Adding a bike lane to a chaotic road in Howard County made it safer, so Maryland wants to try more projects like it.

Last year, state transportation officials completed that and two other “quick build” projects to observe the impact of low-cost roadway changes on safety. The projects use road paint and plastic bollards as a low-cost and fast way to mimic what otherwise requires engineering, concrete and time, and to observe how the adjustment changes the way drivers and pedestrians use the roads.

They like what they’re seeing in the data. So the State Highway Administration selected six sites across the state — a mix of residential and commercial areas along with a school zone — for similar projects to address concerns about speeding and pedestrian safety. Each project will start as temporary but could become permanent.

After years of alarmingly high roadway deaths, Maryland is taking a hard look at how the design of its streets might be contributing to crashes. The data gathered from these temporary projects will help inform how the state does them on a more permanent basis.

The philosophy is known as Complete Streets, which is intended to prioritize safety over speed. More and more, transportation officials are baking it into how they design resurfacing or road maintenance projects.

Officials are trying to curb excessive speeding at these six sites:

• Anne Arundel County: MD 261 (Lake Shore Drive) in Rose Haven at Harrington Harbor
• Cecil County: MD 273 (Telegraph Road) in Fair Hill from MD 213 to Ranger Skinner Drive
• Dorchester County: MD 14 (Main Street) in Secretary at Warwick Elementary School
• Montgomery County: MD 198 (Spencerville Road) in Burtonsville from Athey Road to Lions Den Road
• Montgomery County: MD 410 (Ethan Allen Avenue) in Takoma Park from Jackson Avenue to Carroll Avenue
• Washington County: MD 65 (North Church Street)/MD 34 (East Main Street) in Sharpsburg

Planners have a menu of traffic calming measures to consider for each site, including narrowing the driving lanes, adding speed “cushions” (think speed bumps but flatter) or improving crosswalk conditions for pedestrians. State officials will work with local planners to select the right fit for each site.

They plan to complete each project over the summer and leave them up for six to nine months as they gather data and observe changes. But, if they work, they could become permanent — as the one in Howard County will.

Washington Boulevard, where the temporary bike lane was added on a short section of road last year, has long been a hot spot for road safety issues in Howard County.

On Tuesday, officials broke ground on two permanent intersection changes where the road, also known as U.S. Route 1, meets Doctor Patel and Rowanberry drives. Three pedestrians have been killed by vehicles in the corridor since 2019, including a 29-year-old woman who died in a hit-and-run in September.

Officials clocked an average reduction of about 5 mph in the most egregious speeders after the temporary bike lane was installed last summer, according to a Maryland Department of Transportation report. Meanwhile, the number of cyclists and pedestrians using the lane roughly doubled from when it was installed to officials’ last count. The road is a busy commercial corridor where local businesses have said pedestrian safety was a recurring issue.

It was so successful that the highway administration plans to add a permanent bike lane there — the project is in the design phase and the lane will be installed by early 2027, a spokesperson wrote in an email.

There were no pedestrian- or bicycle-involved crashes along that stretch when the temporary bike lane was present, according to a Howard County Government spokesperson. There was also a 40% reduction in overall vehicle crashes there compared to the same time the year before.

Last year’s other two quick build projects in Bel Air and Hagerstown also brought modest improvements, though residents in Bel Air are hoping for bigger changes, according to the report.

“Communities like Bel Air, Hagerstown, and Howard County are already seeing the benefits of this approach, and we applaud MDOT’s continued leadership in advancing street safety,” said Heidi Simon, director of thriving communities at Smart Growth America, a national transportation nonprofit that assisted the state with last year’s quick build projects.

“These low-cost, high-impact demonstration projects are powerful tools for improving street safety and making sure every community member, regardless of how they travel, can get where they need to go safely,” Simon said.