TheWashCycle

Idaho Stop Wonk

I got tired of constantly having to look things up about the Idaho Stop like it's history and where it exists and where it has been introduced as law, etc... I realized that this is just what wikipedia is for, and I was surprised that they didn't already have a page for it. So I created one. Any errors, omissions or notices of bias you could call to my attention would be appreciated. 

Cheh promotes Conn Ave cycle-tracks at hearing

I testified yesterday at a hearing of the DC Council's Committee on Transportation & the Environment. The hearing was on Pedestrian And Bicycle Infrastructure and Safety and on the Bicycle Safety Amendment Act of 2013.

All the speakers I heard from either completely supported the bill, had no opinion on it or supported everything but the removal of the bell mandate, though in most cases they didn't really seem to have heard about that part until the hearing, so I wouldn't say they were passionate about it. I didn't stay for the whole hearing, but of the last three speakers I didn't hear from, I was sure that two would support it. 

You can read WABA's testimony here. An eventually you'll be able to watch the whole hearing here. 

Mary Cheh, the Chair of the committee, was the only CM in attendance (though Grosso sent a staffer), and I was pretty enthused about her comments on biking and walking. It's pretty clear that she bikes frequently, a fact I already knew, but one that came though clearly in her questions and comments. She talked about biking from the District Building to Sibley, which is no short haul. And I think the personal experience informed some of her opinions.

The biggest piece of news to me, though apparently it had been discussed at a previous hearing, is that Cheh wants DDOT to put in cycle-tracks on Connecticut Avenue. I think she said "down the middle" like on Pennsylvania Avenue, but I may have heard wrong. As the Chair of the committee with oversight of DDOT, that's more than just a casual request. WABA clearly supports cycle-tracks there and on other major arterials as well. 

She also took the opportunity several times to call on DDOT to repave the 15th Street cycletrack which she said was starting to require a mountain bike.

She asked questions about the Idaho Stop, and seemed open to the idea, though I know WABA wants to see contributory negligence fixed first.

There was a lot of discussion about sidewalk cycling. Several speakers after me were concerned about the issue, with one wanting it banned in Georgetown. Though of that group of speakers, one neighborhood advocate said that cyclist on the sidewalk was not even mentioned in a poll of his groups members about sidewalk safety. Cheh seemed to agree with WABA, that sidewalk cycling is often not ideal, but banning it would be an over-reaction and that it would discourage new cyclists, concerned cyclists from riding. I said that DDOT should review crash data on sidewalks before any decision is made. I've looked at the issue before, but MPD doesn't always report if a crash happened on the sidewalk, so the data is weak, but I think there are actually few crashes, and they are rarely serious. I will say this:

• I know of 5 ped-bike fatal crashes in the DC area and none of them were the result of sidewalk cycling
• DDOT counts show that few cyclists ride on sidewalks, unless it is some place like the National Mall
• Cyclists and pedestrians can share space safely as demonstrated on numerous trails

Cheh asked if MPD was enforcing laws, specifically laws about parking in the bike lanes. I told her that even after the Council added a fine to the law, enforcement didn't seem to pick up and that there was even a website dedicated to "Who is parking in the L Street Cycle track today".  There was also talk of the new rules for closing bike lanes and creating "safe accommodations", with a few speakers concerned that it would be no more effectively carried out than it is for sidewalks now.

Cheh also wanted to know about education and what the District could do to better educate drivers.

I have to say it was all a breath of fresh air. There was a little bit of "cyclists always run red lights," calls for banning bikes on sidewalks and one complaint about the "preferential treatment" cyclist receive, but in general there was a lot of agreement. And Cheh came off as at least as sympathetic to the position of cyclists and pedestrians as anyone else in DC government. I know I was concerned that by losing Tommy Wells as head of that committee we were losing someone who understood the importance of active transportation, but Cheh is right there with him. When the chair of the Pedestrian Advisory Council said that DDOT Director Terry Bellamy might attend a meeting she said she wanted to know if he would so she could attend too. 

In the end, I'm confident the law is going to pass, and I look forward to cycle-tracks on DC's diagonal streets. 

