This year's Christmas Wish List will focus on which facilities, policies and laws would do the most to increase the number of trips taken by bicycle. It will be completely oriented toward transportation and not recreation. Not that the two can be completely divorced, but there are items that lean more one way or the other.
While a rail trail in Charles County is cool and fun, it won't do much to increase the amount of transportational biking in the DC area. And the law requiring bells on bikes in DC might be silly, but since it is never enforced it isn't much of an impediment to bike riding (nor is the lack of an Idaho Stop law for that matter).
This list will most resemble the first year's list, but it will be different for it's focus, my evolving thoughts, and the changing bike environment.
My vote for most important bike project is completion of a separated Metropolitan Branch trail connection from Fort Totten to Takoma Park and onward to the Silver Spring metro station, closely followed by the completion of the Capital Crescent Trail from the existing trailhead to the SS metro. The completion of these connections will not only complete the loop around DC but encourage bicycle travel within and to/from downtown Silver Spring, which is (along with Bethesda) one of the two most important population and job centers inside the Beltway (more significant, by some measures, than the segment of the Orange Line corridor in Arlington or the core of Alexandria).
Posted by: Casey Anderson | December 12, 2010 at 08:26 PM