TheWashCycle

Tuesday Afternoon Commute - My bicycle and I were best friends.

Do you think Sunday night at the Oscars will be the last time William Shatner plays Captain Kirk? If so, it's an odd performance for the character to go out on. Like ending Star Wars with the Christmas Special.

• Sustainable DC = Agenda 21. Someone should open a bar on 21st street called Agenda 21. 
• Phoenix Bikes will hold its annual bike show and fundraiser on Thursday, March 21 from 7 to 9 p.m. at 251 18th St. South.
• Bikeshare can do this better. 
• New DC bike maps are in. 
• The Fairfax County Bike Trail has finally reopened. 
• The Boston Globe blames anti-cyclist bias for the failure to indict a driver of vehicular homicide in a hit-and-run case in Massachusetts. It puts this month's Cooper case into some context for why a plea deal might seem appealing to prosecutors.
• Again with the old chestnut about "the time I rode my bike into East Berlin."

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.

Wednesday Morning Commute - BMUFL

Good morning. Not much for me to report, but soon I'll be able to start biking again, which I'm excited about.

• The hit and run in Bethesda might not have involved a hit. "There may or may not have been actual contact between the biker and the van," he said. After the accident, the cyclist said the van made a sudden lane change and hit her, Didone said, but preliminary investigations of the damage did not show any signs of the van hitting the bicycle.
• The BAC comes up with some ideas about automated enforcement. 
• Where BMUFL signs are being installed in Montgomery County. I saw some on MD-212 Riggs Road earlier today. 
• There was another possible hit and run involving a cyclist yesterday, this time in Arlington near Westover.
• Livestrong donations are strong
• I'm blogging for the Green Lanes Project about DC bicycle facilities and you can see my first post here.

The Bicycling Comedian Benefit for Phoenix Bikes

Tom Snyders, “The Bicycling Comedian,” has spent the past 25 years pedaling his fully-loaded touring bicycle to all his stand-up comedy performances. He’s cycled more than 162,000 miles, to and throughout, all 50 states (Hawaii was not easy), and in 34 countries on six continents. This summer and fall on his never ending Smile America bicycle tour he is offering to do benefit shows for worthy bicycle-related advocacy and nonprofit groups along his route. “I took one look at the Phoenix Bikes website and told Executive Director Henry Dunbar that I really respected the impact they have been making on local Arlington Youths, and that his organization was exactly the kind of thing I would be proud to help support,” Snyders says.

Snyders will perform Wednesday, June 27 at 7:30 p.m. (doors open at 6:30 p.m.) at the Arlington Cinema & Drafthouse, 2903 Columbia Pike in Arlington. Tickets are $15, available online at phoenixbikes.org. Please come. Bring Friends. Buy lots of food and drink.

 

Wednesday Afternoon Commute - His eyes are up here

Good afternoon

• Metro has started testing the new Bike & Ride facility at College Park.

The facility can hold more than 100 bikes and requires riders to use an access card to enter the room on the first level of the College Park Metro parking garage. 

During the month-long testing period, a group of people will try out the new system and provide comments and suggestions.

Use of the facility will cost between 2 to 5 cents per hour, says Metro, and there is a one-time $5 charge for "new customer ID verification."

• Bike Maryland is looking for donations of unused children's bikes for use in their Bike Rodeos.
• Oh brother. As a HS senior, Darrin Straus hit and killed a 16 year old cyclist with his car, an event he recently wrote an award-winning book about. I heard him interviewed on NPR last year and genuinely felt sorry for the guy. But this line is just an over-the-top attempt at absolution. "Sixteen-year-old Celine Zilke suddenly swerved her bicycle in front of his car in what may have been a deliberate act. 'She was using me as the instrument of her death,' Strauss said." And then there is this: "The problem with too many memoirs is that you can feel the author trying to forgive himself in every paragraph.” You mean like trying to say the girl committed suicide?
• New NPS pedicab regulations could be approved this summer.  
• “One look at what he did for those bike shorts and every woman in town would be voting for him.” Women are such pigs. 

Wednesday Morning Commute - "Forever Bicycles", was that the one with Clooney?

Good morning. Let us know if you see Obama. My friend had Sasha and Malia trick-or-treat at her house. How cool is that? But she's a Republican so she gave them each a ladle full of hot chili.

