TheWashCycle

Monday Morning Ride - Not a Drum Major

Happy MLK Day

• Rails-to-Trails and the Student Conservation Association will be doing some volunteer work on the Met Branch Trail in DC today from 9:30am to 12:30am. All additional volunteers are welcome. 
• Arlington County will replace an old, narrow W&OD Trail footbridge across Four Mile Run with a new, wider, ADA-compliant one. The trail will also be rerouted a little bit. "The new bridge will be 50 feet long and 14 feet wide with a concrete deck (the existing bridge has a wooden deck)." 
• The Silver Spring Transit Center - and its section of the Metropolitan Branch Trail - is delayed indefinitely. "an engineer’s assessment delivered to the county Friday concluded that at least some of the cement was improperly poured and must be redone." So that's like what, a weekend? The Amish would've have had this finished by now. 
• Thanks to Richard Layman, for digging up this article that predates my time in DC and stings a little in relation to last week's event. "Commuting Bikers and Hikers Find Happier Trails in Pr. George's" [except in the winter]
• BikeWalk Virginia is now just Bike Virginia. "Walk" joins "The Pizza Place" and "Cougar" as cast off name portions. This naming seems to be the trend, with One Less Car making a similar move to become Bike Maryland. 
• Deal could bring bike trail to Clarksburg.
• Western Baltimore County Pedestrian and Bicycle Access Plan meetings this month.

Photo by Steve Offutt

Thursday Morning Commute - Caboose

Good morning

• Capital Bikeshare won one of Tommy Wells' liveable, walkable awards. And from December 9 through 20, holiday treats exclusively for Capital Bikeshare members are being offered in Georgetown courtesy of the Georgetown BID. And also, CaBi has discounted memberships again.
• The WABA holiday party is next week. Also, WABA teaches kids to bike safely - as part of a Safe Routes to Schools funded program.
• Tree blocks the Marvin Gaye Park Trail. This was one of many weather-related barriers reported yesterday.
• The Holiday Shopping Fun Ride to DC Markets is this Saturday.
• Looking at this map of national traffic fatalities again, I realized that as bad as it looks, it doesn't even include all the fatalities that actually happened - not for cyclists at least. Missing, for example, are Ian Wolfe and Yoram Kaufman. That having been said, if you can name any of the cycling victims in the immediate DC area - especially prior to 2005, please note that in the comments, I try to keep track of these things for the blog. 
• Bicycle facilities in the I-66 corridor. 
• Indian Head and White Plains are arguing over where to put a caboose to be placed along the Indian Head Rail Trail. There's also debate over whether to make it a museum or small shop. Along a trail in Montreal, there was a small bike repair shop in a caboose along the trail. I day go with the shop.
• Park Service's preferred plan for the Blue Ridge Parkway is the least bicycle-friendly one (of three bad choices). 
• In my opinion, this is a bicycle. I wonder how the law would categorize them - sometimes having a small wheel means it isn't a bike, so that kids can be exempt from "no biking on the sidewalk" laws. Also, this is not a bicycle.

Friday Morning Commute - So long LaHood

Good morning.

• A young cyclist crossing Maple on the W&OD Trail was hit by a driver who then fled the scene. They cyclist suffered only minor injuries.
• A driver in central Virginia was found guilty of failure to yield to a cyclist. The crash that resulted from this failure led to the death of the cyclist - well-known competitive cyclist Michael J. Fawell. But the driver did not get off scot free. He had to pay a $30 fine. To be fair, Fawell had no lights or reflectors and was riding in the rain before sunrise. But he was also riding on the paved shoulder. 
• Ray LaHood will be leaving the Department of Transportation at the end of Obama's first term. If Obama should win, who would make a good replacement? Is Oberstar too much of a pipe-dream? He lives in Potomac.
• Giant bicycles responds to GM.
• RAGBRAI leads to a scientific discovery about Parkinson's and exercise. Can WABGRAD ever aspire to such heights? The discovery is that forced exercise - where the participant doesn't control the speed - show fewer symptoms of the disease. "Dr. Alberts suspects that in Parkinson’s patients, the answer may be simple mathematics. More pedal strokes per minute cause more muscle contractions than fewer pedal strokes, which, in consequence, generate more nervous-system messages to the brain. There, he thinks, biochemical reactions occur in response to the messages, and the more messages, the greater the response."

