TheWashCycle

Metro Presentation Material Online

The material from the July 22nd Metro Bike/Ped access meeting wasn't available online last week, but it is now. Check it out if you have time. The Existing Bike Facilities map is great. You can't navigate by it, but it shows the gaps in the bike network (Yes, I'm talking about you Prince George's and Fairfax Counties - though the latter is getting better).

Cash for Clunkers

I would be more supportive of the program if it actually gave you cash for your clunker (instead of a rebate on a new car). Then people who wanted to give up their car and bike (or take transit) could do so. Or how about $4500 in bike and bike repair vouchers. That could last you for years.

My wife owns a reasonably fuel efficient vehicle, so we can't do a trade in even if we wanted to. That'll teach her to be responsible.

WABA Alert: K Street Transitway and 18th Street Follow-Up

Thanks to those of you that attended the K Street Transitway and 18th Street Streetscape meetings this week.  The comment period for both projects is still open and WABA urges you read our meeting summaries below as well as our recommendations and to submit your own comments.

K Street Transitway

Of the two build options for the K Street Transitway, which would feature dedicated busways from 9th Street NW to Washington Circle, only option three included any facilities for cyclists.  The bike lanes proposed in this option would run against the curb for the length of the project.  However, given the large number of deliveries made on K Street, WABA feels that a standard bike lane would turn into a parking lane for delivery vehicles.  Instead, WABA is recommending a buffered bike lane or cycle track for the K Street Transitway.  This option would protect the bike lane with a curb to prevent vehicles from parking in the lane and would be a more attractive facility for less experienced cyclists.

Two Way Cycle Track Photo

One Way Cycle Track Photo

WABA is also asking for:

1)    Painted bike lanes at intersection crossings and on segments of K Street where a formal cycle track is not a option.

2)    Ample bike parking to replace the loss of parking meters.

3)    A separate signal system for bikes in the cycle track.

WABA urges you to send your comments on the project to kstreetcomments@rkk.com.

18th Street Streetscape

Currently, the plans for the reconstruction of 18th Street NW from Florida Ave to Columbia Road at at the 90% design phase and the District Department of Transportation is still seeking comments on the plans.  Overall, the project will be a great improvement for pedestrian safety and bicycle travel with wider sidewalks, shared lanes for bikes and cars, and ample bike parking.  While the shared lane configuration is less than ideal, WABA fought long and hard to some sort of accommodations for cyclists in the project.  The website for the project can be found here.

WABA's recommendations:

1)    Support shared lanes with sharrows on 18th

2)    Support wider sidewalks

3)    Widen travel lanes at north end of 18th Street to 14 feet

4)    Provide ample bike parking throughout project area

5)    Test weekend evening closures of 18th Street

6)    Shared lane markings should be included in the redesign of the 18th and Florida intersection

7)    Install bike boxes at 18th and Columbia

The comment period is still open and we urge you to write in to support better bike and pedestrian access in Adams Morgan.

Comments can be submitted here.

Photo by Eric Gilliland

The Cycling Safeway

In Safeway's continuing effort to rebuild every store in the DC area, they've turned their attention to a store in Bethesda that sits across the street from the Capital Crescent Trail.  DCMud reports

Improved sidewalks and streetscapes will provide pedestrian access from several points on Arlington Road and at the corner of Bradley Boulevard. Though there is no direct access to the adjacent Capital Crescent Trail, the plan provides for a covered bike station with drinking fountain and air pump on premises to improve bike access - so you can bike to the grocery.

From the south you can use Little Falls Parkway and Arlington Road to get there. From the north, you can use the stairs to Bradley.


View Larger Map

Sidewalk talk on Kojo

Richard K. Lewis and Mary Cheh were Kojo Nnamdi's guests on yesterday's show. They discussed sidewalks and the controversy about adding them on University Terrace. Most cycling doesn't occur on the sidewalk, but it is somewhat related. Oddly, Richard Lewis mentioned the same Elephant repellent joke that I did earlier in the week. 

K Street Transitway and 18th Street NW

I didn't go to the K Street Transitway meeting on Wednesday night because I had to stay home and watch the season finale of The Bachelorette (Who would she choose?). Luckily David Alpert did.

At WABA's urging, many cyclists attended the meeting to evaluate the impact of the alternatives on cyclists. Reactions were mixed. On the one hand, a bike lane all along K Street gives cyclists a facility that's not present today and isn't present in the two-lane transitway option. However, would trucks and taxis simply park in the bike lane on a regular basis, forcing cyclists to leave and making it more harrowing? Some agreed with my suggestion yesterday to focus instead on high-quality separated, buffered bicycle lanes ("cycle tracks") on parallel one-way streets, while others felt that it was important to make K Street truly multimodal. They also pointed out that even with parallel bicycle facilities, some cyclists will be traveling to and from destinations on K Street.