Monday Morning Commute - Nothing more than an accident

Good morning

• Work is wrapping on the new MVT trail crossing of the GW Parkway. But it makes it clear who has the right of way (even though it's a crosswalk).
• All about the 50 States Ride.
• The Times has a lengthy story on Ciclovias, covering everything from their origin in Bogota, to DC's semi-ciclovia Feet in the Street. 
• According to BikeGuard, a free online bike registry, Maryland is dead last in per-capita bicycle commuter spending. 
• George Mason Univeristy now has bike sharing in the form of viaCycle.
• The director of the Transportation Department for the City of Annapolis wrote an editorial on how to facilitate all forms of transportation in a city designed for horse and buggy. He writes about the problems of parking and how to move people short distances from parking garages to commercial areas. He only mentions cyclists once, and only in passing. It would seem like bike-sharing could help a lot - especially in a college town with military retirees who are probably fitter than your average citizen. 
• VBF wants to know what you think of the Idaho Stop.
• Disturbing news out of interbike. Even though cycling is up as a means of transportation, "the bicycle market in the US has been relatively flat (in terms of revenues) since 2004 and that trend continued in 2011. The number of bicycle shops in the US has declined by over 22% in the last 9 years (over 1,000 shop locations have closed their doors during this time)." [Thanks to the Arlington BAC for the data]. Perhaps the Lance Armstrong effect is wearing off, and there are now fewer people buying high end bikes even as more bikes are being sold. And/or perhaps the internet is cutting into LBS sales.
• NYC launches it's new LOOK campaign. [Despite angering advocates for the blind, it's likely to be much more successful than the previous TASTE campaign]
• REI gave millions to 260 non-profits, though I don't see any local ones that jump out at me. 
• Iris Stagner, a member of the BikeTexas Board of Directors and a longtime promoter of bike safety and education, was killed on Monday after being hit from behind by a pickup truck while riding on U.S. Route 180 outside Mineral Wells, Texas. "Sheriff Ira Mercer said the driver of a white pickup involved stopped. Mercer said indications were the incident was nothing more than an accident and that the setting sun likely played a factor."
• In Los Altos, CA, cyclists were found to blame in crashes 74% of the time. The most common violation was "unsafe speed." 16 cyclists were blamed for this, but only 1 driver was.

Ethics and Jaybiking

Randy Cohen's article about the ethics of Idaho stop-style jaybiking (ISJ) led to quite a bit of discussion on the internet yesterday, and while I think Cohen's piece did make a weak defense of ISJ, the criticism misses the mark as well.

Cohen's piece goes a long way to make one subtle point.

But although it is illegal, I believe it is ethical....A fundamental concern of ethics is the effect of our actions on others. My actions harm no one.

He also claims that if meets the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant who's categorical imperative was "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law" because Cohen wants everyone to behave as he does.

Now, I'm not sure if we can all agree that Kant's moral philosophy is so prevalent or accepted that it is all we need to decide the ethics of certain behavior, but nonetheless, it is Cohen's point.

Felix Salmon misses this. He focuses first on another line

“I flout the law when I’m on my bike,” he writes; “you do it when you are on foot, at least if you are like most New Yorkers.”

This, of course, is one of the weakest ethical defenses imaginable: if lots of other people are flouting the law, that doesn’t give anybody else the ethical right to do so, let alone the legal right.

Salmon would be right, if this were Cohen's defense. It isn't.  When Cohen writes that all cyclists should ride like he does, Salmon also misses the point of that and the reference to Kant.

The “should” at the end of this passage is utterly indefensible. At best, Cohen has demonstrated that he’s causing no harm to others (although I’ll take issue with that in a moment). But if Cohen is doing something illegal — which, by his own admission he is — then he needs something much stronger than “no harm to others” before he urges such behavior on all other cyclists.

What Cohen is arguing is that the Idaho Stop should be legal. That's the should. And in so doing, he's arguing that he's meeting Kant's first formulation that how he acts is what should be universal law. So he isn't arguing so much that people break the law, but that the law be changed. This is the point of the end of his column

Laws work best when they are voluntarily heeded by people who regard them as reasonable. There aren’t enough cops to coerce everyone into obeying every law all the time. If cycling laws were a wise response to actual cycling rather than a clumsy misapplication of motor vehicle laws, I suspect that compliance, even by me, would rise.

Cohen is saying the law should be changed, and until then he'll break it.

Salmon then stakes out an alternate position from Cohen's. Where Cohen argues that it is OK to break the law if it causes no harm, Salmon says it is OK to break the law only when following it causes harm. You may or may not agree with one of them.

