Bicycle Safety Booklets

Arlington is planning to put out a bicycle safety booklet and a brochure. The brochure will cover bike lane safety and be geared toward both cyclists and motorists. The booklet will be pretty extensive and be based on the award winning publication Safe Bicycling in Chicago. The money to pay for it comes from various federal grants.

In general I think a booklet is a good idea, but I do have some changes. I think the DC area (DC and the surrounding jurisdictions) should get together and make one booklet for the whole metropolitan area. How many cyclists do all of their rides in one county? And honestly, I feel like a paper book is so 20th Century (but then again I do write a blog). A website would be much better and cheaper - but i recognize that both can be useful and complimentary even.

The brochure, I'm not sure about. Will drivers (ones who aren't cyclists) ever read it? Ever care? The downside of bike lanes is that drivers see them and think "that area is yours. Everything else is mine." which just isn't the case. The brochure is probably a waste of money. Better to get local news to report on it I think.

Bikes are not the problem.

This article in the Washington Times was supposed to be clever, but the title is a bit annoying. It's short so here it is.

  A gentleman riding a bicycle, briefcase in its basket, huffed and puffed while pedaling up the right-hand lane of 18th Street Northwest near the White House, the gradual incline making his commute home rather difficult, while causing cars directly behind him to creep along in the evening rush.
    We're not certain whether those drivers who sounded their horns were sending a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to the cyclist after reading what was printed on the back of his shirt: "One Less Car."

Above it is written "Buy a Hybrid." Yes. It's bikes that make the evening commute so bad. It's bikes that cause cars to creep along in rush hour traffic. Bikes are the problem, not all the people driving cars by themselves, but bikes. If we could just somehow convince these bike commuters to drive a hybrid we could fix the whole thing.

OT:So I grab a lot of my photos off of flickr. I learned that people leave photos for DCist on flickr labeled "DCist." That got my wheels spinning. If you'd like to have a photo on TheWashCycle, just put it on flickr with the label "washcycle."

McBAG meeting minutes

DC, Arlington, Montgomery County and PG County all have citizen advisory boards for bicycling issues. If Alexandria has one they keep it a secret. I'm not sure if the PG County board - the Bicycle and Trails Advisory Group (BTAG) - still meets as they haven't updated their site in over a year. DC and Arlington call theirs the BAC - Bicycle Advisory Committee/Council. Montgomery County calls theirs the McBAG which sounds like the McDonald's Happy Meal for adults, but isn't.
The McBAG's last meeting for which notes are up was in January. They talked about priorities for the next year, the state bicycle symposium and Metro station design rules. Metro needs a lot of work to make the subway more bike friendly (the buses are fine except for the drivers). Covered parking, which McBAG mentions is one part - bike stations at most major stops would be great. Better security is needed - Metro stations are one of the most common places from which bikes are stolen. Even where bike stations are impractical, cameras would be useful. Improved access and design is key as well. It would be nice if stations had a way for bikes to get in other than elevators. On BART, some stations have stairs (They're like escalators, but they don't move) with stair channels to allow cyclists to wheel their bikes up and down. We need those where possible.

National Bike Summit

The National Bike Summit is going on in DC this week. Today they're meeting with Legislators and while a lot of what is on the agenda is suppose to be national bike advocacy, it's sure to include some local initiatives as well. I suspect WABA will be pushing on Rock Creek Park and the Met Branch Trail. I heard the Virginia delegation was working to open up the Pentagon area.

On Friday there's a session on on-line route mapping that I'd like to go to. I need all the help I can get with my map. [Just yesterday I realized it doesn't work with IE so I had to get that fixed, but thanks to help from commenters I'm able to get the geocode from trails much faster and hope to have it finished by the end of March]; and there's also a caucus bike ride from 2:30 to 5:00.

Custis Trail Tunnel

There's a proposal before the Arlington County Board to build a 10-story, 43-unit residential building (for now called 1101 Lee Hwy) on the .61 acre site located east of North Lynn Street, between

the I-66 ramp and Martha Custis Bike and Pedestrian Trail to the south and the Key

Bridge/George Washington Memorial Parkway ramp to the north. The building would involve construction of a driveway across the Custis Trail. In order to mitigate the impact of the driveway on the trail, the building applicant has proposed modifying the intersection traffic lights to "signalize" the driveway.

But, in 2000, Rosslyn performed the Rosslyn Circle Crossing Study. It recommended that a tunnel be built under Lynn Street. The building is being scaled back considerably in height, density and access by the council and they've stated that the tunnel should be a part of it. The applicant's engineer did a preliminary study and determined that a tunnel with an alternative alignment would be possible but the suggested alignment has a curve that some feel might be dangerous.

