TheWashCycle

Bike Items that Have Little to Nothing to Do With DC - 1/31/10

People in power feel more justified stealing a bike.

All of the volunteers were then asked to rate how immoral it would be for someone to take an abandoned bicycle rather than report the bicycle to the police. They were also asked, if they were in real need of a bicycle, how likely they would be to take it themselves and not report it.

The “powerful” who had been primed to believe they were entitled to their power readily engaged in acts of moral hypocrisy. They assigned a value of 5.1 to others engaging in the theft of the bicycle while rating the action at 6.9 if they were to do it themselves. Among participants in all of the low-power states, morally hypocritical behaviour inverted itself, as it had in the case of tax fraud. “Legitimate” low-power individuals assigned others a score of 5.1 if they stole a bicycle and gave themselves a 4.3. Those primed to feel that their lack of power was illegitimate behaved similarly, assigning values of 4.7 and 4.4 respectively.

The Ohio Turnpike is now treating cars with a bicycle roof rack as Class Two vehicles and charging 75% more. I guess the GMC Granite can corner the Ohio cyclist market then.

AskMen Rank the Top 10 Bicycling Cities.  Portland is the only one in the States. (Via CommuterPageBlog)

1. Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2. Copenhagen, Denmark
3. Bogota, Colombia
4. Curitiba, Brazil
5. Montreal, Canada
6. Portland, Oregon
7. Basel, Switzerland
8. Barcelona, Spain
9. Beijing, China
10. Trondheim, Norway

German pro cyclist Matthias Kessler was severely injured in a single bike crash. He wasn't wearing a helmet.

Kessler, 30, a former rider for the Kazakhstan-based team Astana, swerved to miss a cat, crashed headfirst into a wall and suffered a fractured skull.

The next time people complain about bike messengers and how crazy they are and how they never follow the law, you can point out how they saved the world.

The Cuban missile crisis in 1962 not only showed how close the United States and Soviet Union could come to a nuclear war, but also the sorry state of the communication channels needed to avert it. During one point in the crisis, the Soviet ambassador to Washington had to rely on a bicycle courier to take his urgent messages for Moscow to the local Western Union office.

LA city council votes to study ways to protect cyclists.

Cell Phone Ban hasn't made us safer

A study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows that the cell phone ban in DC has done nothing to reduce crashes.

Using actual crash statistics, it shows there was no significant difference in the number of accidents in the District, California or New York in the months before and after hands-free laws went into effect.

"Our concern with hand-held bans has been that these laws are encouraging drivers to go hands-free, which is just as risky," said Jonathan Adkins of the Governors Highway Safety Association. "We need more research and data to determine whether or not hand-held bans should be implemented across the country." 

Adkins said his group continues to urge states to pass texting bans but to hold off on addressing other cellphone use "until some clarity is achieved."

That talking on the cell phone while driving is dangerous is pretty well established.

The nonprofit National Safety Council, which blames 1.4 million crashes annually on cellphone use, called last year for a ban on cellphone use while driving.

The step to take next is not to stop the process of banning distracted driving, but to expand what qualifies as distracted driving to include hands-free phones. It's like we only banned drinking beer and driving, but it's been OK to drink wine or liquor and drive.

"Laws by themselves are not magic bullets," Adkins said. "The laws must be complemented with strong educational programs, enforcement, employer bans and technological advances."

The District has made an effort to enforce the hand-held ban, issuing 7,519 warnings and 12,936 tickets in 2008.

WTOP has the caveat to the study

The research does have some limitations. It looks at all collision claims and does not identify whether drivers were using cell phones when their crashes occurred.

However, prior estimates of the effects of cell phone use on crash risk were so large, and reductions in observed hand-held cellphone use following the laws were so substantial, that reductions even in aggregate crashes would be expected after enactment of hand-held cell phone laws.

So they did see a drop in hand held use because of the law, but I suspect that much of that was replaced by hands-free devices, thus, no drop in accidents.

L'Enfant Plaza Do-over

L'Enfant Plaza has long served as a much-maligned pedestrian dead zone within the city and it also serves as an important connection for cyclists as the north end of the Francis Case Bridge's active transportation lane (ATL). The National Capital Planning Commission is starting a public examination of L'Enfant Plaza (The 10th Street Corridor Task Force) to transform the area to, among other things, improve mobility. This a great opportunity to correct some of the problems in the study area, bounded by Independence Avenue and Maine Avenue between 7th and 12th Streets, SW, for cyclists.

