TheWashCycle

Wednesday Morning Commute - Southgate

Good morning

• Cyclist in Lapina fatality won't be charged. "The bicyclist was coming down a blind curve, so he didn't have a lot of time to react, Sternbeck said, and both the bicyclist and the victim could have delayed reaction times because of their ages." Both of which would be perfect reasons for slowing down. I'm sorry, but I would not let a car-bike fatality slide because it was an elderly driver and a blind curve, so I'm not going to agree with this either.
  
• Justice
• S. Joyce Street from Columbia Pike to Pentagon City gets " ten-foot wide shared use sidewalks on both sides" plus pedestrian-scale lighting. Which may or may not help cyclists. 
• ...which leads to the discovery that Southgate Road between Henderson Hall and Columbia Pike is going to be closed to make room for the expansion of Arlington National Cemetery. When I bike out Columbia Pike I go uphill on Southgate Road since gravity makes me go slow and there is less traffic on that road. In the same article they note that Columbia Pike is to be realligned to take it farther from the cemetery. Maybe this could include a climbing lane?
• Local poll done in conjunction with the Fairfax County Bike Plan shows reasons people don't bike more have a lot to do with a lack of facilities.
• The north section of the Bethesda Trolley Trail, which is in many places just sidewalk, needs work.
• Sharrows are nice, but they don't encourage more cycling like bike lanes and paths do. 
• Bike-sharing and smartphones are helping to drive VMT/capita down.
• A TRUE STORY OF WWII ITALY, THE NAZIS, AND THE CYCLIST WHO INSPIRED A NATION

• Local poll done in conjunction with the Fairfax County Bike Plan shows reasons people don't bike more have a lot to do with a lack of facilities.
• The north section of the Bethesda Trolley Trail, which is in many places just sidewalk, needs work.
• Sharrows are nice, but they don't encourage more cycling like bike lanes and paths do.
• A TRUE STORY OF WWII ITALY, THE NAZIS, AND THE CYCLIST WHO INSPIRED A NATION

Monday Morning Commute - Buffalo Soldiers: the first mountain bikers

Do you think Bruce Banner qualifies for medicinal marijuana? I mean, if anyone does...

• WABA needs volunteers
• Group of five kids in Columbia Heights surrounded a cyclist and stole his bike. Chase ensued and two of the kids were arrested.
• Bike Maryland on helmetlessness.
• No money for biking in Fairfax county.
• Safe Routes to School is in jeopardy.
• "many positive projects have resulted from a growing relationship between the Park Service and the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA)—a nonprofit group that advocates for landscape conservation, trail access, and above all else, good trail etiquette. “IMBA has shown through hard work and cooperative attitudes that they share our passion for protecting and enjoying our nation’s parks,” said Park Service Director Jon Jarvis in a press release. “Bicycling helps draw new visitors—especially younger people—and gives them fun, memorable experiences in the national parks.”
• I'm not sure if this is too late, but you might be able to ask Sec. LaHood a question.
• The American Taylor Phinney won the Giro d’Italia’s first stage, a 5.4-mile individual time trial in Herning, Denmark.
• I know what got the headline, but this part is more impressive "The top woman was Canada's Angela Naeth, who won in a course-record 4:28:12 despite peddling the last six miles of the bike leg with a flat rear tire."
• Some guy on a bicycle outruns police at crazy highway speeds.

Friday Afternoon Commute - Monthly payment plan

Good Evening

• Capital Bikeshare has announced a monthly payment plan for annual members ($7 a month as opposed to $75 a year) to help those for whom coming up with the money upfront is problematic and they're going to start selling helmets online to members for $16. 
• It appears that during Prince William County's Street Smart Campaign, police gave out nearly 1300 tickets, none of them to cyclists.

