TheWashCycle

Tuesday Morning Commute - We're Number 2

With New York City's bike share program now open for business, the DC area now has the nation's second largest bike-share system. But still, the largest south of the Mason-Dixon line (We're #1)

• Last week, Capital Business had a cover story on the opeartion of Capital Bikeshare. A lot of it is well-worn territory, with the only surprise being a negative comment from Simon Pak, a manager of the Bike Rack. “Since Capital Bikeshare started, any incident [I’ve witnessed] in bike-to-bike collisions have been with Capital Bikeshare riders. They’re the most inexperienced riders emulating more experienced riders,” he said. “I can’t say it’s been great,” Pak said, though he mentioned that about one in 10 customers come into the store looking for a sleeker alternative to the heavier bikes Capital Bikeshare provides. But also
  • After installation, stations require on average about $24,000 a year for maintenance — redistributing bikes from station to station, operating a call center and Web hosting. Since 2012, each station generally brings in about $20,000 in revenue, Holben said, though at its peak, when Capital Bikeshare offered a deal through LivingSocial, they were bringing in about $23,000.
  • In Arlington, the system in total brought in about $411,000 in revenue in 2012 — more than twice as much as it did in 2011. Its total costs were $643,000, meaning it recovered about 64 percent of the expense.
• The first comment in the above story prompted a response from David Alpert
• Sustainable DC. "In other words, Gray told me afterward, the future of city travel is about sharing routes safely. Look for more bus routes, streetcars, bike lanes and devices such as the pedestrian signal, which can make walking safer and more popular without infringing on people’s ability to drive autos...Many motorists suspect that the bike lanes are part of a broader effort to squeeze them off the roads."
• Bike racks enhancing Hyattsville have been making a positive impact for pedestrian safety and travelers, according to community data and investigation.
• I forgot who sent me the photo of the snake found on the CCT, but there it is. 

Friday Afternoon Commute - Vacation

I'm going on vacation all week, and there will be no blogging (I know, I blogged on my honeymoon, but this time I mean it). Instead you will get a chance to enjoy Oscar nominated and winning shorts. Why? Because for once, people should enjoy the blog.

• Bike to Work Day had a 15% increase in registration region wide over last year--more than 14,600 cyclists total!
• WAMU story on DC cycle-tracks "Funding is not as much as an issue as dealing with some of the trade-offs on any given street, especially in downtown where we've done a lot of the easy bike lanes where there was unused space," he said. "When we talk about protection - separation and buffers from cars - and more permanent improvements, it's more a question of planning and consensus building than resources."
• Fairfax County has applied for money to do a Bikeshare Feasibility Study.
• "The last segment of the Great Allegheny Passage opened this morning"
• "An Oregon funeral home in Eugene offers natural burials where the ride to the person's final resting place is on the back of a three-wheeled bicycle."

Thursday Afternoon Commute - You'll be hated for 6 months, then they'll love you

Good afternoon

• The New Belgium Tour de Fat comes to DC on June 1
• Cyclists helping each other on the W&OD Trail
• MWCOG considering a Green Streets Policy which has as a goal making biking easier. 
• "Sharing is for commies, and so is cycling." CaBi should sell a T-shirt that says that. I'd buy one. 
• Urban Delivery seeks to revive messenger culture. Needs more Bacon (Kevin). 
• More on NYC, Citibike kiosks and controversy."Jane Browne, 42, who initially supported the program, said she had recently seen mice scurrying in the “corridors of trash and water” that formed between a nearby bike station and the curb." And to tie it in to DC: “Washington had at least one fistfight at a community meeting,” he said. “We haven’t had that.” (An official with Washington’s Transportation Department said she did not recall any contentious community meetings or significant opposition to the program.)" I think they're referring to this - which seems so bizarre now - and is so eloquently reduced to “Why is everybody so mad about this? Why is everybody so crazy?”
• The Boston Cyclist Safety Report. That's no typo, cyclist were cited for speeding more than twice as often as drivers. And on the helmet issues, between 44-53% of cyclists in EMS response crashes wore a helmet. "It is unknown how the relatively low rates of helmet use among cyclists involved in Boston EMS incidents relates to the overall rate of helmet use in Boston. Convenience sampling of Boston cyclists observed at selected sites throughout the city by Boston Bikes and other researchers has yielded average helmet use rates ranging from 48-72%, although observed rates were significantly lower in some neighborhoods." Earlier in the study they cite the 72% rate as coming from a peak-hour study. This means primarily bike commuters. I suspect commuters are more likely to wear helmets, but I could be wrong.