One improvement would be removing the ridiculous and unnecessary switchback that connects the Case Bridge to 10th Street and replace it with a gradual ramp. From the bridge to the park is 269 feet, and the height difference is 19 feet (as I've measured it). ADA rules require a 12:1 slope, so a gently curving path, with no switchback, should be feasible.

Other possible improvements include

• Add a curb ramp to allow access to the bridge.
• Remove the paving blocks that make cycling on 10th so jarring.
• Create a better connection to Maine Avenue
• Continue the ATL across I-395 down to D Street. There is a sidewalk on the west side of the 12th Street ramp that I can't imagine anyone uses (it doesn't look used). Remove that, and shift the road over to make for a wider sidewalk on the east side. 
• There's a sidewalk that serves as the west side exit of the L'Enfant Plaza VRE station and connects to C Street. Continue that sidewalk (and widen it) along the north side of the rail ROW, and connect it directly, via a ramp, to 10th Street. Even better, continue it to 12th or even Arlington.
• Rebuild the weird intersection of F, G and 9th Street SW, so that G Street connects directly to Banneker Circle (if Banneker Circle is even kept, which maybe it shouldn't be).
• Replace the staircase from D to 10th Street with an ADA compliant ramp, or at least add a bike channel to the staircase.

There is a meeting scheduled for Feb 2, from 5:30pm-7:00pm for those who are interested. It's at the National Capitol Planning Commission at 401 9th Street, NW.

RSVPs by February 1, 2010 are appreciated, but walk-ins are always welcome. Please contact us by email or phone at (202) 482-7200 to let us know you're attending, if you require special accommodation, or if you have any questions.

Ride the City - DC Metro is now live

I posted to this tool before while it was still in development, but they've now decided that it is mature enough to go live with.

Washington D.C. is a great city for bicycling: its greenway network is extensive and it's relatively flat. D.C. is also home to Smartbike DC, a public bike rental program.

We're happy to announce that today bicycling in the nation's capital just got easier: Welcome Ride the City - DC Metro! This newest addition includes Washington D.C., Arlington, Alexandria, all of Fairfax, and the Maryland suburbs within the Capital Beltway. We're hopeful that by making it easier to ride bikes around the epicenter of U.S. political power that we may inspire more action to bring about improved bicycle facilities everywhere, especially in cities where biking is a sensible alternative to driving.

Ride the City - DC Metro was probably our biggest challenge to date. It was tricky because of the many jurisdictions (six counties) and various data sources that had to be organized, not to mention the 1,148 square miles of area and over 450 miles of separated (i.e. Class 1) bike ways that had to be manually edited. We're happy to have had help from many good people in the bicycling world. Among those who helped, we'd like to thank Chantal Buchser (Washington Area Bicyclist Association), Bruce Wright (Fairfax Advocates for Better Bicycling), and Jeff Hermann (Fairfax County DOT) for helping us with data, troubleshooting, and leveraging volunteers to test routes early on.

(For those of you who are new to Ride the City, keep in mind that the Cloudmade basemap that we use is based on Open Street Map, the volunteer effort to map the world. If you notice discrepancies on the map, you can edit Open Street Map yourself or tell us about it and we'll edit Open Street Map for you. To learn more about Open Street Map, click here.)

While it surely is not perfect, it is a great start to a great tool (remember how bad Mapquest directions were back in the day or have you noticed how many errors there are on Google Maps? It is a difficult task.)

WMATA proposes raising price for bike lockers by 180%

WMATA is facing another budget shortfall in 2011 and one of their means of closing the gap is to raise the price of a bike locker from $70 a year to $200 reports Michael Perkins at GGW.

Now I've always thought $70 was a bargain for a Metro bike locker, and I think many people agree as it's almost impossible to get one. I've always supported raising the price in a performance parking scheme and using the added revenue to add more lockers where most needed and improve service; but that isn't what this is. So, there is no indication that cyclists will get more service for this 180% increase in price. No online reservation system, though that is reportedly coming, no more lockers, just a fare increase.

