Monday Morning Commute - Who are you, and what have you done with John Townsend?

Good morning

• Congratulations to WABA award winners.
• A CaBi station at 28th and Meade in Arlington was damaged. 
• Contact the Montgomery County Council to support the Metropolitan Branch Trail. 
• An 83 year old woman went missing on the MVT. 
• On the M Street Cycletrack
  • On why the M Street and L Street projects were decoupled: "These projects have lots of pieces. We have limited staff working on them. That's really all we can handle -- one at a time," said Mike Goodno, who oversees bike lanes for the D.C. Department of Transportation.
  • And then check out this refreshingly reasonable response from AAA's John Townsend, maybe he truly is giving up the "war" rhetoric of the past. "'We think the [cycling] trend is here to stay. ... Motorists have to become more sensitized to the presence of cyclists," Townsend said, adding that he would like to see D.C. invest more in roads. "We're not adding any more capacity for automobiles, and that is a great concern for many motorists."'
• A problem unique to L.A.: It has a bright green bike lane is on a street film crews like to film on. "the bright green of the bike lane is costly to erase if you're filming, say, a scene that takes place in the 1940s and you don't want a bright green bike lane running down the middle of your shot. It can't be lifted out of film by the usual post-production technique known as chroma keying, and it is more expensive to remove than other greens. And it's not just the street that needs to be color-corrected. Under the bright lights used for filming, the green bounces off the street and tints everything it touches, including actors' faces" But filming companies are being pretty reasonable, they want it painted another color. "There may not be 50 shades of green that will work for both bicyclists and moviemakers. But surely there is one."
• A natural combination? The Portland Art Museum is teaming up with the World Naked Bike Ride. "For the museum, its new exhibit "Cyclepedia" is opening -- a collection of 36 weird and wonderful bikes highlighting innovative design through the decades....And so it is on June 8, cyclists in various stages of undress will meet at the museum. They'll get a special deal to see "Cyclepedia" from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m., when the ride begins: The price of admission to the show is $1 per item of clothing. That means no clothes -- no charge." The Portland Art Museum is featured in this not-particularly-funny sketch from Portlandia.

Comments

[DaveS]

Townsend didn't directly attack or insult cycling, which can be called an improvement I guess.

In a few short sentences he still manages to pretend the LAB isn't 24 years older than the AAA, demean his constituency for accepting AAA's own rhetoric, ignore the millions (billions?) being spent by DDOT on improving conditions to increase the throughput of narrow roads in an historic municipality that was designed pre-automobile, and he manages to do so while preserving the context of divisiveness and false equivalency.

But yeah, any day he doesn't say cyclists have no place on the streets is a better day than most.

[JimT]

@DaveS: Can you point to examples where Townsend said that cyclists have no place on the street?

When I interviewed him about the R4-11 signs in Maryland, he endorsed them as very useful safety signs. He specifically said that they are needed on 2-lane Lottsford Vista Road where the shoulder stops and it becomes an old narrow country road. Compare: PG-DPW&T which refuses to post such signs on 2-lane roads.

Perhaps you are thinking about other employees of AAA?

[oboe]

"We're not adding any more capacity for automobiles, and that is a great concern for many motorists."

Nonsense, of course we're adding more capacity for motorists. Of course, that capacity is being added in places like WV and rural.

We're not adding capacity in places like DC because there's nowhere to add capacity: as a percentage of the total, nearly every single square inch of space that doesn't already have a home or a business on it has already been allocated to the automobile.

The only way to go from here is down, John.

[freewheel]

Any day that Townsend doesn't refer to opponents as retarded is a good day for him.

[DaveS]

By the way, http://la.streetsblog.org/2013/04/18/using-editors-to-take-the-green-out-of-the-bike-lane/ shows that maybe the claims that it's really hard to remove green lanes from video are a tad overstated.

[DaveS]

JimT: okay, not in so many words. Rather than dig up something "arguably close" or pick on any individual AAA office, I'll drop it back to the statement that the AAA has worked for years to cripple nearly every on-road cycling improvement in DC and to strongly oppose every transportation dollar spent doing anything other than promoting increased driving of private automobiles. One semi-tolerant statement doesn't constitute a change of heart, for a person or an organization.

[Michael H.]

Not sure if this is new, but it could be of interest for Maryland cyclists:

http://www.fredericknewspost.com/news/politics_and_government/governmental_and_political_topics/transportation/article_6c713185-4854-51f0-a59b-3b674b30bf7f.html

http://www.roads.maryland.gov/Index.aspx?PageId=98

[Mase]

Any more info on what the damage was to the 28th/Meade station (and whether vandalism or not)?

[ACyclistInTheSuburbs]

@oboe

actually wont the restore L'enfant project to deck over I395 add some capacity for motorists? And some of the plans for SW DC? Adding capacity for motorists in an urban area does not mean buildings limited access highways, or widening roads, but improving street connectivity, that, while it is often done with walking and biking in mind, in fact DOES add to general lane miles. That occured to me because I was thinking of Fairfax - a lot closer to DC than WVa. There are some additions to road capacity there - both tolled (I495 hot lanes and the I95/I395 project) and untolled (widenings on Gallows, on Rte 29, and elsewhere) - but also, very importantly, the Tysons project, which by cutting streets through former superblocks, will actually add general travel lane miles (though it will mostly support Bike/ped)

[washcycle]

Yeah, the 11th Street Bridge and Wilson Bridge both added road capacity in the District. Those are two of the largest projects in the District in the last 10 years. But that doesn't do enough to feed the beast...