There may be ways to better separate the bike lane. One person suggested raising it up to sidewalk level, placing the gutter and curb between the roadway and the bicycle lane and essentially making the bicycle lane a specially painted extension of the sidewalk. Many European towns do this with their bicycle lanes. The bicycle lane could also occupy a middle height, or have a mountable curb separating it from the roadway. However, other cyclists worried that such treatment would make it difficult for cyclists to pass slower cyclists, dog walkers, or others that might intrude on the lane, as they couldn't easily jump over to the car lane if necessary.

WABA prefers the design with bike lanes to the ones without. But ideally, they'd like to see cycletracks added in. WABA believes that this would be an ideal solution for K Street and should be considered in the Environmental Assessment no matter what transitway and travel lane configurations move forward. They're concerned, as David noted above, that the bike lanes would be clogged with parked delivery vehicles.

WABA's recommendation is that a cycle track with the following design characteristics be considered as the Environmental Assessment moves forward:

• The cycle tracks should be one way, but wide enough to allow cyclists to pass each other if necessary.  In general, the recommended width of cycle tracks is six and a half feet, but can be narrowed to five feet where right of way is constrained.  
• The cycle track should be at a slightly lower grade than the sidewalk to avoid pedal strikes and be constructed with a beveled curb to allow for mounting of the curb in case an emergency maneuver is necessary.
• To the left of the cycle track, loading zone areas can be created, but a minimum of a two- to three-foot buffer between the loading areas and the cycle track is required.  The curb between the cycle track and loading zone areas should be mountable by emergency vehicles.
• Roadway crossings should be well marked and colored bike lanes should be striped through intersections.  Bike lanes on segments of K Street where formal separation of the bikeway is not an option, should also be colored.
• A bike parking plan should also be developed to address the lack of bike parked created by the move to multi-space meters.

Sort of like in the photo (I like the space for bike parking there too) by sfbike

Also, last night was the 18th Street NW meeting. I didn't go to that either, but David Alpert noted yesterday that the new design would have sharrows.

I wonder what they're doing with that odd drive-through space from Columbia to 18th Street between Julia's and the Metro police station. Some people walk through there, but you can leave plenty of space for that while adding a covered bike parking facility on the north side of Julia's.

C&O Canal Improvements Coming in the Fall

Last week the National Park Service made formal one of the worst kept secrets by announcing that Washington and Allegany Counties will receive $660,000 worth of stimulus money to be put toward resurfacing the C&O canal towpath. That is only a small part of the work that will be done to improve the towpath.

Kevin Brandt, superintendent of Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park, said millions of dollars in federal money is earmarked for C&O trail improvements.

This fall, crews are scheduled to begin repaving the most problematic stretches of the trail with a gravel mix, paid for with $660,000 from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Fund, Brandt said.

An additional $12 million has been allocated to restore sections of the trail that washed out years ago near an area known as Big Slackwater, he said. The park applied for $4.4 million more for other upgrades, he said.

"We're absolutely thrilled and working furiously," Brandt said. "People will see big improvements."

And there is more here (though it isn't specifically about the towpath)

Ideas such as rebuilding and re-watering the deteriorated Conococheague Aqueduct have been talked about for years, but Williamsport Mayor James G. McCleaf II said a new enthusiasm is building.

Officials of Williamsport, which is steeped in canal history, and C&O Canal National Historical Park officials did not communicate well in the past, but the two sides are working together these days, McCleaf said.

About $1 million in state highway funds were sought to put the railroad lift bridge back into operation and to restore Lock 44.

Photo by frumperino

TCO's to Start Writing Tickets, Emphasis Not on Cyclists

Dr. Gridlock writes that DC's Traffic Control Officers can now write tickets, but it doesn't sound like the emphasis will be on ticketing cyclists as it was originally proposed. Instead it will be

for parking infractions and minor moving violations such as parking in a prohibited zone, double parking, using a cell phone while driving or blocking a crosswalk.

Only recently did the District enact legislation and give the officers the training to allow them to stop drivers, bikers and pedestrians and give them tickets.

"Their primary responsibility is to keep traffic moving in a safe and efficient manner," Gabe Klein, the District's transportation director, said in a statement this afternoon. "Distracted driving, blocking of intersections, crosswalks and bike lanes is dangerous for the motorist and the pedestrian and violators will receive tickets."

