Tuesday Afternoon Commute - third wave

Good afternoon

• The Columbia Pike Area Neighborhood Plan has many strategies and details that would make biking in the area easier and better. Such as: "A new bridge for pedestrians and cyclists over Four Mile Run connects the end of 9th Street South (a planned “bike boulevard”) with South Arlington Mill Drive to the west. This connection also ties in with the Washington and Old Dominion Trail, and the Four Mile Run Trail, both part of a wider system of trails." and "All new buildings will be street-oriented; coupled with smart street design, this will greatly enhance pedestrian and bike opportunities." And just look at all the bikes in the renderings.
• "At 23, Montana-native Tejay van Garderen is the youngest of the contingent and the rider who exemplifies what cycling insiders describe as the “third wave” of U.S. riders, with some calling them the most promising generation of Americans to ever challenge the sport’s best on the roads of Europe." They're labelling van Garderen as a contendor for this year's white jersey. 
• Felix Salmon points out that yesterday's NY Times article about how the city Comptroller is worried about increased crashes due to bikesharing perhaps misses the point of the Comptroller's report. "The report itself, by contrast, is much less alarmist, and mostly extremely sensible. Biking in New York is dangerous, for cyclists and pedestrians both, and it’s important to make it safer." He's also critical of the well-known "Safety in numbers graph". His criticism is that the x-axis is commuters and the y axis is total fatalities (all cyclists) per commuter. Since, he claims, NYC has a lower ratio of commuter-to-cyclist than Portland, it makes NYC look worse. I'm unsure that he's right about the Y-axis definition, but it is true that the graph would be better if it dealt either only with commuter in every metric or with all cyclists in every metric [Evil Washcycle points out: If you take out Chicago and NYC from the graph, the whole "safety in numbers" claim falls apart. This is hardly a large enough sample to make a conclusion and I'm suspicious of cherry-picked data]. 

Comments

[Tara]

Well, knock me over with a feather. A cycling article in the sports section when it's not actually an American rider winning a stage of the TdF? WaPo couldn't even be bothered with Tour of California coverage.

Tejay, Andrew Talansky, and Joe Dombrowski (winner of the 2012 Baby Giro)each have great careers ahead of them if they can keep their heads on straight.

[Kathy]

Generally I like the plans put forth for Columbia Pike but am disturbed by the photo showing pedestrians and cyclists sharing a widened sidewalk without any markings delineating ped/cyclist zones.

I really hope the County does not think it is appropriate to expect cyclists to be riding on sidewalks to get up and down the Pike. Put in proper bike lanes (outside of the door zone) or create proper trails please!

[Kolohe]

"A new bridge for pedestrians and cyclists over Four Mile Run connects the end of 9th Street South (a planned “bike boulevard”) with South Arlington Mill Drive to the west.

Seems kinda pointless unless they build something that's able to cross Doctor's Run and George Mason Drive more easily