Salmon then pulls out the old "If we follow the law, we can get the respect of drivers" appeasement strategy. But as he notes, what really annoys drivers is when cyclists are in the road in front of them and slow them down. My experience is that this, not ISJ, is what keeps us from getting "respect" from the minority of drivers who do the bulk of complaining. So if you really want to appease the fringe of drivers who fail to respect cyclists, you're going to have to get out of the road.

Salmon somehow tries to distinguish between jaybiking and jaywalking by arguing that peds fear cars. And cyclists don't? He seems to be arguing that because pedestrians don't want to walk down the middle of the street, it's OK for them to jaywalk - which is in contrast to his rule above that "it is OK to break the law only when following it causes harm."

Salmon writes of Cohen

Doesn’t he understand that in order for New York to work as a cycling city, cyclists will have to stop taking the law into their own hands?

Doesn't Salmon understand that Cohen wants to bring New York cyclist into compliance by making normal, safe cycling behavior legal?

Salmon also tries to argue the slippery slope. But Cohen has a reasonable limiting factor - he only does the things that cause no harm and that he thinks every cyclists should be free to do. That Salmon doesn't believe Cohen can do this is irrelevant. Who should I trust more on how Cohen behaves - Salmon or Cohen?

That Salmon then admits that he jaybikes removes all his ability to preach to us about how it

behooves all cyclists to adhere to the law as it stands, even if they’re convinced that they’re doing no harm.

At least Cohen follows his own rules.

Eric Jaffe dedicates much of his column on the question of why cyclists run red lights.

In an upcoming issue of the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention the researchers cite three main reasons for the behavior: the need to turn, the failure of a signal to recognize them at an intersection, and the absence of others on the road.

Jaffee adds

As for breaking a law you don't agree with, readers are left to decide for themselves whether Cohen's actions are indeed ethical. Sure, some riders will exercise great judgment and save time. Then again others will make poor decisions and create more confusion (and, toward bike riders, resentment) than already exists on city streets. Some traffic laws may be inefficient or just plain wrong, but letting everyone on the road decide which ones to honor doesn't seem all that right.

But that's already the situation we have. Everyone decides which laws to honor right now. Most cyclists choose to not obey red lights and stop signs, and most police choose not to enforce it and some places have chosen to make that legal. Most drivers have chosen to obey traffic lights (but not stop signs). Considering how willing drivers are to break traffic laws, the question Jaffee should be asking is "Why don't drivers run red lights the way that cyclists do?" I think the answer to that has nothing to do with ethical drivers, but their knowledge that it's orders of magnitude more dangerous - to them - to do so. It is a matter of self-preservation, not high moral fiber.

And the argument that we shouldn't slip in to anarchy, where everyone decides which laws to follows, is not an argument against Cohen's position. Again, he has a limiting factor.

But there is another argument for why ISJ may, in fact, not be ethical. And that is that it does cause harm if done where it's illegal. One could make an argument that breaking the law - even a minor law like this that is basically unenforced and carries only a $25 fine in DC - tears at the fabric of civilized society and in so doing is net negative. That is hard to prove or disprove, but it's not unreasonable.

Of course, there is also the argument that Cohen hints at. Driving a car - because of all of it's negative externalities (safety, pollution, resource consumption, land use, health, etc...) - is unethical (unless, I suppose, you make offsetting payments to cover the costs of these externalities).Certainly those negative externalities exceed the tug at civil society that jaybiking represents.

Now of course, the choice is not between driving a car and jaybiking. Nor is it necessarily jaybiking and riding legally. The choice is between jaybiking, riding legally and travelling by some other means, likely with higher externalities.

If we could turn on a machine that would make it impossible for cyclists to run red lights and stop signs, would it be smart to do so? Would it be ethical? What we would be doing is reducing the utility of bikes, without any likely safety gain. Some cyclists would surely continue to ride under the new paradigm, but other cyclists would opt out. Total utility would very likely go down.

The laws we currently have are the closest we can come to that machine. Cohen is arguing that we should turn it off, and that it is more ethical to do so. And I have to agree.

