“The State has recommended 20 years in prison, with all but 10 years suspended, and five years of probation,” Rochelle Ritchie, the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office director of communications, told Baltimore magazine. “The sentencing date is scheduled for Oct. 27.”

Cook’s trial had originally been set for tomorrow, but was moved up.

The 59-year-old Cook, who was the second-highest ranking bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland when she struck and killed 41-year-old Tom Palmero on Roland Avenue on Dec. 27, initially pled not guilty to all charges and had been free on a $2.5 million bond.

She resigned her position as Bishop Suffragan of Maryland earlier this year.

It’s since been learned that Cook pled guilty to driving under the influence of alcohol in 2010 in Caroline County, receiving supervised probation before judgment. She was also initially charged with possession of marijuana and possession of paraphernalia as part of that incident, but those charges were later dropped (“nolle prosequi,” according to online court records).

According to a previous statement from the City State’s Attorney’s Office, Cook’s blood-alcohol level was .22 at the time of the Saturday afternoon crash and that Cook veered into the bike lane that Palermo was riding in. At one of then-new Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby’s first press conferences, prosecutors alleged that Cooke failed to remain at the scene, returning to her apartment before coming back to the scene where she was transported by Baltimore City Police to Central District and given a breathalyzer test.

Palermo, a married father of two children, was a Johns Hopkins Hospital software engineer, part-time bike builder, and well known member of the Baltimore bicycling community.

“I think the sentence is appropriate,” said Penny Troutner, owner of Light Street Cycles and a longtime Baltimore bicycling advocate. “I’m happy she pled guilty. Tom’s family has been through enough already without having this dragged out any further in court. In a way, I feel badly that someone who has accomplished so much is going to jail, but she is going to be able to continue to live her life while those two children are going to grow up without their father. And a wife is going to have to live without her husband. I hope this sends a chill through people who drink and drive, and text and drive—that if this can happen to her—it can happen to them.”

Bikemore, Baltimore’s nonprofit bicycling advocacy organization, posted a long statement on its website after Cook’s plea today that was supportive of Palmero’s family while at the same time making the case that “as a city we must commit to stronger enforcement of negligence while operating a motor vehicle.”

“We have to commit to having zero tolerance to distracted driving. If the city claims they can’t afford to enforce the laws the state passes, we have to stop accepting that as an acceptable response,” Bikemore said in its statement. “There was a time when driving drunk was more socially acceptable than it is today. There was a time when child seats were scarce, if used at all, and seatbelt laws were just coming into fashion. The argument that getting people to put away phones while we are driving is just too hard doesn’t hold water.”

On New Year’s Day, more than 700 bicyclists gathered in Bishop Square Park, adjacent to the Episcopal Diocese’s Cathedral of the Incarnation on University Avenue, for a memorial ride in Palmero’s honor. Bicycle advocates, per tradition for cyclists killed on the road, placed a memorial “ghost bike” at the scene of tragedy.

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The ambitious plan, unveiled online a couple of weeks ago, calls for the addition of roughly 90 miles of new city bike lanes and trails by 2028, including a protected north-south cycle track on Maryland Avenue and a second protected cycle track running east-west in Midtown on Mount Royal Avenue.

Among the other highlights:

—The creation of West Baltimore “bike boulevards” (roads that emphasis safe bicycle access) on Hollins, W. Lexington, W. Baltimore, Carrollton, and N. Smallwood streets

—Bus/bike lane improvements on Pratt and Lombard streets

—The development of a B’More Bicycle-Friendly Business Program

—Implementation of the Charm City Bikeshare by 2016

Other goals include additional bike parking and racks, promoting bicycle safety at schools, bicycling access to the Inner Harbor’s Waterfront Promenade, and mountain bike routes and pump tracks in city parks.

The bigger question at this point, according to bike commuter advocates, is whether the plan will be fully implemented. By all accounts, Baltimore has fallen behind other major cities around the country in recent years—Washington, D.C., New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Pittsburgh—in building bicycle infrastructure.

Presenting the plan during a media availability Wednesday, Rawlings-Blake said that creating a more bicycle-friendly city is part of her often-stated goal of attracting 10,000 new families to Baltimore. However, neither Rawlings-Blake nor the Department of Transportation committed to an increase in bicycle infrastructure funding. (For what it’s worth, the mayor would not commit to attending Bike to Work Day this year, either, saying only that she’s “thinking about it.”)

Baltimore City DOT director William Johnson said that the city will attempt to fulfill the goals of the plan by leveraging other revenue sources, including federal dollars, and by being “more strategic” in the implementation process, looking at ways to add bike lanes during resurfacing projects, for example. Over the past half-dozen years, dedicated funding for bike network infrastructure in the city has essentially remained flat at roughly $350,000 a year.

“The administration and city council just don’t get it—it’s a quality of life issue that cuts across every socioeconomic demographic,” said Light Street Cycles owner Penny Troutner, who served on the plan’s steering committee, referring to the need to fund implementation of the plan. “Bicycle infrastructure also helps small businesses, because people are more likely to shop at their neighborhood stores when they can bike there, and it helps tourism. Right now, more people aren’t biking because they don’t feel safe.”

