TheWashCycle

Extending the Met Branch Trail to K Street

The Greyhound bus station located just north of Union Station, and across the street from the southern terminal of the Met Branch Trail (MBT), closed this week. It would be nice if the new building included an extension of the MBT to K Street.

Currently the MBT ends at L and is connected to the street by stairs. When the plot north of L is developed, a ramp will be built from the terminus to the corner or L and 1st.

A trailhead built at K could have some advantages over one at L. If the trail continued at it's current height across L and then begin a gradual descent down to K it would avoid a switchback. A direct connection to K. Stairs could remain and there still could be stairs to access L, giving two connections instead of 1. And it would create one more grade separated crossing. 

If the development that will take place on the plot builds all the way to the railroad tracks, as the building across K Street did, that may preclude a trail extension, but they could limit the lost space by building above the trail (which admittedly would mean the trail would be closed on 3 out of 4 sides). One could say the same of the building north of L street, but it would look weird, so it would make more sense along the railroad than along the street. The greyhound site developers could cut a deal with the north site to take over their obligation in exchange for what it might cost them, and it would reduce the setback from the road for that building.  Of course, even better would be two ramps.

There's a lot of reasons to think this won't happen, not least of which is that DDOT has basically already negotiated the current deal, so don't hold your breath, but when the MBT plan was created, no one knew that the the Greyhound station might be demolished. Things might have gone differently had this lot been empty then. 

Wednesday Morning Commute - McHugh

Good morning

• "Army Secretary John McHugh is being treated in a hospital for injuries he received in a bicycle accident but is expected to return to work soon. McHugh was riding his bike at around 6:30 p.m. Monday in Alexandria, Va., when the accident occurred. No further details of the accident were available."
• DCist profiles District Bamboo Bikes.
• A map of the "Green Mile" fancy sidewalk.  While sidewalk cycling is generally less safe, this isn't so bad. There are no driveways to deal with, but one must be careful near the intersections. I actually would support signage making the sidewalk one-way for bicycles. But there needs to be good signage warning cars about the facility.
• Don't forget the Dupont-Logan Bicycle Safety Community Listening & Education Session

Tuesday Afternoon Commute - Insurance

Good Afternoon

• Leilah Reese, a news aide at The Washington Post, does the unthinkable. She rode her bike to work. She's right to be proud, it takes a certain leap of faith to try it the first time. 
• The Florida Rock development and its section of the Anacostia Riverwalk gets a little closer to reality with support from the ANC and a neutral response from the zoning commission. 
• Let DDOT know what you think about parking - including bike parking. 
• There are new insurance options for cyclists. 
• Better question: Is it time for DC to entice Interbike away?

Tuesday Morning Commute - On the outside

Good morning

• Virginia Delegate Alfonso Lopez (49th District) plans to reintroduce the "Exercise due care" and "Following too closely" bills again in the 2013 Virginia legislative session.
• In talking about car-bike road rage, AOL's Auto blog puts forward the unusual hypothesis that "Drivers get angry because they don't want to hit a cyclist, and feel that those on the two-wheelers are not holding up their end of the road-safety bargain." That may happen, but that is way down the list from the top reason for anger which is that drivers want cyclists to get out of the way. Then he lists a bunch of road rage incidents between drivers and cyclists, including one of these two that involved firearms.
• "A postal truck driver whose seven-ton vehicle rolled over and killed a former State Supreme Court special referee as she rode her bicycle in Manhattan last year was acquitted on Thursday of leaving the scene of a fatal accident."
• More about outgroup psychology and cycling. 

Lost Friday Afternoon Commute

From last week. Some of the links were OBE so they're not included.

• Portland's airport has a bike assembly area.
• SEPTA is reluctant to turn a disused railroad line over to trail users for fear they'll never give it back; which is why efforts to "Save the Trail" from railroad reconversion actually harms trails.  
• Lance Armstrong will compete in the Half Full Triathlon on Oct. 7 in Columbia, MD. But he can only do it if the race is unsanctioned. 
• Construction will begin along the NW Branch Trail between Route 1 and 38th Street

Monday Afternoon Commute - The Urban Tornado is my preferred wrestler name

Good afternoon

• Bike lanes, sharrows and bike boxes are included in new design of Florida Avenue between U Street and Barry. 
• Should CaBi offere a weekend only membership? Probably not, I say, but I'd have to see what survey data said. And, to set the record straight, the system is not lightly used on weekends. It's busiest day ever was a Saturday, Sept 15th of this year. 
• Despite the controversy, I'm just impressed that a British cabinet minister commutes by bike. 
• Cyclists are becoming less a-holeish (according to observations in Philadelphia) but drivers still associates cyclists with being a-holes due to the affect heuristic.[I will say that I work with a lot of Mormons, and my opinion is that they really ARE really polite. For example, I got no emails at work today bragging about how the Cardinals crushed Philadelphia. Who else would pass up such an opportunity?] "Every time another bicyclist pulls some dickish stunt, the affect heuristic kicks in to reinforce the preconceived biases. The same isn’t true in reverse: The conviction that bicyclists are erratically moving hazards is not diminished by the repeated observance of safe and respectful riding. Facts and logical arguments that do not conform to the emotional conclusion are discounted or disregarded. But we’re not doomed to our initial prejudices: Once a person becomes aware of her biases, she is more able to engage rational thought processes to overcome the affect heuristic and dispel her inaccurate conclusions. So, study those stats bike haters!"

