TheWashCycle

Alternative shot of West Side bike access

The presentation is now available here. It has this image of the west side trail access (I suspect the helipad will not be there in the future?)

Also the presentation mentions that there will be a bikeway connection to the Suitland Parkway Trail. You're welcome Will. 

New Douglass Bridge could be best bike bridge in DC

I know that a lot of people are down on the racetrack ovals on both ends of the proposed new Frederick Douglass Bridge, and they make a good point, but from a biking standpoint, the new Douglass Bridge as presented last night by DDOT has the potential to be the best bridge in DC. 

On the bridge itself, cyclists will have their own space (as seen in the photo at right). They won't share a MUP with pedestrians or the road with drivers, they'll have a 10 foot wide two-way cycletrack - separate from the sidewalk and protected from auto traffic by some sort of barrier. And there will be one on each side of the bridge. Cyclists will get 20 feet of space on this bridge all to themselves, and that's kind of amazing. Pedestrians will get two 8 foot wide sidewalks and occasional overlooks (Belvederes we were told). 

Once off the bridge, cyclists will find pretty direct connections to the Anacostia Riverwalk Trails (ART) on both sides of the river and in both directions. On the east side, they'll also get a direct connection to the forthcoming South Capital Street Trail.

On the SW side (top of picture below) cyclists will ride off the cycletrack and onto the large mixing area and then along the sidepath past the line of trees where they could U-turn down the ramp to the ART. Pedestrians would make a quicker turn to go down stairs to the ART. Or cyclists could continue along the sidepath along South Capital. The presentation had a better angle of this in one of their renderings, but it's not available yet. [Update: It's here on slide 25. Also there is a mention of a "Bikeway connection to Suitland Parkway bike path" which I failed to include.]

On the NW side cyclists could also connect to the trail or follow the sidepath, but this rendering is probably unclear since the Florida Rock development will go in.

West side of the bridge

On the east side, pedestrians would again connect to the ART via stairs immediately along side of the bridge, but cyclists on the NE (left of image below) would ride along the oval and then head north along the Anacostia Drive Connector to connect to the trail near Poplar Point. On the SE side, cyclist would follow the oval a short distance before turning left to connect to the ART. Or they could go straight to the South Capital Street Trail or further up and to the right to follow the Suitland Parkway

East Side of the bridge

Below is a map of the bike network on the west side of the river. The blue lines show 18 foot wide facilities for cyclists and pedestrians and orange is 12 foot wide. Purple lines are bike lanes (so bike lanes on Potomac Ave SW and R SW). 

And on the east side cyclists can continue north around the oval to Howard Road.

There are more renderings here.

There was no mention of or drawing showing a bike trail along the old Shepherd Branch rail line, not that I really expected to see that, though I did notice they were planning to buy the ROW under I-295, but that is likely for the streetcar.

There's not much - from a biking standpoint at least - to criticize here. Some might wish there were more bike lanes for cyclists who don't want to ride on sidewalks - even really, really nice ones; but cyclists will be allowed to ride in the road if they choose. 

It's a pretty nice setup though. The whole thing is estimated to cost $622 million (so less than the baseball stadium) using local and federal money. Work could begin in late 2014 and wrap up in 2018. 

One last image is of the transportation work in the area. The red lines are the existing or planned ART. The South Capital Street Brdige and the area west of it constitutes one of the last major parts remaining. There is of course the Kenilworth Section (see renderings here!!! Bids for that work are due next week), the Virginia Avenue Trail and the trail along 2nd St SE to connect to it, but that is kind of it and they're done.  

"Bike" overtakes "Bicycle"

This is the Google Ngram for the two words. Is the explanation motorcycles, or somehow Bill Clinton? And what's with the recent decline? Also check out this one.

Bike Maryland Advisor Victim of Hit and Run

Former Bike Maryland Board Member Tom Blanks was struck by the mirror of a car as he rode east at about 6:40 AM, near Frankford, Delaware, on July 16.  While no longer on the board, the Bike Maryland website still lists him as an advisor. 

