Thursday Morning Commute - Streetbond CL

Good morning. I don't want to bury this key point so, WABA is reporting that DDOT says the L Street Cycle track will start going in in early November.

• Virginia Del. Jim Lemunyon says that "localities in Northern Virginia support using transportation funds for the Columbia Pike trolley, bike paths and sidewalks where safety is not an issue. Such projects do nearly nothing to improve regional mobility." Because mobility is defined as driving.
• Why progress is slow on the Met Branch Trail. “All of the area around Fort Totten is National Park Service land, and there are certain agreements that WMATA has with rights of use to get the Red Line through. So they have to make sure (that) all those different legal agreements on land use work together to allow for the trail access, [but] The partial completion of the MBT is not stopping bicyclists from using it as part of their daily commutes or for recreation. There were 11,503 trips on the MBT last year, a nearly three-fold increase from 2010, according to DDOT figures." And problems in Maryland include "The group Montgomery Preservation Inc. is unhappy with a plan to run the trail between its building that houses a B&O Railroad museum and Metro’s Red Line tracks.  The plan also calls for building a bicycling bridge over Georgia Avenue that would block views of the historic railroad bridge. "
• Making bikeshare available to and usable by the poor isn't easy. 
• There's another CaBi station on the Mall right near the Lincoln Memorial.
• Photos and coverage of the Diamond Derby.
• "You won’t be seeing miles of green paint soon. Painting miles of lanes is expensive, requires on-going maintenance and doesn’t increase the overall safety for cyclists. Instead, DDOT has developed a striping policy for applying green paint to bike lanes. Their focus will be conflict zones (end of bike lanes, mixing zones with cycle tracks, etc), safe zones (bike boxes, floating bike lanes, etc) and at major intersections to guide bicyclists through them....See the full list of bike lanes in Arlington County planned to be painted green (or have already been painted). DDOT will be painting lanes over the next few weeks and the highly anticipated L St cycle track (PDF) will include green paint (M St cycle track will have green paint in 2013).  Officials expect the L St cycle track will be installed during the first few weeks of November. So, be on the look out for green paint in a bike lane near you!"
• One reason developers are reluctant to add parking: bikes. 
• It was walk and bike to school day yesterday. Unfortunately, two teens in Montgomery County were hit while walking from school to the bus stop. A driver lost control of their car and jumped the curb to hit them on the sidewalk.

Comments

[unclejed]

I got a traffic ticket in Crystal City this morning while riding CaBi! $161 for crossing on the walk signal while not being within the cross-walk...from a motorcycle cop no less.

[MM]

I wonder what Lemunyon will say when the $1.4 billion HOT lanes (the construction of which caused MASSIVE congestion for 4.5 years) aren't the magical traffic panacea he must think they'll be. I don't think any data shows that widening roads has a significant, long-term impact on congestion, and I doubt the HOT lanes have increased property values along the Beltway. Meanwhile, the $250 million Pike project will spur development and investment in the area, increase property values by hundreds of millions of dollars, and attract car-free and car-light households, reducing congestion and all the other negative externalities associated with it.

Yup, them Arlington liberals don't have a clue!

[Crikey7]

I used to commute through Fort Totten in pre-MBT days. It's got some wicked hills you have to traverse going North-South. Avoiding those is highly desireable.

[mole]

Walking to a bus stop isn't really walking to school.

[SJE]

Mole: Its a start. I've seen parents who drive kids to the bus stop. If school is 8 miles away, I don't expect anyone to walk. Making them walk .5 miles to the bus stop is another thing.

[mole]

I'm just saying it's not fair to blame that accident on walk to school day, as some have tried to do (not here).

"We can't let kids walk to school or they'll get hit by cars! Aaaaah!"

Like that.

[Jonathan Krall]

A while back there was a study that showed that half of the kids hit by cars on their way to school were hit by people driving their kids to school. I think roads near schools should be re-engineered to lower both road speed and road capacity. If driving to school is a pain in the --s, people won't do it.

[Crikey7]

A tagline in WaPo today read "Police seek D.C. Office of Aging burglars". Can a D.C. Office of Aging bicycle scofflaws be far behind?

[JeffB]

My sister drives her daughter 2 blocks to the bus stop :(

[JeffB]

@unclejed,

Seems to me to be over zealous enforcement. Wonder how many tickets that cops writes on motorists that fail to stop before the stop line?

[SJE]

We live about 6 houses from my son's elem. school. The biggest hazard in our neighborhood is parents dropping kids off.

[oboe]

Seems to me to be over zealous enforcement. Wonder how many tickets that cops writes on motorists that fail to stop before the stop line?

Totally different situation. Rolling into the crosswalk with a 4500 lb vehicle is normal behavior that normal people engage in. A reckless bicycling scofflaw crossing the street with the signal, but outside the crosswalk is engaging in reckless scofflaw -type behavior, and must be stopped.

[Greenbelt]

Regional mobility is code for sprawl facilitation.