the Neighborhood Design Center

Multimodal Transportation and Pedestrian Planning

West North Avenue Streetscape Conceptual Master Plan

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One of many community workshops. Photos by Matt Roth.
One of many community workshops. Photos by Matt Roth.

A large-scale effort to reimagine a neglected, high-traffic corridor into a safe, inviting pedestrian streetscape.

Upon invitation from the 7th Baltimore City Council District, Reservoir Hill Improvement Council, Druid Heights CDC, and Coppin Heights CDC, the Neighborhood Design Center facilitated an 18-month streetscape visioning process in 2014 and 2015 with dozens of volunteer and staff designers, community core stakeholders, and hundreds of resident stakeholders.

Community Goals

INCREASE PEDESTRIAN SAFETY & ACCESSIBILITY

    • The most frequently mentioned goal was increasing pedestrian safety and pedestrian accessibility along West North Avenue.


CREATE AND MAINTAIN A CLEAN, ATTRACTIVE STREETSCAPE

    • Many aligned priorities expressed by community members can be summarized as a desire for a clean, beautiful streetscape.


CREATE AN ENVIRONMENT RIPE FOR DEVELOPMENT

    • The other priorities contribute to this overarching desire to increase public and private development along West North Avenue.


RESPECT AND CELEBRATE THE IDENTITIES OF NORTH AVENUE

    • Development should not come at the expense of the identities of the surrounding communities, and celebrating those identities should help promote development by establishing West North Avenue as a unique opportunity for investment.

Some of the Highest Priorities

    • Maintain/upgrade all sidewalks to ADA standards for accessibility, including level surfaces and ramps at intersections

    • Conduct a traffic study to determine feasibility of signaling proposals

    • Repaint all crosswalks to a standard of “high visibility”

    • Install pedestrian timers at every stoplight

    • Apply “pedestrian lead” programming at intersections, where pedestrians get the walk signal seconds before the parallel green light for vehicles, to enable pedestrians to begin crossing before cars start right or left turns

    • Install curb extensions at every intersection to increase pedestrian visibility, shorten crossing distances, and visually narrow the roadway

    • Add consistent street trees and pedestrian-scale lighting to every block

    • Add more waste cans, with a waste-removal strategy that accommodates the actual disposal rate of trash in the waste cans

    • Every bus stop should have at least a bench and a waste can

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Sno-ball stand to gather feedback.
Sno-ball stand to gather feedback.

Together, the 28 volunteers on this project contributed 1,744 hours of professional service, with an estimated market value of $110,000.

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This case for support helped secure a $26 Million Federal TIGER Grant. That’s the power of community-led design!Read the full 71-page conceptual master plan.