Milloy argues that because DC doesn't have good bike infrastructure, we shouldn't build bike infrastructure.

Courtland Milloy has chosen to write another anti-safe streets column, and as is usual it's full of mularkey.

To better understand what the fight over bike lanes in the District is about, it apparently helps to visit Copenhagen.

I've never been, but I think I have a good grasp on it and it has nothing to do with Copenhagen. Here's what you need to know to understand the fight. It isn't even about bike lanes. It's about public space and who gets to use it and how. On one side are those who believe we should set aside more space for biking (among other things) and a side that doesn't. The side that does has - at least publicly - the buy in of the DC government as well as the regional authorities, and the side that doesn't has the power of the status quo. This is a fight similar to like a million others and you don't have to go to Europe to understand it. One side wants change for reasons we agree are good and the other side doesn't want change for reasons they're embarrassed to admit. 

Paul Dougherty, a resident of the Spring Valley neighborhood, called Copenhagen “a bicyclist utopia”

Not necessarily true, but the downside is...?

...that was unrealistic for the District.

This is bad faith argument. The goal is not to become Copenhagen anytime soon. If everything in the MoveDC plan were put in place and the entire Capital Trail Coalition plan were built, we wouldn't be Copenhagen. There is literally no plan to move that far on any timeline. 

Dougherty is leading a group of residents opposed to converting two lanes of the Dalecarlia Parkway into bike lanes.

You can read Dougherty's petition at change.org (more like nochange.com amiright?). He's got 600+ signatures as of this writing. His opposition stems from:

1. As he sees it, people don't want them. Or at least people who live near him don't.  
2. Bike lanes will slow down ambulances. "The hospital now enjoys a clear, direct, approach for these vehicles which under the Study will require vehicles to at least cross the bike and pedestrian lanes."
3. Dalecarlia Parkway is a Parkway with a 40 MPH speed limit. Bikes that travel at 20 MPH should not be sharing the road with cars doing 40 MPH
4. major traffic congestion along Dalecarlia will not help the back-up during the morning or evening rush hours. 

Let's look at these one at a time. There's no proof that (1) is correct and even if it is, not wanting something is not a good enough reason. That's the logic of a 6 year old. On (2), here's what DDOT says

DDOT has shared the draft recommendations from the Livability Study with Sibley Hospital, and they have no concerns at this time. They have requested that DDOT notify DC FEMS and private ambulance providers. DDOT will continue to update Sibley Hospital as the project progresses.

For (3), that's literally what the bike lanes are for?

On (4), ding ding ding, we have a winner! Like I said, this is about public resources (space) and who gets to benefit from it. Paul would like people who want to drive 40 mph without traffic congestion to benefit. DDOT wants people who will bike to benefit. Which makes sense because as a city, we've already set goals to have more people bike and fewer people drive. 

Back to Milloy

People at the meeting were saying to Cheh, a bicycle enthusiast (the opponents claim they're bike enthusiasts too, so everyone's a bike enthusiast) who chairs the transportation committee, “ ‘We’ve been to Copenhagen, and D.C. is nothing like Copenhagen,’ ” Dougherty recalled.

Yeah. "Copenhagen is spectacular and this town is a real shithole. Do you thing the morons in this room could build a city half that nice? No way! We shouldn't even try. Didn't we all move here BECAUSE this place is a dangerous shithole?" 

But seriously, this is how it always goes. Person A: "I saw something nice in xxx" Person B: "well this isn't xxx and we're incapable of learning from anyone else's experience" Person A: "Oh, we are" Person: "Game. Set. Touchdown." (<- This is intentional). 

Milloy then points out the Denmark and Copenhagen started out from a better place than we have probably at any time in the last 120 years - and that's true. I push against other bike advocates for the same reason. We can't just magically become Copenhagen overnight. We are starting from another spot and have to make our own path. But... that doesn't mean we aren't aspiring to the same thing, or at least something similar. That doesn't mean we should act as though Copenhagen doesn't exist or that their grits cook faster than ours or something. 

While more D.C. residents are moving away from cars toward public transportation, scooters and, yes, bikes, the truth is that we are still far from having an infrastructure to support all those things on the roads and pedestrians.

