TheWashCycle

Friday Afternoon Commute - River Health

Good afternoon

• The Anacostia Watershed Society and the Anacostia Community Boathouse Association are hosting a River Health and Public Recreation Forum this Saturday, February 11, 9-11 am, at the First District Police Station, 101 M Street SW.
• On Monday and Wednesday of next week, the District will hold a design charrette on redoing the area around the Anacostia Metro station. The charrette, according to a news release, is aimed at “designing a public space that connects the Metro station to neighborhood assets, makes the area safer for pedestrians and bicyclists, better manages local stormwater and complements upcoming economic development projects in the community.” Assuming the unused rail line that runs through the station isn't turned into a rail trail, one idea is to improve and better sign the connection to the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail through the Park Police property.
• The Met Branch Trail isn't the only thing that's being cut by Montgomery County under protest. 

Wednesday Morning Commute - Non-economic

The first post here reminds me of a TFTS moment I had once biking to work. A woman in a robe came running over to me and asked me to stop. She had come outside to wave goodbye to her husband and after he drove away, she realized she'd accidentally locked herself out of the house. She said she recognized me because I rode by her house all the time, and she asked if I could call her husband to ask him to come back and let her in. I did, and after he got to work, he got my message and came back. Anyway...

• A Virginia cyclist and city planner wants to know how to help people who want to bike to work, but don't now, to do so.
• Mayor Gray in the state of the District speech "WHILE WE CONTINUE OUR INVESTMENTS IN TRANSIT THROUGH EXPANSION OF THE CAPITAL CITY BIKESHARE PROGRAM AND THE LAUNCHING OF A STREETCAR SYSTEM, WE ALSO ARE EXPLORING OPPORTUNITIES IN RENEWABLE ENERGY, ESPECIALLY SOLAR ENERGY."
• MoBike testifies in favor of the Met Branch Trail and bike funding in general.
• Meanwhile, the Met Branch Trail got over 11,000 users per day month in 2011 up from 4765 users in 2010.
• "The drip of damning evidence against Armstrong looks like a slow-moving version of the sexual assault allegations last year against international banker Dominique Strauss-Kahn or the rape accusations in 2006 against members of the Duke lacrosse team. In both of those cases, prosecutors withdrew their charges, concluding that the widely reported accusations were untrue or wouldn’t stand up in court. (In the Duke case, the prosecutor was disbarred for his misconduct.)"
• Another bike t-shirt. 
• Road diets, which often include bike lanes, are now a Proven Safety Countermeasure according to the FHWA. 
• Bike league goes after Beohner for blaming bikepaths for taking up 25% of the Highway Trust Fund spending (it's more like 1.6%). But my bigger problem is with him calling bikepaths "non-economic projects." Millions of people use bike paths to get to work, to shop and to carry out commerce. They play a large role in tourism in some places. Then, there is the sale of bicycles themselves that trails encourage. How is that non-economic exactly?

Tuesday Afternoon Commute - rebid

Good Afternoon

• The Met Branch Trail bridge to Rhode Island Avenue will be delayed since they only received one bid and it was too high. "After going out to bid for construction in January, the bridge will be re-bid again in the next few months. This is because District procurement regulations require that Contracting Officers make contract awards ONLY after a determination is made that the price is Fair and Reasonable. An analysis of the bid received failed to confirm that DDOT had received such pricing. Since there was only one bid received, DDOT had no recourse but to cancel the solicitation." 
• The Golden Triangle BID is having another bike rack competition. 
• Possible hit and run fatality of cyclist in PG County. Update: Not a hit and run. Instead the cyclist was shot. 
• TBD on the CaBi recovery rate for Arlington and DC. "The idea that Capital Bikeshare D.C. is recouping costs at 120% is, like Arlington's number of 81%, a little deceptive for not including those other very real costs. But hey, the revenue still beats operating costs for D.C. That bodes well for the system." It's even better considering that road user fees have a recovery rate of only 50%
• How to talk to Agenda 21'ers. 