In a city with a significant percentage of adults who don’t drive, Troutner noted, bicycling is also one of the least expensive ways to travel to work or school.

At a preliminary unveiling of the new bike plan last month at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Greg Hinchliffe, interim director of Bikemore, the city’s nonprofit bicycling advocacy organization, said much the same thing as Troutner.

“I think the stuff on the posters [the planned new bikes lanes and trails] looks great, but you can’t ride on pretty lines on the wall,” said Hinchliffe. “The planning looks great; the bottom line is implementation.”

In related news Wednesday, Rawlings-Blake announced an executive order establishing the Mayor’s Bike Advisory Commission, which is intended to help guide the administration and various city departments in promoting bicycling as a safe and convenient transportation and recreation option.

Jon Laria, a partner at the law firm of Ballard Spahr, LLP, and member of the new advisory commission, and also spoke of the need to ensure implementation and necessary funding for the bike master plan now that it’s been completed.

“It’ll be up to us to hold the administration and the city accountable for implementation,” Laria said, adding that he does not yet know how often the advisory commission will meet, but said the meetings will be open to the public.

In welcome news for the mountain biking community, Rawlings-Blake also announced Wednesday that the city has reached an agreement with the Mid-Atlantic Off-Road Enthusiasts (MORE), the regional International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA) chapter, to improve mountain bike access around Loch Raven Reservoir.

Access to the best trails in the reservoir watershed has been an area of contention for years between city officials, who have been concerned about maintaining water quality, and local mountain bikers.

From Bikemore’s website:

“Together, DPW (Department of Public Works) and MORE, the regional IMBA (International Mountain Bicycling Association) chapter, will identify specific trails for improvements while closing or re-routing unsanctioned trails … In addition to trail maintenance, MORE and Bike Maryland will conduct education workshops on sustainable trail design and proper mountain biking techniques to reduce user impacts on the area.”

MORE’s annual Project Clean Stream event, which removes debris from Loch Raven Reservoir, is schedule for April 11 in Cockeysville.

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That was the message from bicycle
advocates at a public meeting Thursday evening at the Midtown Academy
near the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).

It won’t be
completed overnight, but the Baltimore City Department of Transportation
presented the next step in a suddenly expanding downtown bicycle
network—the Mount Royal Avenue cycle track.

The dedicated,
two-lane bicycle route (cycle tracks physically separate bicycles from
auto traffic) will run on the north side of Mount Royal Avenue from
McMechen Street, near North Avenue, down to Charles Street.

The
design, which is 65 percent complete, officials said, will be finished
this fall. Construction is scheduled to begin next spring, with the
cycle track opening some time in late 2016. When completed, it will
particularly help bicycle commuters in the MICA, University of Baltimore,
and midtown corridor link with Penn Station, for example, and the
forthcoming Maryland Avenue cycle track project. About 45-50 parking
spaces will be removed along Mount Royal Avenue to make room for the
bicycle track.

At a standing room-only public meeting at the Pratt Library two weeks ago, BDOT
representatives presented plans for
a dedicated, two-way cycle track that will run north and south on
Maryland Avenue from 29th Street to Pratt Street. That project, expected
to be implemented this fall, also includes several new east-west
painted bike lanes.

The Mount Royal Avenue cycle track is part of a
broader, $6 to $7 million infrastructure upgrade to Mount Royal Avenue
that will include dedicated electrical conduits intended to assist Artscape, water main improvements, street and landscaping, new traffic signals, and enhanced handicap accessibility.

Currently,
the only cycle track in the city is the short, north-south Fallsway
bike lane east of Charles Street, which starts near the Inner Harbor and
links to the Guilford Avenue bike route. Light Street Cycles bike shop owner Penny Troutner and Chris Merriam, executive director of Bikemore,
a Baltimore nonprofit bicycling advocacy organization, as well as
others in attendance—while pleased to hear the city is building
additional cycle track for bike commuters—also strenuously requested
that city officials extend the Mount Royal cycle track three blocks more
to Guilford Avenue.

According to the current plan, bicyclists are
supposed to use the eight-foot sidewalk between Charles Street and
Guilford Avenue when either heading north on Guilford or south on the
Fallsway cycle track, which is also part of the larger Jones Falls
Trail. But an increase in pedestrian traffic and the speed of cars
coming off I-83 in that area will remain a hazard without the extension
of a dedicated cycle track, Troutner and Merriam said. They also
stressed the benefits of a fully connected bicycle-friendly route that
sweeps across a large swath of the downtown commercial area.

“This
is such a short distance to go [to extend the cycle track to Guilford
Avenue],” Troutner said. “We need to complete the thought.”

“I
strongly recommend continuing the cycle track down to Guilford Avenue,”
Merriam said, noting that the bike path in front of the Inner Harbor,
which isn’t physically separated from pedestrians, hasn’t worked for
bicyclists because of the heavy foot traffic there.

Still, despite
the desire to extend the Mount Royal cycle track by several blocks, as
well as concerns about crossing North Avenue and turning onto Charles
Street—the planned project, though not yet completely designed—was
generally well received.

“I think this is great,” Troutner said. “The more cycle track, the better.”

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