Article: Easy Bikes, No Spandex Required

[GovernorSilver]

@mstone 117623 wrote:

Yes, there’s a lot of dutch bike infrastructure, but that’s to enable a lot of arbitrarily chosen short trips (i.e., things people decide to do organically rather than specifically planned destination pairs), not primarily to enable long trips. It’s certainly possible to take long trips, but that’s more for leisure than for daily commuting.

I’d be fine with infrastructure improvements to make short trips easier and safer for everyone – even better if the same infrastructure can be used for a safer work commute, say between DC downtown and a neighboring municipality like Silver Spring or Alexandria.

[lordofthemark]

@vvill 117627 wrote:

If everyone in DC who worked within 3 miles of their home rode a comfy cruiser bike to their offices in work clothes it’d be cool and a great start – but there’d still be crazy traffic everywhere.

A huge amount of the traffic that drives people insane is not on the highways, but on local arterials where a huge proportion of the trips are less than 3 miles (and many more are 3-5 miles)

If in any given part of the region, we could get all commute trips under 3 miles onto bikes, and say 50% of non-commute trips under 3 miles, and say 50% of commute trips of 3-5 miles – we would have relieved congestion on those arterials a tremendous amount.

Some of that won’t happen because of hills, climate, and non modifiable aspects of culture – but a lot of it is infra, and modifiable aspects of culture.

At earth day we had one woman who lived about 3 miles from her workplace – but both home and workplace were in the landmark area of west alexandria, and 3 BPAC people could not figure out a comfortable route for her. It is so frustrating. I also know a woman who lives in that part of Alexandria, and works in Crystal City, and is eager to bike (she used to be a semiathletic rider) but Edsall Road discourages her.

OTOH I know someone who lives near Shirlington and works in Crystal City, and who bikes regularly – he is not the least bit athletic – he rides an Ebike. It works for him because he uses the trail network.

[mstone]

@GovernorSilver 117637 wrote:

I’d be fine with infrastructure improvements to make short trips easier and safer for everyone – even better if the same infrastructure can be used for a safer work commute, say between DC downtown and a neighboring municipality like Silver Spring or Alexandria.

Well, the point is that it’s really hard to enable short trips unless you have a comprehensive network that happens to also work with long trips. It’s very unlikely that you can implement a network entirely of tiny disconnected segments that manages to actually connect all the places that people are trying to go. (Listen up, local jurisdictions!)

[GovernorSilver]

@mstone 117641 wrote:

Well, the point is that it’s really hard to enable short trips unless you have a comprehensive network that happens to also work with long trips. It’s very unlikely that you can implement a network entirely of tiny disconnected segments that manages to actually connect all the places that people are trying to go. (Listen up, local jurisdictions!)

Well, I never said segments shouldn’t be connected.

I live in Huntington, where the road is the only way to get to any bike trail – no bike lanes or sharrows here. Any improvement is fine by me.

[GovernorSilver]

@sjclaeys 117598 wrote:

Shhhh, don’t let people know that an 8-speed can be a gateway drug to cycling longer distances!

Heh, my bike is an 8-speed – a commuter bike with rack, fenders, etc. Handlebars designed for more upright posture instead of drop bars.

My longest ride so far is 23 miles, but I’m sure I’ll do a longer one before too long. I love riding the trails here.

[vvill]

@GovernorSilver 117635 wrote:

Of course it’s not possible to exactly reproduce their rider culture over here. I’m just saying we can get better – closer to their standard.

I have no comment on the Dutch cruiser bike thing – I believe your opponent in that fight is a different person.

lol, fight? This is a general discussion (is it not?). My original post was in response to the OP article and the follow up posts. My second post was just a reply to your reply. (And yeah, surely we all agree we can get better infrastructure.)

[GovernorSilver]

@vvill 117663 wrote:

lol, fight? This is a general discussion (is it not?). My original post was in response to the OP article and the follow up posts. My second post was just a reply to your reply. (And yeah, surely we all agree we can get better infrastructure.)

You mentioned Dutch cruiser bikes several times in your replies to me – I’m guessing you did that because someone else said more people should ride Dutch cruisers. Just pointing out that it wasn’t mel.

[mattotoole]

@PotomacCyclist 117636 wrote:

As for the weather, we can adapt by adding more showers in or near office buildings. Some private gyms may want to think about offering shower-only memberships. Some already do, but I don’t think most do.

There’s a lot of potential with gyms. Note how many are in struggling strip centers and office buildings with cheap rent, and often have a lot more space than they need. So I’ve been trying to sell the idea of providing secure bike parking, showers, and lockers for bike commuters. Also partnering with companies like Bikestation, etc. I’ve talked with them too. There’s been some interest, but it’s still a stretch.

[PotomacCyclist]

The DC Office of Planning noted that the number of people biking to work in DC increased by 389 percent, from 3,035 bike commuters in 2000 to 14,854 bike commuters in 2013.

http://op-inions.com/2015/05/21/biking-to-work-more-than-quadrupled-in-just-over-a-decade-in-dc-2/

It’s true that the total population has increased in DC over the past decade, but nothing close to 389 percent. DC’s population increased from 572,059 to 649,111, an increase of 13.5% from 2000 to 2013.

