TheWashCycle

Wednesday Afternoon Commute - Auntie Emm

Good afternoon

• Restoration of Memorial Bridge could result in it being closed for 40-100 days. But not for a few years. I doubt any major improvements would be included for cyclists, but what would you change?
• New CaBi stations at S. Arlington Mill Dr & Campbell Ave and S. Kenmore & 24th St S. And then...US Navy Capital Bikeshare? Ironically, you can't ride a bike where it is parked. 
• May is Bike Month.
• Maryland and DC guide to the East Coast Greenway - and Baltimore's trails are marked.
• "Using a helmet to protect your head in a tornado is a NO BRAINER!"

40% of cyclists injured in NYC are hit by taxis

A medical study of injured pedestrians and cyclists in New York City, conducted by a team of trauma surgeons, emergency physicians and researchers from NYU Langone Medical Center found that 

• Victims with an above-normal body mass index were found to have less severe injuries than their counterparts
• Among patients 18 and older, 15 percent of pedestrians and 11 percent of cyclists were found to have consumed alcohol before the collision — a figure that stood out to transportation officials whose focus is often reckless driving. [WC: If we effectively convince people to stop driving drunk, then, of course they'll be more drunk walking and drunk biking incidents. The only way to fix that is to reduce drunkeness in general. Though, biking while drunk is both illegal and ill-advised]
• About 8 percent of both pedestrians and cyclists said they were injured while using an electronic device, including a cellphone or music player. For victims ages 7 to 17, the numbers climbed to more than 10 percent of pedestrians and nearly 30 percent of cyclists.
• Taxicabs pose a disproportionate threat to cyclists, who often compete for the same sliver of curbside roadway. In a finding unlikely to surprise the city’s cyclists, about 40 percent of injured riders were hit by taxis, compared with 25 percent of the pedestrians. 
• More than 80 percent of cyclists rode with traffic flow
• less than a third wore helmets.
• But for cyclists, the study found, injuries spiked from noon to 3 p.m. and outpaced pedestrian injuries from 6 p.m. to midnight — times when food deliveries are most often made.
• One harrowing take-away from the report is that no area, it seems, can be entirely safe. Six percent of pedestrians were injured while on a sidewalk. Of those injured on the street, 44 percent used a crosswalk, with the signal, compared with 23 percent who crossed midblock and 9 percent who crossed against the signal.

pedestrians or cyclists who died at the scene of the accident and never reached the hospital are not included. 

Monday Morning Commute - Bicycle Easter Egg

Good morning

• What causes traffic?
• Arlnigton County's new wayfinding signs are up and they look good. DC has some new ones too I noticed, and I'll be posting photos of them later. 
• Easter was historically a big day for biking. (And, it appears they used the Examiner trick of mismatching the picture with the headline, In this case "Natives Shot Like Dogs")
• Neighbors are worried about how kids will access the new Southern Regional Technology and Recreation Complex in Fort Washington. One key connection might be the Henson Creek Trail. The trail will go under the new Bock Road bridge, which is under construction and is being raised six-feet to accommodate hiking and biking on the trail underneath.
• Austin's new bike map colors roads and trails by a level of comfort.
• "The findings from this paper indicate that while bicycle helmet laws are widespread and thought to be effective, the net effect of these laws on health outcomes is actually not straightforward. It is clear that there are offsetting behaviors and unintended consequences of these laws, and these effects need to be considered by policymakers."
• One possible effect of driverless (and thus mistake-free and crash-free, so the theory goes) cars might be Driverless cars will increase the appeal of walking and biking. I think we're much farther from driverless cars than perhaps the cheerleaders think we are, but it's interesting to conisder how much more people would bike if they didn't think it was possible to get hit by a car.
• "When asked to describe their bicycle in one word, many cyclists of all kinds use the word “freedom.” Nowhere is this description more appropriate than for the women who make up the Afghan National Women’s Cycling Team."

