TheWashCycle

Tuesday Afternoon Commute - Stunts

Tough day for biking out there, but then, it sounds like it was no picnic driving either.

• This is no knock on Obama, but most of the progress in the region's bike-friendliness and mode-share uptick would have likely occurred under McCain. Unless...you think that the McCain administration would have denied Arlington/DC's use of CMAQ funding to pay for Capital Bikeshare. Biking in the area boomed during the Bush years too. 
• More from State Sen. Wagner on the anti-dooring law "It's establishing you're guilty for opening your car door whether you're guilty or not." No, that's not how the law work. If you fail to use due care, then it does kind of establish that you're guilty. But of course, a court will decide what is due care - and thus guilt. It is, however, correct to say that the current law establishes that you're not guilty, whether you're guilty or not - since opening a car door into someone without looking isn't a crime.
• Salisbury, MD has agreed to let mountain bikers maintain park trails. "The trails would not be what people imagine for mountain biking or stunts." This follows the passing of a bike lane ordinance last summer. 
• This is a surprisingly good article on the quiet car initiative conclusions. 
• A doctor who, in an act of civil disobedience, tried to block the removal of a bike lane was sentenced to community service. He'll be doing it with Cycle Toronto. 

Christmas Eve Ride - There's an app for that

Happy Holidays

• Parking apps may make eliminating curbside parking more palatable.
• The Eastern Shore branch of the International Mountain Bicycling Association (ESIMBA) is attempting to get the Salisbury City Council to endorse a Memorandum of Understanding for trail preservation. But concerns about the environment and confrontations between mountain bikers and other users appears to be holding it up. 
• Philadelphia looks into bike sharing. 
• " Cardboard boxes full of partially assembled mountain bikes, missing a pedal, seat or handlebars and unable to be sold, gather dust in a corner of the Musetta bicycle factory in suburban Buenos Aires. Meanwhile, they're running out of stock at Nodari Bikes, a neighborhood cycling store."

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.

Maryland announces next round of Rec Trails Grants

Last week, Maryland announced 42 projects statewide that will receive funding from the Maryland State Highway Administration’s (SHA) Recreational Trails Program (RTP). These are small grants ($5000 to $64000) so don't expect any big projects, but still, there are a couple local winners - though I'm not sure what they'll do with the money.

• The WB&A Trail's Lemons Bridge Spur got $64,640
• MNCPPC Montgomery County got $32,800 for boardwalks on the upper Rock Creek Trail

 

Tuesday Morning Commute - T-shirt

Good morning

• If you ride across the new 11th Street Bridge, you'll notice a shift to the sidewalk on the south side as they get ready to open the ramp from 295 tomorrow night.
• Is wearing a Capital Bikeshare shirt while riding Capital Bikeshare like wearing a band's concert shirt to their concert? [Don't be that guy]
• Speaking of CaBi, August stats are in. They set a new record with 214,785 trips in August, up 53% since last year.
• Get a deal on a biking and camping trip.

Thursday Afternoon Commute - Walk-Friendly

Good afternoon

• The FHWA released data comparing some of the country's bike sharing systems. While DC was #1 in annual members, CaBi came in just behind Minneapolis in the number of stations and bikes (though I think it's #1 again now) and way behind Miami in casual members. And of course, more expansion is planned and underway "This week, for example, county officials are installing one new station at North Queen Street and Arlington Boulevard near Fort Myer and another at North Barton Street at 10th Street North near the courthouse. Those two stations were approved last year, although installation was delayed for legal reasons."
• DC has been named one of 10 Gold level Walk-Friendly communities by the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center. "The designation goes to towns that promote walking and pedestrian safety through programs and policies." I don't think this is actually a cycling designation though. 
• MPD issues tickets to pedestrians and cyclists too. "D.C. police issued 500 tickets to pedestrians, and 3,000 tickets to bicyclists in 2011, Chief Cathy Lanier told WTOP on Thursday's "Ask the Chief.""
• SHA proposes modifications to Green Mile sidewalk along Wisconsin Avenue, that inlcudes narrowing it to 5 feet. This is to serve as a bike facility. 
• Montreal's Bixi is experimenting with a new pricing method for daily users. They get a key and are charged $5 (instead of $7) for each day they use it. Good for people who rarely use it, but don't want to deal with the kiosk - and they save $2 each time. Could be something we try here. 
• How DC area teams did in the National Bike Challenge
• State and federal funds will be used to create a corridor of hiking, biking and fishing areas more than 10 miles long from near Thurmont to north of Middletown in Maryland.
• Fairfax City, George Mason University and Fairfax County created the Mason-to-Metro Initiative, with recommendations to improve the bicycle and pedestrian sign system and map, and on-road bicycle facilities and trails. So, this fall, the city plans to install shared-use lane markings and signs on sections of Old Lee Highway. "Sharrows currently mark the bike lanes on George Mason Boulevard and University Drive between the university and Old Town Fairfax."
• Lots of pro cyclists are coming clean about their doping. 
• Puget Sound Wind Farm doubles as hiking and biking recreation area. "A bike ride among the bright-white towers seemed just the right pace at which to ponder their strange, mechanical beauty."
• I like the idea of this, but it will probably be too expensive and it would by like crack for NIMBY's - same as monorail. 

