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 Richard Layman covered some of it at his blog, and the Bike Washington website was good, but often out of date, so there just wasn't any place to know what was happening or why things weren't happening.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 dcwashcycle@gmail.com 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. 

Comments

[charlie]

Ah. The overly polite Mr. Alpert swallows another blogger. Our loss.

Many thanks for your hard work and good luck.

[Wayne Phyillaier]

Washcycle:
I am really going to miss the regular reporting I had come to expect from this blog. But I can see how you came to this decision.
Few have noticed that I have stopped blogging regularly at my own blog, silverspringtrails.org. I stopped for some of the reasons you cited here - other blogs have come forward to report on many of the local biking issues, and it is better to support other, better blogs like GGW.
I hope that you do continue, even if at a much reduced frequency. Your blog is the best.

[Sam Farmer]

Thanks for running a great blog.

[Shalom]

Dear Wash,

Thanks for explaining your thinking. And we're all just grateful for the contributions you've made to the cycling community here. You should do what makes you happy!

Okay, that said: There's no place like home. I just perused the current front pages at WABA and DC BAC blogs -- only a single item each (14th St bridge and Idaho Stop), of the kind that you served up by the fistful every day. They're organizations first, bloggers second, so they mostly just talk about themselves as organizations. And the other sites you mention don't cover DC.

Yes, there's GGW, which I read all the time. But it's nowhere near complete in its bicycle coverage (and probably shouldn't be). Worse, the comment threads always devolve into "war on cars" blather. Folks here are actually cyclists. We get to talk amongst ourselves (even if I mostly lurk...).

Maybe just some lighter link dumps that don't take as much of your time, to keep this place the Premier DC bicycle blog? Or is there an automated way to have your blog subscribe to your Twitter feed, so we can shmooze about your tweets in the comments?

[JeffB]

I will miss the daily content. This blog was my first read every morning after my commute while eating my Wheaties.

It is a positive sign, though, that cycling issues are no longer of interest to just a niche audience. GGW is a broader platform and allows our issues to be presented to a broader community.

[aaa]

Hey -- I just came here to get some more scoop on the 14th Street Bridge trail widening (after reading about it GGW), but it will be great to see your writing there too. Maybe a weekly "big bike news" column??

[Greenbelt]

When I started bike commuting, this blog and its comment section were pretty much the only place to get news and encouragement. I intend to click over here at least once a day just out of grateful loyalty. -Jeff

[Zach]

Best of luck, WC! Thank you for all your hard work over the years.

[JJ]

:(
However, I entirely understand and look forward to the change.

[JJJJJ]

noooooooooooooooooooooooo

[Michael H.]

Perhaps having a small team (2 or 3 people) could be a good solution going forward. While the other info sources cover cycling, it's not quite the same thing as having the Washcycle blog.

Washcycle is a unique mix of local D.C. bike news, bike advocacy, general bike topics, and cycling news. I hope there is a way to have Washcycle continue on in some form.

[Kathy]

Noooooooo! So sad to see you go but thank you immensely for all of your hard work day in and day out on this news site. I think we have all taken your efforts for granted. Best wishes on your new endeavors.

[Jon]

You will definitely be missed. This has been my go-to spot for local bike news for quite some time now.

[washcycle]

I should reiterate that I will still be blogging. Just much less.

[Crickey7]

There are other DC bike blogs, but none that serve the vehicular cycling/commuting community as well.

[Mrs. Washcycle]

You have another blog?

Your dedication to your blog and your reader's loyalty to you makes me proud of you.

[Jim T]

I plan to continue contributing on an occasional basis. I could conceivably make it once a week especially if some others step up.

I agree that it makes more sense to publish here than in a lightly read blog. Possibly a few other advocates should be cross posting here.

I don't think GGW is always preferable to this blog. It depends on the purpose and whether your first drafts are good enough without an editor.

[Matt]

Your exceptional daily blogging will be so sorely missed! I look at this site every day, and there really is no other site in DC - or probably anywhere - that does such a comprehensive and accessible job on issues critical to bike commuters. Thanks for your tremendous efforts and I looking forward to seeing your work around here and/or GGW.

[Christopher Fotos]

Congratulations on an outstanding blog and also for lining up your life with you priorities. I checked in here at least twice a day, with coffee in the morning and beer at night, and I'll definitely look up the Twitter feed. Mazel Tov!

[7]

Sniff. I suppose this means I'll have to find those bookmarks to WABA and GGW and SST and MoBikes, and all those other blogs I bookmarked over time but rarely went back to read. Thanks for all the info and wise commentary over the years.

[david johnson]

Good idea. Blogs, jobs etc. come and go but young of your kids comes only once.
Looking forward too maybe seeing you and the kids out for a ride in a few years.

[JD]

I see a lot of very familiar sounding reasons there. :) Thanks for all of the great content (and links!) over the years, and looking forward to seeing what comes in the future.

[Ted]

You were my first read every morning for a long, long time. Who can tell for how long I'll continue habitually checking here every couple hours for updates. Thanks for all your work and the awesome fiskings.

[Dwayne]

This has been a great blog and has helped me tremendously, but I don't know how you've kept it up this long with a wife and kid. Thank you for all you've done. I hope the best for you going forward.