Monday Morning Commute - Voronoi

Does anyone know who coined the term "CaBi"? I remember that I hadn't heard the term until the day it kicked off, but the earliest reference I could find to the term was mid June 2010. Anyone?

• Montgomery County is making repairs to the Capital Crescent Trail area ""Repairs and improvements to CCT shoulder and storm water management facilities will occur starting approximately March 25, 2013 and last approximately 3 months." 
• Introduction to Montgomery County's road code.
• Voronoi Diagram of Capital Bikeshare. This is cool (and I'm glad I know the name because it helped me find a Voronoi diagram of NFL team areas) but it would be cooler if if showed you the closest station as the peacock walks as opposed to how the crow flies. So - walk sheds to each station. 
• When helmets are "counterintuitive". "Although the move might seem counterintuitive in preventing brain injuries, the chairman of AIBA's medical commission, Charles Butler, cites numerous medical studies that suggest fighting without head guards will decrease concussions." Of course, if you really want to protect your brain, you probably shouldn't go into boxing, but still it's an interesting statement about protecting ones head even while not being particularly applicable. 
• LATE ADDITION: WAMU has coverage of the Bike DC cancellation. "Every time we would come back with a new proposal, we would get a new set of requirements that we needed to meet and a new order of meeting them," says Farthing. "We were just never able to get a clear yes or a clear no that would give us a next step we could go to, and eventually ran out of time to secure sponsorships and to sell tickets.".....National Park Service spokeswoman Jenny Anzelmo-Sarles was unaware the event had been cancelled until we told her.

Monday Morning Commute - No Bags

Good morning

• One cyclist left their Go-getter bike bag on their bike while they visited the Library of Congress and House office buildings. Capitol Police treated it as a bomb threat and mutilated it. "I couldn’t help myself and I said holy crap that’s a $150 bag. They offered me no sympathy and told me I shouldn’t leave a bag on the bike near the Capitol buildings or anywhere around DC." So if you're coming to the bike summit this week, keep that in mind. 
• More development coming along the ART.
• If the Purple Line, and thus the extended CCT, is built, there will be less development along it in the Chevy Chase Lake area. In the image below, you can see the trail and it's bridge over Conn Ave on the north side of the Purple Line. And, in other Purple Line/CCT news, silver spring trails explains why the project doesn't need a Health Impact Assessment. 
• At a recent Alexandria Traffic Board Hearing, T&ES staff requested approval to remove one car parking space on King Street to allow for the installation of a bike corral with space for 8 bikes. "T&ES staff has coordinated with the Old Town Civic Association and key businesses located at the intersection of King Street and Union Street. None of the businesses that were contacted posed an objection to the removal of the parking space, and many noted that they believed the additional bicycle parking would bring more business to their establishments."
• Council Staff on the need for automatic points in car collisions with cyclists: "Currently, there is no fine or penalty for a driver who collides with a bicyclist. If a driver collides with a cyclist as a result of violating traffic laws, e.g. failure to yield, the driver is only cited for the underlying infraction. Certain traffic offenses against pedestrians are currently singled out for enhanced penalties where the same offenses against bicycles are treated identically to an offense between two cars. While it is often desirable to treat cars and bikes equally under the law, the vulnerability of cyclists to collisions with cars warrants increased penalties. This bill is necessary in order to create more severe penalties for drivers who hit cyclists and to eliminate ambiguity surrounding who should be cited for which violations in the event of a collision. Under current District law, hitting a cyclist does not amount to an offense beyond any other moving violation that led to the collision. With respect to cyclists, the practice of citing drivers for the infraction that caused the accident is insufficient for several reasons. MPD has a questionable history when it comes to properly citing drivers involved in accidents with cyclists. In some instances MPD ticketed the cyclist who was hit by a car, even though hitting a cyclist would seem to be a prima facie violation of the 3-foot passing requirement. Additionally, even when MPD does properly cite a driver who hits a cyclist, the penalty may be minimal. District law already has a citable offense for colliding with a pedestrian. This amendment would simply put cyclists on par with other vulnerable road users."
• I think I missed this article when it came out. There's nothing new in it if you follow the blog, but it's a pretty good summary of the status and recent history of bicycle transportation in DC. 
• The helmet challange - ask your helmet-law advocate to take it. Brilliant.
• Richard Layman disagrees with the analysis of "why cyclists enrage drivers" from BBC futures. While I agree with him that drivers aren't morally superior, I do think that part of the explanation is that cyclists break rules that drivers hold above the law - like cutting in line (even though that isn't really what's happening) and not running red lights from a stop. It's the "rules" that cyclists break that make them angry, even when not an actual law or rule (like riding in the street or on the sidewalk). But other violations, like riding without a headlight, almost never seem to get mentioned, even though it's much more dangerous.  
• Starting this week, a long stretch of the W&OD trail ( from Shirlington in Arlington County, all the way to the western town limit of Herndon in Fairfax County) will be open for extended hours - from 5am to 9pm - as part of a pilot program. 
• National Transportation Safety Board, not so interested in bike/ped safety. 