Improved Four Mile Run to W&OD connection

It's been awhile since I made it out this far, but I recently noticed that work is ongoing at the S. Shirlington Rd/Four Mile Run Drive intersection. This is the connection from the trailhead of the W&OD trail to the Four Mile Run trail underpass beneath I-395. They've installed a hawk light (visible in the background) and are improving the sidewalk from it to the W&OD. It looks like wider curb ramps and moving poles out of the way. It's far better than it was before.

 

Looking toward Shirlington from the W&OD trailhead.

Saturday Morning Ride - Skedaddle

Happy College Football Kickoff Day (not a real holiday, but it should be)

• This reminds me of the Bloom County strip where Oliver uses a "flesh" colored band-aid.
• WABA has it's own take on the "worst drivers" report.
• A pedicab rides along the MVT, and USPP does what it does best. Making stuff up. Are pedicabs allowed among the walkers and cyclists? "I don't believe so," a Park Police man told me. "A pedicab wouldn't be narrow enough." There are rules and this isn't one of them. If it were, you'd be banning adult tricycles and quad bikes. There is no law about the width of bikes that are allowed.
• Phoenix Bikes' Arlington fun ride.
• The Great Skedaddle, a 5K Run/Walk or a five- or ten-mile bike ride along the W&OD Trail, is today. Get a free history lesson while running, walking, or biking through a portion of the route that the Union troops took after the first Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861. The races begin at 11 AM and starts and finishes at Farmwell Station Middle School in Ashburn. Register here for $20 for the 5K and five-mile bike ride, $25 for the 10 miler, and $10 for children ages 12 and under.
• Baltimore "is in advanced stages of negotiations with B-cycle to be the one of the next mid-Atlantic cities in the United States to bring bike-sharing to its citizens. With 250 bikes in 30 stations under discussion, the plan is to deploy the system around July 2012 in the Central Business District (CBD)." And it turns out, bike-sharing causes more bike-buying. "In Paris, for example, consumers have bought more than 2 million bicycles since the city launched its huge Velib bike share program."
• Ron Paul goes for a bike ride.

Monday Morning Commute - MLK Memorial

Despite the Hurricane I managed to go on bike rides both days the weekend. On Saturday at 11am I had the CCT all to myself. But yesterday the trails were crowded.

• On Wednesday there's a launch party for a new book entitled Where to Bike Washington, DC at the Wilderness Society.
• The MLK memorial really needs bike parking. Ran into a woman at the CaBi station yesterday. She hadn't been on a bicycle in 20 years but was going to ride down to the Memorial. I told her there were no stations nearby and she'll probably have to pay overage fees, but she didn't mind. Also, on both Saturday and Sunday I saw Park Police writing parking tickets for the half dozen cars illegally parking on Independence in front of the memorial.
• Tim Kelley of BikeArlington is going to be meeting with NPS on bike issues and is looking for suggested topics. Specifically Arlington topics, though people are suggesting more.
• Driver has a story about careless cyclists. But part of the problem is the confusing trail/road intersection.
• Richard Layman has an assortment of bicycle stories from around the world. 

Friday Morning Commute - Irene, you rene

Who is that young man on the right? Why that is Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Riding without a helmet will surely cost him the nomination. Scofflaw! Get out of the road!