Cyclists shouldn't mind doing their part to cover the costs of Metro service, but 180% is pretty dramatic. Can you imagine the uproar if they raised the price of parking for drivers by 180%? Dr. Gridlock's computer might literally explode from the torrent of email (I actually don't think that's possible, fyi). $200 might still be a fair price, but I hope WMATA doesn't expects to give bargain service for what is no longer a bargain price.

Hopefully, they'll set up a system by which the fee can be paid with Smart Benefits which would reduce the impact for some people.

Long Beach Combines Sharrows with Green Stripe

Long Beach, CA, which is trying to become nothing less than the most bike friendly city in America, has taken sharrows to a whole new level.

Street by street, cyclists and motorists are seeing changes, the most dramatic of which took place last summer when lanes of green paint appeared on one of the city's busiest stretches, providing an early test of how the city will balance car traffic with cyclists' rights to safe routes.

The green strip created a "sharrow" -- a 6-foot-wide space in the middle of the right lane of traffic on both sides of 2nd Street in Belmont Shore. It was intended to be a stark reminder that drivers must share the road with cyclists.

Perhaps DC should try this in the northbound lane on 15th St NW.

Not everyone loved the green stripe at first, but people are adjusting.

"There was a lot of confusion from cyclists and motorists because there was green paint all over the place," said Dominic Dougherty, manager of the Bikestation, a business that provides bike rentals, parking and repair in downtown Long Beach. "And confusion breeds anger."

Gandy said the green strip "better articulates the existing law," which allows bikes to travel with vehicular traffic.

"We haven't given cyclists any more privileges than before the green stripe, we've just made it more obvious," he said.

But others say the green lanes have emboldened cyclists too much, with many weaving in and out of traffic, riding four-deep and making the already clogged street impassable.

"We just don't understand" the purpose, said driver Anne Long, an insurance agent who lives blocks from 2nd Street. "Are we supposed to pull over and go around them? I just stay behind them and go really slow until there's an opening in the other lane."

And that is what you should do, just like with a slow moving car.

But others say that slowly, behavior is changing; cyclists are being more consistent about where they ride and drivers are being more attentive.

"When it first got put in we thought, 'Oh, my God, everyone is going to get murdered,' " said Jean-Marie Garcia, a hair stylist who rides her baby-blue beach cruiser to work on 2nd Street every day.

"But gradually, over time, drivers have adjusted. They're slowing down."

The green lane is only part of the plan

At a time when cities are cutting expenses across the board, Long Beach has raised $17 million in state and federal grants to improve its bike system through traffic improvements, education and bike share programs. In the next six months, the city will be resurfacing 20 miles of streets to include new bike lanes, part of a plan that includes painting and paving more than 100 miles of bike infrastructure.

In spring, the city hopes to install traffic circles on less-traveled streets parallel to thoroughfares and designate them "bike boulevards" -- preferred routes for cyclists.

Also in the works are plans to replace entire lanes of traffic with protected bikeways. And in what's bound to be a controversial move, the city is looking at taking away prime parallel parking spots -- the ones most convenient to shops and restaurants -- and putting "bike corrals" in their place.

When Chris Woodyard, who writes USAToday's Drive On blog and who loves to put the word rights in quotes when referring to cyclists in the road, heard about it, he naturally lost his mind in a post entitled "City Puts Bicycles Directly in the Path of Motorists" (Notice they put things in the way of people).

bicyclists are kings of the road in an experiment that turns frustrated motorists into serfs.

Even though cars were whizzing by at 30 miles an hour yesterday, bikes were free to ride right in their path.

The speed limit on the road is 25mph. And he continues to point to the Leymeister fatality as evidence that cyclists don't belong in the road - when the real lesson should be that drivers should make sure their windshield is clear and then keep their eyes on the road.

But it in Maryland recently, center-of-the-road biking led to a death, a bicyclist killed by the car of a driver on the way to work one morning.

Now, it's a person who was killed by a thing. The driver was just the owner of the car that did the killing. [Fact check: the driver was going to school].

Bikers on beach cruisers are meandering along in the center of the lane, disregarding honking horns of the drivers being held up for blocks behind them, he says. One of them "just gave us 'the bird.'" For the bikers, "there should be signs saying 'Keep up with traffic.'"