Monday Morning Commute - Stick the Landing

Good morning

• MAP-21 (the new federal transportation bill) will no longer mandate that money be spent on biking. So the advocacy push moves to the states - and DC. Spokes (page 20) contacted Maryland, DC and Virginia officials to see what they planned to do starting Oct 1.  So far, all three plan to keep their Safe Routes to Schools Coordinator, continue funding Recreation Trails Programs and fund Transportation Enhancement programs. 
• It's official: treating red lights as stop signs, and stop signs as yield signs is ethical - even when not legal. [An ethisist says so]. The column also has a local tidbit " Uninterrupted motion, gliding silently and swiftly, is a joy. It’s why I ride. And it’s why Stephen G. Breyer says he rides, sometimes to work at the Supreme Court: “The advantages? Exercise, no parking problems, gas prices, it’s fun. An automobile is expensive. You have to find a place to park and it’s not fun. So why not ride a bicycle? I recommend it.” I don’t know if he runs red lights. I hope so." BTWD speaker!
• Human rights bike rack.
• Many MoCo neighborhoods are closing their street grid to reduce traffic. This is a bad idea, and bad for cyclists who would like to avoid traffic sewers. A better option is to "turn streets like Ellsworth Drive into "neighborhood greenways," also known as "bike boulevards," designed to give people on foot or bike priority over drivers. That's sort of what currently exists on Second Avenue between 16th and Spring streets in Silver Spring, which allows bikes and buses during rush hour, but not cars. And if we're going to turn a street into a dead-end, we should at least make it passable for pedestrians and bicyclists, like on Middleton Lane near downtown Bethesda."
• Real estate executive Mark Schneider, a man who was "instrumental in the development of Heinz Field, PNC Park and the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh died Sunday from injuries he sustained after crashing his bicycle near Thurmont" two weekends ago during a 100 mile charity ride. "Schneider was at the rear of a group of nine riders near the 8300 block of Ramsburg Road when he took a left turn down a hill and lost control of his bicycle."
• UConn basketball coach Jim Calhoun injured in a bicycle accident for the 2nd time in 4 years.
• Austin is getting bike sharing. 

Thursday Afternoon Commute - Paris and Idaho

Good evening

• A new GWU building at Washington Circle will feature "15 bicycle storage spaces inside the building as well as 66 spaces on the exterior, with shower and changing facilities provided."
• More renderings of the SW Waterfront's Phase II which will include "two bike routes: one a continuation of the Maine Avenue sidepath from the west, and a "shared street" next to the water that continues the existing path from the south (east)."
• An Arlington boathouse could be built along the Mt Vernon Trail at TR Island or Gravelly Point.
• 42% of London cyclists say they have been knocked off their bike by motor vehicles at least once. 15% have hit a pedestrian at least once.  Also, England has insurance for cyclists. 
• Paris is testing out the Idaho stop at 15 intersections. This was done because "road safety experts deemed the measure would cut road accidents." "The measure is already being tested in Bordeaux, Strasbourg and Nantes, where "these experiments have led to no rise in the number of accidents," according to Paris' town hall."

Monday Morning Ride - 2012

Good morning. I hope everyone avoided Y2K+12 related computer bugs.

• Vincent Orange is busted for parking in the 15th Street cycletrack. He issued a twitpology, but without explaning how it happened.  
• Dr. Gridlock has one expected bike facility for 2012 that I left off "construction of a pedestrian bridge between the Minnesota Avenue Metro station and Kenilworth Avenue to the Parkside community." It's not too significant though, because they're just replacing or rebuilding an existing pedestrian bridge.
• Alexandria's Transportation Commission meets on Wednesday. It looks like some budget reductions are coming down the pipeline and as a result, funding for the Backlick Run multi-use paths is delayed. 
• If I'm reading this article about "bizarre" new laws proposed in VA this year correctly, Del James Edmunds (R-South Boston) has submitted a bill that would basically bring the Idaho Stop to Virginia. The reporter doesn't seem to understand the issue very well. "The gen­esis of a bike measure from Del. James E. Edmunds II (R-South Boston) is less certain. He did not return e-mail and phone messages seeking comment. The bill would free bicyclists who approach red traffic lights from the need to — who knew? — wait two minutes before pedaling on." (Update: See the bill here. It is not an improvement)
• More on the plan of Frederick, MD police to stop teenage cyclists from cycling recklessly. "Children older than 10 are prohibited from riding bikes on sidewalks in the historic district, but can ride bikes on Carroll Creek Linear Park as long as they are not negligent, according to city law."
• While there is one report that trail clearing has begun for the South Shore Trail between Odenton and Annapolis, a witness says it looks like brush clearing for the power lines over the old ROW.

