TheWashCycle

Wednesday Morning Commute - BP

Good morning

• The BP Oil Spill inspired one local resident to start biking everywhere."You know, I never anticipated the payoff in, like, mood regulation," Wohler says. "I'm so happy all the time. You know, the thinking like, 'It's 4 o'clock, I'm going to be stuck in traffic, I wanted to go to the gym...' I don't have any of that."
• Arlington's Kidical Mass ride is this Sunday
• Cyclist sets up sting to catch bike theif. Not sure if he did. But he did recover his stolen bike. [While I'm not sure this guy stole the bike, even if you believe his story he HAD to strongly suspect it was stolen - or how did the crackhead get a $4000 bike? That's only one rung below stealing. Feeding the beast.] Also, beagels. 

Tuesday Morning Commute - So much to say

Good morning. Too busy to read this. But if you want to summarize it for others, the comments are open. 

• According to DDOT, there will be no hooks or racks on DC streetcars, but cyclists will be able to bring their bikes onboard. Unfortunately their policy will mirror WMATA’s for bikes on the Metrorail, which will probably mean a rush hour ban.
• DC wants to narrow roads and add a bike trail. VA and MD, less so. 
• InTowner wonders about the Council's desire to ban smoking near trails (sorry smoking bicyclists). Also asks "Having voted to penalize operators of motor vehicles for failing to yield to cyclists, why was there no provision for penalizing cyclists for failing to yield to pedestrians both on sidewalks and in crosswalks in the streets?" The answer is a bit of what they say later - this isn't a very big problem - but also that they have the law wrong. Both failures to yield are already illegal and carry penalties. DC is increasing the fine for hitting a cyclist with a car and adding points. Maybe the fine for cyclists hitting pedestrians needs to be increased, but we don't give points on a driver's license for non-driving activity.
• "A boy riding a bicycle was hit by a car and critically injured Sunday evening in the Bowie area of Prince George’s County....Preliminary investigation indicated that the driver was unaware of the boy who was trying to cross the street,"
• "The Madison Manor Bike Club will host the second annual “Phoenix Rising” celebration in support of Phoenix Bikes on Saturday, July 20 from 6 to 11 p.m. at the Dominion Hills Pool clubhouse, 6000 Wilson Blvd."
• "A fan on her way to a Dave Matthews concert pulled over to help a stranded bicyclist, who turned out to be none other than the singer himself."
• "A few years ago, What Would You Do?, an ABC-TV hidden-camera show, set up a situation where two actors posed as bike thieves in a public park, using bolt cutters and hack saws to cut a bike chain. The results were instructive. Over the course of an hour, a hundred people passed the white “thief” by with barely a glance. The black one had hardly gotten to work before a crowd of whites gathered around him, interrogating him, lecturing him, calling 911, even shooting cell phone video." [OT: Listening to Zimmerman's brother yesterday morning fret that someone might take the law into their own hands and behave like a vigilante - without a hint of irony - was a bit surreal]

Tuesday Afternoon Commute - “If you want to shoot me the bird, that’s okay, too.”

Good afternoon

• My latest green lane blog post on 1st Street NE. 
• DCBAC meeting is tomorrow night. And they want to know what you think about the Idaho Stop. 
• A protected bike lane that uses the Zebra barriers DDOT is considering for Pennsylvania Ave NW.
• Watch out for this hole at Key Bridge.
• After the fireworks show, the Crystal City Connector saw 800 bikes pass through in one hour, when the usual peak for a day is about 100 an hour. 
• Arlington County needs bike boxes one person argues. Arlington County is getting a bike box the county responds. 
• Sheman Ave NW, now with a road diet and sharrows. 
• CaBi is awesome. And soon to get two new stations in Arlington: one on Columbia Pike and one in the Buckingham neighborhood.
• “To be honest, it’s not a statement, it’s not an experiment,” Armstrong told the Register. “It’s just me wanting to go ride my bike with what in the past has been a friendly group of people who share the same interests.”

Thursday Morning Commute - Parity

Good morning

• The Commuter Parity Act of 2013 would, among other things, increase the fringe benefit for bicycle commuting from $20 a month to $35 a month, specifically allow beneficiaries to use it to pay for bicycle sharing and allow employees to claim it AND/OR the transit benefit (currently it is either/or). It would also automatically adjust for inflation each year.  
• Proposal to close a gap in the East Coast Greenway near Baltimore. 
• Filibuster training: "An avid runner and cyclist, Davis was in good shape for the physical challenge of standing and talking for nearly half a day."
• The Non-Motorized Transportation Pilot Program Report is now available. This program provided $25 million to four communities to create a non-motorized transportation network. "The four pilot programs saw an average increase of 49 percent in the number of bicyclists ... between 2007 and 2010." This outpaced the national average from 2001 to 2008. Despite the increase in cycling, cycling fatalities did not go up. "the count increases over these 4 years came primarily from increased utilitarian bicycling and walking trips in each of the four communities." The health benefits alone were estimated to be about $7M per city. 

Wednesday Afternoon Commute - Nobody's Home

Good afternoon

• Some are pushing to expand the areas where sidewalk cycling is prohibited. The Mayor can already do this block by block, but signage is needed. In general I'm OK with sidewalk cycling if done safely - and Alpert's rules make sense to me - but it should be rare. I'd like to see more ticketing of bad sidewalk cycling and more cycletracks and bike lanes. 
• Former and current CaBi employees went to protest their wages outside of DDOT headquarters. Problem is, they went to the old address. If only there were a convenient way for them to make an unplanned trip across town. 
• A new analysis by the Transportation Planning Board shows that between 2005 and 2011, the metropolitan Washington region's population increased while the average daily driving per person decreased, reversing a decades-long trend of ever-increasing driving. 

