall 2024 WABA Montgomery County advocacy update!

This update is going to focus on six items: Two past events, two-upcoming rides, and two current advocacy priorities, followed by a quick recap of recent WABA Advocacy activities.

Event #1: A report from the 5th Great Montgomery County Bike Summit

The header photo on today’s advocacy report shows the Effective Advocacy panel at WABA’s 5th Great Montgomery County Bike Summit, which took place September 29 in Wheaton. We’re grateful for our panel participants, Danielle Blocker with Young People for Progress (YPP); Helen Heinrich with the Action Committee for Transit (ACT); Shannon Shea, representing the Rockville Bicycle Advisory Committee (RBAC); and moderator Dan Reed from Greater Greater Washington. We aimed to communicate a sense of the spectrum of concerns and considerations related to bicycling, mobility, transportation equity, and safety in Montgomery County, by amplifying a diversity of voices. We hope this panel advanced the cause.

A couple more shots: State Highway Administrator Will Pines, who gave a detailed and frank overview of SHA safety and active transportation initiatives, and Delegate Marc Korman, who chairs the House of Delegates’ Environment and Transportation Committee.

Event #2: WABA honors Councilmember Natali Fani-González at the 2024 WABA Awards

Each year at a WABA Awards celebration event, we recognize the amazing work of neighbors, instructors, advocates, and elected officials across the region who continue to build momentum to create a region where anyone — any age, ability, background, or zip code — can get around safely, comfortably, and with joy.

This year, WABA presented a Public Leadership Award to Montgomery County Councilmember Natali Fani-González, at the October 9 WABA Awards program in the District of Columbia. Here’s what WABA Montgomery County Organizer Peter Gray had to say when presenting the award to Natali:

Councilmember Fani-González has been bringing attention to the need for equitable and inclusive multi-modal transportation long before her time on the Montgomery County Council. As a member of the Montgomery County Planning Board she was a strong supporter of the creation of the current County Bicycle Master Plan. As a County Council member, she has demonstrated her leadership by engaging state leaders including Governor Wes Moore and Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefeld, advancing important road safety projects, and supporting community efforts – not to mention, joining and providing food for our Montgomery County Bike Summits.

We were honored to honor Councilmember Fani-González!

Peter Gray and Natali Fani-González at the WABA Awards

Mark your calendar for two upcoming rides…

Upcoming #1: The Cider Ride

The Cider Ride is a WABA signature event, a tour of Prince George’s County trails — with 60, 30, or 10 mile ride options and of course with cider and donuts — followed by a post-ride celebration.

This ride is a fundraiser. Registration fees support WABA’s work in the DC region and our mission empowering people to ride bikes, build connections and transform places.

Join us on Saturday, November 2nd, rain or shine, starting and finishing at metrobar, 640 Rhode Island Avenue NE, Washington DC 20002. Visit https://waba.org/blog/2019/09/the-cider-ride/ for information and to sign up. See you there?

Upcoming #2: Ride For Your Life, November 17

For this item, on the November 17 Ride For Your Life, we’ll simply relay invitation text from the event organizers…

Two years ago, one of the largest safe-streets advocacy bike rides was held in the Washington area, with nearly 2,000 riders and walkers converging at the U.S. Capitol to demand safer streets. Now, for the third year running, the ride organizers and others will once again join forces with others across America to raise our voices on World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims.

Join us! On November 17, riders will embark on an 8-mile slow ride to the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall from Wood Acres Elementary school in Bethesda. An alternative walk option will proceed south from Freedom Plaza to the National Mall and then the Lincoln Memorial for a rally with Ride for Your Life participants.Our aim: to send a clear message about roadway safety to our leaders as a new Congress and presidential administration takes shape.

Ride: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ride-for-your-life-2024-tickets-1033704186047?aff=oddtdtcreator

Walk: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/walk-for-your-life-2024-tickets-1036835351447

And finally, two current advocacy priorities…

Advocacy Focus #1: 2025 Maryland State Legislation

We expect that a number of our 2024 bills that didn’t pass will be reintroduced in the 2025 Maryland legislative session, which opens January 8, 2025. Those bills include Bicycle Safety Yield (a.k.a. Stop as Yield), Bikes On Sidewalks as the default statewide, enabling Montgomery County speed-limit reduction without a traffic and engineering study, and the Transportation and Climate Alignment Act. Stay tuned for more.

We’re thrilled to have a sponsor for a new bill: Delegate Michele Guyton will introduce a bill prohibiting stopping, standing, or parking in a striped bike lane or a bicycle path such as a cycletrack. We’re glad! The Better Bus Service Act of 2024, which passed earlier this year, includes a prohibition against driving, standing, or parking a motor vehicle in a designated bus lane, but a similar bike-lane prohibition was stripped out. So now we’ll have a bill to address that point.

We’re still working on recruiting a lead sponsor for enabling legislation that would allow counties and municipalities to impose an additional fee up to $0.25 on an Uber or Lyft ride, with the funds going to e-bike purchase, lease, or rental subsidies and to bike-share programs. We have two secondary sponsors but need a legislator who will take the lead and champion the bill.

We’re organizing a virtual 2025 State Legislative Preview meeting, aiming for early December, with a senator and a delegate as special guests. We will announce a date once those guests are confirmed. We’ll discuss the state transportation budget outlook — it’s not a pretty picture — and 2025 transportation legislation, new revenue measures, and how community members can be effective advocates, and we’ll talk about the WABA and Bike Maryland 2025 legislative agendas. More on this soon.