If they're in the road, bikers are traffic.

To see it, check out this photo by redwagonteam

Long Bridge Replacement Opportunity

The District recently secured federal funds to replace the Long Bridge Railroad bridge over the Potomac. If the bridge is to be replaced, and the $2.9 million secured is probably only enough for a study, then it would be an excellent opportunity to add the new non-motorized bridge called for in the 14th Street Bridge EIS.

The Long Bridge is only about 1000 feet downstream from the George Mason Bridge and it's ATL, but the idea of a bike bridge south of the Long Bridge is already being considered, and this would be a cheaper way to do it (albeit closer to the Mason than the one in the 14th Street EIS). And there is a bridge planned to connect the Mt. Vernon Trail to Long Bridge Park between Roaches Run and I-395. Perhaps it would be wise to add the bike bridge to this project. If so it would make sense to allow cyclists and pedestrians to continue across the river on the same line, rather than make them drop down to the Mt Vernon Trail, and then move up or downstream to another bridge.  An ATL along the rail bridge would give a more direct connection to Ohio Drive and it could even be carried further, across East Potomac Park and channel to Maine Avenue and 14th Street. If you wanted to get really crazy, the rail-with-trail could continue all the way to the park south of C between 7th and 9th. There is space along the rail corridor and even an extra tunnel under Maryland Ave SW, of course the land belongs to CSX so that would be a tough negotiation to say the least (and it may be the ROW is better used for high speed rail).

I'm not sure it would be worth the money (as I have no idea how much it would cost), but it is something that should be looked at. DC is in a flurry of bridge rebuilding right now, and it's a great opportunity for cyclists.

2nd Triathlon Coming to DC

Registration opens February 1st for DC's 2nd Triathlon, the Washington DC Triathlon, which joins the Nation's Triathlon. It benefits the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

The Inaugural Washington DC Triathlon^TM on June 20^th, 2010, will feature Sprint and Olympic distance courses that wind through DC's monumental corridors with a spectacular finish along Pennsylvania Avenue - America's Main Street - in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol Building.  Registration for the race opens at 9 AM EST on February 1^st, 2010.  Those interested in registering for the race should go to www.DCTri.com. 

A USAT-sanctioned race, the races will start in West Potomac Park along the banks of the Potomac River and will finish on Pennsylvania Avenue and 3^rd Streets, NW.  The Sprint distance course includes a .8k swim, 20k bike and 6.7k run.  The Olympic distance course includes a 1.5k swim in the Potomac River, 40k bike course along DC's most scenic parkways and a 10k run through Washington's monumental corridor. 

Saturday Morning Ride

The Post has a long article about the possible transformation of the Dupont Trolley Station into an art gallery. No mention of a bike parking facility.

"Wait a minute. Did you not see the new bike rack?"

At the meeting, some people were concerned that more parking could have negative consequences on the park.

Resident Ken McCaughey was worried about rain run-off from the proposed increase. He also felt the plans did not encourage people to use bicycles. Both plans include the addition of one bike rack.

Speaking of which, the new Capitol Heights shopping center will have 20 bicycle parking spaces (compared to 500 for cars).  The site is across central avenue from the buried blue line extension. The cut has left a sort of rail-less ROW that could support a bike trail from the Addison Road Metro station to Brightseat Road. Sort of a rail-beneath-trail opportunity.

This just doesn't sound safe.

"Today we went on a bike trip where we had to shoot BB guns and do archery,"

Ballpark parking meter revenue propsed for use on bike infrastructure.

DDOT says that an advisory committee is working with Councilmember Wells' office and DDOT to select projects for the funds. The proposed projects include 25 bike racks, pedestrian signs, wayfinding maps, park benches, recycling bins, planning funds for an M Street cycle track, and real-time transit information displays.

Upcoming Washington area triathlons.

GGW has the first part of a series about ride-lengthening Superblocks. It includes some great maps.

Virginia Closer to 3 feet to pass law

From the 1/28/2010 VBF Legislative Update, SB 566, the three foot to pass bill, was merged with the House bill and is now out of committee and headed for the full Senate. The careless driving or tailgating sections were removed. Please contact your Senator to urge passage of SB 566. To find contact info for your Senator, visit the Who's My Legislator page.