Chevy Chase Lake Site Plan

Improvement to Maryland Three-Foot Law Defeated in Committee

The Environmental Matters Committee gave an unfavorable report yesterday to House Bill 445, which would have removed the "narrow highway" exception to Maryland's three-foot safe passing statute.  The Committee also rejected HB 160, which would have legalized riding bikes on sidewalks in localities with no local laws on the subject (Baltimore, Montgomery, Prince Georges, and Howard have local laws.)

As we've discussed before on the Washcycle, Maryland's three-foot law has four confusing exceptions.  One of those exceptions allows drivers to pass with less than three feet of clearance if the highway is too narrow for a driver to pass with three feet of clearance.  No one knows precisely what that exception means:  Bike Maryland thinks that this exception refers to virtually every two-lane road with a double yellow line, while I think that, regardless of what was in the mind of Delegate Malone when he inserted the provision, the rules of statutory construction mean that the exception only applies to narrow highways (e.g. country roads or one-lane bridges).  But if the cycling advocates can't agree on what it means, clearly the statute needs clarification.  The best way to clarify the statute would have been to eliminate this exception, which this bill would have done.

Why did the bill fail?  We don't know yet, though some of the contributing factors are obvious. Cycling advocates have focused more on HB 339, the mandatory helmet bill.  Two weeks ago, ten advocates showed up to a hearing at the Environmental Matters Committee, and passionately offered a wide array of arguments against the helmet bill. About 20 minutes later, Delegate Cardin presented the safe-passing bill to the same commitee, and only three of those advocates testified, along with Bike Maryland (which has taken no position on the helmet bill).  None of the advocates were as passionate about the three-foot bill as they were in opposing the helmet bill.

The truck drivers opposed the safe-passing bill, and interpret the existing law the same way Bike Maryland construes it.  They want to be able to pass cyclists more closely than three feet if the alternatives are to cross the double yellow line or wait.  Trucks are wider than cars:  It will often be possible for a car and a bike to share a lane with a three-foot clearance (if the cyclist hugs the edge).  But a 9-foot truck can only pass with 1-foot of clearance, and the truckers want to be able to continue doing so.  One representative added that they can't really tell whether they are passing with 3' feet or 2'6" anyway.  None of the cycling advocates made a strong case for why a safety buffer is more important than giving truckers what they want.

Another contributing factor was that Delegate Cardin also seemed to be preoccupied with other matters.  His presentation starts at 1:25:00 in the video of the hearing.  There was a subsequent colloquy with Delegate Vitale in which it became clear that the committee and Delegate Cardin had different versions of the bill (1:35:00).  A few minutes later, (1:38:00) Delegate Cardin closed that colloquy by providing an explanation that seemed to more closely resemble last year's bill than this year's bill.