Update: Here's the press release

The DC Code [§ 50-921.04 (3)(E)] gives the TCOs the authority to issue citations for parking infractions and minor moving violations, including:

• Parking in a bus or loading zone
• Parking in front of a designated entrance
• Expired tags
• No standing
• No parking anytime
• Double parking
• No parking during rush hour
• Expired inspection sticker
• No stopping
• No front or rear tag

photo by dcroadie

DASH buses now have racks, Alexandria adds racks and bike lanes

Update: This story is incorrect. DASH buses do not yet have bike racks. The City of Alexandria and DASH are working to install racks and it is a priority. This need was identified as a possible stimulus project, but has not yet been funded.

One of the local stimulus projects that would serve cyclists is now online. DASH buses have moved from Ugly to Good as all of them now have bike racks like the one photographed at right (leaving just PG county's The Bus as the only close-in system without them). 

The city has also outfitted all Dash buses with bicycle storage racks

Other new projects include

The resurfacing of a 0.5 mile stretch of trail along Eisenhower Avenue; a Duke Street overpass that provides a pedestrian and bicycle link between the Cameron Station Development and Beatley Library; and a new trail along Route 1 that provides a connection between the Mount Vernon Trail in Old Town and the Huntington Metro Station. The city has also installed dozens of bike racks on sidewalks across the city.

"Thanks to these improvements," [pedestrian and bike coordinator for the City of Alexandria Yon] Lambert said, "about nine percent of all commuting trips in Alexandria are now made by cycling and walking, an increase of over five percent since 1994. That’s four times the national average."

9%. Yowsers.

The Bicycle Section of the City of Alexandria’s Comprehensive Transportation Master Plan, adopted April 12, 2008, proposes that Alexandria City Public Schools begin keeping track of the number of children who choose bicycling as a means of getting to school. The plan proposes that schools work towards increasing this number by five percent annually through 2011. The plan goes on to mandate that "more than 50 percent of elementary-aged school children receive bicycle safety education by 2010."

(Thanks to Catherine for the link)

I also learned that CUE buses in Fairfax now have bike racks. Good.

Idaho Stop makes cyclists 14.5% Safer

This story comes via GGW, via theathleteslawyer, via OregonLive via Jason Meggs, UC Berkeley researcher.

the year after the Idaho Stop became law, bicycle injuries in the state actually declined by 14.5 percent.

Boise, home to Idaho's biggest bike population, "has actually become safer for bicyclists than other cities which don't have the law," Meggs said.

Mark McNeese, the Idaho Transportation Department's bicycle and pedestrian coordinator, said legislators removed an education requirement in the original law in 1988 because special training quickly became unnecessary. "The kids were quick to adapt," he said. "The bottom line is that when this thing passed, there wasn't one doggone thing that changed."

And despite what you may have thought, the law wasn't promoted by cyclists in Idaho, it was judges.

Carl Bianchi, a retired administrative director of Idaho's state courts who is widely considered the father of the Idaho Stop, said it was traffic judges -- not cyclists -- who pushed for the idea in 1982.

Police were ticketing bike riders for failing to come to a complete, foot-down stop. Judges, however, saw "technical violations" clogging up their courts.

"We recognized that the realities of bicycling were a lot different than driving a car," Bianchi said.

Which may be good considering some of the trouble Oregon has had passing their law

The Bicycle Transportation Alliance puts the chances of the Idaho Stop becoming law in Oregon this year at 50-50. Over at BikePortland.org, they're blaming slanted coverage in the mainstream media for putting the effort in jeopardy. But Karl Rohde, the alliance's former chief lobbyist, says a bigger problem is the cyclists who left nasty messages for lawmakers during a recent debate over registering bikes. "Some of them were appalling," he says. One lawmaker told Rohde that a bike advocate called to tell him "you've probably never been on a bike, you fat (bleep)." Yeah, that doesn't help.

And The Arlandrian gets involved with a nice point in calling for Alexandria to go potato

A driver would be pretty peeved if he wasn't allowed to pass a biker on a double-yellow-lined road. That automotive maneuver would be illegal if a bike were treated as a motor vehicle and the driver would be subject to a ticket. There are certain exceptions to the normal traffic rules for bikes, and the Idaho stop should be one of them in Alexandria. Hopefully this will eventually be adopted state-wide, but why not lead the way.

Despite what one of Alexandria's planning commission members, Lawrence Robinson, thinks

[He] went on a rant about how bikes are always getting in the way of his car during a July 2 discussion of the outdoor display of rental bikes. He thought any behavior that encouraged more biking was a bad idea. Not the most bike-friendly set of comments you can think of.

If Oregon passes the Idaho stop, that would increase the chances of passing it in the DC area. Though I'm sure some would be quick to point out that Portland "just isn't like DC."