Friday Afternoon Commute - Stockholm Syndrome

Good morning

• WaPo on BikePlanner and the Great College Park Bicycle Move. Did they use WABA's MOABT? Still more here.
• 5 DC Bike rides. 
• Ok, despite the fact that it's tied to the Premium Rush movie coming out in August, this is a pretty good article about fixed gear bikes, how they work and why people choose them. You can expect more articles about fixie's if the movie has any success and they may not be as good as this one. 
• A study of San Jose shows how high stress streets create islands of low-stress bikeability that are disconnected from each other, and how to fix that. 
• From an article on the Olympic atheletes who finish in 4th place (including Taylor Phinney twice) "In the women's triathlon, after swimming, biking and running about 34 miles, Sarah Groff gave two hours of all she had. While biking she said she "rode over" a Polish entrant who had fallen in front of her. Still, she ended up 10 seconds behind the bronze medalist." Speaking of the women's race, there may have been a tie for first.
• Stockholm's congestion fee was initially opposed by 75% of residents. But then the pilot worked...really well, and so they voted to reinstate it. "Six years after the city imposed a congestion fee on drivers coming into the urban core, the sense of sanity in Stockholm’s streets continues to awe local researchers, environmentalists, and politicians." Oh, if only sanity ruled the land. 
• Lance Armstrong takes his case to court.

Wednesday Afternoon Commute - Holy Moses

Another day, another morning links post abandoned on the home computer. But there is another blog post at my other blog. 

• Sign up for Car Free Day and you could win an iPad. 
• Glen Echo, MD wants to install the state's first stop sign camera (and the first outside of California?) According to study of the intersection “Approximately 81% of all vehicles, ran the stop sign,” and 65% of all vehicles did so with a police officer present. So by the 85th percentile rule, it should be legal. There's more a the Examiner, which leads me to wonder how you get less than four wheels to stop?
• Biking from Ocean City to Assateague"The ride can be frustrating at first — the designated bike lines occasionally jump from one side of the road to the other, change into vehicular turn lanes or disappear altogether, and the road sees a good amount of trucks and other heavy traffic whizzing by at 50 mph — but traffic thins closer to the park."
• Three New York City council members want to double the width of the Brooklyn Bridge path. They want to designate three-quarters of the widened lane to pedestrians and the rest to cyclists (which doesn't match the ratio of 4000 pedestrian users to 3100 cyclists, but may if you go by time on the span. And it may not even matter.). When will they learn that you can't end congestion by adding lanes? Update: More here. 
• "Few people think of Moses as a cycling advocate, what with his infamous—and unpardonable—refusal to include bike lanes on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge (ostensibly for fear of suicides). But earlier in his career, Moses was a keen advocate of bicycling and built New York City's first true bicycle infrastructure. The Depression had set off a bicycle sales boom in the city, as people could no longer afford cars. In 1938, to accommodate all the new bicyclists, Moses announced a vast system of bike paths—"fifty miles of paved parkland roads exclusively for bicycle riders," gushed the New York Times, that would enable bike enthusiasts to "pedal from one end of the city to the other.""

Monday Afternoon Commute - Good cops, bad cops

Good afternoon

• Driver hits two cyclists in bike lane, and once he notices that the collision damaged his car, he called the police who promptly cited him for illegally changing lanes into traffic. 
• The Washington Monument repairs could start this fall. It will require closing off the sidewalk along the south side of the Monument for 12-18 months, which should be no more than a minor inconvenience to cyclists.  
• "Frederick police are cracking down on skateboarders and bicycle stunt riders in the downtown historic district" If stunt biking and skateboarding had been against the rules in my hometown, then I would've had to take up another hobby - like huffing paint. 
• Would a BART-style "bikes on during rush hour" pilot program work on Metro Rail?
• Don't approach the Olympic Torch security bubble. 
• Lance Armstrong takes his doping case to the courtroom. Also "The agency says it has...along with blood samples from 2009-10 that are "fully consistent" with doping." If the 2009-10 blood samples are the ones that do him in, that would make his the worst comeback decision of all time. 

Wednesday Evening Commute - Doping

Good afternoon

• "The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency brought formal doping charges against former cyclist Lance Armstrong in an action that could cost him his seven Tour de France titles, according to a letter sent to Armstrong and several others Tuesday."
• Meanwhile 2010 Tour de France Champion Andy Shleck has pulled out of the race due to a spine injury he sustained earlier this year. Contador is also not competing this year because of his doping scandal.  
• Most CaBi trips appear to be faster than their comparable transit trips. 
• CaBi bikes along the route of the Air Force Cycling Classic.
• Biking is fun.