Mr. Blanks has very serious injuries, and a relief fund has been set up on his behalf. Details on his status are updated as the relief fund's website.  The Baltimore Sun reported both the crash and his slow recovery.  We probably overlooked the crash when it occurred because the same week, cyclists were killed in Severna Park and the Bowie/Glenn Dale area.

According to media reports, Mr. Blanks was riding east when the car's mirror struck him, sending him into a crash which threw him more than 10 feet from where his bike stopped.  The driver did not remain on the scene, and there are no other known witnesses.  About 15 minutes later, a postal worker noticed the bicyle on the roadside and stopped to investigate.  She found Mr. Blanks in the woods and he was flown by helicopters to Christiana Medical Center.

(Jim Titus is a bike advocate from Prince Georges County)

Sunday Video - Discovery Channel on the Bike Station

Washcycle: now with a new, and significantly worse format

As many of you have noted in the comments, Washcycle has been a little quiet lately. This is because the blog has gone to it's new - and as near as I can tell, permanent - "lite" format. I had originally planned to do this at the end of the year out of an obligation to the Green Lane Project blog, but when that changed it's format the same day I started my new job, it freed me up to do this sooner and seemed like a natural time to make the change.

So, here's what the new format means. Primarily, there will be much much less blogging here (by me at least). About 1/20th as much. There are a lot of reasons for this, which I'll go into below, but primarily I just want to spend my time doing other things - like getting a full night's sleep or hanging out with my family. I wouldn't say I'm burned out, but I'm a little bored and I have a project that I want to finish that has been lingering for some time. As one of my friend's said, "You don't find time, you make time" and so I'm cutting back on the blog to make time for other things. 

Since I won't be blogging very much, what I do write will almost always be local and almost always original. Ironically, this will free me up to go to more public meetings - most of which are unreported by the MSM. One of the reasons I started this blog was that so much bike-related news was going unreported. Richard Layman covered some of it at his blog, and the Bike Washington website was good, but often out of date, so there just wasn't any place to know what was happening or why things weren't happening. That's no longer the case. WABA has it's own blog run by a real journalist. ARlNow and DCist cover a lot of this material. There are blogs for VaBike, Montgomery County biking, FABB, the DC BAC, Silver Spring Trails, the Capital Crescent Trail etc...I feel like the Post and the Gazette cover biking more now than they used to, plus there are all the versions of the Patch and of course there's GreaterGreaterWashington. I'm not sure this subject is under-reported anymore, but to whatever extent it is I'll try to hit those subjects from now on rather than just doing intelligent search and link dumping. 

I'm also going to follow some of my own advice. Periodically other bike advocates in the area have wanted to start their own blogs and I've tried to encourage them to write here instead. I argue that due to the network effect, one DC-area bike advocacy blog is better than 12. No one ever listens. Not to flatter myself, but for a while there I think this was - as I liked to joke - the Premier DC-area bike advocacy blog - mostly due to a lack of contenders for the title. But I don't say that anymore. Let's face it, that title now belongs to GreaterGreaterWashington. And so I plan to write there more than I do now. Writing here is easier, because there's no editor and I can call people an asshole in the comment section (I've found that some people just need it), but I've made a pretty strong argument about the value of pooling efforts and I've finally convinced myself.

And I'm going to try to write more at my other blog Nothing More Powerful, where I propose ideas that (I think) have a very high "good idea to possible" ratio, quantify politics and engage in other quixotic endeavors. That blog doesn't have much readership, but it makes me happy.

If you miss the morning and afternoon link dumps, I will be tweeting that same kind of content on my twitter feed (and if you follow that you've probably noticed an uptick in my tweets as a result). That feed is @Wash_cycle. It will have the same content, but likely less comment discussion. 

