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Bio
Mike (he/him) got his start in local politics as a neighborhood activist pushing for walkability. From there he founded a non-profit focused on sustainable and equitable growth, and then became mayor of Seattle. He has always worked to add new voices to City decision-making and has gained deep insights into how influence is gained and wielded to make change. Just before joining America Walks, Mike worked to help Feet First, Washington State’s walking advocacy organization, expand their sphere of influence across Washington state. He has worked on numerous public education, legislative, ballot measure and election campaigns – which has given him an abiding faith in the power of organizing and volunteers to create change. His many years of advocating for sustainable cities and environmental justice give him perspective to expand America Walks partnerships.

Presentation
Mike will discuss trends in walkability at the national level, in particular the increased funding available for safe streets and new initiatives for safer vehicles. Mike will also share ways in which individuals can help build momentum in their local communities for more walkable, accessible places.

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Bio
As the director of AARP Livable Communities, Mike Watson works closely with AARP’s 53 state offices, volunteers and key stakeholders to encourage towns, counties and cities to be more livable for people of all ages. He leads a team that's responsible for supporting the AARP Network of Age-Friendly States and Communities; delivering direct technical assistance to communities; publishing free resources and the AARP Livable Communities weekly e-newsletter; equipping mayors and local officials with tools and resources; and delivering livability grants to communities nationwide through the AARP Community Challenge program.

Previously, Mike helped advance AARP’s livability work by leading the AARP Community Challenge and the association's national mayoral engagement effort. Mike also served as an advisor to AARP's chief advocacy and engagement officer, providing strategic advice and expertise on retirement policy, family caregiving and livable communities.

Before joining AARP in 2011, Mike served as a lobbyist on Capitol Hill for an advocacy organization focused on issues affecting older adults. He holds a bachelor's degree in history with a minor in legal studies from Wingate University, a master's in public policy (focused on social policy) from the University of Maryland School of Public Policy and a professional certificate in municipal finance from the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. An avid runner, cyclist and outdoor enthusiast, Mike is passionate about helping communities become places where people of all ages can thrive.

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Bio
Edward Erfurt is the Director of Community Action at Strong Towns. He is a trained architect and passionate urban designer with over 20 years of public- and private-sector experience focused on the management, design, and successful implementation of development and placemaking projects that enrich the tapestry of place. He believes in community-focused processes that are founded on diverse viewpoints, a concern for equity, and guided through time-tested, traditional town-planning principles and development patterns that result in sustainable growth with the community character embraced by the communities which he serves.

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Bio
Wes Mitchell is a Senior Vice President with a Multi-disciplinary Planning / Engineering firm WSP USA and serves as the Mid-Atlantic Planning Lead from New Jersey down to West Virginia. Wesley’s background includes both public and private design experience from the planning, preliminary and final engineering phases of projects that seamlessly integrates transit, roadways and bicycle / pedestrian accommodations throughout the project life cycle. Wes has over twenty-six years of experience as a Project Manager, Transportation Planner and Public Outreach Specialist for a multitude of large and small scale transportation projects throughout the Region. He is well versed in developing innovative and cost effective solutions to transportation issues that consistently embrace balanced multi-modal complete street principles and transportation / land use linkages especially as it relates to vision zero and improved pedestrian safety & accessibility.

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Bio
Kathryn Hendley is a transportation planner with WSP in Baltimore and was the Deputy Project Manager for the Druid Park Lake Drive Complete Streets Feasibility Study. She has a wide range of planning experience for Complete Streets, transit and bicycle infrastructure projects in the Central Maryland region and has led several successful federal grant applications to fund multi-modal transportation projects. As a pedestrian and cyclist, she is passionate about planning and designing safe, connected, and accessible active transportation infrastructure to create more vibrant cities.

Presentation: Druid Park Lake Drive Complete Streets Feasibility Study
The Baltimore City Department of Transportation's Druid Park Lake Drive Complete Streets Study, completed in 2021, reimagines Druid Park Lake Drive in Baltimore City to significantly increase safety for all modes, including pedestrians, on this major corridor bordering Druid Hill Park. Druid Park Lake Drive is a high-speed, highway-like arterial roadway that divides Druid Hill Park from several majority-Black communities and currently has unsafe walking infrastructure marked by high-speed traffic, infrequent safe crossing opportunities, a lack of continuous sidewalks, and inhospitable intersections. The Druid Park Lake Drive Complete Streets study presents concepts for the future of this roadway as a corridor that is safe and accessible for pedestrians by adding continuous, ADA-compliant sidewalk, redesigning intersections with safe pedestrian crossing infrastructure, and reducing the width and speed of the roadway to increase comfort for people on foot. This presentation will provide an overview of the project, highlighting the design process and the concepts developed to make walking safe and accessible on Druid Park Lake Drive.

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Bio
Molly Porter is a Bicycle and Pedestrian Planner with the Maryland State Highway Administration (SHA), Office of Planning and Preliminary Engineering (OPPE), Regional and Intermodal Planning Division (RIPD). She received her Master’s degree in Community Planning from the University of Cincinnati and has been working at SHA since 2022. Her job responsibilities include assisting with the implementation of transportation and safety planning initiatives including implementation of MDOT SHA’s Context Driven and Access and Mobility for all Users Guide.

