WABA looking for help with Met Branch Trail event

WABA writes

We are looking for volunteers to be our support team for the following three roles:

-Clean Up Crew Leader: These volunteers will work closely with our Trail Rangers to lead small clean up crews of participants during the event. Tasks will include managing clean up participants for the event, handing out tools, and making sure clean up participants are performing their tasks. You would meet up with the Trail Ranger Coordinators at 11:00am at the Brookland Metro on August 17^th and be done at about 3:00pm.

- Check-In Captain: These volunteers will manage the check-in station for all clean up participants. Trail Ranger Coordinators will give you a brief training of check-in responsibilities and you will check in participants, have them sign a waiver, and direct them to their clean up crew when they arrive. You would meet up with the Trail Ranger Coordinators at 11:40am at the Brookland Metro on August 17^th and be done at about 12:30pm, when you would be invited to stick around and help us clean up the trail.

-Met Branch Trail Spokesperson: These volunteers will help a WABA staff member table at the NoMa BeerFest event (at 1250 First St NE) in the afternoon of Saturday August 17^th. We are seeking folks who are very familiar with the MBT and would enjoy talking to event goers about the trail, access points, planning and advocacy around the trail. There are two shifts, one from 1:30pm to 4pm, and another from 4pm to 6:30pm.

 

Comments

[Jim Godfrey]

This is my first time visiting this site, and I'm not sure how to start a new topic, but this is to start a new topic: the disappearance of the MBT Trail bike lanes along the west side of Union Station (1st St. NW from K to F Streets NW). A few days ago they resurfaced the road there and when they painted lane markings on the new pavement, the bike lanes were gone, replaced by car-wide lanes. Why? I bike commute there and while before the repaving it was a zoo (pedestrians going to and coming from trains, cars discharging and picking up passengers, trucks making deliveries, the bubble machine guy, etc.) with bike lanes, now it's a zoo without bike lanes. Removing bike lanes and cowing to the cars is not the right direction if we want our city to be livable for the inhabitants, and now the still incomplete MBT has lost, not gained, length. That's regression. My suggestion is to rethink that stretch of road and acknowledge its unique character. The bubble machine guy, food cart, buskers, and the thousands of pedestrians ignoring the crosswalks are the seeds of what that stretch of road wants to be: a pedestrian mall with bike lanes. Think food stalls and music instead of the current grungy bleak asphalt canyon with a too narrow sidewalk. Heck, before the bike lanes got erased the train-bound pedestrians would walk in them because the sidewalk was too narrow for the amount of pedestrian traffic.

[washcycle]

Jim, it's because they're upgrading from bike lanes to a cycletrack.

http://www.thewashcycle.com/2011/11/ddot-proposing-cycletrack-for-1st-street-ne-.html

[likesdrypavement]

London is considering an elevated bike highway, and Denmark already has one. They've thrown down the gauntlet--accept the challenge to lead the world in cycling DC.

http://news.discovery.com/tech/gear-and-gadgets/soaring-bike-highway-proposed-in-london-140103.htm