HEPMPO Regional Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan

The Regional Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan provides guidance for future bicycle and pedestrian improvements within the Hagerstown/Eastern Panhandle Metropolitan Planning Organization (HEPMPO). Planning for enhanced bicycle and pedestrian mobility at a regional level takes a multi-pronged approach through project, policy, and strategy improvements.

The Stakeholder Advisory Committee was comprised of professionals with local knowledge of the region's Bicycle / Pedestrian network which included state and local officials, HEPMPO’s TAC, and others.

The HEPMPO Regional Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan builds upon previous studies of the area at the state, regional, and local levels. There are a variety of ongoing bicycle and pedestrian efforts and activities including the release of new federal guidelines, state and regional master plans and safety studies, and Statewide Transportation Improvement Programs (STIP).

The existing conditions section provides an overview of existing bicycle and pedestrian facilities and safety findings within the HEPMPO region.

Most bicycle facilities within the region are shared lanes or bicycle routes, followed by off-street shared-use paths. Bicycle lanes and paved shoulders are primarily located in urbanized areas such as Hagerstown.  

Pedestrian facilities such as sidewalks, crosswalks, and curb ramps are primarily located in urbanized areas. The following maps highlight four cities and towns in HEPMPO and their existing pedestrian facilities.

Trails across the HEPMPO include the C&O Trail, Appalachian Trail, Western Maryland Rail Trail, Tuscarora Trail, Eastern Panhandle Recreation Trail, and other smaller local trails. The larger off-street facilities are accessible for both people walking and bicycling. A handful of smaller local trails, in Hagerstown and Martinsburg, are within SS4A underserved communities.

Between 2017 and 2021, a total of 642 pedestrian and bicycle crashes occurred with the HEPMPO region. Of those crashes, 497 involved a pedestrian, and 145 involved a person on a bicycle. Additionally, 25 crashes were reviewed that occurred in Hagerstown in 2022.

Stakeholder and public participation played a critical role in identifying issues and priorities during the planning process. Throughout the development of the plan, input and feedback from a diverse group of stakeholders were solicited and incorporated through a series of meetings, as well as through a web-based survey. There will be three public meetings and a 30-day public comment period.

A web-based survey was utilized to gather public input about biking and walking in the region. Over the 34-day survey period, there were 485 participants.

More than half of the participants walk for exercise or recreation. 21% of participants walk for errands (grocery/shopping/doctors) or to commute to work/school. Of the walkers, 4% use a cane or other mobility aid. Over half the participants walk 1 or more miles on a typical one-way trip.

Nearly half of the participants avoid walking due to the lack of sidewalks or sidewalk conditions. Traffic was the next highest prevention. Participants wanted to see walking improvements at adjacent communities, rural roads, and intersection crossings.

Of the responses, 79% of participants own a bike. More than half the participants bike for exercise or recreational purposes with 20% biking to run errands or commute to work/school. Forty-three percent of bikers ride one to five miles and 41% ride greater than five miles on a one-way trip.

More than half the participants choose not to bike because of safety concerns, traffic, and/or poor bike conditions. Seventy-five percent of bicyclists want to see improved bike conditions between adjacent communities, rural roads, and high-speed/volume roads.

Participants were given a hypothetical amount of money to distribute across five different categories. The distribution results showed that the majority of applicants want to see new trails and multi-use paths as well as new and improved markings, shoulders, bike lanes, sidewalks, or amenities.

The last screen of the survey allowed participants to share additional comments. The graphic below highlights the keywords mentioned in the participant responses, with the bold and large words mentioned the most.

This Plan includes goals to enhance safety and promote bicycling and walking as healthy transportation alternatives. The examples below, pertaining to events, outreach, and education, offer examples of potential initiatives to help generate interest in and awareness for cycling and walking.

• Advertise bicycle-related events through graphical calendars, such as the City of Hagerstown’s “National Bike Month Calendar”.

• Hold events such as a bike or walk to work day. Maryland’s Bike to Work Week 2023 is scheduled for Monday, May 15 – Sunday, May 21, with locally hosted events and group rides throughout the week and Bike to Work Day events on Friday, May 19.