Advocacy Focus #2: State Transportation Priorities

A visualization of Maryland’s six-year, FY 2024-FY 2029 Consolidated Transportation Program

Maryland’s dire transportation funding picture is reflected in a draft six-year Consolidated Transportation Program (CTP) that reduces funding from last year’s levels for key transit, road-safety, and bicycling programs.

In response, we’re calling on Governor Wes Moore and the General Assembly to fully fund the Kim Lamphier Bikeways Program and Complete Streets Program, should current revenues allow that, and to prioritize those programs as new revenue sources are brought online. Will you sign on?

Community + Partnership + Dialogue = Progress

In late summer and into the fall, we continued to hold community events and work in partnership with other advocacy groups. In 2024 Q3 – a sampling – WABA:

Hosted an August 21 Montgomery County Bicycling Advocates Meetup at BabyCat Brewery in Gaithersburg, with special guests Del. Ryan Spiegel and Gaithersburg Councilmembers Yamil Hernandez, Neil Harris, and Jim McNulty.
Participated in advocacy around improvements on River Road, Goldsboro Road, University Blvd., and Old Georgetown Road.
Participated in meetings of the Montgomery County Bicycle Advisory Group (MCBAG); the Montgomery County Pedestrian, Traffic Safety, and Bicycle Advisory Committee; and the Rockville Bicycle Advisory Committee (RBAC).
Met with State Highway Administrator Will Pines and staff, to discuss 2025 legislation and the state’s Consolidated Transportation Program.
Interacted with SHA staff about state Pedestrian Safety Action Plan (PSAP) projects and MDOT’s Complete Streets Program and Context Driven methodology.
Developed testimony on Montgomery County’s Master Plan of Highways and Transitways (MPHOT) Technical Update.

That’s a sample. Please reach out if you’d like to get involved or to enlist our help with anything related to cycling in Montgomery County…

Stay in Touch!

Visit WABA’s action center, blog archive, and events pages to learn more about current actions and events throughout the region. Finally, if you’re not already a WABA member, PLEASE JOIN. We need your support to amplify cycling community voices and elevate safe-roads advocacy and mobility for all.

More about Complete State Roads: Montgomery County

WABA’s Complete State Roads initiative aims to remake state highways in Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties as complete streets, boosting safety and mobility for people who walk, bike, roll, or use transit as well as for drivers and their passengers.

The Complete State Roads–Montgomery County report is available at waba.org/stateroads and you can watch a presentation delivered about it at WABA’s 4th Great Montgomery County Bike Summit in 2023.

As part of the Complete State Roads initiative, WABA backed the development of legislation for introduction in the 2024 Maryland legislative session.

More about Montgomery County Budget

Montgomery County's budgeting process, both for its annual budget and its 6-year Capital Improvement Program, takes place in the spring. WABA works with grassroots advocates and partner organizations to build support on the County Council for funding individual projects and to ensure that the relevant agencies (usually Parks, Planning, Transportation) have the resources required to grow and maintain the County's active transportation network.

Current priorities include funding the Montgomery County Equitable Bikeways proposal, completion of the Capital Crescent Trail from Bethesda to Silver Spring, and developing an e-bike purchase rebate program.

More about Montgomery County Equitable Bikeways

Montgomery County's piecemeal approach to building bike infrastructure is not aligned with its stated climate, safety, and equity goals,

In 2021, WABA assembled a proposal that prioritized projects in the county's existing (and laudabe!) Bicycle Master Plan within county-designates Equity Focus Areas. You can read the report here. With around $110 million, the County could build all of the Tier 1 bikeway projects in most of the equity emphasis areas in the County. This dollar amount spread over the FY 23-28 six year capital budget period is consistent with current commitments to biking and walking

More about Montgomery County Legislation

More about Complete Streets

Complete Streets are streets designed to accommodate all users, and that prioritize historically underinvested modes of transportation like transit, walking, and biking. An incomplete street might lack adequate sidewalks, low-stress bike infrastructure, or safe and comfortable access to transit.

Effective Complete Streets policies change the way a jurisdiction plans and builds transportation infrastructure—sidewalks, low stress bike infrastructure, and transit should be included in any new or rebuilt street by default, rather than as an add-on when there's space or demand.

While most regional jurisdictions have a Complete Streets policy of some sort, they lack teeth and permit transportation departments to continue to build streets that put cars first and squeeze other modes into the margins.

More about Laws & Policy

WABA works with grassroots advocates at the local, county and state level to support laws and policies that make it easier and safer to walk, bike, and take transit. And we work to changes ones that make biking less safe, make it harder to build bike infrastructure, or that deprioritize the safety and convenience of people walking, biking, or taking transit.

In practice that means advocating for robust and transformative Vision Zero programs, enforceable Complete Streets policies, and funding for new infrastructure that supports biking, walking and transit.

Other regional legislative priorities include:

Reforming Contributory Negligence (passed in DC, in the works in Maryland and Virginia).
Getting rid of the Level of Service engineering standards in transportation decision-making.
Funding E-bike purchase rebates.

More about Advocacy

WABA fights for a region where biking, walking and transit are the best ways to get around.

We educate policymakers and organize grassroots advocates for to speak up for safer places to bike and walk; and for laws and policies that protect people who are walking and biking, reduce dangerous driving, and facilitate changes to the built environment.