Monday Morning Commute - cluttering up sidewalks

Good Morning, and happy Bike to Work Week. How was BikeDC? I rode past it on the way to Mother's Day Brunch.

• David Alpert and Dr. Gridlock have an excellent piece on what cyclists and drivers need to know to better understand each other.
• Ward 5 DC Council candidates respond to the question "Do you support continued taxpayer investment to expand the number of Capital Bikeshare stations?" ---- "Hunter said yes. McDuffie and Hubbard said only after other spending priorities, such as affordable housing, are met. Wilds said no because he worries that stations are “cluttering up sidewalks.” Day said he would not support additional funding until a broader transportation vision for the District was in place. “Adding bike share stations to certain parts of Ward 5 is a moot point because they are mostly seniors and not going to ride them,” Day said"
• Metro Connection on walking and biking to school in the DC area. "Anderson says getting more kids on bicycles or walking is not as simple as he'd like. Parents are concerned about traffic congestion, and some just want to talk with their kids in the car for those precious few minutes before the busyness of the day takes over."
• Arlington County wants to help businesses get recognized as bike friendly. 
• The Alexandria City Council approved the Beauregard Small Area Plan which includes 6 miles of bike lanes and trails.
• The House voted to eliminate the American Community Survey - which is where the bike commuting data (as limited as it is) comes from. "Republicans, acknowledging its usefulness, attacked the survey as an unconstitutional invasion of privacy, arguing that the government has no business knowing how many flush toilets someone has, for instance....It is unlikely that the Senate would pass such a measure, but it also could be attached to other legislation, as the House GOP has managed before with measures the Senate does not like."
• "Among Victorian men, high-wheel bicycles were notoriously prone to throwing riders into potentially lethal “headers,” yet it took decades for safer alternatives to replace them in the 1890s. The Dutch sociologist Wiebe Bijker has argued that for well-off young men—pennyfarthings weren’t cheap—the hazard was less a bug than a macho feature."

Comments

[Christopher Fotos]

Bike DC was a blast, with perfect weather and that new section on the swoopy Rock Creek Parkway. Other than some of the usual Darwin Award nominees on the GW Parkway (and I don't mean most of the fast downhillers) and a mass of biker humanity that tied up the last exit out of Iwo Jima, it was perfect. What a great event.

[Liz P.]

Although we didn't encounter any problems at Bike DC (other than two places where we had to get off and walk due to choke points), I heard there were some pretty major snafus. Check out the Bike DC Facebook page for the different experiences people had. I hope that someone will be able to provide a full accounting of what happened.

[Daniel Gohlke]

BikeDC was mostly good. I did it on a cabi bikeshare to prove they aren't that heavy and slow. The Rock Creek park section was really fun, as was GW parkway. However, Arlington had a few problems. First the ramp between the bridge and the next road was a major chokepoint. Everyone had to slowly walk their bikes up that section. The same happened after Iwo Jima, but half of the road there was shut down and covered with steel plates. Finally, I was midway back across the bridge when DCPS reopened the bridge (9am). I ended up lifting the bike over the rail and onto the sidewalk, the only time I really felt the weight of the cabi bike, and got back to the finish that way.

Overall it was a great event, lots of fun, with excellent weather. If Mexico city can do this every Sunday, I think we can do it too. Thanks to all the organizers and sponsors.

Later in the day, I rode down past Alexandria and met up with a group of police cycling from Richmond to DC as part of Bike for Blue. I rode my brother in for the last 10 miles with full police escort. Two rides on the GW parkway in one day!

[Christopher Fotos]

Yeah, I apparently just missed some of the major snafu early in the morning--here's an account, towards the end. I ended up with a group after crossing the bridge that either got lost or entered an unmarked section, but suddenly we were competing a bit with cars.

[Martinsj2.wordpress.com]

Several (scores? hundreds?) of cyclists were inadvertently turned around at Iwo Jima, meaning they missed out on 4.5 miles of the course. Others were caught in the chokepoints mentioned above. The route into DC was not properly marshaled and people failed to find the E Street ramp, meaning they were dumped into traffic on Constitution Ave. Those who arrived late found the pickings slim at the food/water station. Although the weather was great and the beginning fantastic, the end was a major disappointment.

[Greenbelt]

I'd never done Bike DC before and was sort of taken aback by the hugeness of the crowd. We had a wonderful ride -- only minor traffic jams in spots: http://youtu.be/70PQ57cL-pE

[Victorian]

The studies that show that penny-farthings are unsafe are bogus! The good studies show that they are actually safer than "safety" bikes! I have a constitutional right to ride what I want anyway! etc.

[Rootchopper]

I'm with Martins12 on this one. I was among the participants who was turned around near Iwo Jima. What fun to salmon into a thousand cyclists. Not. Then to find out the route was re-opened. Grrr.

And I also missed the tunnel at the finish.

Bike DC is worth doing but I've done several of them and there is always some snafu that messes up the ride.

I think it tries to be too many things to too many people.

[Early Man]

This was my first year doing Bike DC and while I will do it again I hope they can remedy the serious Family Route problems. The only part of the ride that felt like a Ciclovia was Penn Ave. Crossing over to VA and all of VA was a lot tenser than a typical commute. Being taken out by a cyclist can be as bad or worse than getting hit by a car. Why provide so many opportunities for bike-on-bike calamity? But an even better Ciclovia event is coming to DC--the Inauguration in January. Either it will be "Seen it, done that" or "Packing my bags for Copenhagen" so I intend to spend that morning biking the car free streets of DC.

[Leslie]

Yeah, I was really bummed to miss out on 4.5 miles of it, then find out that the course was reopened later! It was also rather horrifying to watch a police officer rev his engine and salmon through a big clot of cyclists on his motorcycle with his sirens blaring at the point near Iwo Jima where we were ordered to turn around. The police were kind of a-holes about the whole thing, and there were no race personnel around (anywhere, even at the finish, that we could find - just volunteers handing out snacks and shirts) to explain what had happened. Overall, extremely disappointing.