Monday Afternoon Commute - Minnehahahahaha

Good afternoon

• Politico poll = flooded. "MT’s readers sure seem to love their bikes — 42 percent said it replaces car trips and 38 ride when it’s nice and convenient. But 7 percent haven’t hopped on two wheels since middle school."
• Wait a minute. NPS wouldn't let CaBi set up on the Mall for over a year, but they're helping pay for Minneapolis' bike sharing? If NPS has money for bike sharing, it would seem DC would be the natural place to spend it. "Nice Ride is using more than $630,000 provided by the National Park Service to add stations at such popular recreation destinations as Lake Harriet, Lake Nokomis, ­Minnehaha Falls, Boom Island, Fort Snelling and Webber Park."
• DDOT "will soon kick off a study to consider how to make Florida Avenue safer, which [Sam Zimbabwe, Associate Director for Policy, Planning and Sustianability at DDOT] hopes will finish by early 2014; temporary fixes to implement the recommendations could come as early as next summer."
• "A New York City bicyclist who was injured by a police officer who nearly ran him over with his car now has been handed a bill — to repair the dents in the cop car."
• "For the first time, the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad will provide a train to take 700 cyclists to the starting line the night before the Boston Marathon for the Midnight Marathon." And we can't even get the Nationals to pay for a train for their customers. And this "Hubway waived fees for cyclists who used the bike-share program to complete the 26.2 miles, which they may do again this year."
• "Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili has a broken shoulder after a bicycle accident in Turkey."

Friday Afternoon Commute - no bicycle parking at all

Good afternoon

• Politico's Morning Transportation feature is doing a poll on biking and we can totally distort the numbers. 
• "One person spoke at a public hearing Wednesday on the CIP. Jonathan Krall with the Alexandria Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee asked for bicycle and pedestrian facilities to be included in the plan."
• And more from Jonathan Krall "The last thing we should do is build new housing next to two multilane roadways with no evidence of transit options and wide streets that favor cars over pedestrians. Yet, that is exactly what we are doing in Potomac Yard, where all bike lanes end on the Arlington side of the border....We could fix this situation quickly and at very little cost by narrowing or reducing traffic lanes on Potomac and Main Line avenues and adding bicycle lanes. Further, we could add a bicycle parking facility or bike station to the bus rapid transit line that is under construction....I was astounded to learn from city staff that the bus rapid transit line will have no bicycle parking at all."

Tuesday Afternoon Commute - Regardless

Good afternoon

• Comparing CaBi to Velib. For one thing, Velib smokes a lot more. 
• And, remember when people complained about CaBi stations coming to their neighborhood, instead of complaining that they weren't. "In TriBeCa, a 25-bike kiosk was moved from Duane Park to the northeast corner of Duane and Greenwich streets after residents said it was a blight on the park. Now it’s drawing the ire of residents of Independence Plaza, who say Duane Street is too narrow for a hulking station." And “This area has a lot of congestion,” said Adam Malitz, a community-board member and plaza resident. “It’s not a good corner to put a lot of bikes."
• Fairfax finalizes its bike crash data. "Twelve crashes were a hit and run where a bicyclist was struck and the motorist fled the scene. None of these crashes involved the death of the bicyclist. In 43% of the crashes, the bicyclist was held at fault. [In 53% of the crashes, the motorist was held at fault." [Note: there actually was one fatality in the county in 2012]
• Shout it from the rooftops: Why it's OK for the government to favor bicycles/cyclists over cars/drivers - "Standing side by side with many state DOT heads, US DOT Secretary Ray La Hood and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today announced a new public safety campaign to encourage less driving, lower speeds, and encourage more cycling and walking to meet the nation’s transportation needs." Update: Sadly, this was an April Fool's Day post. 
• This article on dropping gasoline use in America is only tangentially related, but I found this surprising (emphasis mine) "the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) requires blending increasing volumes of ethanol into the U.S. gasoline supply, regardless of how much gasoline is needed...The 2013 requirement for 13.8 billion gallons is likely to go beyond the 10% threshold of what can be blended into gasoline and still be used in older vehicles without risking engine damage and voiding warranties." Could the ethanol requirement kill so many cars that it pushes more people to biking? Why does Congress keep using hard numbers instead of percentages or goals or inflation-adjusted values? Sigh...

Friday Morning Commute - Play Ball

Good morning

• Baseball is back. And, as always, biking to the game is easy and free. 
• How do we get more families biking?
• "Despite its famously narrow, twisting streets, Menino ushered in a bicycle-sharing program and named a “bicycle czar” to negotiate conflicts between bicyclists and Boston drivers."

Biking Because They Must

That's the title of an excellent article at Arlington Mercury. Here are some choice lines. 

“The tenants that I work with are low-income people who work in construction jobs and they have no transportation, and a lot of them don’t have licenses to drive,” she said. “That’s why they ride bikes.”

bikes are used more and more by immigrants because of the difficulties they face when getting a driver’s license.

“They’re not going to risk driving without a license,” he said.

Paul Wilee, a mechanic at Phoenix Bikes said they get swamped with requests for bikes all the time.

“Our shop has donated quite a few bikes over the years to lower income organizations, like safe houses, half-way houses, rehab houses,” said Wilee. “People need a mode of transportation, and we turn around and donate some bikes to them.”

Rather than “flopping down” a [CaBi] station and hoping people use it, Hamilton said, “I think our challenge will be, as we expand to Columbia Pike,...to see how this works. So we’ll be doing some special things in these neighborhoods to help [residents, especially Spanish speakers] understand how the system works.”