TheWashCycle

From the Archives: 100 mile Alleycat & There's nothing new about trail squatting

Two from the historical record for this week. It's Bike to Work Week after all.

First, this is the oldest record I could find of a bike race in DC (though surely not the first bike race). It's from Feb 22, 1879.

Clearly Krauskopf was doping, no?

And then here's a 1994 article that is about a subject familiar to anyone following the Purple Line/Georgetown Branch Trail stories lately. "Arlington Seeks to Reclaim Land on Bicycle Trail; Encroachments Spark Disputes Over Extended Use of Property"

I haven't paid for highbeam membership, so all I have is the lead-in, and I have no idea how this was resolved. I assume it was done the Arlington Way, aka, sumo wrestling.

There are roses and stones and statues in Donna and Gerardo Rivero's Mediterranean villa-style garden in Arlington, and there is a garage.

And winding beside the garage there is a paved and wildflower-trimmed lane, part of Arlington County's 85-mile-and-growing bicycle and walking trail system. Some people think the garage shouldn't be there because a corner of it is on county property and they want it torn down. And the Riveros are angry about that.

 

Monday Afternoon Commute - Railroad

Good afternoon

• CaBi posts another record with 203,896 Bikeshare rides in July. 
• Bikes abandoned at Metro stations have been tagged and after 10 days, they may be removed and sold at auction. And still more parking is needed. 
• While MDOT is installing the "Bicyclists may use full lane" on it's roads, most county and city transportation departments are not. 
• More grants: Montgomery County has been awarded  $40 million in grants for transportation projects at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda. Defense officials say the money will be used on projects including a bicycle and pedestrian path under Maryland Route 355 that will connect the medical center and a Metrorail station. But I doubt many cyclists will use this path. 
• The driver who struck and killed cyclist Lanie Kruszewski in Richmond last week claims he thought he hit a deer. Since 2002, he's been charged with reckless driving four times with one conviction. In two of the other cases, the charge was reduced to a lesser speeding violation. In the fourth case, the charge was amended to improper control/driving. In addition to those cases, Webb has gotten seven other speeding tickets. One of those was amended to disregarding a highway sign, and two were amended to a violation of defective equipment. He also was found guilty of a violation involving a right turn on red. So yes, it is impossible to lose your license in Virginia. As with the Pettigrew case I might believe that the guy thought he hit a deer. And, as in that case, I really don't care. It doesn't explain why he hit a cyclist with a light on her bike. And one has an obligation to determine - with 100% certainty - that they did hit a deer, and not a person, before leaving. So, while morally-speaking, driving away because you thought you hit a deer is better than doing so to avoid legal implications of hitting a person; legally it should be treated as the same thing. If his 2004 Dodge Durango has Airbag Control Module similar to the one the driver in the David Williams case had, I'm giving 10-1 odds that he was speeding.
• Bicycle railroad.

Thursday Morning Commute - One City

Good morning

• Mayor Gray's One City Action Plan calls for expanding bike share stations (by 87 by the end of the year which has already been reported) and bike lanes. Bike lanes would go from 56 now to 61 by 2014, which doesn't sound that aggressive compared to the Action Agenda from 2010 which aspired to have 80 miles by 2012. The One City Plan adds "DDOT will also add high visibility bike lanes with green paint beginning on L Street and in other high conflict areas. Lastly, additional pavement markers that help to better identify bike lanes will also be added to help increase bicycle safety."
• WAMU is not finding as many abandoned bikes as I'd expect. Maybe next they can focus on something that impacts safety.
• Ray LaHood "If accessibility advocates and biking and walking advocates make their voices heard in their state capitols and in their county and city councils, there's no reason to believe that the tremendous progress we've made in the last three years can't continue." Except that many state capitals are dominated by the kind of people who oppose spending money on biking. 
• Velib is 5 years old. 10% of Parisians are members, and car trips are down 25%. Velib has turned a profit the last 3 years. 

DC Junks abandoned bikes

I told you so...

Over the past year, DDOT received 250 requests to remove abandoned bikes. "We've removed a little over 200," he says.