If only there were some way to fix that. Like maybe the infrastructure will come here on its own if we all sit real quietly.

The problem is, the Dalecarlia Parkway serves as a commuter gateway in and out of Maryland and Virginia, with links to Chain Bridge Road and the Clara Barton Parkway.

I agree, that is a problem, but if we shut it down entirely people will get REALLY angry.

Oh...you meant that it's a major regional commuter route and a road diet here would inconvenience some drivers. Oh...OK. Then my answer is "I don't care." We need to change the transportation system. We need to make it safer, more equitable and cleaner. We need to make a system that lets everyone who wants to bike and walk, safe to do so. And to do that we have to take space from drivers and we need to make driving less convenient. On the upside, it will also make driving safer and reduce pollution in your neighborhood. So it's really a win-win.

“Dalecarlia was designed to keep traffic from our neighborhood streets,” said Alma Gates, a longtime resident of the District’s Palisades neighborhood. “When you shut down two lanes of the parkway, traffic is going to start coming through the neighborhoods and that will pose a huge safety concern for us.”

Actually....Dalecarlia Parkway was partially built on a bicycle route that was built by cyclists (using their own money and labor) in the late 1890's. And then road was built to provide access between Western Avenue and Conduit Road. Not that it matters. What matters is that there is no credible scenario where this road diet causes traffic to redirect through either Spring Valley or the Palisades. That's just hogwash. 

But also....If you don't want cars in your neighborhood...if they're a problem...we can do something about that. 

Residents complain that the city was taking action without their knowledge or rushing to implement policies before citizens could organize in opposition.

This was part of the Rock Creek Far West study that began in early 2019. A bike facility was in the MoveDC in 2014 and in the 2005 bike plan. It might have been in the bike plan from the 1976 for all I know. It's all on the web. There is no rushing or hiding. You're writing this about a PUBLIC MEETING where the councilmember showed up!!!

Copenhagen is working in cooperation with 17 other municipalities in the capital region of Denmark to build a network of “cycle superhighways.” The plan is to make fast and comfortable routes from the suburbs to the city center. Cooperation for a project like that does not exist in the Washington region.

You'd be excused for not knowing about this, but such a project does exist. It was reported about in a little local paper called the Washington Post. 

Forty years. Patient, deliberative, one step at a time.

Courtland Milloy must be the only person who thinks DC is moving too fast at building out it's bike network. In 1974 they set the goal of 30 miles of bike lane, which they didn't achieve until ~2010. "One step at a time" is our jam. And by time we mean months and months. Same writer, two paragraphs later:

By 2025, Copenhagen expects to have 75 percent of the trips in the city made by foot, bicycle or public transit. In the District, the goal is to have 10 more miles of bike lanes by 2024. But the plan is behind schedule 

Maybe we need more patience. 

The problem in D.C. is that we aren’t seeing the big picture,” said Thomas Smith, a resident of the Spring Valley neighborhood. “Decisions are being made one street at a time without regard for how it’s going to affect the next street. Nobody is looking at the whole city.”

Oh FFS Thomas. Really? Really? Again: Bike plan in 2005. Comprehensive Transportation Plan in 2014. The city has a comprehensive plan, which it updates often. We have regional plans. We've got plans Thomas. We've got plans. [Thomas Smith use to be on ANC 3d and lost his election.  He opposed the New Mexico Ave bike lanes making claims about the damage they would do that never came true.]

opposition to more lanes continues to mount.

“Copenhagen is a thousand-year-old flat peninsula with lots of roads everywhere,” Dougherty said. “In D.C., everything is up. There is no comparison.”

There is opposition and repeating these bad faith arguments as if they're anything other than what they are doesn't help. 

Comments

[Kolo Jezdec]

I read the article and the comments. As of around 6 AM, no comments that the cyclists need to follow the rules of the road before they get safe places to ride. Has the car lobby lost their talking points crib sheet?

[hlinak]

Please stop posting this jackaninny's articles. All of the clicks just encourages him to keep writing whatever drivel he came up with this time.

