Thursday Afternoon Commute - Monroe

Good afternoon

• August 1st is reportedly the opening date for the new 0.1 mile section of the Met Branch Trail behind the Monroe Street Building. 
• Alexandria's ordinance making sidewalk cycling legal has some people upset. DCist really knows how to sell the change "Sidewalks throughout Alexandria could become a lot more crowded and difficult to navigate with the latest decision by the city's leaders." Well, that is one thing that COULD happen, but it almost surely will not. There will be a slight uptick in the number of sidewalk cyclists and the impact will be trivial on most people. 
• Work has begun on buffered bike lanes along Veitch Street in the Arlington Courthouse area.
• "The Virginia state government has issued a call to the private sector for ideas on improving Interstate 66 outside the Capital Beltway" How about extending the Custis Trail?
• Chicago's bike sharing system, Divvy, start tomorrow; while LA's bike sharing system by Bike Nation hits a snag. They were going to use ad revenue to pay for it, "But advertising on a bicycle kiosk in Los Angeles falls under a city contract with CBS Outdoor and JCDecaux, which jointly hold the rights through 2021 to sell advertising on "street furniture," which includes bus stops, public toilets and newsstands." Does that sound familiar?

Comments

[NE John]

Monroe Building or Bridge?

[Daniel]

Sheesh. I live on a busy street in Alexandria People were riding on my sidewalk before and they are riding on my sidewalk today. And you know what? I don't blame them. It's a busy street.

[Michael H.]

Hopefully once the NYC and Chicago bikeshare systems are in place, ALTA/Bixi will be better able to supply bikes and stations to CaBi for its ongoing and delayed expansion round.

I'm not complaining too much. But the sooner this round is finished, the sooner they could move onto a potential next round of expansion.

I hope the next round will include some mega-stations downtown, at Franklin Square, Farragut Square and maybe a couple other locations. (I've already added these as suggestions on the crowdsourcing map. Plus I sent CaBi a separate email.)

[Liz]

Riding west on King Street in Alexandria once (around 9:30 on a Sunday morning), a huge Cadillac came up behind a friend and me and began honking. Non stop. The guy then opened his window and started screaming at us to get off the road and onto the sidewalk. And more honking. and more...

At a light (that I normally would have just Idaho-stopped...) I stopped behind a car, the cadillac behind me. And he kept honking. Until the drive of the car in front of me got out and started stomping back towards me. Thought I was really in trouble, then!

No -- the guy kept walking all the way back to the Cadillac and started yelling at the driver that I had exactly the same right to the road that he did. They went at it until the light changed and the driver in front got back in his car.

Rather scary, in all.

Anyway, I heard the news about the use in Alexandria of sidewalks with a bit of horror, since now that guy, and every other, can scream at cyclists all they want that we better get the hell on the sidewalks. It won't matter to them at all that we're also allowed on the road.

(If I remember correctly, his license plate was PASTOR1. Maryland.)

[T]

The city built the bike lane on Slaters right up to around Buzz and then it's pretty obvious they intended for cyclists to deviate onto the extremely wide sidewalk to go underneath the Monroe Ave Bridge. The problem is that their design did not match up to their code. The change in policy makes perfect sense to me.

As for the whiners about cyclists soon utilizing the sidewalks in the heart of OT, rule or no rule, well, that's just laughable. You can barely walk on those sidewalks many times during the summer because of hordes of tourists, ghost tours, outdoor eating, etc, let alone ride. Plus, it's much easier to ride on the streets in OT then the sidewalks and they're in better shape. Whiners will be whiners, but the guy quoted in WAMU hates everything and everyone--the town's grumpy old man.