Thursday Morning Commute - Ride away from the trouble

Good morning

• Christine MacDonald writes about her experience in the sharing economy, which includes Capital Bikeshare.
  • Capital Bikeshare still struggles to match supply to demand: As anyone who uses the sturdy red two-wheelers knows, too often there isn’t a bike or a dock available when you need one.
  • Capital Bikeshare has seen its usage more than double since it opened in September 2010. Today the system has 22,146 “active members” with one-month or annual memberships, and has tallied another quarter million one-day and three-day “casual” memberships in the last two years. That’s between, 20,000 and 60,000 trips per week depending on the season, according to Capital Bikeshare.
  •  I donated my clunker to charity and signed up for Capitol Bikeshare months before it opened. And my husband later bought me a used bike at a moving sale.
  • Grocery shopping on a bike took some getting used to.
  • If companies can’t work out the glitches—like Car2Go’s Internet connection problems and Bikeshare’s apparent inability to expand its bikes and docks fast enough to meet demand—they could kill sharing:
• WABA tries to educate cyclists about the L Street cycle-track. 
• The D.C. Bicycle Advisory Council is scheduled to provide testimony at its Fiscal Year 2012-2013 Performance Oversight Hearing before the Committee on Transportation and the Environment, chaired by Council member Mary M. Cheh (Ward 3).
• Letter writer is right on how bike lanes can free up automobile parking. "Perhaps we should all pay more for the privilege of street parking — $100 a year, say, instead of $35 — with new revenue dedicated to transit, bike lanes and sidewalk repair."
• Following Too Closely bill in Virginia still alive, but 3-Foot Passing is not. 
  • Del John Cox launching into the slide show on his lap top of RABA cyclists riding more than two abreast and refusing to fall into single file formation when being approached from the rear by a faster moving vehicle. He continued by noting that he took these photos himself on Blanton Rd. near his home, and that we also could take such pictures almost any Saturday or Sunday morning.
• "The commenter got caught up in the Green Line shutdown Jan. 27 but found a Capital Bikeshare station nearby and rode away from the trouble."
• Maybe congestion pricing should be renamed Road Fare?
• Movie shows cycling as romantic and practical, not weird. 

Comments

[MM]

Call congestion pricing "Capital Roadshare". You pay a small fee, and then you get to use the roads all you want!

I think it's interesting that roads are built with taxes, but then are free to use (gas tax doesn't count)...but transit is also built with taxes, but requires a user fee. So I fully support congestion pricing and some sort of VMT system. Either that, or keep the roads free but also make transit free. Of course, we'd have to sell Florida to pay for it, but most would agree that'd actually be a pretty killer deal.