Thursday Afternoon Commute - Lettuce

Capital Bikeshare is opening on Columbia Pike next Thursday (the first of 30+ new stations coming to Arlington this spring). There will be a ribbon cutting at 9:00am at the Walter Reed Community Center.

• "The police department sent 76 special assignments to enforce pedestrian and driver compliance last year, according to Innocenti. During those operations, 1,100 pedestrians were issued citations for various offenses, such as not crossing in a crosswalk or starting to cross after the solid red hand has begun blinking, and those citations often come with fines. There were 38 vehicle citations during as well, Innocenti said." So there are 28 pedestrian violations for every driver violation? That sounds off to me. 
• The east gate to the Navy Yard Promenade will be closed until the end of April for 11th Street Bridge construction. 
• WABA walks readers through the basics of Bike to Work Day. No word yet as to whether the lettuce bikini girls will show up again. 
• Sure, you could watch college basketball all night, OR you could go to the Public Meeting regarding the Maryland Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan Update for some real madness.
• "In Mississippi's healthiest county, many residents have easy access to bicycle paths and walking trails. In the least healthy county, there are few places to exercise"...."if someone wants to walk or ride their bike and they can't do it safely near their homes, "I haven't done my job," Mayor Chip Johnson said.
• Rep. Blumenauer "not interested" in being Secretary of Transportation. That's too bad. 
• Bike battles (between cities competing to be the best, not between cyclists and drivers) is named one of the top trends of 2013 by Planetizen.

Comments

[ellen degenerate]

really?:

"The police department sent 76 special assignments to enforce pedestrian and driver compliance last year, according to Innocenti. During those operations, 1,100 pedestrians were issued citations for various offenses, such as not crossing in a crosswalk or starting to cross after the solid red hand has begun blinking, and those citations often come with fines. There were 38 vehicle citations during as well, Innocenti said." So there are 28 pedestrian violations for every driver violation? That sounds off to me. "

really? you mean...the police arent the bicyclists' friend?...keen insight.

[Nancy]

Did the Gazette writer mean have "after the red hand has begun blinking" or "after the red hand has stopped blinking"? (SOLID hands don't blink.)

Anyway, I don't see why pedestrians are expected to treat blinking red hands as sacred commands when they behave in many different ways. Some ped lights have countdowns that end exactly when the time to cross expires. Some countdowns end several seconds before the crossing time expires. Lights without countdowns are quite variable in the amount of time they allow peds to cross, and peds familiar with the traffic pattern shouldn't be penalized unnecessarily if they can cross safely before the light changes. Some crazy intersections have ped lights that turn to blinking red and then back to white if no cross traffic comes to trip a sensor.

Drivers have it comparatively easy -- a yellow light that follows a green light is always followed very soon by a red light. (Don't get me started on green lights that change to flashing yellow, which I think are completely useless.)

[Nancy]

Oh, and how could I forget? Most annoying of all are those ped lights that stay solid red unless you find and push a button a few seconds BEFORE the light turns green for motorists going your direction. At many of these intersections, the length of green for motorists is the same whether or not a ped activates the ped signal.

Ped signals are not designed to help you cross the street. They are designed to discourage walking and to keep damned peasants out of the way of the royal motorist as much as possible.

[Jonathan Krall]

@Ellen. Based on comment-thread discussions, numerous motorists will swear up, down, and sideways that the police always ticket motorists and never ticket pedestrians or cyclists. So this is news.

You are correct that bias against pedestrians or cyclists is still common (it shows up in crash reporting), but has been improving over the past several years.

[7]

@ Nancy "I don't see why pedestrians are expected to treat blinking red hands as sacred commands when they behave in many different ways."

I don't understand your frustration. A blinking red hand (regardless of how poorly a writer terms it) at a crosswalk has always meant "Don't enter the crosswalk". It does not mean "Rush into the crosswalk to cross the street if you think you can beat it before it goes solid." - even if that though process is aided with a count-down timer.

[Kolohe]

Is there a map on where their installing the new Arl bikeshare stations? There's nothing on the bikeshare site itself, and the only thing I could find on BikeArlington was the crowdsource map and where the (I think) pre-decision proposed locations were.

[Nancy]

@7

My frustration is due to the fact that a blinking red hand doesn't mean the same thing at all intersections. (Only to law enforcement does it mean the same thing. To actual people trying to cross an intersection, walk signals are not very informative.)