Friday Afternoon Commute - Damn you Fozzy Bear

Good afternoon. Here's a pretty cool map of real-time water levels as measured by USGS. Here's one along the Northeast Branch Trail (reportedly 5 feet is when the trail is impassable). 

• My most recent Green Lane blog post - on Pennsylvania Avenue. Look at the photo DDOT made and see if you can find the two "flying" zebra barriers.
• "From a European perspective, space, or lack thereof, is never the problem. If we can find solutions for integrating bikes in the centers of Amsterdam and Copenhagen, it can happen anywhere."
• Washington National Tyler Clippard often bikes to the stadium, but Drew Storen no longer does. 

Storen has since moved downtown. Biking has become a less appealing option, so he hasn’t yet gone that route this season.

“Maybe if I get a little more achiever in me, if I want to achieve a little bit more with my biking abilities,” he joked. “But there are potholes downtown. It’s tough.”

• Jonathan Krall of 
the Alexandria Bicycle and 
Pedestrian Advisory Committee argues that cyclists aren't really scofflaws, it just looks that way. "The mistaken idea that cyclists are less cautious than others has its root in two facts. First, while drivers and pedestrians generally have clearly assigned space on our streets, cyclists do not. In an effort to squeeze the round peg of bicycling into the square hole of our roadways, the law generally allows cyclists to use either traffic lanes or sidewalks....Second, because bicycles have safety advantages over cars, a “safe” rolling stop on a bicycle is faster than a “safe” rolling stop in a car. "
• And the letter that prompted it. "So long as bicycles aren’t required to be registered and have visible forms of identification, like automobiles’ license plates, bicyclists will feel licensed to behave unaccountably."
• Drivers on the W&OD are not all that uncommon.
• Jon Stewart on Citibike in New York "Full Pedal Jacket" (see below). In the first segment, he spends much of the time poking fun at bike sharing and worring about helmets. But then in the second segment, he goes after all the sillyness from critics including, yes - Rabinowitz (aka Rabidowitz). 
• And look at how the New York Magazine makes it funny. 
• Also, Citibike is having software issues.

 

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Comments

[Michael H.]

The only two cars I've seen on local trails (W&OD and Four Mile Run Trail) have been police cars. Neither had their emergency lights on. I don't know why they were driving on the trails.

[oboe]

So long as bicycles aren’t required to be registered and have visible forms of identification, like automobiles’ license plates, bicyclists will feel licensed to behave unaccountably.

Pretty comical that when the majority of the road-using public can run down pedestrians with impunity (so long as they're not legally drunk), and where cyclists pay for any irresponsibility or inattention with their lives and bodies, it's cyclists would be described as "licensed to behave unaccountably."

Just further evidence that bike hate is 99.99% projection.

[IMGoph]

i see the flying zebras - why are they there?

[Read Scott Martin]

@Michael H. Law enforcement drives on the bike trails for the same reason N.P.S. drive into the middle of Lincoln Park rather than park and get out, or deploy on foot or by bike. It's air conditioned inside, their laptops are in there and, oh yeah, because they can. Because it's effective policing? Not so much.