President Pines,

The announcements on Monday, February 6 by the Department of Transportation (DOTS) on Twitter and Instagram, the quiz and article from UMD Today, and the email from Carlo Colella do not reflect the needs and wants of students and broader campus community, and most importantly, fail at prioritizing effective safety strategies to protect our most vulnerable road users, pedestrians, cyclists and e-scooter riders.

We at Terps for Bike Lanes agree that pedestrian and micromobility safety are of paramount concern. Our mission is to work with the university to improve safety through the most effective means available: separate and protected infrastructure. Toward this end, it is wonderful that the university plans for an eventual bike lane to be built next to the Purple Line, and that there are talks of potential feasibility studies for bike lanes elsewhere. These are steps in the right direction and we are happy they are being taken.

That being said, the Purple Line bike lanes will not be added until after all other construction has ceased, and there have been no communications about specific feasibility studies that have begun for areas on campus, let alone status updates. Without any more information, we must assume that there has been no more progress and that what Carlo Colella said in his email, “In addition to current and planned improvements, [the university] will continue to explore the feasibility of infrastructure updates like shared-use paths and bike lanes,” is a platitude at best.

The quiz published by UMD today consists of a list of questions that each have a “correct” answer beside a set of obviously “incorrect” answers (save for the one question about texting while driving, oddly enough) to the point where it feels like passive aggression. The quiz also parrots the same line that UMD gave in Spring 2022 when we requested comment from UMD regarding better delineation of legal and illegal places to cycle: “Maryland state law requires that bicycles, e-bikes and e-scooters be operated on the road.” This is either a misunderstanding of the law or a blatant disregard for the fact that the state of Maryland fully allows riding on sidewalks and other off-road paths where local jurisdictions have made it legal (MD. Transportation Code Ann. § 21-1202 (2021)). Shared use paths like that of Paint Branch Trail are a perfect example of this. The university could make off-road riding legal in areas, but has decided not to.

Terps for Bike Lanes commented on the DOTS Instagram post, stating our dissatisfaction with the direction that the university has decided to take. In response to that comment, DOTS attempted to give support for “Safety Starts with You” by listing “unsafe riding behaviors…that have nothing to do with infrastructure.” All of the problems listed can be attributed to a lack of infrastructure or mitigated by additional infrastructure:

• “e-scooters blowing through stop signs”: Adding pedestrian tables at crosswalks reduces average vehicle speed of all modes, and encourages safer behavior around pedestrians.
• “[e-scooter riders] riding with multiple riders”: Veo e-scooters are expensive to use. Personal e-scooters are expensive to own. Bike and scooter parking are limited in many parts of campus, and secured parking is basically non-existent. Offering an affordable or free micromobility alternative and adding sufficient parking throughout campus would encourage riders to use their own bike or scooter instead of sharing.
• “[e-scooter riders] wearing headphones”: While infrastructure cannot stop people from wearing headphones while riding, adding clear signage, separated bike lanes, and automated warning lights at pedestrian crossings would reduce any harm that would come from such acts. Additionally, infrastructure should be built in such a way that it works for all people who cannot hear other pedestrians and vehicles because people with headphones in are not the only people who cannot hear.

Infrastructure can go a long way to accommodate undesired behavior. In many cases it is the most effective tool to reduce harm. Education initiatives have a lot less evidence to back their efficacy, which is why the new “Safety Starts with You” initiative is difficult to understand (Table 1, World Health Organization).

The initiative comes not long after DOTS made a public request for comment on Reddit regarding road and sidewalk safety. The overwhelming majority of both comments and “upvotes” (Reddit’s way for a reader to support a comment) were begging for infrastructure to solve the safety issues on campus. And a study done at UMD surveying commuters concluded that the lack of separate cycling was stopping many people from biking instead of driving because they felt unsafe around cars (G. Akar, 2009). The UMD community has been asking for separate infrastructure for over a decade.

The biggest threats to our campus community members’ safety are cars and heavy vehicles. The danger of injury from a crash scales with the energy of the collision, which is a function of velocity, yes, but also scales linearly with mass. Collisions between cars and pedestrians/micromobility users have a much higher likelihood to result in serious injury or death than a collision between pedestrians and micromobility users. A 200 lb scooter and rider has one tenth the kinetic energy of a 2000 lb car going the same speed, and cars go much faster than scooters on campus, exacerbating the issue. The “Safety Starts with You” initiative shames micromobility users for behavior when the university is at fault for failing to invest in sufficient infrastructure for safe micromobility use. Cars are the real danger, and education tactics for behavior change are not an effective strategy. It is time the university deprioritized car convenience, invested in proven safety countermeasures, and committed to a Safe Systems Approach through **action **to protect pedestrians and micromobility users.

The university has talked about adding bike lanes since at least the 2011 Facilities Management Master Plan. More than a decade later, we have yet to see progress toward a coherent network of micromobility infrastructure. Carlo Colella and the Tiger Team have talked about painting more sharrows on campus roads, a “solution” that has little-to-no efficacy (World Health Organization). Separate infrastructure is needed, and there are many locations on campus where it could be added with temporary infrastructure such as cones or plastic Jersey barriers. Building a comprehensive network requires a great deal of planning, but there is no reason we cannot test routes today. We appreciate that the university is paying attention to micromobility safety, but we hope that you take into account the wants and needs of the campus community and aim for high-efficacy interventions that are backed by research.

Sincerely,

Terps For Bike Lanes