Recreational Use of the old 11th Street Bridge

At the September Bicycle Advisory Committee meeting a representative from the Office of Planning gave a presentation on the proposed recreational space to be built on the downstream piers of the demolished 11th Street Bridge. You can see a very similar presentation to the one given at the BAC meeting here.

The recreation bridge might have more direct connections to the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail on both sides. An image shown had ramps going from the bridge directly to those trails. That might be a bit ugly, but very functional.

They showed some other planned and existing facilities that might be good models for what they have planned. These included the Providence RI Pedestrian Bridge, the Shelby Street Pedestrian Bridge in Nashville, the Pfluger Bridge in Austin, Chelsea Piers in NYC, the Continental Bridge in Dallas and the Walnut Street Bridge in Chattanooga.

They're looking at a public-private partnership to finance the project and one group already wants to sponsor the design competition.

The design competition would start in 2012-13 with a winning design chosen in 2013. Construction could start as early as 2016.

The downstream piers are supposed to get overlooks built on them as part of the current 11th Street Bridge replacement project. The overlooks will extend from the current bike/pedestrian lane (or ATL). When the 11th Street Bridges project kicked off, I asked Gabe Klein if there were any plans to repurpose the upstream bridge piers, since those aren't to be used for anything. So I was surprised when this project planned to use the same downstream piers as the overlooks, because it means that cyclists who are just riding over the bridge will no longer have a view of the river (being between traffic on one side and the recreation area on the other).  The reasons for using the downstream piers, we were told, was that it would have less noise because it would be next to slower moving traffic; that the prevailing winds would blow less road exhaust downstream than up and that it would be closer to Poplar Point (which seems pretty weak, since it's a trivial difference).

Other information from the BAC meeting:

• If you want bike racks installed in front of your business, call 311
• Some people at DDOT wanted to know if there was support for banning bikes in the various underpasses in DC (like under Thomas or Dupont Circles). There wasn't. It was unanimously agreed that such a policy was not conducive to complete streets.
• There has long been a leak from the C&O Canal, through the old bridge abutment near the trailhead of the Capital Crescent Trail. DDOT has been looking into tracking down the source and either patching it or rerouting the water.
• The Downtown BID is creating its own bicycle parking plan. They're taking a strategic look at parking - walking every single block as they do so - in the hopes of completing a draft plan this year. They'll be looking at parking meter conversion, recognizing that not every meter makes a good candidate; at best practices elsewhere; and at policies aimed at getting employee parking inside buildings or garages to free up street parking for visitors and customers.

Monday Morning Commute - Nothing more than an accident

Good morning

• Work is wrapping on the new MVT trail crossing of the GW Parkway. But it makes it clear who has the right of way (even though it's a crosswalk).
• All about the 50 States Ride.
• The Times has a lengthy story on Ciclovias, covering everything from their origin in Bogota, to DC's semi-ciclovia Feet in the Street. 
• According to BikeGuard, a free online bike registry, Maryland is dead last in per-capita bicycle commuter spending. 
• George Mason Univeristy now has bike sharing in the form of viaCycle.
• The director of the Transportation Department for the City of Annapolis wrote an editorial on how to facilitate all forms of transportation in a city designed for horse and buggy. He writes about the problems of parking and how to move people short distances from parking garages to commercial areas. He only mentions cyclists once, and only in passing. It would seem like bike-sharing could help a lot - especially in a college town with military retirees who are probably fitter than your average citizen. 
• VBF wants to know what you think of the Idaho Stop.
• Disturbing news out of interbike. Even though cycling is up as a means of transportation, "the bicycle market in the US has been relatively flat (in terms of revenues) since 2004 and that trend continued in 2011. The number of bicycle shops in the US has declined by over 22% in the last 9 years (over 1,000 shop locations have closed their doors during this time)." [Thanks to the Arlington BAC for the data]. Perhaps the Lance Armstrong effect is wearing off, and there are now fewer people buying high end bikes even as more bikes are being sold. And/or perhaps the internet is cutting into LBS sales.
• NYC launches it's new LOOK campaign. [Despite angering advocates for the blind, it's likely to be much more successful than the previous TASTE campaign]
• REI gave millions to 260 non-profits, though I don't see any local ones that jump out at me. 
• Iris Stagner, a member of the BikeTexas Board of Directors and a longtime promoter of bike safety and education, was killed on Monday after being hit from behind by a pickup truck while riding on U.S. Route 180 outside Mineral Wells, Texas. "Sheriff Ira Mercer said the driver of a white pickup involved stopped. Mercer said indications were the incident was nothing more than an accident and that the setting sun likely played a factor."
• In Los Altos, CA, cyclists were found to blame in crashes 74% of the time. The most common violation was "unsafe speed." 16 cyclists were blamed for this, but only 1 driver was.

New green bike lane on C Street, NE

This is just east of 15th Street, NE. Once again at an area where car traffic can be to both the left and right of a cyclist.

Sunday Video - Maybe they need more "Share the Road" signs