Presentation
Maryland is committed to eliminating traffic-related serious injuries and fatalities, a strategy known as Vision Zero. Federal, state, and local agencies are working together with the public to review safety, identify strategies to reduce crashes, and enhance livability for Marylanders.

The Maryland Department of Transportation State Highway Administration (MDOT SHA) is focused on contributing to Vision Zero efforts. By initiating Context Driven, MDOT SHA is providing a framework for roadway design and creating an actionable plan to improve roadway safety and balance access and mobility in all contexts throughout Maryland, from urban cores to rural areas, by developing a toolkit of safety improvements and providing training to practitioners and the public.

This actionable plan is the Pedestrian Safety Action Plan (PSAP). Through this PSAP, MDOT SHA will work with communities to improve pedestrian safety by identifying challenges, setting goals and objectives, focusing on areas of need, setting priorities, and taking action.

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Bio
Doug Mowbray has served the Motor Vehicle Administration’s Highway Safety Office for nearly 15 years in the role of Traffic Records Program Manager and Safety Data Analyst and manages a federal grant program to support the improvement of and access to datasets related to motor vehicle crashes and other traffic safety issues. He is the Maryland Traffic Records Coordinating Committee (TRCC) Facilitator and serves as Chair for the Crash Data Accessibility TRCC Subcommittee. Doug and his wife, son, two cats, and four chickens reside in Harford County where he and his family are involved in environmental sustainability efforts. He has undergraduate and graduate degrees from Towson University in English and Professional Writing and is a published poet and multi-media artist.

Presentation: Crash Data Dashboard
Maryland takes a data-driven approach to reach our goal of zero roadway fatalities and serious injuries.

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Bio
Chester Harvey directs the Transportation Policy Research Group at the University of Maryland's National Center for Smart Growth, where his research bridges transportation and urban design to investigate how walkability can be better measured and planned for. Chester holds a PhD in City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley. He formerly led the Data Science group at Alta Planning and Design.

Presentation
This presentation will summarize ongoing research at the National Center for Smart Growth about walkable urban design and its implications for multimodal transportation and placemaking. This includes work to predict how walkable design around Metrorail stations impacts ridership, and examination of inequitable access to walkable streetscapes within Maryland. Through these examples, the talk will discuss how the designs of buildings and spaces alongside streets impact walkers and how design guidelines may be used to support walking.

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Bio
Michael Rodriguez, AICP, is Director of Research for Smart Growth America where he conducts and oversees quantitative and qualitative research through SGA’s many research initiatives. His expertise is in fiscal and economic impacts of transportation and infrastructure projects, especially with regard to smart growth and walkability.

Michael is co-author of “Foot Traffic Ahead 2023,” a statistical survey of walkable urbanism in the U.S.; econometric research on the economic and fiscal impacts of catalytic development in Downtown Detroit; and “WalkUP, Wake-Up: NY Metro,” a study of walkability in metropolitan New York and part of the Fourth Regional Plan.

At SGA, Michael has worked with dozens of communities assessing the fiscal impacts of development scenarios and statistical impacts of infrastructure and development alternatives. Further, he leads Benefit-Cost Analysis and technical assistance for communities seeking federal grants such as RAISE and CRISI. Michael brings over 14 years of professional urbanism experience to SGA from roles at top real estate, research, and transportation organizations.

As a resident of Tysons Corner, Virginia, Michael promotes smart growth in one of the fastest growing regions in the country. He holds a dual MPA and an M.S. in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Wisconsin – Madison, and is currently a PhD doctoral dissertator in Public Policy at George Washington University.

Presentation: Dangerous By Design
Smart Growth America has produced a continuous series called "Dangerous by Design" where we use federal data to develop a data-driven ranking of the most dangerous places in the U.S. for pedestrians. Consistently we see that pedestrian deaths are rising, that certain states in the U.S. fare much worse than others, and that vulnerable communities are at high risk for pedestrian death. This presentation discusses the methods of that report, the results, and implications for policy.

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Bio
Matt Johnson, AICP is a Capital Project Manager and the Bikeways Coordinator for the Montgomery County Department of Transportation. He has 15 years of experience working in planning and project management in Montgomery County. He holds a Batchelor of Science in Public Policy from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Master of Community Planning from the University of Maryland College Park.

Presentation
This presentation will give an overview of Montgomery County’s efforts to develop a toolkit to improve not just the designs of roads, sidewalks, and transit stops for people with vision disabilities but also the planning and design processes to improve their ability to provide feedback. Montgomery County is committed to eliminating roadway deaths by 2030, and pedestrians with vision disabilities are among the most vulnerable road users. Learn about the new design tools Montgomery County is using to make it easier and safer for them to get around the County.

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Bio
Charles Marohn, known as “Chuck” to friends and colleagues, is the founder and president of Strong Towns. He is a civil engineer and a land use planner with decades of experience. He holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and a Master of Urban and Regional Planning, both from the University of Minnesota.

Marohn is the author of Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity (Wiley, 2019), And of Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town (Wiley, 2021). He hosts the Strong Towns Podcast and is a primary writer for Strong Towns’ web content. He has presented Strong Towns concepts in hundreds of cities and towns across North America. Planetizen named him one of the 10 Most Influential Urbanists of all time.

Presentation
In Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town, renowned speaker and author of Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity Charles Marohn pulls back the curtain on the assumptions and approaches that go into building and managing America's transportation systems.