TheWashCycle

Thursday Afternoon Commute - Acceptance

Good afternoon

• New Hampshire Ave NW to get bike lanes between Washington and Dupont Circles. Also the road will become two-way, which should also help cyclists. Project will wrap in about 18 months. 
• Meanwhile, Arlington installed a green-painted bike lane yesterday at Military Road and Nelly Custis Drive. It's the first green-painted bike lane of any length in the area (there is small strip of test paint on a bike lane in SE). There is also a blue painted lane at Military and Nellie Curtis.
• The new Tri360 triathlon store is big, has a bike shop and will organize bike rides.
• Ride with BicycleSpace this Friday and you could win a free Linus Bike. 
• CaBi, now at King Street Metro. Plus, 2nd quarter trip data is now available for download - just in time for Grandparents Day!
• More on Loudoun's Reston Century behavior. 
• The Herndon Town Council approved bicycle facilities for inclusion in the Fairfax County Bicycle Plan by a five to two vote at their Aug. 14 meeting.
• Google is bringing expanded mobile biking directions and navigation to its Maps for Android application, adding turn-by-turn voice guidance as well as new mapping data spanning 10 additional international markets.
• Businesses in Seattle are effectively opposing efforts to close a gap in the Burke-Gillman Trail. 

 

Photo by BeyondDC

Thursday Morning Commute - Three for Two

Good morning

• CaBi expands two stations. The station at Mass. Ave. NW & Dupont Circle NW went from 23 to 41 docks and the Thomas Circle station doubled in size.
• DDOT points out, in response to distracted walking concerns, that while pedestrian fatalities are a larger percentage of total traffic fatalities than they have been in the past, that's because other fatalities are down so much. In fact pedestrian fatalities are down too. And they add "The largest category of pedestrian crashes in DC occurs when a pedestrian is in the crosswalk with the walk signal and is struck by a vehicle turning right or left."
• Ground has broken on the Washington Gateway Project along the Met Branch Trail. 
• The District Department of Transportation is holding a public meeting to discuss plans to replace three aging pedestrian/cyclist bridges over Kenilworth Avenue/DC-295 with a pair of new bridges. They're on a half-mile stretch between Nannie Helen Burroughs and Eastern avenues in Northeast Washington. Replacing three with two huh? I wonder if one of them just isn't used much. The meeting is tonight at 6pm.
• RIP Chuck Harris.
• The new bike shop in Arlington is the Old Bike Shop.
• One cyclist's encounter with a particularly vocal driver. If only the driver would shout at this cyclist.
• Bikeshare and twitter. 
• More PR.

Post-op link dump

Lance Armstrong.

Tyler Farrar

A new bike shop opening at Pershing and Washington?

Monday Morning Commute - Success is not an option

I might be out for awhile, as I'm having some minor surgery done, and I really don't think I should blog on Vicadin.

• "Many of the mechanics in the shop just off Four Mile Run aren't old enough to drive. Some are performing community service after scrapes with the law. Others are simply looking for something to do."
• Though a new grant will help plan for a WB&A Trail bridge over the Patuxent, it does not appear that Anne Arundel County will support the trail on the rail ROW. "Using the railroad path is not an option since it would cut through the Meyer Station Nature Center, said Rick Anthony, the director of Anne Arundel County’s Recreation and Parks....“That railroad bed is not something we’re willing to resurrect,” Anthony said. “It’s not an issue. We’re going to go around it.”" Because, you can't have a bike trail through a Nature Center - that's crazy. "Anthony said the county government got a “verbal commitment” from New Jersey-based developer Two Rivers LLC to help pay for a part of the trail that takes a detour around the original railroad alignment. Two Rivers LLC is developing The Preserve at Two Rivers, a community for residents ages 55 and older that includes a golf course." Meanwhile, on the PG side of the river. "Eileen Nivera, a planner coordinator for Prince George’s County Parks and Recreation, said Prince George’s planners are currently designing a link to a railroad spur that would fit in line with Anne Arundel County’s proposed detour. She said the sooner the work on the preliminary designs for the bridge begins the better, but said an undetermined amount of grant money is necessary to move forward.“We’ll need more money to do the final design and permitting, then we’ll need money for construction,” Nivera said."
• With kids going back to school today, AAA has some advice for drivers and parents including "Watch for bicycles. Children on bikes are often inexperienced, unsteady and unpredictable. Slow down and allow at least three feet of passing distance between your vehicle and the bicycle. If your child rides a bicycle to school, require that they wear a properly-fitted bicycle helmet on every ride."
• Details on the Easton Rail Trail on the Eastern Shore.
• Floating bicyclists.

Tuesday Evening Commute - Naked or Nekid?

Good afternoon

• Groupon has an offer for an $80.00 tune up for $39 at Rollin' Cycles in Logan Circle. 
• "A Fairfax man has been charged with indecent exposure after reportedly riding a bicycle while naked on Jermantown Road."
• Why Ryan instead of Portman? "maybe the prognosticators were right and Romney was leaning toward Portman… but somebody might have informed Romney that Portman and Sen. John Kerry are good buddies; they have been seen frequently on morning bike rides."
• During the London Olympics, "the city's bike hire scheme broke a record with 46,000 bikes rented on a single day." I suspect that record will stand for a good while. 

Thursday Afternoon Commute - Potluck

Good afternoon

• This is a bit old - from the January issue of Hill Rag (page 57) - but ANC6C's Transportation and Public Space Committee voted to ask DDOT to end the three-lane periods on K Street, NE and add traffic calming measures, like bike lanes, to it. Right now there are two lanes of traffic and two lanes of parking, except at rush hour when there are three-lanes of traffic. 
• Proteus Bikes website now has lots of biking advice and the store is having a going away party for their departing owner. 

