A brief history of winter trail condition reporting in the D.C. area

[dasgeh]

So I don’t have answers to your very good questions. But I did have a thought: what do people think about putting signs up on the trails advertising the forum? The more users we have, the better our trail condition reporting will be (and honestly, I think it’s good for the cycling community). (Of course, there may be downsides of encouraging trolls — I suggest putting the signs far out of sight of cars.)

Maybe something along the lines of “Join the online cycling community: Get Trail Conditions, Commuting Tips, Route Suggestions and more bikearlingtonforum.com

[rcannon100]

How did cyclists get around in those years?

In 1978 I was a teenager. I got around by riding on the shoulder of River Road (at least…. that’s where they found me lying unconscious in a ditch). The path along MacCarthur existed back then – and we use to bike out to Great Falls. And of course there was the Tow Path along the Canal. Actually… there wasnt. In 1972, Hurricane Agnes removed large pieces of the tow path. I forget how long before they fully reopened it (it took a while).

In 1986 I was a courier. Got around pretty much straight down the middle of the road.

In 1989 I moved to A-Town and learned the Joys of the Custis – tho the Arlington Loop had yet to be completed. You would bike to Shirlington (half its size back then) – and then have to go over that pedestrian bridge to the other size of 395 – wander aimlessly through neighborhoods in a route that claimed to be the bike route – and then re appear over on FMR. And the Intersection of Doom – it existed back then too (all the promises we hear about how they are just about to fix it – yeah, we heard those back then too)

Of course back then Bike to Work day had one pit stop: Freedom Plaza – a few hundred bikers would sit around eating bagels while the mayor promised great things to come.

In 1995 I bought a house in N Arlington. Proximity to public transportation and bike paths was a golden feature that strongly influenced where we bought.

Gots to say, in 25 years in Arlington, fabulously impressed by the work of the County. And I am grateful for the sub communities that have sprung up through social media. Bike all day – yammer about biking all night. Sounds about right.

[Justin Antos]

Great retrospective! Following @DCTrails was my primary motive for joining Twitter.

[5555624]

@PotomacCyclist 41756 wrote:

What about the pre-2009 days? I think Bike Washington may have been the primary source of online cycling-related info in the D.C. area, before local jurisdictions like Arlington set up more polished bike sites of their own.

Before the Bike Washington days and before the Web became ubiquitous, how would local cyclists communicate to others about various weather-related and other hazards on area roads and trails? Paper sheets stapled to telephone poles? Morse code light signals? Bat Light? Perhaps all of the cyclists knew each other back then because there were so few of them, and there were fewer dedicated bike facilities than there are now. (No Mount Vernon Trail before 1973. No W&OD Trail before 1974. No Custis Trail before late 1982. No Capital Crescent Trail before 1996!) How did cyclists get around in those years?

Although I stopped reading it a couple of years ago, the dc.biking newsgroup goes back to the mid-1990s. Trail conditions, route information, Allen’s class announcements, etc. (The last message I have saved from the newsgroup is from March 2010, “W&OD trail plowing.”) If I recall correctly, it started out as a mailing list “dcbike@igc.topica.com” before becoming a local newsgroup.

Oh, there was also some informal mailing lists, too. Looking back, I see some messages from Allen Muchnick, with a list of people. That included an “Arlington Bicyclists” e-mail address.

I see I have a discussion of “WB&A Expansion to PG County” that was on dcbike@igc.apc.org, so that’s where the mailing list was before switching to dcbike@igc.topica.com in the Fall of 1999.

[Author]

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