State Awards $3.8 Million to Create Bikeways

Anne Arundel and Calvert counties get a piece of the pie 

By Krista Pfunder 

As more Marylanders are hitting roadways and trails on bicycles, the state is pumping up funding to help support their safe cycling. 

State leaders will award $3.78 million in fiscal 2021 to support bike safety and access improvements through the Maryland Department of Transportation’s Kim Lamphier Bikeways Network Program. Founded in 2011, the program provides money for planning, design and construction of bike lanes and shared-use paths. 

Lamphier, an avid cyclist, was an advocate for bike safety and a voice of support for state legislation to guarantee funding for Maryland’s bikeway network. She died of cancer in 2019. During this year’s legislative session in Annapolis, the General Assembly passed a bill renaming the program in Lamphier’s honor. 

In December 2019, Governor Larry Hogan announced an increase in the Bikeways Program from $2 million to $3.8 million annually. 

Nineteen projects throughout the state will get funds, including projects in Anne Arundel and Calvert counties. 

The City of Annapolis will receive $224,000 to study key gaps in the Annapolis bike network, including to and from downtown Annapolis, the Baltimore and Annapolis Trail and the Poplar Trail.  

Anne Arundel County will be awarded $600,000 — the largest grant awarded in the state — to complete a design for an extension of the BWI Trail Loop spur through Linthicum to the Nursery Road Light Rail Station in Linthicum Heights. This project will close the gap in the trail between the BWI and the B&A trails and the Gwynns Falls Trail at Harbor Hospital in Baltimore. 

Calvert County will receive $88,000 to determine the feasibility of a shared-use path serving commercial, recreational and residential destinations in the Dunkirk and Prince Frederick Town Centers. 

“We are working with our county, city and state government partners to build our envisioned trail network that will connect people with the places they need and want to get to, without using a car,” says Jon Korin, president of Bicycle Advocates for Annapolis & Anne Arundel County and chair of the Anne Arundel County Bicycle Advisory Commission. “Bicycling has increased in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic and with more safe routes, that will last beyond the pandemic.”