At the December 2005 meeting they were still waiting on a response and deferred the subject to 2006. A bike/ped tunnel under Lynn would be a big improvement to a dangerous intersection.

Addendum: Please read the first comment to this post as it is very useful. I think I got some facts wrong. In my own defense they came from my own hazy memory and what I could glean from county council notes. If you can get through one page of those without falling asleep on your keyboard you are a better person than I.

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CCT Trouble and Scenic Byway

Just south of where Newark Street NW would intersect with the Capital Crescent Trail if it went through, there's an area where the road bed under the trail is slowly washing away.(Map) A few years ago a small support was added to protect the trail, but if you ride by you'll see that the erosion is starting to occur around the support. We may be only one big storm (think Isabelle) away from the trail washing out. A complete collapse of the hillside is not out of the question and if that happened it might be years for the trail to be restored.

There's some question as to who is responsible for protecting the trail - with the Park Service and the District both trying to determine what to do and who should do it. One possible source of funding would be the designation of Canal Street (below the CCT) as a Scenic Byway. The Scenic Byway plan is filled with bicycle goodies (It's also a little hard to read since the text on some images is too small), Including:

• Between Foxhall Road and the Georgetown Reservoir, support the conversion of the trolley right-of way to a multi-use trail ed: This is the old Cabin John Trolley right-of-way that runs all the way to - you guessed it - Cabin John.
• Connect the Capital Crescent Trail crossing of Canal Road to the rail trestle (tow path to trestle on the east, Arizona Avenue to trestle on the west). ed: this is confusing since the crossing IS the rail trestle, but I think the part in parenthesis is what they're talking about.
• Connect Battery Kemble Park//Palisades Park Trail to the Capital Crescent Trail. Add directional signage. If feasible, convert the culvert to a secondary bike trail.
• Enhance the connection of Glover Archbold Park to the Capital Crescent Trail using the existing pedestrian underpass (Foundry Branch Tunnel). If feasible, relocate the existing sewer and restore the culvert to its historic configuration.
• Improve vehicular, pedestrian, and bicycle access to Fletcher’s Boat House area.
• Install a pedestrian bridge over Canal Road to connect Battery Kemble Park/Palisades Park Trail to the Capital Crescent Trail in the vicinity of the access road to the Fletchers Boat House access road.

Like the Four Mile Run plan - it has good ideas, but we'll see if it gets the money. And we'll see if the CCT gets fixed before it collapses. The review period ended on Feb 17th, but here's one letter.

One last thing. For some time the Park Service has been trying to add lights and a call box to the Arizona Avenue Trestle on the CCT, it seems that that might be occurring "sooner rather than later." Wish I had specifics.

Met Branch Trail Update

The Met Branch Trail continues to plod along at its nearly glacial pace. It appears that construction on the  Pepco Substation north of the New York Avenue Metro Station has begun. If you recall, this construction is necessary for the trail to be extended north to R Street. Eric Gilliland of WABA reported that the city still has some land acquisition issues to work out, but hope to break ground in March.

In Maryland the news is not so good. Because of a lengthy redesign of the Maryland options, the report may not make it to the County Council until fall of this year, causing greater delays in the project. In addition the first explanation for why the bridge and tunnel option (option 1) is so expensive was given.

DPWT staff now estimates that Option 1 would cost up to $21M, while the lowest cost Option 5 would cost up to $9.5M. These estimates are about 4 times as high as the cost of comparable trail projects built recently in the area. A principal cost driver is the need to use a small amount of CSX/WMATA r.o.w. to build the trail alongside Selim Road and to build the trail tunnel under Burlington Avenue. A DPWT survey for this project shows that the CSX/WMATA r.o.w. boundary is several feet closer to Selim Road than had been assumed in the earlier M-NCPPC study - a small difference with big consequences for cost. While the amount of r.o.w. needed is very small, use of any CSX/WMATA r.o.w. at all forces the project to comply with expensive safety and separation requirements there for facilities built near operating railroads.

So that does not bode well for building a quality trail in the Georgia Avenue/Burlington Avenue area - unless the county can come up with $21 million, which is unlikely.

On the good news side is this report about the Silver Spring Transit Center receiving additional federal money. It doesn't specifically mention money for bicycles, but since budget problems were causing the county to trim bicycle facilities, including connections with the Met Branch and Green Trails, it can only help