Monday Afternoon Commute - Schleck Wins

Good afternoon (late)

• Alberto Contador was stripped of the 2010 Tour de France title (allowing Andy Schleck to back into the title) and banned for two years (sort of) as a result of testing positive for use of a banned substance. "CAS backdated Contador’s ban, and he is eligible to return to competition on Aug. 6. The ban means Contador will miss the Giro d’Italia, the Tour de France and the London Olympics, but he would be eligible to ride in the Spanish Vuelta, which begins Aug. 18." He'll also be stripped of his 2011 Giro d’Italia victory. 
• According to the bikesharing blog, Arlington's portion of CaBi recovered 81% of its operating costs in the first year. But it places DC's portion at only 20%, which is different than what DDOT reported in September (more than 100%) 120% (it was a typo). That isn't counting marketing which drops the Arlington recovery rate to 53%.
• Pricing for NYC's bikeshare. "Rental rates will be determined after the contracts are signed, but Alta is promising affordable annual memberships, costing less than a monthly unlimited ride MetroCard (around $90-95). Unlimited weekly membership would cost $20-25 and unlimited 24-hour access would be $8-10."
• WABA's Shane Farthing calls on Montgomery County officials to fund the Metropolitan Branch Trail. "Tomorrow night at 7 pm, the Montgomery County Council will host a public hearing on the proposed budget and its capital plans. This is the community's chance to testify in support of the trail, and to ask councilmembers to keep the MBT a priority keep the county's commitments. If you are unable to attend and testify in person, you can send an email to the Council here;" and also on DC leaders to ensure that the DC section of the Met Branch trail is safe to use. 

Monday Morning Commute - Sorry Vegas

I was rooting for the Giants, primarily because of a story that the odds-makers missed the mark (and the futures market too) and so way more people were betting on the Giants than the Patriots. That means that a win by the Giants = a loss for Vegas, and who roots for the house? I wonder who Trump, both a New Yorker and a casino owner, rooted for? He was probably hoping that somehow he would win.

• WABA calls on cyclists to support Met Branch Trail funding in Montgomery County. "This year, the budget proposed by the Montgomery County Executive cuts design and construction funding for the county’s portion of the MBT for the next six years. We need the County Council to ensure that these years of effort are not wasted and that the County’s commitments to prioritize the completion of the trail are kept." Silver Spring Trails adds "the ongoing disagreement with the owners of the station museum does not prevent MCDOT from designing and building the MetBranch from the new Sarbanes Silver Spring Transit Station south through the Ripley District to the station museum."
• It looks like preliminary work has started on Washington Gateway, the property that will fill the triangle shaped property between New York Avenue, Florida Avenue and the Met Branch Trail, or as I like to call it Triabfla (also the name of my infomercial ab machine). The current renderings still appear to show a set of properties that block out, rather than connect to, the trail, which would be too bad. I've tried to contact people involved with the project several times, but had no luck. 
• Speaking of trail adjacent development, the Florida Rock property - which includes a section of the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail - has submitted a new design. While the buildings change, it doesn't appear that the trail does.
• Lydia DePillis notes that, despite talking a good game about greening embassies, none have purchased a CaBi station. Not even the Canadians (which would seem a good way to support a Canadian company, n'est pas?)
• Arlington County is expected to authorize spending $3.44 million for six projects in the latest round of Neighborhood Conservation grant funding. That includes adding bike lanes to Patrick Henry Drive from 16th Street North to Washington Boulevard and to North Sycamore Street from 26th Street North to Williamsburg Boulevard. Also, Arlington is removing unnecessary bollards from area trails.
• How to trigger a traffic light with detector loops. 
• VASA ride is March 4th.
• Chat with Dr. Gridlock today. 
• Nice photo. 
• Why complete streets matters "Anne Gerlach, 43, of Glenmont, said she would like to be able to bike near her home, but can’t because there are no pedestrian or bike paths and traffic is heavy."

Saturday Morning Ride - 100% totally innocent

So the big bike story is that federal investigators have dropped their investigation of 7 time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong. "The hurdle for prosecutors wasn't so much to prove whether any particular cyclist used drugs, but to determine if Armstrong and other team members violated federal conspiracy, fraud or racketeering charges." He's still being investigated by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. As my dad says when filling out his March Madness bracket - "Winners win".

• A ride-along with a DC bike cop.
• The December CaBi data is now available. Trips and miles are both down for the winter, but one thing that's up is the number of bikes available. From 931 to 1120 bikes. Trips per bike per day were down to 2.5. The lowest they've been since March. None of this is too surprising.
• Obama's new Veterans Job Corps could help improve biking on national lands. "The Veterans Job Corps will involve projects such as repairing trails, roads, levees and recreational facilities, according to the White House." Which is good for DC, since we have a lot of national land around here.
• DDOT has installed more bike parking in the Central Business District of D.C. as well as in Federal corridors of SW.
• The Silver Spring Transit Center, which includes a section of the Met Branch Trail may be delayed, or it may not. 
• Arlington's BAC meets on Monday night. Christine Green, the Safe Routes to School Coordinator and Debbie DeFranco, Arlington Public Schools Health and Physical Education Supervisor are the guests.