[T]

You have single-handly improved my worktime effeciency going forward! (jk). Glad you're not giving it up entirely as it's great reading. Thanks!

[twk]

WC,

I have been a reader of this blog for many years (maybe since 2007). I have often wondered how you found the time to consistently have such rich content. Especially since you now have a tandem to go with that trike. It is completely understandable that you would need to cut back.

As an engineer myself, I do enjoy the engineer's logic and mathematics that you apply the world transportation by bike. This is the first blog I read whenever I pop open my browser. This blog is unique and its current format will be missed. Glad to hear it is going to persist, just differently.

Thanks so much for what you have done over the years. And good luck with the new job.

[antibozo]

I will also miss the twice-daily link dump.

In addition, even if news coverage for cycling has improved, your blog has served to collect the various activity in a single place so that we blessed readers don't have to independently locate it all every day. I certainly don't blame you for wanting to spend your time having a life, but it's going to be a loss for the rest of us, i'm afraid. But that isn't meant as pressure on you, only as an observation that it's time for someone else to carry the ball for a while.

What i wish we had was a good Facebook group, maybe a moderated one to keep out the anti-cyclist trolling. Twitter just doesn't have the infrastructure to really support microblogging. Is anyone aware of a decent D.C. cycling group on Facebook? If not, would there be interest among others here to join such a group in order to distribute the load of finding and posting items of note?

Also, i wonder if there's a way for typepad to aggregate washcycle's twitter link posts into a daily blog post, or something like that.

[washcycle]

People looking for a more discussion based experience should look at the bike arlington forum.

http://bikearlingtonforum.com/forum.php

[antibozo]

The problem with that is that it requires maintaining yet another set of credentials. Also, it's somewhat excessively categorized.

[contrarian]

This is a dark day.

David, thank you for all you've put into this over the past how many years? It's got to be close to ten. I feel that the world is a palpably different place than it was then. Biking to work is no longer the province of hippies on ten-speeds.

[Craig Tupper]

Thank you, thank you, thank you from just another biker who was always amazed at the sheer volume of obscure info that could be found here. Like you I have been waiting for the ART to happen, and link to the ATTS... for so long, the only good info I could find - including pictures fer crying out loud! - was right here. I am not really a believer in good karma, but if there were such a thing you would be swimming in it. We were, and are, not worthy!

[Michael H.]

The first Washcycle post, or at least the earliest dated post on the Archives page, from Sept. 30, 2005:

http://www.thewashcycle.com/2005/09/index.html

[antibozo]

FWIW, the Bike Arlington site has been broken since last night.

[freewheel]

Since the very first post (about bikesharing before the concept seemed plausible in DC!), Washcycle has been *the* DC bicycling blog. Kudos to you for maintaining it all these years. You've done an outstanding job.

Have you considered becoming a full-time editor - letting other people submit stuff to you and you decide what gets posted and how it's edited?

[Sally M.]

You and JDland cutting back in the same summer?! What a blow.

I'm primarily a pedestrian, rather than a cyclist. I've found this to be far and away the best site for info about trails, bridge sidewalks, and the like. Since I'd much rather be surrounded by quiet, clean bikes than by autos, this has been my daily fix for cheering on the non-car culture in DC.

GGW has its strengths and but also its limits, so thanks for continuing whatever you reasonably can on both your blogs.

[Jack Cochrane]

You've had such an incredible blog over the years!

But as owner/writer of the CycleMoco blog (http://cyclemoco.com/) I can tell you that blogging is very time consuming and takes away from my time for actual advocacy (and riding and other hobbies...) I use it mostly for writing up issues so I have something to refer public officials to and I use the MontgomeryBike forum for news (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/montgomerybike).

So I perfectly understand your decision!

[Jack Cochrane]

Naively I thought that after all these years, Typepad and Wordpress and Yahoo had figured out NOT to include parentheses and periods after URLs as part of the URL.

[washcycle]

freewheel, it is part serendipity that the first post wound up being about what was arguably the most important bike story of the last 8 years - bike sharing. Almost everyone covered the bus station deal, but only the Examiner mentioned the bike share part of it, and then as a throwaway line late in the article (and only in the continued part of the article farther back). I only read it because I was on a bus that day and found a copy. But I recognized that it was a pretty big deal and so I decided to start the blog with it (even though I wasn't totally ready to start then).

Yes. I'm willing to be an editor. If people are willing to write (even just once in a while) I'm willing to manage all that. So if there are any volunteers, let me know.

[Mike]

I disagree that GGW is the premier bike advocacy blog--that was washcycle up until you decided to stop. :) GGW is less focused, and has much lower signal to noise. I read this site daily, GGW as I had extra time. I'm quite interested in regional bike news, but really couldn't care less about ANC politics. It was nice to focus on the one without having to skip through the other.

Question: if putting everything on GGW is the way to go, please explain GreaterGreaterEducation? It seems that there is still a place for more focused areas of interest.

[antibozo]

Bike Arlington Forum seems to be working again. Wonder what that was about.

[Asuka]

I've thoroughly enjoyed exposing you for the irrational, illogical hypocrite you are. You're an angry guy who should probably spend more time with your family (or a shrink) and less time with your computer.

[washcycle]

Awww, I bet you say that to all the boys.