Tuesday Morning Commute - Speeding alone will not produce criminality

Good morning

• The BAC's Safety, Education and Enforcement Committee is meeting tonight. And the Facilities Committee is having a ride/meeting on Saturday along Rhode Island Avenue.
• I haven't mapped it out, but I wonder if bringing a bike along on the "ride the whole metro" race might help you. Ride out to the end of one line, then bike to the end of the next and ride in? It could help you avoid doubling back, but the connections aren't that good. Maybe if you ride faster than me it would help. Also, not sure if it would be considered cheating.
• I too would advise against wrong-way cycling in almost every case, but something about how this writer frames it bothers me. Dr. Gridlock's response is fine.
• "Last year, 21 cyclists were struck and killed but only two drivers were arrested. And about 40 percent of the time a driver is involved in a fatality – a pedestrian, cyclist, other motorist or themselves – not even a ticket is issued....In order to make an arrest, the NYPD said a motorist must break two traffic laws for the crash to rise to the level of criminal."
• National Bike Challenge to launch in May. "the 2012 Get Up & Ride National Bike Challenge aims to encourage people to bike for transportation and recreation, and to catalog exactly how many miles they're logging every day of the challenge. The program runs from May 1 to August 1, with the goal of uniting 50,000 people to pedal 10 million miles."
• Meh

Cyclist injured last week was interviewed prior to ticket, MPD report

At the DC Bicycle Advisory Council meeting last night, MPD representatives reported that the police officer who cited the cyclist struck and injured last week at 11th and U, says that she did interview him prior to ticketing him. She said that he admitted to running the red light and that he was informed that he would be cited. The injured cyclist is currently unavailable, but when he is again, they plan to interview him again.

The citation for "no helmet" was obviously a mistake, and should never have been approved by the Sergeant, so that one will be dismissed. The MPD representative added that giving two very similar tickets, for running a red light and failure to yield seems unnecessary. A statement was sent to the force about that, as well as a reminder about where information on bike laws can be found.

In other actions,

The Safety, Education and Enforcement committee reported on an upcoming curriculum update to taxi driver training/certification.  Those who are putting together the new curriculum (at UDC I think) have been in touch with  DDOT and WABA about adding training related to cycling. This is a move that the BAC supports. At their next meeting they plan to review current and past police report forms, and how those forms treat cyclists.

The MPD representatives talked about other issues. They plan to update the share the road brochure to make it more practical and stronger. They would like it to discuss common crash types in DC and how to avoid them. They would also like the officer training to have more video examples of common crash situations. Chief Lanier is interested in more frequent on-duty traffic enforcement, with it increasing from quarterly to monthly, and for that enforcement to be better. During complete streets they plan to have bike officers enforce bike laws, and they will target laws that WABA has identified as safety issue. This will including riding the wrong way, endangering pedestrians and running red lights. WABA has also identified some laws for enforcement on drivers such as unsafe passing distance. The recommended locations for enforcement are:

New York Ave. & Florida Ave. NE
K St. & North Capitol
Rhode Island Ave. & Florida Ave. NW
14th St. between Pennsylvania Ave. & V St. NW
14th St. between Girard St. & Lamont St. NW
15th St. cycle track
Pennsylvania Ave. cycle track
K St. between 29th St. & Wisconsin Ave. NW
Dupont Circle
Washington Circle
Thomas Circle
Columbus Circle
East Capitol around Lincoln Park
16th St. between Columbia Rd. & Arkansas Ave. NW

The Facilities committee has sent letters to the Mayor about funding the parking called for in the report created as part of the Commuter Act, and on designating someone to maintain facilities. And they sent a letter to DDOT Director Bellamy on improving riding conditions EOTR. They submitted comments on the 14th street bridge draft EIS, supporting the three areas that were identified for future study.  It was noted that the budget currently includes money for a multi-modal transportation plan, but that an updated bike plan would also be needed. Their next meeting will be a ride on Rhode Island Avenue, which is - according to a survey from 2005 - the most used bike route in DC that neither has bike lanes or has any planned in the bike plan. They discussed how to get bike lanes and traffic calming on the road and this may be something that could be addressed during streetcar planning.

