Thursday Afternoon Ride - Paranoid

Good afternoon

• DCist has a list of "best" bike rides in and around DC. 
• Sign up for BikeFest
• A suspicious package on a bike closed a DC street for 45 minutes. I fear that this was just "a" package on a bike and that leaving a bike parked with anything on it will be reason for freaking out. 
• Harry Jaffe worries that "we are one bad biking accident away from nipping DC’s booming biking culture in the bud.  All it takes is one tourist or a commuter badly hurt or killed while biking." He's paranoid and a curmudgeon. If that were true, it would have been nipped in the bud long ago. 
  • "a guy on a Bikeshare cycle caused a jam at L Street. He was taking up a lane, pedaling slowly, minus a helmet, oblivious to the automobiles." Harry, you don't know he was "oblivious" only that he seemed oblivious. 
  • "Wearing earbuds on a bicycle in downtown Washington is one step away from cycling with blinders. It’s asking for trouble and certainly increasing the chances of getting into an accident." It's probably more than one step from cycling with blinders, but it almost surely does make you less safe. It's illegal in the region, and ill-advised. 
• Kathyrn Papp is back again with another letter to the editor pitting Capital Bikeshare funding against library funding. 
  • She continues to conflate Bixi with Capital Bikeshare, to fail to understand how Bixi works (Saying it is "selling off" systems in NYC and Chicago, and someone getting bent out of shape because it's paying off a loan. Aren're we all?), to call CaBi a private company and to claim that "every other city uses dedicated sponsors to cover operating costs" which isn't true. 
  • Nor is this statement: "Bikeshare is not a city-owned service like DASH buses and the King Street Trolley. It is owned and operated by a private company." It is owned by the cities. 
  • She draws on statements from Arlington and College Park about funding and revenue to make a case that's unrelated to those statements. 
  • This is the same list of untruths she's spouting off elsewhere.  We should better fund libraries, but I'm not sure how it's related to bikeshare. The money being used for FY 2013 funding is Transportation Improvement Program money - as in not available for libraries. 
• New bike parking coming to Baltimore's train stations. 
• New York is signing up bikeshare customers. By 3 p.m. on Monday, more than 2,500 people had signed up.

Comments

[JeffB]

I used L St last night to go across town as the plaza in front of the White House was still cordoned off.

I was astonished at the amount of driver misbehavior still occurring.

Cars were queuing up for left turns in the cycle track well before the merge point.

At the end of the block many cars failed to fully merge over and so blocked the thin sliver of the cycle track left for the cyclists.

Finally I was almost taken out by a cab that threw a left hook from the intersection rather then use the left turn lane.

[Jay]

Is it illegal to ride with headphones? I tried to look this up earlier after reading Jaffe's screed but couldn't find a straight answer.

[MM]

@jay

IIRC, it's the same rule that applies to cars...one earbud is fine, but you can't have headphones in both ears. I'd assume this applies only to riding on streets and not MUPs.

[contrarian]

I don't believe DC has a law prohibiting headphones.

[Michael H.]

I don't think it's safe to ride with earphones. But it's not the biggest safety issue out on the roads. It continues to be distracted driving, with drivers texting or websurfing. Red light running (by drivers and cyclists) and jaywalking pedestrians who dart in front of cars are other problems.

Kind of strange how a single hypothetical accident is supposed to bring down, single-handedly, bike culture in D.C., but the steady stream of driver-caused fatalities, here and in every other city in the U.S., is not really a problem.

[Washcycle]

I can't remember the details. I think it's illegal to have two earbuds in Virginia. I can't recall the rules in dc or md, though I don't think DC has one. That's why I hedged my bets and wrote " in the region".

[oboe]

This is why no one rides a bike in DC anymore:

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2008-07-09/news/36831818_1_bike-lane-bike-accidents-truck-driver

[UrbanEngineer]

Harry Jaffe's article is the first description I've seen of what was hanging from the handlebars from the fatal accident a few months back....A barbecue grill...

[washcycle]

Really? I thought I posted that here. Have you not been reading every day like you're supposed to?