If these are the reasons the bill failed this year, I hope that Delegate Cardin and Bike Maryland will stick with this version of the bill and try again next year.  It was a step in the right direction, and the fact that we did not convince the Committee this year had more to do with the fact that our minds were elsewhere than the merits of the bill.

With a little more preparation, we can make the case for removing the narrow-highway exception.  The idea that trucks should be able to pass bikes with less clearance than cars, simply because trucks are wider, is absurd.

(Jim Titus is a cycling advocate from Prince George's County.  The opinions expressed here do not represent the views of any organization with which he is affiliated.)

 

Friday Morning Commute - % on sidewalks

Good morning

• MV Jantzen has another map of biking in DC. This time using bicycle count data. Be sure to play with the picklist on the bottom to see how things differ when you look at helmet use or CaBi use. For example, the statistics tell you that 27% of cyclists counted were on sidewalks, but when you choose "% on sidewalk" you see that almost all the dark red ones are on bridges. Helmet use really goes down east of the river, perhaps lending support to the idea that helmet laws especially hurt the poor.
• Gotta listen to the boss. 
• On Feb 13, the Rockville Planning Commission discussed the final draft of Rockville’s Pike Plan and a set of associated zoning requirements for the area along Rockville Pike from just south of Town Center to the city’s southern border. "The draft plan calls for a boulevard design on Md. 355 with more side streets, low-speed access roads and pedestrian crossings. It also seeks to bring new buildings closer to sidewalks and to break up the area into smaller, more walkable blocks...The new Pike Plan was prompted by concerns about traffic, accommodations for pedestrians and bicyclists, and development interest near the Twinbrook Metro station, which opened in 1984, according to the draft plan."

Monday Morning Commute - Retrofit

Forgot to mention that one of the super bowl commercials - the one with the kid who goes stag to the prom and then, powered by the confidence his dad's car gave him, kissed the prom queen - featured Corinne Bohrer star of the bike messenger TV Show "Double Rush". If his dad had just given him his Bianchi, the kid would have kissed the prom queen and NOT have been punched in the face. 

• Sigh, this came up in the comments last week. Just because 14th Street has the most bicycle crashes doesn't mean that it is the most dangerous street in DC for cyclists. It is likely due to the fact that 14th Street has a bunch of cyclists. It is the crashiest street in DC. WTOP doesn't seem to understand that. The SE/SW Freeway is probably more dangerous. 
• On Meet the Press this week, new White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough admitted tha Obama ordered him to stop biking to work. 
• The Alexandria City Council will re-vote on the city's Waterfront Plan to put an end to a lawsuit that threatens to delay it. "The city envisions a comprehensive plan that would unify the multiple parks, parking lots, two marinas, boat club, residences and [Mt Vernon] bike trail, as well as address the area’s persistent flooding. Outside the boundaries of the waterfront plan, but still along the waterfront, are high-rise hotels, office buildings and a now-abandoned power plant.
• Cycle MoCo: "The Maryland legislature is considering House Bill 445 which would strengthen the flawed “three foot” law enacted last year."
• How did Doug Landau become WTOP's interviewee for their bike legislation story? Landau, it appears, supports the helmet legislation because cyclists sometimes have head injuries. But he's more neutral on his own site. Still, why would they seek him out - he's not even from Maryland. It reads like a big ad.
• Retrofitting cities can make them greener, and bike lanes are a pretty cheap way to do that.
• Cyclist in Utah hit by car, then hit and killed by train. 

Nancy Floreen's statement on bike helmet law

Here

I am lucky to have survived my bike accident 15 years ago, so I feel strongly about the proposed Maryland law to require all bicyclists, not just children, to wear a helmet. I just delivered this testimony to the Maryland House of Delegates Environmental Matters Committee in Annapolis:

Good afternoon, Ms. McIntosh and members of the committee. My name is Nancy Floreen, and I am an at-large member of the Montgomery County Council; however, I am testifying as an individual today.

