Thursday Afternoon Commute - Quack

Good afternoon. I don't know if they re-timed the lights, but I caught the green bike light this morning coming off of 15th onto Penn and didn't get a red until 6th. People used to complain about the stop and go nature of Penn, but I didn't have that problem today.

• Don't count on seeing any Arlington area trails plowed this winter.
• WABA and MoBike recently created a list of recommended bike infrastructure improvements for Silver Spring, Takoma Park, Bethesda and Friendship Heights. "Among the suggestions are to finish two incomplete trails in Silver Spring: Metropolitan Branch Trail and Silver Spring Green Trail." You can see a longer list of recommendations at the link.
• MORE becomes a chapter club of the International Mountain Biking Association
• The Federal Highway Administration has issued recommendations for “non-motorized” groups in its Traffic Monitoring Guide which could give guidance on counting cyclists. One nice thing about having CaBi, is that we can use it's data to get a good idea of how many cyclists are out there. Here's the best way to do that
  • When doing counts, just try to determine the ratio of CaBi cyclists to non-CaBi cyclists, the actual number doesn't even really matter.
  • Then use that ratio to determine the total number of cyclists every day. So, for example, if 1 out of every 10 cyclists is on a CaBi, and on Dec 2 there were 2000 CaBi trips then we can extrapolate that there were 20,000 total bike trips.
  • One flaw with this is that the ratio determined above is the ratio of cyclists on the road (based on time) not the ratio of actual trips. If CaBi trips are shorter than other bike trips then it would overcount total trips. But you could account for that two with some survey data.
• Give to streetsblog and streetsfilm and you could win a free bike. 
• What Gabe Klein is up to now.
• Sonoma County pursues an anti-bicycle assault law similar to the one working its way through DC's Council.

Photo of the duckling bike rack on 18th, across from the World Bank, by WillH.

Comments

[sbg]

If even a third of the recommendations proposed by WABA and MoBike for on street bicycle improvements in the downcounty area are implemented it would be a huge improvement. Perhaps the list is overambitious but much of this could be achieved quickly and at relative low cost. A road diet for Arlington Road would be great but I doubt that will ever happen.

[I forgot]

One problem with the bike counting methodology is that the ratio of CaBi to non-rental/shared bikes may vary over time (long term), season, and specific short-run weather events.

[T]

Generally good recommendations proposed by WABA and MoBike. With that said, the Spring to 13th is a horrible idea. Why end at 13th? Most likely because that's where on street parking resumes, but if you ever have driven this section, you know that folks are routinely trying to merge in from that right lane, turning out from that 7-11 and/or turning out from 13th. It's going to lead to someone getting hit. Not to mention the narrow tunnel bridge with a huge sewer grate bump at the bottom below the Metro tracks, which would suck to ride over. The answer has been obvious--run it down Fenton or even Eastern and you solve the problem. Similarly, I'm not sure the lanes running up 29 would work as planned due the idiocy of some drivers there. The corner 29/Colesville and Georgia/97 (technically GA becomes 29) is all sorts of bad during rush hour. I would never cross it on a bike if I could go over one block either way and hit much more sanguine traffic conditions. It's counterintuitive.

[Michael H.]

DDOT announced the locations of the 54 new D.C. CaBi stations, to be installed between January and March:

https://capitalbikeshare.com/news/2012/12/17/ddot-releases-new-capital-bikeshare-locations