That having been said, if there is someone out there who has been chomping at the bit to step in as the main writiner of an existing Washington, DC-area focused bike advocacy blog, well then, this is your chance. Contact me at [email protected] and I can help you get started here. There might even be a trivial amount of money in it for you. Though, if you wanted my advice, I'd say you should probably just write for GGW. 

Sunday Video - Bike Snob NYC book signing at Bethesda, Maryland Barnes & Noble

Anacostia Streetcar narrowed to 2 options, one with a bike trail

When originally proposed way back in the Williams administration, the Anacostia Streetcar was to use the old CSX ROW - abandoned after 9/11 - to run the streetcar on. That ROW would leave enough space for a parallel trail. But then CSX asked for an incredible amount of money and there was some legal concerns about whether or not they could even sell it. So the streetcar was moved to streets and the trail was dropped. Then, DDOT came out with 10 alternatives for the streetcar - one of which retained the CSX ROW. 

Recently DDOT pared that list down to 2 alternatives, one of which would use the CSX ROW and include the parallel bike path. In addition to the path, that alternative (a Beatles-worthy number 9) seems to be better across the board - but for the current ownership by CSX and the conclusion that it is less accessible to the service area.

You can see the route and a cross-section here. 

I'm not sure how much of a change this represents. Everyone I've ever talked to at DDOT about this has always said they would rather use the CSX ROW, but they're prepared to move forward without it. Perhaps identifying this option as one of two preferred options will create greater impetus. We'll see.

Even if the streetcar doesn't use the ROW, a trail could still be built along it later, but like the Purple Line one has to wonder when the political will would exist. If DDOT can't make the deal work with the streetcar and trail on the table, it seems unlikely they'd do more to get just the trail. On the otherhand, getting the Anacostia section of the old ROW turned into a trail, might spur (see what I did there?) DDOT to extend it all the way to C and 33rd Street SE. 

Pennsylvania Ave SE Path - part of a great street

I don't believe I've ever included a photo of the multi-use path along Pennsylvania Avenue SE east of the river, even though it's been open for a couple of years now. The project represents one of the road diets that the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board approved this week (even though it's already complete). 

This was built as part of the Pennsylvania Avenue Great Streets project. The original plan in 2007 included bike lanes, and when it was changed in 2009 I was a little critical of it. The 2009 design included a diagonal crosswalk at 28th with an exclusive bike/pedestrian crossing phase, but that didn't make it. Nor did the trail NW of 28th, which is too bad. Nonetheless, the MUP here is a pretty good feature and it makes Pennsylvania bikeable in this direction - which I would not say it was before.

The trail is really only needed going SE, which is almost entirely uphill. Then the trail becomes a climbing lane. At 10 feet it's about the same width as the CCT, and there's much less traffic. There aren't too many crossstreets, so it doesn't have the safety issues associated with sidewalks - and going uphill slows one down to a little over a walking pace. Downhill, it's easy to ride in the street.

But heaven help anyone who decides to go downhill on this path. I can get easily up to the 30 mph speed limit going down Penn (not that anyone else is) and that kind of speed is not safe on this path. DDOT should put sharrows on the downhill part of Pennsylvania to encourage its use -  and even consider marking the trail for uphill bike use only. 

I still wish they'd gone with a sidewalk, and put in a buffered bike lane on the uphill side instead of the path (with sharrows going downhill of course), but this is still a great improvement over the old road. 

Bicyclist killed in crash in Anne Arundel County

Second fatal bike crash in Maryland this week.

A bicyclist died after being struck by a dump truck on Wednesday at about 3:05 p.m., police say. 

According to Anne Arundel County Police, the bicyclist was traveling west on Berrywood Drive and failed to stop at the intersection with Baltimore Annapolis Blvd. 

As the bicyclist entered the intersection he was struck by a dump truck traveling north on Baltimore Annapolis Blvd. 

"The driver of the dump truck attempted to avoid striking the bicyclist but was unable to," police said.

Police said preliminary investigations indicate that neither speed nor alcohol appear to be a factor in the crash. The Traffic Safety Section is still investigating this case.