Ribbon Cut on 15th Street Bike Lane

The District had a ceremony yesterday morning to cut the ribbon on the 15th Street contraflow bike lane. Borderstan, unlike me, was able to make it out. Mayor Fenty, Councilmember Jack Evans and DDOT Director Gabe Klein showed up on SmartBikes and did the usual photo-op, ribbon cutting and speechifying that goes on at such things. Someone should tell Jack Evans that the helmet only works if you buckle the strap.

One bit of news is this.

Fenty noted—and it is important to remember—that the southbound contraflow bike lane next to the curb is a one-year pilot program. DDoT will then decide whether to keep the lane, make changes or come up with another configuration for 15th Street between Massachusetts and U NW.

Maybe we can still get Alternative 3 (which I still think is the best one). I think this configuration is an improvement over what it was, and I don't see any evidence that it's the disaster that some make it out to be, but I agree with Richard Layman that making 15th two-way is the best option - which was WABA's position back when this all started.

In the comments at Richard's post, BeyondDC says that now that we have a cycletrack (is this a cycletrack? I've not been calling it that, but DDOT did. It's easier that calling it a contraflow bike lane, that's for sure) it might be even better to modify Alt. 3 by moving the bike lanes outside the parked cars. That would be nice, but to do it they'll need to find several more feet somewhere. A 5' bike lane is adequate when you can move over to the left to avoid an open door, but if you have curb on one side and parked cars on the other, 5' is not going to cut it. So you'll need to narrow 15th to one lane in each direction - and that might be too much (or too little). 

You could do a two-way cycletrack on one side, which might need less space, but still more than 10'. So there are challenges if you want to keep the cycletrack. You may need to take out parking on one side and replace it with a wider cycletrack and some shy space, kinda like this.

Comments

[Froggie]

Why would you need "more than 10ft" for a cycle track? IMO, you could do one with 9ft. Even DDOT proposed it in Alternative 2 (a 10ft track), and some variation of Alt 2 would still work. If you need more "shy space", an 8ft track and 2ft curb would still be doable.

[Washcycle]

If one side of the cycletrack is alongside parked cars, you need some shy space so that someone isn't forced to ride in the door zone. I think Alt 2 is a bad design.

[Andrew]

Wash, I'm curious: In the past I think you've acknowledged that riding on sidewalks and sidepaths is statistically much more dangerous than riding in the street.

Yet here you seem to support a "two-way cycletrack" which by any reasonable standard is just an urban sidepath. It's actually worse than a suburban sidepath because the intersections are more frequent.

I've slowly warmed to the idea of bike lanes, but taking bikes completely out of the flow of traffic just makes it far more dangerous for us at intersections, which is where most of the danger in cycling is in the first place.

I don't mean this to be accusatory; I'm just legitimately confused about your position on these things.

[BlindPilot]

Where's the police escort?

(Sorry couldn't resist.)

[Washcycle]

1) I've rethought my position on sidewalk riding. I'm not convinced it is inherently more dangerous. Wrong-way sidewalk riding is, but going with traffic at a slower speed, I think is not. The real disadvantage is that you have to go much slower for the same level of safety (so maybe it is more dangerous, depending on how you think about. The exact same behavior on the sidewalk is more dangerous than on the street, but one can ride safely on the sidewalk).

2. A cycletrack is different that a sidewalk or even a sidepath. Especially if it gets its own signal as I've often seen. By giving cyclists there own turn to cross an intersection, you reduce the intersection problem. With a cycletrack, drivers expect to see cyclists so I don't think it's right to transfer intersection risk from the street grid to cycletracks. And there are obvious gains in removing the overpassing risk. Being hit from behind is more rare than being hit in a turn, but much more deadly. Of the five fatalities in the area this year, two are of that variety.

3) Cycletracks will get more people to ride, which makes us all safer.