Street Renaissance

A coalition of groups in New York have come together to work toward the goal of reforming public space usage initiate city. 80% of people in New York do not own a car, yet much of the public space is dedicated to car usage. The NYC Street Renaissance is "building the movement to re-imagine our streets as lively public places."

While DC doesn't have the same numbers as New York, we also waste much public space on auto use. I'm not against cars, they serve a real purpose. I'm against the over-use and inefficient use of cars. When I ask people why they don't bike commute they list fear (because the streets are not safe for bikes), lack of bicycle parking and and lack of showers as the top reasons. Those are all indicative of a failure of the district to plan.

The same reasons do not crop up for car commuters. While I know a few people who don't drive to work because there's no parking, I don't know anyone who feels streets aren't safe for cars. In general the lack of facilities or planning do not keep people out of their cars.

Still, In DC things are changing. Often when I complain about DC design flaws I'm complaining about decisions made in the 50's, 60's or 70's (which is why the decisions made today are so important). One example of things getting better is the Thomas Circle project (pictured) . I also suspect the new baseball stadium will be a better public space than RFK. Still there are too many times when decisions are imbalanced in the direction of automobile interests.

Not shown in the Thomas Circle photo is that there should be a bike lane using new blue concrete so that it really stands out.

Comments

[Richard Layman]

Same thing. But in any case you have a good idea there. Why don't you forward it to Jim Sebastian and Michelle Pourcieu (acting director), and Ken Laden (director of transportation planning) forthwith...

[Washcycle]

Perhaps I should correct this - the plans already include the blue bike lane, the picture does not.

[Contrarian]

I cycle through Thomas Circle every day on my commute, and I have to say that those bike lines are an unmitigated disaster. Look at them closely: they go nowhere. Or, more specifically, they go one place only -- from one entry point to the next. There is no way to use the circle as a circle with the bike lanes. To make things worse, since the bike lanes were put in the Massachusetts Avenue underpass has been (illegally) signed as off-limits to bikes. I spent some time observing cyclists at Thomas circle, and I did not see a single one using the bike lanes. Every one was either using Massachusetts despite the signs, or riding on the sidewalk -- either one of which is risking a ticket.

[washcycle]

Yes. It has not turned out as well as I had hoped. I don't use the bike lanes in the circle either (because I'm never using the circle to make a 170 degree turn).

[Chris]

I use Thomas Circle every day too (going North to South on 14th Street), and I would agree that the bike lanes there are a disaster. While I'm not particularly enthusiastic about the utility of bike lanes generally, I can see why some might see them as good, progressive policy -- but in the case of circles, I think they are simply unsafe.

I mean, how many people driving motorized vehicles are going to look over to their right side to make sure there isn't a bike next to them as they're turning? How many of them use turn signals? By my experience, very few.

Rather than hoping you see a car turning before it's too late, I ride down the center of the right lane of motorized traffic. While this seems to irritate some people (like the idiot driving that contractor's van last week), generally I'm going the rate of traffic through the circle anyhow, so my presence isn't really holding anyone up.

Massachusetts Avenue under the circle is a different matter -- because I never go that route, I had no idea how bad that was! Nice to know that the authorities screwed up the entire circle so badly when it comes to bikes -- but, hey, at least it looks nice!

I've written the authorities about the bike lane problems at Thomas Circle. In fact, I sent a note back in October. No answer. Hopefully, something really bad won't happen before they're persuaded to take another look at the problem.

[Contrarian]

Normally when I go through the Mass Ave underpass it's rush hour and cars are stopped in the tunnel. I ride in the center of the right lane and have no problem.