Behold: RackSpotter – A crowdsourced bike parking tool!

[PotomacCyclist]

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Parking lot across the street from Nationals Park. Bike racks just visible at the bottom.

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[PotomacCyclist]

I came across more new bike racks in the Golden Triangle BID area, along Connecticut Ave. I had passed by that block several weeks ago and didn’t see any bike racks on that part of the block. But today, I found several new ones there. I don’t think it was a case of missing them. The racks look brand new, with hardly even any dust on them. You can also see the paint markings in the concrete indicating where the installers were supposed to drill into the sidewalk.

I wonder if the RackSpotter helps the BID in determining where to add bike racks. Most of that area is well-covered with bike racks but there are a few stretches here and there without bike racks, including some in very busy retail/office areas. Those barren areas are disappearing though, as the BID continues to add more bike racks. They seem to have switched from a bike hitch design with a thin circle to one with a thicker circle.

[Tim Kelley]

@PotomacCyclist 119627 wrote:

I wonder if the RackSpotter helps the BID in determining where to add bike racks.

I’m sure it would be useful for that, but I don’t know if it’s gotten enough exposure for that yet!

[PotomacCyclist]

I saw that the Crystal City BID released a map of bike racks in their area not too long after I finished mapping that area.

I haven’t covered all of the “Golden Triangle area” yet, but I have covered much of the eastern part of the BID area, including the section of Connecticut Ave. in their jurisdiction. There was a noticeable gap in the bike rack coverage, on a busy block with retail and offices. Now that gap has been filled in with the new bike racks.

Even if they don’t know about it, I’ll proceed as if they are. At least in central DC, I’m trying to cover every block, to highlight any possible gaps in bike rack coverage. There are also some gaps where new construction is taking place. Given recent trends with bike racks at new projects, I expect that those new buildings will have multiple bike racks after they are finished.

The biggest gaps are around the large government office buildings, at Federal Triangle, Gallery Place, NoMa and “Capitol Hill-North”. I expect that those gaps will remain because of security issues. (I wouldn’t expect the gov’t to add bike racks around the sensitive buildings. Even if there weren’t security concerns about parked bikes, the thick bollards and concrete planters take up a lot of the space on the sidewalks around those buildings, leaving much less room for bike racks and parked bikes.)

[chris_s]

My campaign to make PotomacCyclist famous continues: http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/27361/theres-an-app-for-tracking-places-where-you-can-park-your-bike/

Sent from my XT1060 using Tapatalk

[Tim Kelley]

@chris_s 119884 wrote:

My campaign to make PotomacCyclist famous continues: http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/27361/theres-an-app-for-tracking-places-where-you-can-park-your-bike/

Sent from my XT1060 using Tapatalk

Awesome–thanks Chris!

[PotomacCyclist]

LOL

I don’t know if people can read the comments on that specific rack, but it’s the rack near the intersection of Ohio Drive and West Basin Drive SW in West Potomac Park. I added two separate notes for that rack, both of them accurate:

PotomacCyclist : Birds like to sit on these posts, thus the extensive bird droppings.

PotomacCyclist : West Basin Drive & Ohio Drive SW. Close to the FDR Memorial.

I’ll have to find the original photo and post it here. Then you’ll get a close-up look at why I included the bird dropping comment. It’s kind of gross, but funny at the same time. Suffice it to say, I recommend that people use one of the non-target/non-latrine bike racks at that location. The one on the left end (when facing the row of bike hitches from the street) is the bird toilet one.

You probably can’t see the details of the photo on RackSpotter, but there is a bird sitting on one of the rack posts. I’ve been trying to catch interesting moments in the bike rack photos. Other examples: I included a shot of the French tall ship “L’Hermione” in the photo of an Old Town bike rack. I included a shot of the Independence Day “Eve” fireworks at Nationals Park for one of the Nats Park-area bike racks. I included a shot of a Weeping Angel cosplayer from Awesome Con in one of the shots of the bike racks near the convention center. And so on.

[PotomacCyclist]

I just hope that if some new people add racks, that they are careful about the process. I saw an upside-down photo added recently. Although no one is perfect and sometimes it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact location of a rack (because Satellite View isn’t available on the mobile site), I would think that it’s easy to spot whether a photo is upside-down or not. There is a preview page with the photo, before you press the Submit button. All the forum regulars have been pretty careful with photos on RackSpotter so far. (When I first started adding racks, I didn’t add many photos at all, but now I add photos for every rack.)

[PotomacCyclist]

Last week, a couple of young African American men tried to intimidate me while I was stationary on a sidewalk. It was still light out and there were a lot of people walking by, but they felt free to ask me for a quarter, then swear at me repeatedly about the quarter. I wanted to say something back, but you never know what can happen. The strange thing is that they were dressed in very preppy fashion, polo shirts with turned-up collars. What’s up with that? Nothing happened in the end and I went on my way.

[NOTE – I’m not trying to bash any particular group. A few days before that incident, some red-headed guy came rushing at me from the side and slammed his boot into the back wheel of my CaBi bike, for no apparent reason. I hadn’t encountered him before and he never even said anything. After he tried to knock me over, he walked along with a sullen look. I had mentioned this on a different thread.]

But the biggest hazard of mapping bike racks… is all the *&^% mosquitoes!! Seriously. It’s probably due to all the rain we’ve been getting. At certain spots, my legs get chewed up from those critters. Maybe I’ll have to invest in some mosquito repellent. But don’t those lotions and sprays have a lot of toxic chemicals?