• The Center Hiking Club will host an Arlington history bike tour on Saturday, Aug. 27 beginning at 9 a.m. at the Ballston Metro station.
• NPS is going to rehabilitate and improve two small bridges on the MVT near mile marker 1.75.
• The new Lewinsville Road Bridge over the Beltway is now open with new pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly sidewalks.
• Vienna will participate in "Hail the Trail,” a celebration of the W&OD Regional Trail, on Saturday, Sept. 3 from 7:30 to 10 a.m. Followed by hours of fighting all the crime that everyone knows trails bring.
• The editors of the Sun Gazette support Vienna's child helmet law proposal. "any adult who rides without a helmet in Northern Virginia is being a bit foolish"
• The Post promotes the B&A trail as an off-the-beaten path....path.
• The NYC 9/11 museum has a bike rack among its artifacts

W&OD Medallion Roundabout

road furniture by bikesnick

This is in Purcellville and I haven't been there in years, so I haven't seen it with my own eyes, but that raised center part has a large medallion marker in it.

I guess the point is to get cyclists to slow down. I wonder if the cone is permanent.

Monday Morning Commute - Saxamaphone

Good morning

• Renderings of the Southwest Waterfront show a redesigned Maine Avenue SW with a 10-foot wide trail between the sidewalk and a row of street trees
• More coverage of black women in DC who bike.
• A rendering of the building to replace Faith Baptist Church on Maryland NE near the Argonaut includes Capital Bikeshare riders and the CaBi logo. I wonder if that means they're including a station.
• Last week, the W&OD trail's Wilson Blvd underpass was flooded. Just a sidenote, do not try to bike through a flooded underpass. Water can rise very quickly and it only needs to be a few inches deep to sweep you away. When I taught defensive driving, I used to show this video of people trying to cross a low water bridge and classes always freaked out when they saw how the car was pushed off the bridge by only a couple of inches of water.
• Boards replaced on the MVT
• BRAC transportation success may rely on bike commuters. "Montgomery County officials hope workers will take advantage of improvements to the county's bike path network. About 700 NIH employees already bike to work, according to Phil Alperson, BRAC coordinator for Montgomery County"
• Maryland's new driver manual has more information on sharing the roads with bikes. Hopefully it wasn't updated by the same people who hosted the MacArthur Boulevard "share the road" meeting.
• Despite the heat cyclists kept biking. And saxophone players kept saxophoning.

 

Heat Cycles from Jay Mallin on Vimeo.

Saturday Afternoon Ride - I've missed out on so much

Good afternoon

• On Monday at 7pm, ANC1C will discuss DDOT's planned bike lanes on Columbia Road. Please consider attending.
• Some people are really worried about CaBi riders without helmets - despite no reports of skull fractures among riders. In fact, the story makes clear that all the available data shows that neither injuries nor fatalities have increased since CaBi hit the streets. It's a pretty reasonable story - making clear that helmets aren't the end all be all for bike safety, but they can be helpful in a crash.
• On a related note, I heard Tom Sherwood on Kojo yesterday talking about the Harriet Tregoning crash (he's a big cyclist) . He said "it reinforces the idea that bike riding is a dangerous thing in the city, and that's why the city is aggressively trying to put in bike lanes....And people should wear helmets." I'd have preferred a different lesson - one about drivers and red lights.
• Finally, another story from WAMU, on Tommy Wells' ride across the Douglass Bridge.
• The Bicycle Film Festival is coming.
• Grant money will help to improve the mountain bike trails in Fountainhead Park. "Phase one will involve Jack Rabbit Run, a long ridge top downhill trail that does not take advantage of any of the surrounding side slope. The enhanced trail will shift the existing tread from the fall line to the sides with slope and include banked turns and whoops for a fast and swoopy trail ride experience."
• One idea to improve the intersection of Reston Parkway and Sunset Hills Road is to extend more roads across the W&OD trail. It doesn't say if those are at grade or not, but too many and the trail risks getting a tunnel-like feel.
• The Onion on LA's new cyclist harassment law.