Wednesday Morning Commute - Working

Good morning

• The National Ride of Silence is today - same time as the M Street Cycletrack meeting. 
• Inaugural ride of Kidical Mass Arlington is this Sunday. 
• The Suitland Parkway Trail is a mess, (and it is likely to get worse long before it gets better).
• "Alexandria City Council approved the expansion of its eight-station Capital Bikeshare program in Old Town as part of its budget adoption last week. Planners are looking at adding stations in Del Ray and Carlyle, as well as potentially adding more in Old Town.....Several meeting attendees asked that any bikeshare station be placed in existing parking as not to disrupt pedestrian traffic on sidewalks."
• Cyclist assualts runner on the W&OD Trail. 
• Henry Graber at the Atlantic responds to Sarah Goodyear's piece yesterday "On balance, cyclists' illegal behavior—like that of pedestrians—adds much, much more convenience to life than danger. Aggressive enforcement of traffic laws could upend the fragile system of incentives that leads thousands of people to undertake a long and sweaty commute each day."
• More on the increase of bike commuting over the last decade. 

Griffiths said he was surprised by the increase in the number of people biking to work. The share of commuters biking in the area doubled from 2000 to 2011, with most of those cyclists coming from D.C., as about 6,600 new bike commuters started cycling to and from home and work in the District. Griffiths said that change could point to the success of the city's bike lanes, although cyclists still make up less than 1 percent of commuters.

"It's a lot easier to commute by bike in the District than it was at the beginning of the decade," Griffiths said. "Some of the District's policies to make bike commuting more friendly are working."

• CitiBike tips.

Thursday Morning Commute - Charm City Bikeshare

Going back to this article about Southwest they write "At the turn of the century, the original proposed location of the National Arboretum was in Southwest..." But they're talking about the turn from the 1800's to the 1900's. When does "the turn of the century" mean 2000?  

• Baltimore may finally get bikeshare - next year - as the city's financial oversight panel approved an agreement with the state Wednesday to establish Charm City Bikeshare
  • More than 250 bikes at 25 stations
  • Officials said the state will pay 80 percent of the $1.1 million start-up costs, including purchasing cycles and station equipment, and Baltimore must come up with the rest. City leaders haven't decided whether to use tax dollars or find a private-sector partner.
  • A vendor to run it has not been selected, but Alta is under consideration
• A profile of Ben Freed, new editor of DCist includes this "He gets around by bike—when he can. (It was in the shop when we talked.)"
• MDOT's next public meeting on the Bicycle & Pedestrian Master Plan is June 11th.
• Drive till you increase unemployment, or how sprawl is killing America: "The authors find that higher levels of homeownership in a state appear to be associated with lower levels of labor mobility, higher commute times, and fewer new businesses created. Taken together, those three factors tend to increase the unemployment rate."

Monday Afternoon Commute - The bike share station will severely endanger the health and safety of the residents

Good afternoon

• Arlington bike month activities
• New CaBi stations at 15th and Euclid and Mass and Eye
• Robot Ride on Wednesday
• NBC story on the M Street cycle track puts a lot of focus lost parking. 
• One cyclists story on being the victim of a hit and run.
• New York bike share synopsis. And more focus on the NIMBYs "It is a sign of how much more sensitive the city has become – only 60 years ago, Robert Moses could tear down entire communities to make way for the motor car, with relative impunity."
  • Bike kiosks have been defaced with posters deriding the $41m sponsorship of the scheme, by Citibank. In Fort Greene, leaflets saying "residential landmark blocks are not for advertising or commercial activity" were slapped over the kiosks. Street vendors have protested that their regular parking spaces are being obliterated. The owner of a Tribeca bistro was almost arrested when he waged a sit-down occupation outside his restaurant, to prevent the installation of the racks.
  • The residents of the 100-year-old building fear the value of their property will decline thanks to marauding cyclists riding on the sidewalk, knocking down older people and children.
  • "Bike lanes, I put that now in the category of things you shouldn't discuss at dinner parties," one of the front-runner candidates to succeed Michael Bloomberg, Christine Quinn, said recently.
  • an underlying truth is in danger of being lost: that the scheme is overwhelmingly supported by New Yorkers. Polls suggest more than 70% approval across the city. 

View more videos at: http://nbcwashington.com.