[huskerdont]

Sure, perhaps he can be a bit of a ninny, but some people listen to him; I dunno, impressionable people, children too young to have learned careful discernment. I think it's important to refute his arguments when they're false, both in the comments section and elsewhere. Well done here.

[ACyclistInThePortCity]

we need to know the memes. We have heard this also in Alex from Seminary Road diet opponents "It's bad because it does not connect to anything" (it does). "Its bad because there is no city wide planning" (there is). Its bad because its not a perfect bike lane (thats true but disingenous) Of course a lot of that is a trap, to get people talking bikes, when the project was largely designed to help peds, certain left turning drivers, and overall safety.

[fongfong]

For the record, Doughty, Gates and Smith are people we in Ward 3 have been dealing with for decades to stop any development whatsoever. I find it interesting that Milloy was drawn to quote that group. Oh wait, they called him and he found a cause to champion.

If only they had been quoted as saying this is gentrification!

[Crickey]

I appreciate that the most vocal critics are cranks who have very limited appeal.

[drumz]

Reading Milloy's column was an interesting exercise.

One one hand you have the text of his column which outlines the choices Copenhagen made over the course of decades that DC is just now getting around to. On the surface that's a lot better than the "we're not Copenhagen" argument that usually rests on the assumption that Copenhagen's bike infrastructure just appeared one day.

But the subtext is that everything Copenhagen did is still a bad idea for DC. You get some stuff about hills or whatever but there's no actual refutation.

Change the tone here and there and you actually have a pretty good column.

[drumz]

Now re: the actual proposal on Dalecarlia.

The petitioner is just making everything up. Guaranteed there's nothing to back up his assertions. That's how it always is.

Beyond that, what neighborhoods? On one side of the parkway you have the reservoir and on the other side you have two roads that kind of go into the neighborhood but the neighborhood itself isn't on a grid.

[fongfong]

The reality is that this stretch of road is the One Mile where folks in Ward 3 get to drive really fast - like 50 mph is the average speed. Taking that away from drivers is wrenching from them the fantasy of every car commercial ever shown on TV.

One person at the ANC meeting actually called it "our Beltway," as in "don't take away our Beltway."

The alternate routes are simply other traffic laden Avenues that these folks want to avoid having to drive on because they have their Beltway.

[ah]

Dougherty's point 3 above doesn't even make sense, as bikes would have a separate lane.

Not to mention DDOT's own data show that the traffic on the road, at least as it stood in recent years, can be handled by two lanes. (Though the ANC will ask DDOT to update the data, which he seems to want to avoid having happen, lest it undermine his main point.)

[Beth]

Making driving less convenient is definitely a way to get people to look at other forms of transit. At least, it was for me. I brought a car in 2012 to commute to work in Alexandria, from DC. It was a glorious 20 min easy-ride. The construction on the Memorial Bridge started and it was a frustrating-AF 45 min - 1 hour ride. And I thought: if it's going to take me an hour to get home from work, I may as well bike. So now unless the weather's really sucktastic, I bike. And I work from home more. Net result: one less car on the road. Also my newly minted bike booty.

[contrarian]

Part of the context of this public space debate is that the population of DC hit its all-time high in 1950 and declined steadily for 50 years after that. For a long time the city had a surplus of public space, and the demand for it was shrinking. It became established in the DC political culture that if you didn't like the way a space near you was being used or proposed to be used, you could throw a temper tantrum and get your way, the DC government would just look somewhere else.

Population started rebounding in 2000 and has been growing steadily since, the city has gained almost 200,000 residents in the past 20 years. As the city has filled pressure has been growing on public space of all kinds. The political culture still lags but there are signs that a new reality is sinking in.

[dynaryder]

How do I upvote fongfong? He hit the nail on the head with the car commercial thing. I rode the Dalecarlia once,just to see where it went. I'd never take it again. I had two idiots blow by me too close and way above the speed limit. And they were the only two cars I encountered,so it wasn't like they didn't have the space.

[dynaryder]

Crap,how do you edit comments? Only 'once' was supposed to be italicized. :-}

[Mike]

i dont know if this response is going to do anything, but it is spectacular!! and therapeutic (funny, too!) thanks for taking the time to write it. this will be widely circulated, im guessing... this is right up there with your scofflaw essay....