Fifteen years ago I took a leisurely bike ride on the Capital Crescent Trail and wound up in the intensive care unit of the Georgetown University Hospital neurology department. I spent five days there, and while I eventually recovered, I never regained any memories of the accident. I don’t really know what happened, but I do know that I was not wearing a helmet.

That’s why I’m here to ask you to vote for HB339, requiring all bicyclists to wear a helmet.

I understand that there is significant opposition to this bill, and I appreciate the arguments made by bicycle advocates that this bill could discourage people from bicycling, particularly in the emerging bikeshare program. These are valid points.

Still, I cannot stress enough the importance of wearing a helmet. According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than a half a million people in the US are treated in emergency rooms annually--and more than 700 people die--as a result of bicycle-related injuries. Ninety-one percent of those killed in biking accidents are not wearing helmets. We can change these statistics. We must change these statistics.

While I am here in support of HB339, I want to note that a helmet law is only one of many actions we must take to make bicycling safe and accessible. We must also create a complete bicycle network with bike lanes connecting to each other as well as to major destinations like schools, transit stations and job centers.

These networks require roadway improvements like buffered and non-buffered bike lanes, shared use markings and conflict zone markings. Specifically, I encourage the State to look at placing bike lanes on Georgia Avenue from Spring Street to 13th Street and on the east side of Colesville Road from East-West Highway north to Georgia Avenue. These improvements will do as much as (if not more than) a helmet law to ensure bicycle safety for current riders in addition to those who may use bikeshare.

In 1884, Mark Twain said, “Get a bicycle. You will certainly not regret it…if you live.” It’s 2013, and I look forward to continuing to work together to make bicycling safe and enjoyable for everyone. Thank you for your time and attention to this matter today, and remember…governing is like riding a bicycle; to keep your balance you must keep moving forward.

She acknowledges that opponents have valid points, but then never addresses them. She only says that wearing helmets can improve outcomes* - which the opposition has not denied. Does she really think this is the only standard for such a law? If so - sunscreen legislation should also be pursued.

*she does pull out some questionable "facts".

Wednesday Afternoon Commute - altruistic punishment

Good afternoon. 

• The WeMoveDC Idea Exchange was last Saturday. There is some coverage from the BAC, WABA and GGW. 
• The Navy Yard section of the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail is open again. Biking is still not allowed. 
• Mayor Gray won't rule out a congestion tax. "It's a possibility. I wouldn't rule it out," Gray says. "I haven't considered it yet. I know they do that in London where you can't go into certain areas of the city with a car without paying. But I don't think we're at that point yet." Such a move could really make bicycling a more appealing option to a lot of people. 
• I failed to mention this from the helmet article yesterday " This session, another bill would open up sidewalks to cyclists to give the road-shy a place to pedal, said Del. Aruna Miller, a Montgomery Democrat. But cyclists oppose that measure, too, in the name of promoting driver awareness of cyclists." Whoa. Did not know about that. Which cyclists oppose making sidewalk cycling legal? Is that a WABA or BikeMaryland position?
• "Completion of the last missing piece of a trail network connecting Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., will be celebrated at a June 15 event in West Homestead and at the Point in Downtown Pittsburgh." So I definitely think this should also be celebrated here in DC. Perhaps in Georgetown. I don't know who should organize it (WABA or the C&O Canal group or DDOT or who?) But they didn't just celebrate the Chunnel opening in England.
• Why driver's hate cyclists (one theory): they're perceived as rule-breaking free riders "Then along come cyclists, innocently following what they see are the rules of the road, but doing things that drivers aren't allowed to: overtaking queues of cars, moving at well below the speed limit or undertaking on the inside."
• "the League does not support mandatory helmet laws because of the many potential unintended consequences". And MoBike weighs in on the law as well.
• National bike advocates want the President to appoint a secretary of transportation who supports cycling as much as Ray Lahood does.