The Legislative committee updated the BAC on their discussions dealing with bike definitions. While there is no question about what is and is not a bike, it gets much more difficult to distinguish between PMDs, electric bikes and motorized bicycles. This matters when deciding who may ride where, who may park where and what obligations owners have. While the committee first agreed that an electric bike is a PMD and thus free to use trails and to be operated without being registered, inspected or used by a licensed and insured operator; a DMV pamphlet seems to include them with "motorized bicycles" which would make that untrue.

The committee supports allowing motorized bikes to use bike racks (and thus adding more bike racks as needed) and treating electric bikes as PMDs, but they'd like to get motorized bicycles out of the bike lanes. But drawing lines between these various items is complicated and confusing (what distinguishes one from the other?). Because of this, and because there have been few concerns raised about these issues, the committee decided to table the issue until the lack of clear definition becomes a problem. MPD added that they were unaware of any ticketing on these issues and expressed their opinion that enforcement of these categories was very difficult in the field.

Finally the BAC supported adding "Look for Bikes when exiting taxi" signs to DC taxis. 

Also, the meeting started with a presentation from the Alliance for Walking and Biking. I won't recap the whole thing, but I'll note this factoid. Currently Colorado has the lowest level of obesity among states. But, at currently levels, they would have been the most obese as recently as 1990.

Cyclists run red lights = careless, rogue and somehow newsworthy

FOX WUSA9 CBS did some hard-nosed investigative journalism to show that cyclists are, in fact, running red lights. Yes, that must've taken them 9 minutes of undercover work. Wait for their next story about young people and their penchant for making out. 

They follow it up by asking a few cyclists why they run red light, which none of them answer well and makes me wonder what wound up on the cutting room floor. The best part was when they interviewed someone from WABA about it...oh, wait...they didn't.

Sigh. They never show any evidence that what is going on is dangerous (though the one guy who squirts in front of the Metro bus is doing it worn), never mention the real reasons why cyclists do it, never mention the Idaho Stop, never mention the low rate of crashes that result from cyclists running TCDs, never compare it to the hight rate of jaywalking or speeding or all the other types of traffic violations that would make all road users careless groups who rule road in rogue fashion...In short, terrible, terrible news story.

Monday Morning Commute - Sorry Vegas

I was rooting for the Giants, primarily because of a story that the odds-makers missed the mark (and the futures market too) and so way more people were betting on the Giants than the Patriots. That means that a win by the Giants = a loss for Vegas, and who roots for the house? I wonder who Trump, both a New Yorker and a casino owner, rooted for? He was probably hoping that somehow he would win.

• WABA calls on cyclists to support Met Branch Trail funding in Montgomery County. "This year, the budget proposed by the Montgomery County Executive cuts design and construction funding for the county’s portion of the MBT for the next six years. We need the County Council to ensure that these years of effort are not wasted and that the County’s commitments to prioritize the completion of the trail are kept." Silver Spring Trails adds "the ongoing disagreement with the owners of the station museum does not prevent MCDOT from designing and building the MetBranch from the new Sarbanes Silver Spring Transit Station south through the Ripley District to the station museum."
• It looks like preliminary work has started on Washington Gateway, the property that will fill the triangle shaped property between New York Avenue, Florida Avenue and the Met Branch Trail, or as I like to call it Triabfla (also the name of my infomercial ab machine). The current renderings still appear to show a set of properties that block out, rather than connect to, the trail, which would be too bad. I've tried to contact people involved with the project several times, but had no luck. 
• Speaking of trail adjacent development, the Florida Rock property - which includes a section of the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail - has submitted a new design. While the buildings change, it doesn't appear that the trail does.
• Lydia DePillis notes that, despite talking a good game about greening embassies, none have purchased a CaBi station. Not even the Canadians (which would seem a good way to support a Canadian company, n'est pas?)
• Arlington County is expected to authorize spending $3.44 million for six projects in the latest round of Neighborhood Conservation grant funding. That includes adding bike lanes to Patrick Henry Drive from 16th Street North to Washington Boulevard and to North Sycamore Street from 26th Street North to Williamsburg Boulevard. Also, Arlington is removing unnecessary bollards from area trails.
• How to trigger a traffic light with detector loops. 
• VASA ride is March 4th.
• Chat with Dr. Gridlock today. 
• Nice photo. 
• Why complete streets matters "Anne Gerlach, 43, of Glenmont, said she would like to be able to bike near her home, but can’t because there are no pedestrian or bike paths and traffic is heavy."

