Tuesday Morning Commute - Distracting

Good morning

• Wait, you can turn a bike blog into a book deal?
• ECGA seeks to hire a Mid-Atlantic Regional Trail Coordinator.  Job description PDF here. Closing date: 5 pm, June 20, 2011.
• Another section of the Great Allegheny Passage from DC to Pittsburgh will open this Friday. "a new three-mile section of the trail along the Allegheny River [sic] will open to the public, connecting the trail's current northern terminus at McKeesport up to Homestead, Pa. This extension means that just a single mile of additional trail into Pittsburgh is needed to complete a grand 150-mile route through rural Pennsylvania." Update: It's actually the Monongahela River.
• Photos from the Clarendon Cup.
• The contractor who is building the 2201 Pershing Drive project (northwest corner of Pershing Dr & Arlington Blvd) will need to shut down the Arlington Blvd trail between Pershing Drive and 10th Street. The closure will begin tomorrow (June 14) and take effect for about four weeks while they reconstruct the right curb lane along Arlington Blvd. A pedestrian and bicyclist detour involving 10th Street, Barton Street and Pershing Drive has been signed. Access along Pershing drive to the Henry gate of Fort Myer will not be affected.
• Cyclist in NYC threatened with a ticket for riding while wearing a short skirt. Biking while sexy is not illegal.
• "The motorist's real enemy isn't simply the bicyclist, it's anyone and anything that gets in the way. It's pedestrians, it's joggers, it's people out walking dogs. And don't forget about buses, taxis stopping to pick up passengers, and of course, other drivers. It's even the police, and it's one of the few contexts when a lot of otherwise law-abiding citizens resent the presence of law enforcement officers."

Comments

[Daniel]

Correction on that Rails to Trails. You copied it correctly from the article, but the article got it wrong. The trail is along the Monongahela (or "Mon" if you're hip):

http://www.atatrail.org/tmi/map5.cfm

[Daniel]

Here's the Post-Gazette article that gets it right:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11162/1153083-140-0.stm

Another error in the RTT article: the Sandcastle section is NOT done. That's been the thorn in Onorato's and the GAP's side. North of the Glenwood Bridge, however, the trial is continuous right into Downtown Pittsburgh.

Kudos to Onorado and the Burgh. They've been working their butts off to make this happen. And the Sandcastle section is close, so you can stop hating on the water park.

[Blue-eyed Devil]

"The motorist's real enemy isn't simply the bicyclist, it's anyone and anything that gets in the way. It's pedestrians, it's joggers, it's people out walking dogs. And don't forget about buses, taxis stopping to pick up passengers, and of course, other drivers. It's even the police, and it's one of the few contexts when a lot of otherwise law-abiding citizens resent the presence of law enforcement officers."

Exactly my point. It isn't about scofflaw cyclists--never has been. It's about anything on the road that isn't a motorist.

[Brendan]

Great quote, but at M & Wisconsin, the right lane has a dedicated right turn green arrow. The honker just wanted the cyclist to move over and wait in the through lane, which in this case is the center lane, not the right lane. Right turners are always missing their arrow because of through traffic (both cars and bikes) sitting at the front of that lane when the main signal is red but the right turn arrow is green.

Good thing bikes are nimble and can correct mistakes by shuffling over a couple of feet.

[Crickey7]

Drivers like this are as annoyed at law-abiding motorists as they are at cyclists, although they be more willing to be menacing toward the latter. And again, you're mixing up the group that is irritated with cycists lawbreaking with the psychos like this.

[Rob P]

Brendan, my memory is fuzzy because this happened a few weeks ago, but I'm pretty sure the light on M was a solid red, and the driver wanted to make a right-turn on red onto southbound Wisconsin. I'll try to pay more attention to that intersection in the future.

[Daniel]

I realized my second comment made it sound as if WashCycle is hating on water parks. But I meant "you" impersonal, "one can stop hating on water parks." Humor fail. After looking through the archives, I was unable to come up with one case of WashCycle water park hatred.

[Blue-eyed Devil]

Crikey7, "drivers like this" are typical, average drivers, perhaps under the influence of a bad mood or driving-induced stress (which is one point the blogger makes), perhaps just natural-born a-holes.

This sort of behavior happens all the time. If you haven't experienced it far too often, you aren't riding your bike enough.

I'm not mixing up anyone; in fact, it would be difficult to separate the few motorists genuinely concerned about lawbreaking cyclists (again, why they are concerned I can't imagine, since a cyclist breaking the law typically affects no one but the cyclist, if him/her, but that's another argument) from the overwhelming majority of frustrated motorists who see cyclists as easy targets for their anger.

But we've had this debate before and there isn't much else to add. Just nice to see that someone else (the blogger) is paying attention.

[Crickey7]

I ride plenty. I experience incidents on my bike on a roughly weekly basis. Given that I "encounter" thousands of cars a week, I'd say most don't have a major issue with me.

I've had incidents driving, too. So the blogger's point as refined by me is that frustrated motorists are frustrated by lots of things, including cyclists. But the vast majority motorists, even frustrated ones, don't do anything more than grumble to themselves. I find it hard to lump them into enemy territory. They're just trying to go along to get along, like me.

[tifat]

He's quoting oboe.

[guez]

"The motorist's real enemy isn't simply the bicyclist, it's anyone and anything that gets in the way. It's pedestrians, it's joggers, it's people out walking dogs. And don't forget about buses, taxis stopping to pick up passengers, and of course, other drivers. It's even the police, and it's one of the few contexts when a lot of otherwise law-abiding citizens resent the presence of law enforcement officers."

Exactly my point. It isn't about scofflaw cyclists--never has been. It's about anything on the road that isn't a motorist.

But here's the thing: change a few words in the quote (switch "cyclist" and "motorist," say), and it could just as easily apply to cyclists. Motorists have no monopoly on irrational anger.