Saturday Morning Ride - Tour de Fat

Today I saw a woman driving with her left hand on the wheel and a cell phone balanced on her left shoulder. Her right arm reached across her chest to the left shoulder where her right hand held the phone in place. It was at least the equivalent of Bikeshare Dad. 

• A cyclist in the Penn Avenue bike lanes was hit by a car making an illegal U-turn. He flipped up on to the hood but was OK. Uniformed Secret Service police were on the scene and another report says the driver got a ticket. 
• Another month, another Capital Bikeshare record. 195,967 trips in May, that's 46% more than last year and 12% above last month (the previous record). 
• "The current [Minnesota Avenue] project area is bounded by A St. SE and Sheriff Rd., NE. There is no space dedicated for bikes in the plans. Now is the time to demand better. DDOT will be hosting a meeting on Tuesday, June 19th at 6:30 pm at Friendship Edison PCS/Woodson Senior High School Cafeteria (4095 Minnesota Avenue NE, Washington, DC 20019). Come and speak out for safer streets for all: bikes included."
• I'm pretty sure it had no bike lanes. Here you can see the RR tracks where the CCT is now.
• In an unforgiving world, one man battles against abandoned bicycles. 
• Photos from the Seersucker Social
• New crosswalk warning signs on the MVT. 
• Chris Slatt explains everything you wanted to know about plans for biking improvements in the Columbia Pike area (and beyond).
• “What we did not realize,” said Annemarie Mott Ewing, who has lived in the neighborhood for four years, “was how much we’d fall in love with the bike path along Sligo Creek.”
• Life expectancy is going up faster in NYC than in the nation as a whole, even in the Bronx - the nation's poorest urban county. Are public health initiatives - that include bike infrastructure - part of the reason?
• The US Olympic Cycling Team was named. It includes Chris Horner, Kristin Armstrong, Tyler Farrar, Teejay van Garderen and Sarah Hammer. But not George Hincapie. 

Comments

[Shawn]

I saw the 'aftermath' of the U-turn crash. And saw 3 vehicles making U-turns as Secret Service looked on.

I'd love for some traffic cameras down there. Or more bollards or something.

[antibozo]

It's hard to tell for sure from the photo on Twitter, because there's a helmet perfectly placed to block any view of a taxi roof placard, but the car pictured in the photo doesn't look like a taxi otherwise. Is it possible there were two separate incidents? The times on the tweets are quite different ("taxi" at 0605h vs "car" with pic at 1419h).

[washcycle]

Someone else mentioned the same thing. It may very well be two crashes, with the second one involving an injury.

[David R.]

I don't think the vehicle in the 2:15 pm photo is a taxi - if it were a DC taxicab, it should have one of those round "I'm legal because I have a meter" stickers on the rear pillar.

[Tara]

Hincapie is riding his 17th Tour de France, which will be a record for him. He intends to finish the TdF, which can't be said about a lot of other riders, who are going to quit early to prepare for the Olympics.
As strong as Big George is, he probably can't do well at both events, so I think it makes sense.

[Shawn]

It's not a taxi. Just two guys with Dallas Cowboys seat cushions who made an illegal u-turn in rush hour traffic on Friday, presumably to make a "left turn" on 14th.

[UrbanEngineer]

My favorite part about almost being clobbered by drivers making illegal u-turns along the penn cycle track, is that they never stop the illegal u-turn and head straight. They'll slam on their brakes, get berated by me for doing something illegal and almost killing me in the process, and then once I'm done berating them and out of their way, they'll continue through the illegal turn.

[DaveS]

UrbanEngineer, I did manage, once, to talk a driver out of finishing his illegal U-turn after I had bounced off his fender. I pointed out that he could make a legal left a quarter of a block ahead, then another after a quarter block, and he'd be headed where he wanted to be without breaking the law or adding more than a few seconds to his trip. Then I escorted him through it.

(No injury or damage. This was at night, at the east end of the Pa Ave lanes where the courthouse unofficial parking lot is, and "he didn't see me because of the van parked there".")