B&O station managers say they welcome the Met Branch Trail

After being accused of being the reason for the rerouting of the Met Branch Trail, Judy Christensen, Executive Director of Montgomery Preservation, Inc. which manages the historic B&O train station says that it is not them.

MPI welcomed the Metropolitan Trail as a way to showcase the historic B&O Station to trail users. Last spring DOT presented MPI with a trail alignment through our property that far better accommodates our programs, and MPI thought we were all going forth with this design. MPI asked several times to meet and address implementation issues such as the loss of parking, liability and compensation but DOT did not meet with us again.

So then who, Silver Spring Trails asks, is the true culprit?

Monday Morning Commute - cash, sex, drugs and bicycles

Good morning. Riding the Met Branch Trail yesterday I noticed they've removed most of one half of the New York Avenue Bridge and it makes the underpass there so much more open and sunny. But I suppose it won't last.

• State Deptartmen CaBi station has been moved a little and expanded by four docks.
• Capitol Heights, MD got a grant to study turning a street into a green street, which could include bike lanes. They're considering three streets: Old Central Avenue; Chamber Avenue, which becomes Capitol Heights Boulevard; and Suffolk Avenue, which becomes Brooke Road. All three of these are just across the District boundary. "A community input meeting to ask residents where they want to see a green street and what it should include is scheduled for 10 a.m. to noon Feb. 25 at the First Baptist Church of Capitol Heights at 6 Capitol Heights Blvd." If they went with Central or Chamber, perhaps they could team up with the District.
• Stafford County cyclist riding at night on US 17 was struck from behind and killed. No charges for the driver and no mention of lights.
• NPR's Marketplace on stolen bikes. "The San Francisco police officers will routinely bust bike thieves, but there's a shameless open-air market. Within a minute of arriving, I was being offered bicycles. I found a kid with a bike that was about the right size for me, a track bike, pretty fancy machine. I tried to bargain with him a little bit, and he said, 'I looked it up, this is a $700 bicycle.' So he wasn't even pretending to own the bike."

Thursday Afternoon Commute - a ton of bike facilities

There is a morning commute post, apparantly sitting on my home computer. Hopefully it won't crash and will still be there this evening when I get home. 

• A man was robbed, punched and shot on the Met Branch Trail yesterday evening. The bullet, luckily, just grazed him
• The draft VDOT Safe Routes to School plan.
• Gabe Klein interviewed in The Atlantic "I would have gladly stayed had we won, because we would have done some amazing stuff that we had planned....we were going to launch a ton of bike facilities." What might have been...
• Study determines that bicycling generates $1million a day in Iowa in benefits
• Long Beach and it's goal to be the most Bicycle Friendly City in the United States. "Before the paint was laid down, the street saw about 400 cyclists and 40,000 motorists a day. After the paint dried two and a half years ago, the street sees about 1,000 cyclists per day and the same level of car traffic. And while some had been concerned that intersplicing bikes with cars on this stretch would result in accidents and injuries, Gandy says the post-paint crash figures are the same as before, at just about 5 car-bike crashes per year."

Montgomery County Met Branch Trail significantly downgraged, in trouble

According to Silver Spring Trails, the new 2013-2018 budget has removed the $12M set aside for Metropolitan Branch Trail construction and ROW acquisition. Which means they'll be no work until 2018. In addition the trail has been rerouted, removing two grade-separated crossings of Georgia Avenue and East-West Highway.

The County Executive and MCDOT want to take the trail down Philadelphia Avenue across business driveways of the many small auto repair shops along the way, and across both Georgia Avenue and E-W Highway at-grade. This proposed trail route is not new. It has been proposed by MCDOT and rejected several times at public workshops, Planning Board hearings, and County Council proceedings over the past 10 years in favor of a route along the CSX corridor with a trail bridge over Georgia Avenue and a trail tunnel under Burlington Avenue (E-W Highway).

I’ve posted here about the foot dragging by MCDOT throughout the MetBranch project history. But this new threat to the project is breathtaking in its inconsistency with the hype we are hearing from the county. Just as Montgomery County tauts BikeShare as proof of its commitment to increase cycling in Silver Spring and Takoma Park, it proposes cutting the most important cycling and walking infrastructure in this area.

He makes the point that all is not lost yet, but this is nonetheless disheartening.

Update: Read the first comment for more on this