• Capital bikeshare station expansion begins. First station expanded - 16th and Harvard. Enjoy.
• WABA's Call to action summit is on Thursday
• BRAC funding in Virginia: "In addition to widening Route 1, the Belvoir project will include sidewalks and bicycle paths and accommodations for future transit. Construction is expected to start in 2013 with possible completion in 2015."
• Collecting abandoned bikes for the less fortunate is a Mitzvah!
• Bicycle parking facility, similar to the one in College Park is planned for the Franconia-Springfield Metro. "WMATA is in the final stages of planning an indoor, enclosed bike parking facility at Franconia-Springfield Metro station. It will likely be located in the new parking garage. The project is funded through a TIGER I grant for multimodal improvements at the station."
• Bike paths are infrastructure [Warning link is to conservative website].
• “Forever Bicycles” is made of 1,000 bicycles installed in a 10-meter high space in a moving, abstract shape to symbolize the way in which the social environment in China is changing. It probably won't fit in your basement.

Monday Morning Commute - Skulls are skulls

Happy New Month!

• WABA coverage of the Douglass Bridge ride. "Discussions centered around the traffic circle (to be built on the southeast side of the bridge) and the traffic oval (to be built on the northwest side) and access to the bridge from Anacostia via Howard Rd. & Firth Sterling Rd." And DDOT's Mike Goodno lists the issues discussed in greater detail including bike lanes on South Capital Street, connnections to the ART, continuation of the Suitland Parkway trail etc...
• A good reason to not ride naked - "The seat on this bike was 153.5 degrees."
• Susan Paisner writes to the Post to ask where are all the bike helmets for Capital Bikeshare riders? "heads are heads, skulls are skulls, and brain injuries can maim and kill, regardless of how they take place." Right. So where are the helmets all these pedestrians and motorists should be wearing?
• A profile of Bikes for the World, where the bikes come from and where they go. "The Arlington County nonprofit group takes thousands of unwanted bikes in suburban Washington — where things go from coveted to clutter in an instant — and sends them overseas to people who need them."
• Cyclist assaulted for no apparant reason. "1200 block of Wilson Boulevard. Arlington. On July 22 at 7 pm, a man was riding his bicycle when a car drove up beside him. The car ran him off the road and a passenger in the backseat reached out and pushed the victim over. The vehicle was a black sedan."

Friday Morning Commute - Taking the lane

I saw Captain America last night so I didn't have time to check the news. I assume the whole debt cap thing is fixed, right?

• Lydia DePillis turns her spotlight on the Tourmobile contract - the one that supposedly prevents Capital Bikeshare from going on the Mall. You're going to be shocked to hear this, but it may be illegal. And it doesn't actually preclude BikeSharing "Nothing in the language of the contract actually precludes the Park Service from allowing different forms of transportation on the Mall, interpretive or otherwise. Tourmobile has the right of first refusal there, but doesn’t get to block others." What are we going to do when DePillis gets scooped up by someone bigger?
• MPD coudl take a lesson from the Mount Ranier Police Department. Here is a story for which they should be commended. A cyclist was bumped by a passing car..."Conveniently the police were out monitoring traffic so I told the officer what happened. He jumped into his car and raced after the guy. The guy came back to the police station and we talked about what happened. He said he saw me riding in the street but he didn’t see me as he was passing. That’s a little hard to understand since I’m on a day-glo orange bike wearing a orange safety vest with a super blinky light in back. The officer thought he was telling the truth though so after discussing it with me I decided to have him give the guy a ticket for ‘failing to yield’ which is a $120 hit." This despite there not be $2000 worth of damage or any injuries. You can see a video here of how closely he was passed or the photo at top.
• The Examiner blames Montgomery County for "dropping the ball on BRAC." Now I've been following this since the beginning, so I'm not sure that's a fair characterization - the Pentagon should have come forward with more money, and five years is a short time span for a large project like this - but more importantly this sounds like an insult: "Montgomery County's hopelessly inadequate immediate solution consists largely of building pedestrian and bike trails and urging commuters to car pool." Bike trails are a fantastic solution if the roads are already congested. And perhaps the Examiner should actually wait to see what happens before they call it a complete failure. Do they not even read their own paper?
• Laurel, MD is getting more bike-friendly. "Connecting newer parts of the city to downtown through safer bike and pedestrian routes will help draw more people to struggling Main Street shops, Brendle said."
• A Bikes for the World photo slideshow. It shows bikes, their previous owners and where they end up. 
• Finally a Fox news story somehow ties together the CaBi expansion, Tregoning's crash and Tommy Wells' Frederick Douglass bike ride - and it doesn't feel too forced. I went on the bike ride, the highlight of which was crossing the bridge in the road (which I've never done, and is legal. The speed limit there is 30mph if you'll believe it) instead of on the sidepath. But most of the information given out is well known to readers here. No one honked at us either.

DC Council Member Tommy Wells Bringing Attention To Bike Safety in DC: MyFoxDC.com