Friday Afternoon Commute - Everybody runs, sometimes

Good Afternoon. Happy 29th birthday to Mrs. Washcycle.

• The Atlantic published results from an observation of red light and stop sign compliance in Portland. 
  • The report [PDF] is available here, and shows that of the 497 cars observed only 36 ran red lights, while 58 of the 99 bicycles observed blew right through. That's about 7 percent of cars compared to 58 percent of bicycles. Two of the three intersections the students chose to study have a cycle track, or a bicycle lane separated from traffic lanes. The researchers found that cyclists were more likely to run red lights at the intersections with the cycle track, with about 70 percent of riders running lights compared to less than 40 percent on the shared street intersection.
  • A separate study "showed bicyclists came to a complete stop only 7 percent of the time. It also showed that motorists stop completely only 22 percent of the time."
  • The headline calls out cyclists, but I think compliance is pretty low for both groups, so maybe the headline "Most people break the law" would be more accurate. Could be filed in the obvious section. If only 22% of drivers stop at stop signs, then they also have "selective vision when it comes to stop signs and traffic signals."
  • I wonder how they count "cars observed." Not every car that comes to an intersection and stops has a chance to run a red light. If you are driving and desperately want to run the light, but the two cars in front of you don't, you are largely screwed; but on a bike, you're almost never boxed in. Running is always an option. So what is the count for those who had an opportunity to run the light, I wonder.
  • The data on the difference between compliance on roads with cycletracks and those without is new and interesting.
  • "While it's not likely that cyclists will begin to comply fully with the laws of the road, this study does shed some more light on the potential dangers of the road." How it does this, the author never says. What has been shown is that cyclists don't comply with these laws as often as drivers, and drivers comply less than 100%. It doesn't show that the behavior of cyclists is dangerous. In fact there is no mention of crashes, injuries or fatalities, which is what you would need to make any conclusions about safety. In Idaho most of this behavior by cyclists would be legal, and all the evidence points to it being as safe as the status quo, if not safer.
  • "And though bike-person accidents aren't incredibly widespread, they do happen." - in my experience this is usually because or wrong-way cycling, sidewalk-cycling and jaywalking. 
  • "Even more concerning should be the increasing potential of car-bike accidents that can occur when stop lights are ignored." What increasing potential? Where are the facts?
  • "But there's also a danger that the more comfortable we get going green on a red, the more likely we are to relax our reflexes and de-elevate our senses to the four-wheeled threats that surround us." Again, Idaho stands in direct contradiction to this. 
  • The City Paper got in on it too, with Shani Hilton also calling it dangerous - but later saying that the feeling of anxiety erratic behavior causes can leed to hostility. But I'd point out that it most cyclists run stop signs and red lights, then it shouldn't be "unpredictable." It should be expected. 

 

• As part of a fare restructuring, Metro might "reduce the fee for bicycle lockers to $120 based on low demand for lockers." I guess raising the fare was a mistake then?
• More on the DDOT/Takoma/CaBi station denial story. "...it would also force maintenance crews off their normal routes to take care of the bikes."
• OK, maybe the bike lanes on Wisconsin are back on. "Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2E voted to approve the first phase of a District Department of Transportation project that would restrict traffic on Wisconsin Avenue to allow for widened sidewalks and the addition of bike lanes."

Tuesday Afternoon Commute - dead red

Good Afternoon. I failed to note the 50th Anniversary of Peace Corps last week (though really it's in March) so consider it now noted.

• Kansas passes a "dead red" law, much like Virginia did last year and other states have done. Their law says that bicycles may continue through a red light if it doesn't change in a "reasonable" amount of time, instead of 120 seconds like Virginia's law does. But that doesn't make it an Idaho Stop law in my opinion. New Mexico's real Idaho Stop bill, meanwhile, made it out of the House, but died in the Senate.
• T4America corrects Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on his misstatements and errors relating to Transportation Enhancements. 