Monday Afternoon Ride - Suspended

Why does everyone "suspend" their campaign? It's over. I didn't announce last week that I was suspending my NYE resolution to stop eating Popeye's Chicken. I just stopped. Is it some kind of legal thing so that they can keep fundraising to pay bills? Or are they just holding on to any sliver of hope like Jim Carrey's character in Dumb in Dumber. "So you're telling me there is a chance....yes."

• Careless cyclist almost hit by Obama motorcade.
• Metro GM Richard Sarles admits that the bike locker fee was set too high. "At $200 annually, the fee discouraged users. He would drop the charge to $120 a year."
• Sharrows come to Richmond and people want to know what they are. 
• Rockingham County, VA has a new Bicycle Advisory Committee. "The committee hopes to have a master bicycle plan to expand the city's trails, and to make dangerous intersections safer."

 

Saturday Morning Ride - Infamy

Good morning

• Columbia, MD is now looking into bikesharing, but will it be CaBi? The article has this incredible fact from Denver "In Denver, officials report that the year-old program has led to 43 percent of downtown car trips being replaced with bike trips."
  
  • "We would like to see other jurisdictions join in," he said, saying the Baltimore program will hopefully encourage more MARC train riders who might cycle the rest of their journey to the office. He pointed out that the city program will use a different vendor than Washington uses, which would require riders to sign up for both programs
• Why SilverSpringTrails thinks building a grade-separated crossing for Wisconsin avenue isn't worth looking into.
• TBD discusses a cyclist who, egads, runs red lights. And she's not even going to a shooting. 
• Not really about riding a bike, except that in some ways it is. "For the past year and a half, I’ve ridden my bike to work a couple of times per week. The first three miles aren’t much to write about, but the last five are special — through Arlington National Cemetery, over the Memorial Bridge, past the Lincoln Memorial, the World War II Memorial and the Washington Monument, then along the Mall to Capitol Hill."

Monday Afternoon Commute - Agenda 21

Good afternoon.

• An Ohio man, after originally pleading no contest, tries to have his "driving under the influence" charge dropped because he was riding a bike. But he filed his paperwork late, so the issue of whether the law applies to him was never considered.
• I guess this article isn't aimed at me since my answer to the opening question "Ready to trade in your car for a bike, or maybe a subway instead?" Is an emphatic "yes", instead of a horrified "no".
• "A 2008 follow-up report recommended replacing LOS with an entirely new measure known as "auto-trips generated," or ATG. Instead of asking how much congestion a project creates, ATG looks at how many new automobile trips it produces. Since bike lanes or bus-rapid transit or the like don't generate any automobile trips, those projects would no longer be subject to a full environmental review. "
• A Salon article also hits on the Agenda 21 fear that bicycling seems to scare up in the tea party set. "Adam Sternbergh argued in the New York Times that there’s a whiff of the Tea Party in the anti-bike backlash: “the specter of bureaucracy run amok,” in which a subset of society forces lifestyle changes on the majority." But the article is primarily about why cyclists are incorrectly viewed as smug and elitist. Citypaper asks "Do you buy the argument that some of the burden for being a positive advertisement for bicycling is on you?" My answer here is summarized as yes, but really we should be safe and polite for reasons that are bigger than public perception. And if someone is being safe and polite but not legal...what really is the problem there?