Holben says it takes about 30 days to remove the bikes, including a 10-day period where the bikes are tagged, giving the owners a chance to retrieve them.

Currently, Holben says DDOT has nowhere to store the abandoned bikes, and says they are simply thrown out.  "A lot of times they are just junk, and I don't know, but I assume that they are recycled, as we recycle things at the landfills," says Holben.

Phoenix bikes says they'll take them, maybe that's a good alternative. 

Tuesday Afternoon Commute - L Bar

Good afternoon

• Transportation Nation and WAMU are tracking all of DC's abandoned bikes in the hopes that DDOT will remove them. One commenter at DCist links to this clever method of tagging possibly abandoned bikes. Does it make you sad to know that abandoned bikes go to the dump?
• Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) "typically gets around town on Metro or his bike."
• Earlier this month, a Maryland cyclist - Russell Henman - was killed by a driver in Rehobeth Beach at 2:00 am. The driver - Brian Meegan - hit him from behind without ever stopping and then left the scene dragging the bike beneath his car before pulling into a CVS parking lot. He was reportedly drunk and had been arrested for drunk driving just six weeks earlier in the same area. His insurance had expired. "The documents say Henman’s bicycle had both front and rear lights: the front light was still operating after the crash, and pieces of the rear light were found at the scene...Meegan was charged with first-degree vehicular homicide, leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death, driving under the influence of alcohol, failure to report a collision resulting in injury or death, inattentive driving and failure to have minimum insurance.... In the first incident, Meegan was charged with DUI, failure to have insurance identification in his possession and failure to have registration in his possession. Court documents show his blood alcohol level in the first incident was 0.18, more than twice the legal limit of 0.08." Meegan is out on bail and may have fled. According to his employer “We don’t know where he is."
• "Two doctors and a team trainer associated with Lance Armstrong’s cycling teams during his run of seven consecutive Tour de France titles received lifetime bans Tuesday for doping violations from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency." And, a rider in this year's tour was arrested for doping. 
• Chuck Thies equates livability with "a city that caters to devotees of streetcars, Draconian parking restrictions and bicycling." Actually, that sounds fantastic.

Saturday Morning Ride - Tour de Fat

Today I saw a woman driving with her left hand on the wheel and a cell phone balanced on her left shoulder. Her right arm reached across her chest to the left shoulder where her right hand held the phone in place. It was at least the equivalent of Bikeshare Dad. 

• A cyclist in the Penn Avenue bike lanes was hit by a car making an illegal U-turn. He flipped up on to the hood but was OK. Uniformed Secret Service police were on the scene and another report says the driver got a ticket. 
• Another month, another Capital Bikeshare record. 195,967 trips in May, that's 46% more than last year and 12% above last month (the previous record). 
• "The current [Minnesota Avenue] project area is bounded by A St. SE and Sheriff Rd., NE. There is no space dedicated for bikes in the plans. Now is the time to demand better. DDOT will be hosting a meeting on Tuesday, June 19th at 6:30 pm at Friendship Edison PCS/Woodson Senior High School Cafeteria (4095 Minnesota Avenue NE, Washington, DC 20019). Come and speak out for safer streets for all: bikes included."
• I'm pretty sure it had no bike lanes. Here you can see the RR tracks where the CCT is now.
• In an unforgiving world, one man battles against abandoned bicycles. 
• Photos from the Seersucker Social
• New crosswalk warning signs on the MVT. 
• Chris Slatt explains everything you wanted to know about plans for biking improvements in the Columbia Pike area (and beyond).
• “What we did not realize,” said Annemarie Mott Ewing, who has lived in the neighborhood for four years, “was how much we’d fall in love with the bike path along Sligo Creek.”
• Life expectancy is going up faster in NYC than in the nation as a whole, even in the Bronx - the nation's poorest urban county. Are public health initiatives - that include bike infrastructure - part of the reason?
• The US Olympic Cycling Team was named. It includes Chris Horner, Kristin Armstrong, Tyler Farrar, Teejay van Garderen and Sarah Hammer. But not George Hincapie.