[Drewdane]

@Tim Kelley 117534 wrote:

“To get more people riding, bike-makers peddle relaxed models without all the gears or carbon fiber”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/easy-bikes-no-spandex-required-1433777624

The industry is lurching towards the future.

I see the comments section has been overrun with the usual “Biker Hooligans Need to Git Offa Mah Road!” trash…

[GovernorSilver]

@PotomacCyclist 117872 wrote:

The DC Office of Planning noted that the number of people biking to work in DC increased by 389 percent, from 3,035 bike commuters in 2000 to 14,854 bike commuters in 2013.

http://op-inions.com/2015/05/21/biking-to-work-more-than-quadrupled-in-just-over-a-decade-in-dc-2/

It’s true that the total population has increased in DC over the past decade, but nothing close to 389 percent. DC’s population increased from 572,059 to 649,111, an increase of 13.5% from 2000 to 2013.

Interesting. It was last year or maybe 2 years ago that I found out about WABA’s “adult how to ride” classes. Before that I didn’t have any inclination to learn how to ride. Unfortunately, every single class was fully booked, every time I looked. I then gave up and didn’t think about riding again until the failed attempts to teach me to ride earlier this year.

Fully-booked adult how-to-ride classes for multiple consecutive months would seem to indicate a lot of people learning to ride for the first time. I don’t know though how many of them went on to become bike commuters.

[Tim Kelley]

@GovernorSilver 117875 wrote:

Fully-booked adult how-to-ride classes for multiple consecutive months would seem to indicate a lot of people learning to ride for the first time. I don’t know though how many of them went on to become bike commuters.

I think I heard somewhere that the waitlist for the classes is in the hundreds! There’s something to this bike riding thing…

[Steve O]

@Tim Kelley 117876 wrote:

I think I heard somewhere that the waitlist for the classes is in the hundreds! There’s something to this bike riding thing…

Last month I taught a class with Dan Hoagland, Director of Education at WABA. He told me the waiting list is now approaching 1000.

[PotomacCyclist]

I came around to bike commuting in a very roundabout way. I used to bike a lot in grade school, although I never bike-commuted to school. I knew how to ride, but I rarely biked in high school and college.

After watching the 2004 Summer Olympics on TV, I started swimming. Nothing too serious. Just casual sessions in the summer months. But it was enough to build a modest amount of aerobic endurance.

Then after seeing Michael Phelps on TV at the 2008 Summer Olympics, I decided that I wanted to train for something myself, strictly at an amateur level. Someone suggested triathlon, since I liked swimming. So I started training. I kept up with it, despite some running-related injuries that first year.

I started out with stationary bike workouts until I bought a bike. After I got a triathlon bike, I continued to focus on athletic training, but I did some bike commutes too. After Capital Bikeshare started up in 2010, I started to do a lot of rides on CaBi, for commutes, errands and general recreational/tourist-type riding. I also became more interested in bike infrastructure and transportation issues.

Although I still train for some events (including non-bike events like running races), more and more of my cycling is on CaBi and I’m not as focused on athletic performance. (If I were a professional athlete or competitive in my age group, I might be more focused on it. Unless I devote much of my life to training, I would only move up from somewhere in the middle of the pack to a little higher up in the middle of the pack. That’s not enough of an incentive if I’m never going to be competitive at a large race.)

I only heard about WABA well after I started cycling and triathlon. As I realized the importance of bike infrastructure, planning, policy and general education (for drivers too), I took more interest in that side of cycling.

This year, I’ve changed my habits again. For my training, I decided to focus a little more on running and swimming. I haven’t done much athletic bike training at all this year. My bike commuting has been sporadic too. That’s partly because of the running, but also because of the RackSpotter process.

So I started biking because I watched a swimmer on TV, not Lance Armstrong or another cyclist. Then that athletic focus transformed into bike commuting and bikeshare riding, on the slower but more stable and safe CaBi bikes. I still haven’t heard from anyone else who probably started biking again as an adult, primarily because of Michael Phelps. I don’t consider him my personal hero, because he is a flawed individual, like most of us. But he did accomplish something outstanding and historic in 2008. It changed many parts of my life. Eventually it got me to try bike commuting. I became interested in transportation and planning issues. I’m more familiar with side streets, trails and various neighborhoods, in Arlington, DC and the entire region. If I hadn’t started biking, I wouldn’t know what the Mt. Vernon Trail is. Or the W&OD. I would still think that the Birchmere was half a continent away from Pentagon City and Crystal City when it’s a fairly short bike ride. I wouldn’t be that familiar with neighborhoods like Gallery Place, the Southwest Waterfront, NoMa, etc. East Potomac Park would simply be a place where the Metro trains pass by between DC and Arlington. And so on.

[PotomacCyclist]

Are the classes free or is a fee charged? If there is that much demand, why not increase the price to get more people to sign up for the training and be available to teach the classes? Or find some other way to get more teachers for the classes. Additional funding from WABA, DDOT, BikeArlington, etc.? Large businesses and government agencies sponsoring adult bike classes. All of these organizations have an incentive in encouraging more people to become active and healthier. That can cut down on healthcare expenses. More cyclists can mean improved traffic flow, or at least less demand on Metro, which is often overcrowded during peak hours.

[Author]

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