Monday Morning Commute - $1,000,000

So I'm not going to be reporting on anything Tour related until news is at least 48 hours old. I don't want to spoil anything for anyone. If you need updates now, there are probably other blogs that report such things. If you wait more than 48 hours to watch a stage, be warned. Here, btw, is what the NYT thinks are the stages to watch.

• The Dercho on Friday knocked down quite a few trees and wires and that made several trails impassable. If you had trouble getting to work because of storm, add a comment about and let's see if we can get the right people on the job. 
• Capital Bikeshare is offering a contract for advertising rights for $1 million plus 50% of profits, which means they must've worked things out with Clear Channel [City Paper, or someone like it, could get a good story out of how the whole Smart Bike/Clear Channel contract worked itself out. What happened to the bikes? Did Clear Channel have to pay DC money? Or the other way around? And how did CaBi get permission to sell ads? etc...]. "The money we generate will go toward the program and help cover operating and maintenance costs and expanding the system." CaBi is, unlike other programs, using an "open bidding system offered to any company that wants to advertise through Capital Bikeshare." Every station is available for advertising except the 4 on the Mall which "cannot be used for private advertisements." And John Lisle also reports that "Capital Bikeshare is turning a profit, at about $195,000 this year, by using only federal funds to support expenditures."
• Tri360, a bike shop, will be opening at 2121 N. Westmoreland St. near the intersection of Lee Highway, I-66 and the W&OD Trail in Arlington sometime this summer.

Bicycle Space pursuing Living Social/Chase small business grant

Chase and Living Social are offering 12 grants of up to $250,000 to small businesses and DC's own Bicycle Space [Full Disclosure: also a sponsor of this blog] is trying to win one. They need 250 votes in the next few days to qualify [Update: they have more than that now, but more can't hurt]. Go here and login to vote for them. We all benefit from better bike shops. 

Though our means are and have been limited, we have gone to extraordinary lengths to provide a place which is friendly, helpful, and active in supporting and building community to make our city better.  In our short life-span, we've been voted the Best in DC by both the readers and editors of City Paper, we've attracted the most Facebook fans of any local bicycle shop, and our YouTube channel has almost 13,000 views.  We lead at least six free weekly moderate-paced groups rides where we're friendly and respectful to both pedestrians and drivers.  We host two free weekly yoga classes, bike repair classes, host numerous free events, and provide assistance and financial support to numerous established and new organizations.

Our background is in working with bicycles, and we're using this platform to make Washington DC an exemplary city for getting around by bicycle.  Bicycles help to bring people health, happiness, liberty, and when areas can provide safe infrastructure, bicycles can even help with economic revitalization. 

Imagine for a minute if people in the city didn't need a car, or if couples only needed to own one car.  By AAA estimates, each household would save over $8,000 on the average by going car-free or car-light.  Now multiply that by all of the households in the region, while considering that people who use bikes as their primary form of transport spend much of their money locally, and you can see the potential economic benefit that bicycles can bring to our neighborhoods.  With new local opportunities, new specialty shops, cafes and restaurants will open, jobs will be created, employees will be hired, and profits will be reinvested locally to create thriving, dynamic, and connected neighborhoods.  One day, perhaps, we could enable even local manufacturing and production and bring even more jobs back home.

 

Monday Morning Commute - I liked Agenda 18 better

Good morning

• More details on the change in ownership at Proteus Bikes. 
• Salon's Will Doig responds to Reason's video on Capital Bikeshare. He gets quite a few facts wrong, but some of his points are solid. At the end though, he doesn't ask the right questions. Of course, having Owen Wilson riding CaBi is not helping with the demographics. 
• DDOT's press release about the Anacostia Trail TIGER grant and a GGW post about it. And more bike-related TIGER winners. Also, there's a FOX5 report below the bump that starts out covering the TIGER grant and then moves on to the 11th Street bridge project. I hope that David Patterson unbuckled his helmet for the interview, otherwise he's wasting his time with it. 
• Do dress codes hamper bike commuting? Probably.  I'm reminded of this quote from Bike Snob NYC "the entire notion that we have to build a transportation infrastructure around allowing people to show up to work clean in suits, why? Who cares?"
• The Lake Frank Trail is almost finished. 
• "Bicycles and pedestrian traffic as an alternative form of transportation to the automobile. That’s Agenda 21."
• The Americans are longshots to win the TdF this year

Friday Morning Commute - DOMA

Glad to see so many people out bike commuting this morning. It's a nice counterpoint to the people who say "no one's going to bike when it's hot." Looking at CaBi tracker, and usage is down some today compared to last week, but not by more than 10-15% I'd guess.  

• Jill DeMauro, owner of Proteus Bikes in College Park for the last decade, sold the store and is moving so that she can stay with her partner. Her partner is not American and her visa is expiring. Even though they're married, DeMauro can't sponser her partner because of DOMA, so thanks to all the intolerant, homophobic members of Congress for driving away a great bike shop operator, small business owner and job creator - you're truly making our country stronger. “I’ve never made a loss. I’ve never had to fire someone. I’ve never cut hours. I’ve never cut pay,”...“She’s a very community-oriented business owner. It’s a real loss.” Sounds exactly like the kind of person who we need to defend marriage from.
• Photo of the new northbound bike lane on George Mason Dr. between the Custis Trail & Washington Blvd.
• Roads to be resurfaced in MoCo, which means an opportunity to add bike lanes. 
• If you want a flying bicycle, all you have to do is befriend an adorable alien. 
• Yelling the word "left" when you want someone to stay right can be confusing to some.