The Finer Points of DC Traffic Law

@eminva 86061 wrote:

So, what are cabs supposed to do when discharging passengers when there is a cycletrack in the curb lane? I assume this is an issue on 15th (especially in the central downtown area) and will be on M Street to be sure. Also, whatever, the answer is, shouldn’t the cabbies have been educated about this by now?

I don’t know the answer to your questions, but I do have an additional question related to yours: Would the curb separating a cycletrack from the main travel lanes be usable for discharging passengers?

In your situation on M Street, it seems to me that the cab would have to discharge on the right curb if there were no curbs on the left to use without illegally crossing the cycletrack. Of course, looking at it from the taxi driver’s perspective, how’s a taxi driver going to explain this to an unhappy passenger who would have to then cross the street on their own (there goes your tip)?

I don’t know the law – good question – but there’s a safety problem for both cyclists and cab passengers if they have to open a door, get out, and cross the cycletrack that should be factored in.

I found this DC regulation:

“822.16 No taxicab operator shall stop to load or unload passengers on the traffic side of the street, while occupying any intersection or crosswalk, or in such a manner as to unduly interfere with the orderly flow of traffic. All taxicab drivers shall pull as close to the curb or edge of the roadway as possible to take on or discharge passengers.”

So unless this regulation is old, it seems the cab driver was correct. Obviously this was written before the days of cycletracks.

This is something we should be either prepared to deal with or try to change. Like I said, it’s a safety problem to discharge passengers next to a cycletrack, as if it were a sidewalk, as much as it is to pull to the curb and block the cycletrack. I’d say the solution is to just ban discharging passengers along a cycletrack altogether, at least a two-way cycletrack.

@baiskeli 86093 wrote:

…I’d say the solution is to just ban discharging passengers along a cycletrack altogether, at least a two-way cycletrack.

As much as I want to agree with this, I fear it would end up reducing the miles of cycletrack that will be built. Imagine the opposition to the M St cycletrack, for example, if it meant that cabs weren’t allowed to drop off passengers on the right side of the street anywhere from downtown to Georgetown.

I’m not sure there’s any solution that’s going to be better than letting cabs drop off in the cycletrack and teaching everyone to be careful.

@jrenaut 86100 wrote:

As much as I want to agree with this, I fear it would end up reducing the miles of cycletrack that will be built. Imagine the opposition to the M St cycletrack, for example, if it meant that cabs weren’t allowed to drop off passengers on the right side of the street anywhere from downtown to Georgetown.

I’m not sure there’s any solution that’s going to be better than letting cabs drop off in the cycletrack and teaching everyone to be careful.

I disagree. The blockage of the cycletrack resulting from the door and passengers would be smaller and shorter than the blockage from the entire taxi. The cycletracks I’m familiar with (15th St, M St) all have some buffer, so if a cab pulled up beside the track, its door wouldn’t block the entire path. Passengers would have to be mindful not to open the doors into oncoming bikes, and not to step in front of oncoming bikes, but that’s pretty easy to deal with, as it’s close to what already happens, and it’s easy to anticipate on a bike). Besides, I rather have a person in my path than a car.

FWIW, my reading of the regulation that baiskeli quoted is not that it authorizes cabs to be in parts of the roadway that they are not otherwise allowed to be in. The most natural reading is that taxis are not allowed to drop off where taxi are not allowed to be in the lane next to the edge of the roadway. Think about a 2-way road. A taxi headed northbound on Wisconsin is not allowed to drop off passengers in their left-most lane beside the curb, because only cars headed southbound are allowed to be in that lane.

@dasgeh 86105 wrote:

I disagree….

Yeah, you’re right. We can’t ban cabs from dropping off anywhere there’s a cycletrack because there’d be too much pushback and we’d never get another cycletrack built. But this isn’t entirely either/or – no cabs in the cycletrack but let people get out into the cycletrack is probably the safest, most reasonable solution.

I don’t like what it implies if we define “the edge of the roadway” as “the outside of the cycletrack” because that reinforces the view that bike lanes are not part of the road and therefore walking in them is okay and jogging and valet parking stands and all the other things we generally put up with on sidewalks but become really dangerous in the bike lane. But safety before semantics, I guess.

@mstone 86115 wrote:

What about the person? We expect that cyclists should get certain accommodations as vulnerable users, but here you kinda sound like “at least the person is a softer target”.

No, that’s not what I’m saying. A person is smaller, easier to dodge around, won’t be a large hunk of steel being powered by a large motor, will have better use of senses, etc. In other words, will be easier to get around a person if they don’t move, and easier to ask to move/more likely to sense that you’re coming. I said I rather have them in my path. I would prefer not to hit either of them.

@mstone 86115 wrote:

The concept is valid, the question is just whether it can be written in a practicable manner that covers all the relevant cases without getting unwieldy. E.g., can a cabbie unload into a no parking zone, where he wouldn’t be allowed to drive?

I don’t see what you’re getting at here. Cars are generally allowed to drive through no parking zones (on their side of the street), so cabs can stop there. It’s just parking that’s banned.

@baiskeli 86093 wrote:

“822.16 No taxicab operator shall stop to load or unload passengers on the traffic side of the street, while occupying any intersection or crosswalk, or in such a manner as to unduly interfere with the orderly flow of traffic.

But aren’t cyclists part of “traffic?” Parking in the cycletrack is, IMO, interfering with the “orderly flow of traffic.” This is even more the case with a counterflow track.