Friday Morning Commute - The Final Countdown

Today, if the weather holds out and everything else works, will be the last Space Shuttle launch ever, which makes me nostalgic for my brief period testing software for the Shuttles (I wonder if any of the code my team wrote is still on board). They had just upgraded the computers and the new ones had 1 MB of memory (up from 500kb) and our job was to fill up that 500kb with useful stuff. I worked on testing code that would allow them to redirect the launch path during flight based on real time weather observations. This would increase accuracy of orbit insertion and allow them to conserve fuel so that they could stay in orbit longer. Anyway it was all pretty cool, and when I got to Goddard I wondered why the place didn't shut down during a launch so that everyone could gather around TV monitors to watch. I guess it was more of a Johnson thing. At Kennedy, I suspect they just go outside.

• The NCPC picked the winner of the President's Park South Design Competition. It wasn't the one that showed bike lanes on E Street though. Of the winner and E Street they wrote "Should threat conditions change in the future, this design could also accommodate re-opening E Street, NW without requiring significant changes."
• Another winner, the team that is redesigning the Southwest Waterfront, filed a preliminary report with the DC zoning office, bringing them one step closer to breaking ground. The three phase project, expected to complete in 2022, will, among other things, "turn Water Street into a promenade with 60' of width shared between pedestrians, streetcars, bikes and outdoor diners."
• BikingTown is coming in September. I have to remember to sign up to lead a tour next year. I have a good one.
• NoMa's summer screen next week (July 13th) has "a "bike-in" theme—the first 50 bikers will win a NoMa bike swag bag." The movie is The Dejarling Limited.
• There are just so many things wrong here. (1) The "self-righteous environmental snobbery" is all in her head. We're just trying to get somewhere, same as you. (2) Relegating cyclists to bike lanes or "tough cookies" when none are available is going to require a lot of cookies. (3) Anyone who thinks they're the next Lance Armstrong goes faster than 5 mph. (4) "I rev my engine in hopes of scaring the sheets out of the offensive biker. It has never worked." Classy - and illegal. She's only 19 I suppose.
• The Custis Trail is having some paving work done. "The contractor has moved beyond the projected section and will complete resurfacing up to the Lincoln Street ramp today. The detour takes you around to 14th Street, then back on the Custis trail. This section of the Custis Trail is expected to be open Friday 7/8."
• The author of this story about the new law that let's two-wheeled vehicles run red lights after waiting 120 seconds is not 19, so I don't know what their excuse is. "It’s a small victory, two-wheeled drivers say, in a constant battle between those on bikes and those behind the wheel. But some drivers feel it’s putting the brakes on safety." What? This has nothing to do with the "battle between" drivers and cyclists. It's about a flaw in technology. The video (at bottom) briefly mentions this, but mostly they act like this law is an Idaho Stop law. If only. And then some guy rambles on about bikes on the sidewalk, because that's relevant.
• Another try for the children's bike ride with the Columbia police. 
• Democrat Pamela Danner, running for the 34th Virginia District House of Delegates seat against freshman incumbent Republican Barbara Comstock, "would work to... bolster pedestrian and bicyclist access to future Metrorail stations on the Silver Line."
• Charles Blackford, the cyclist who died on Wednesday, may have been drinking. It is unlikely any charges will stem from the incident. Officers were called about him being on the road before the crash occurred.
• Maryland's Indian Head Rail Trail is Rails-to-Trails featured trail this month. "This is the first rail-trail conversion in southern Maryland," Roland says proudly. "Since 2009, we've probably had close to 170,000 visitors, and it's been very well-accepted by our community. We're seeing families, runners, bikers, birders, photographers, artists. It has been really nice."
• Cool lights for your wheels. You still need a head light and tail light though.
• Rep. Mica's proposed transportation bill eliminates any federal guarantee for bicycle and pedestrian programs and it and discourages states from choosing to spend their dollars on these activities that are “not in the federal interest.” "Meanwhile on the Senate side,  James Inhofe (R-OK), the lead Republican negotiator on the transportation bill, declared that one of his TOP THREE priorities for the transportation bill is to eliminate ‘frivolous spending for bike trails.’" Bike advocacy groups are organizing to oppose Mica's bill. Meanwhile AAA's Lon Anderson likes the policy direction even though he thinks there are too few dollars. Democrats think it's too small too. “This is a cruel imitation of a proposal,” added Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC). “This is not a serious proposal. No one would really propose that districts get a third of what they got last time.”