Friday Afternoon Commute - I liked it better as Kozmo

Good afternoon

• M Street cycle-track will be narrower than L, separated by auto parking in places, on the right instead of the left and will have different mixing zones. 
• Bike Month Roundup.
• University Boulevard may go on a road diet when the Purple Line is built. And the redesign may include a cycle-track. All the stations in the corridor will have bike parking. 
• "Urban Delivery, which launches this week offering users the ability to hire a bike messenger to retrieve and courier, well, whatever a user damn well pleases." I predict the most common requests will be snacks for potheads and condoms for the lucky. 
• New Yorkers take lessons from Capital Bikeshare. "New York is not D.C., and thank god for that. But if you’d told me that bike share was going to change the entire landscape of transportation in D.C., I would have slapped you in the face. But it has. The bike share program there is a success—that much is obvious from the sheer number of them on the street." I agree, thank God we are not New York.  More here. 
• And here's a piece on Montgomery County's expansion, "Since bikesharing is low-cost and available 24/7, it may be particularly helpful for low-income residents, many of whom hold multiple jobs and try to participate in job training programs," Leggett said.
• I don't disagree that changes in work or family can make bike commuting less viable - I don't bike the whole way anymore and only a few times a week - but this guy seems to have not informed himself of what actually happens. "Commuting to work by bike just is not feasible for a family and in most US cities.  The weather is too extreme, there's not enough infrastructure to support safe cycling over long distances (from suburbs to cities) and employers are not ready for sweaty Mr. Lumbergh tracking down rouge TPS reports."
  • Wherever you live, there are likely people who live in hotter or colder climates who make bike commuting work. 
  • Bike commuting over long distances takes a larger committment. Luckily, you don't have to live far from work. 
  • I've never worked anyplace that didn't have a bathroom where I could spongebath and change clothes. Also, you can bike in your work clothes, but you don't have to. 
  • "We would need to move back into the urban areas to shorten the commutes to gain acceptance on a much larger scale." Which is what people have been doing. 
• The article that prompted it is pretty good, even if I think Colville-Andersen is misinformed about Americans and still too obsessed on what people wear. Still it's good to see an article like this in a business magazine. 

Thursday Evening Commute - Library Card Needed

Evil Washcycle wonders if the reduction in VMT over the last decade is thanks to the growth of GPS devices that help people take the most efficient route and get lost less often. Being evil, he'll start to say it's true regardless of the answer.

• Ribbon cut at Columbia Circle Plaza. Project built bike lanes on Mass Ave and a small section of the Met Branch Trail. 
• After a weak March, CaBi had a record-breaking April. 
• A literary alleycat.
• Delaware celebrates their 5th most bike friendly state ranking. “Other states are going to be beating down the door to get in front of us and it’s going to be very hard to maintain,” she added. “Right now we have good leadership but the pressure needs to stay on.”
• Citibike bans riders over 260lbs, but not really. 

Thursday Morning Commute - bipedal torture machine

Good morning

• CaBi has new trip history data out. Enjoy. And there has been an unfortunate first - the first time that year over year trips have dropped. In March of 2012 there were 164,898 trips system-wide. In March of 2013 it dropped 3.2% to 159,581.
• Mother's Day Bike Ride to Hains Point, coordinated by BikeArlington, Black Women Bike DC, and WABA's Women & Bicycles.
• I was looking for the Goddard policy on bike helmets today (which I did not find) and I came on this, which I don't think I'd read before. It's about connecting Goddard to the Greenbelt Metro with a bike path. "As is, the bike path would start from Goddard’s west property line and link through a portion of the Greenbriar Condominiums located just east of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. But convincing owners to endorse more asphalt—and bike traffic—may be a challenge, especially since the path would be made to serve only Goddard employees pedaling to and from work. " And NASA can't pay for any of the trail that isn't on NASA property either.
• Responses to the WaPo story on adult biking. 
• "To leap ahead of our frost covered competition, Baltimore should build a bike friendly infrastructure network, focusing on its destination rich center to complement Bikeshare."

Wednesday Afternoon Commute - "More people in the neighborhood is better for me"

Good afternoon

• Bicycle Friendly States rankings came out today. Maryland was 11th and Virginia was 16th.
• "On any given day, you can find about 700 of the bikes scattered like toys across Google’s Mountain View campus. All morning long, Google’s private shuttle buses drop off employees in front of clumps of bikes. The Googlers mount up and ride to work. Jimenez and Mac are part of a seven-person army that keeps them up-and-running, seven days a week."
• "The cyclist’s best chance at protecting his personal fortune likely rests in convincing a jury the government has already earned plenty from him."
• More citibike handwringing, even from a bike shop owner “They really take up a lot of space on the city streets … It’s so congested, with bus stops and bike lanes,” Scarfelli says.
• Streetsblog is raising money and giving away a bike.