Pennsylvania Avenue Bike Lanes 2.0 Now Open - Late Entries

More coverage of America's Bike Lanes.

DDOT has a new instruction sheet out for them.

WTOP does a man on the street story about them

One woman said flat out: bikes don't belong on the road -- anywhere. "You can't go as fast as a car. Period. You have no protection. You have no bumpers around you. You're in the same lane as me. To me, it's dangerous."

And gets confused on the facts

As a commuter who drives, does he resent the loss of lanes to bicycles? Not at all.

Great. So we had to give the lanes back, but still get dinged in the media for taking them.

another Washington area resident said she didn't like seeing the Pennsylvania Avenue pavement given up to bikes.

"To me it's wasted space. It could be a lane that a car could be driving in."

So could the National Mall.

DCist had some photos and news that Fenty is still committed to bringing the Giro d'Italia to DC. After all Europe is our neighbor. 

Gabe Klein, Earl Blumenauer and Ray LaHood wrote about them. Of the other two, Klein wrote,

These two individuals, and our own Tommy Wells, Council member for Ward 6 were the inspiration for the bike lanes on Pennsylvania Avenue.  Earl and Tommy were the originators of the challenge.  I then championed the challenge, and the whole bike team, and operations teams at DDOT excitedly stepped up to the plate, with Toole Design as the author, and put it together.   Mayor Fenty said “do it!  And make it safe.”

It may have been Blumenauer's idea, but it was in the bike plan in 2005. So Blumenauer is more like Leibniz than Newton, but without the silly wig. Blumenauer wrote

As someone who has for the last 14 years made Washington, DC his second home and having made the decision to bring a bike here instead of a car, I have watched with great satisfaction the cycling landscape change in our nation’s capital as an indicator of its enhanced livability, but I’ve never felt better about the progress and of the future than during today’s inauguration event.

Comments

[NeilB]

Washcycle, in previous posts you have correctly pointed out a flaw in the new design that puts bike-lane-cyclists through the pedestrian refuge island, causing bike-ped conflicts. Looking at the DDOT instruction sheet, it appears to be even worse than that. Since left turners are supposed to go through the intersection and then wait at the pedestrian refuge for the ped walk signal, through cyclists will not only have conflicts with pedestrians at the refuge island, but also with cyclists waiting for the ped signal to complete their left turns. And cyclists will naturally want to face the direction of travel, which is perpendicular to Pennsylvania Avenue (to complete the left turn), meaning that their bikes will be perpendicular to the bike lane, for maximum blocking effect.

[darren]

That left turn action is a bit ridiculous. Most will just go rogue and do a conventional yield-to-oncoming left turn.

Two more glitches -- the eastbound traffic light timing makes the lanes unusable. I don't remember Penn Ave being that stop-go before this all started. I caught every single red light, except for 4th St, which was of course the place where I was turning, and is also the only intersection without a turning stall to get out of the way of thru-bikes.

Second, this might be the case at other intersections, but I only noticed it at 9th and 10th heading eastbound -- the pedestrian signals on the nearside pole obscure the traffic signal faces you're supposed to be obeying located on the farside pole.

[Chris]

I'm thinking if you have to have an instruction sheet to explain the traffic signals and signs, it might be a indication of poor designing.