• Pursue “Ciclovia” or Open Streets type events, closing off commercial corridors to auto traffic and offering space for active transportation users. This type of event can be held annually, monthly, or even weekly. Ciclovias began in Bogota, Colombia in 1974 and now attracts 2 million people (30 percent of Bogota’s population) every Sunday. The Open Streets concept has since spread all over the world, including many communities, large and small, in the United States. Locally, Shepherdstown Farmers Market is held every Sunday from 9am-1pm during the growing season. It occurs on South King Street between German and New Streets.

Safety and demand analysis was conducted to identify areas with high bicycle or pedestrian demand and areas with high bicycle or pedestrian safety concerns. Identifying corridors or intersections with high demand and/or high safety concerns helps locate areas most in need of bicycle and/or pedestrian improvements.

The demand and safety analysis generated bicycle and pedestrian scores across the HEPMPO region. The scores were generated in hex bins (e.g., a hexagon grid) to maintain uniform scoring by land area across the region. Hex bins work well when aggregating point data, which was primarily used for the demand and safety analysis (e.g., Strava origin and desitination point data, public comment point data). Analysis was conducted separately by method and by mode and a total of four scores were generated: 1) walking demand, 2) walking safety, 3) biking demand, and 4) biking safety. The scores were categorized into tiers 1 – 4. A score of 1 indicates the highest demand/safety concern and a score of 4 indicates the lowest demand/safety concern.

While the scores were calculated separately, the methods worked in parallel and used public input data, crash data, Strava data (e.g., self-reported walking and biking data) to generate scores. The Strava data included two inputs, origin and destination point data, and trip polyline data. Origin and destination data highlights where walking and biking trips start and end. Trip data highlights the entire walking or bicycling trip. The trip data was assigned a slightly higher weight than the origin and destination data, as the demand score goes beyond where trips start and end. The safety analysis also used forecasted volume along major roadways within HEPMPO region.

The safety and demand score per mode combined generates a bivariate map. The map highlights areas that are both in high demand and have high safety concerns per mode. Dark pink represents the highest safety concern areas, and the darker green represents the highest demand areas. Therefore, where the two colors overlap, they produce a purple shade, and the darkest purple represents areas with the highest demand and safety concern scores.

For both bicycle and pedestrian modes, there are more areas of demand than areas of safety concern. Demand is more distributed while safety concerns are more concentrated. Overlap amongst the two variables occurs more often in areas of medium demand and medium safety concern, resulting in more muted purple hex bins than dark purple hex bins.

Projects and recommendations were identified using public input from the MetroQuest survey, overlaid with demand and safety concerns scores for biking and walking, and refined through stakeholder input.

The Action Plan aims to improve safety, access, connectivity, and comfort for people walking and biking across the HEPMPO region. The Action Plan outlines proposed recommendations across the region to fill critical bicycle and pedestrian network gaps. Proposed recommendations were directly influenced by public feedback and align with areas of high safety concern or biking and walking demand.

The Action Plan recommends taking a  Safe System Approach  when determining improvements along proposed facilities. The Safe System Approach is a holistic view of roadway safety that utilizes six principles and five objectives for all road users and focuses on reducing fatal and severe injury crashes.

Projects recommended for each county are located in the tables below. The design phase of each recommended project would occur at a later time. The Action Plan recommends consulting state and local Policy and Design Guidance, and the Safe System Toolkit when designing specific treatment strategies and implementing specific bicycle and pedestrian improvements along the proposed facilities.

An  online data map  was used as a data repository to visualize existing facilities, crashes, socioeconomic variables, and other data. Data was collected from various state, national, and regional agencies, as well as generated by the analysis and facility identification approach in the plan.

This section of the plan outlines funding sources from Maryland, West Virginia, and the Federal government which will be leveraged to support initiatives related to bicycle and pedestrian needs, such as increasing regional bicycle and pedestrian connectivity. The HEPMPO intends to capitalize on the wide variety of funding sources available to further the improvement and expansion of our bicycle and pedestrian networks.

Want to learn more? Click the button below to view the final plan.

Comments were accepted through June 18, 2023.