[cvcalhoun]

@PotomacCyclist 119922 wrote:

I just hope that if some new people add racks, that they are careful about the process. I saw an upside-down photo added recently. Although no one is perfect and sometimes it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact location of a rack (because Satellite View isn’t available on the mobile site), I would think that it’s easy to spot whether a photo is upside-down or not. There is a preview page with the photo, before you press the Submit button. All the forum regulars have been pretty careful with photos on RackSpotter so far. (When I first started adding racks, I didn’t add many photos at all, but now I add photos for every rack.)

At least on my phone, the image often takes a long time to show or doesn’t show at all. (And that’s on my good days; on the bad ones, I go through all the effort to fill in all the blanks in the form and submit the rack, and then nothing but a blank page comes up, and I have to try again, often multiple times. I’ve had to give up on some racks because I don’t have the time to keep resubmitting.) And you can’t edit anything after you post. So if you accidentally upload a photo upside down, you may not see it before posting, and then it is too late.

[PotomacCyclist]

Sometimes the preview page hangs up. For some reason, it used to happen more often before, but not as frequently now. If I hit the Back button, re-add the photo, then go back to the Preview page by pressing Next, the preview photo will appear. If the preview doesn’t appear and I press Submit, the rack will be posted without the photo.

If there are too many glitches, then I cancel the entry, go back to the main screen and refresh the browser screen. That usually clears the problem.

Sometimes that doesn’t help. I think it happens when I’m in an area where the cell network is being overloaded, such as at a large event like a Nationals game or a large concert. In that case, it’s the network overload, not the RackSpotter, that is causing the issue. In that case, I either skip the location and take down a note to come back to it later. Or I take the picture, and note exactly where the rack location is, plus the rack, space and comment info. Then when I get back to a desktop or laptop computer, I can enter all the info accurately and add the photo from the phone. I’ve only had to do this a couple times.

I’ve also done that a few times during the workday when I don’t have time to enter all the info on my phone. I take the photo and type up a quick note of all the relevant info. Then I can enter the info on a desktop computer. It’s a quicker process too, but I only do that in limited situations when I don’t have time to linger.

I’ve only seen the one upside-down photo. I believe it was added a couple weeks ago. It’s not a big deal, but I wanted to mention it so that the map doesn’t get inundated with a lot of upside-down photos or more rack locations without photos. (I added too many locations without photos already, in the first couple weeks of mapping.)

[PotomacCyclist]

Another item: Sometimes the website will log you off if you go to your default camera app and return to the browser. Usually that doesn’t happen, but every once in a while, it does. The site will let you go through some of the submission process without telling you that you have been logged out. When you figure out that you aren’t logged on, go back to the main page, refresh the screen, log in and then restart the process. It’s a little frustrating, but hopefully it doesn’t happen too often.

There is also a lag when displaying the map. I think it has to do with all the new data on the map (the bike racks). When I move the map page around, I have to force myself to wait a few seconds before trying to zoom in on a particular area. If I don’t wait, I usually hit an existing bike rack pin mistakenly. Or I press a Google Maps location highlight, like Presidents Park. Then there’s another delay until the pop-up window for that bike rack or the Google Maps highlight. Then I have to close that window, wait and then try to zoom in or move the map around again. I’m learning that a little patience is required when using the site. Most of us want to be able to move the map around immediately, or zoom in immediately after opening the browser window, but you can’t do that on RackSpotter.

I think the delays will always be there, because of all the extra data from the pins, the photos and the comments added to the map. Hopefully by the end of the year, most of the map will be filled in and none of us will have to add too many more bike racks in the future (except when there are new buildings and developments with bike racks). I’m hoping to get all of central DC finished by the end of the month. That would include everything from Dupont Circle, the West End, Foggy Bottom, the National Mall and West Potomac Park on one end, over to Downtown, Federal Triangle and L’Enfant Plaza, then Gallery Place, NoMa, Capitol Hill and Capitol South.

For other areas outside of central DC, I think I’ll just focus on the main retail/entertainment strips. There really aren’t many bike racks at all in the residential areas, except for the main streets. It wouldn’t be worth it to check every block in the residential areas, not just to find one bike rack.

[PotomacCyclist]

SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR NEW RackSpotter PEOPLE

We might have new people signing onto the RackSpotter website after the Greater Greater Washington article. I’d like to offer a few suggestions for anyone new to RackSpotter, to smooth the way and help us create an awesome map for everyone in the region.

– Photo glitch. I’ve experienced problems when I start the process of adding a new bike rack to the map, then taking a photo in the middle of the process. This causes the website to lock up. A better practice is to take a photo first. Then open the browser and the RackSpotter website. While adding a bike rack location, you will see an option to Add Photo. At this point, you can select My Files (or similar name, depending on your phone software) to select the most recent photo for the bike rack.

– More about photos. It’s useful to add a photo to each bike rack location. It can help people to locate the bike rack, especially when you include the surrounding area in the photo. If there’s a landmark nearby, I try to incorporate it into the photo, if possible. A close-up shot of the bike rack may not be as useful to people who are searching the map for possible places to lock up their bike on an unfamiliar block.

– Beware of display lag. While moving the map around to navigate to a particular location, you may notice that the website doesn’t react immediately. There’s a lot of data on the map (the individual bike racks), which causes the site to react slowly. Wait a few seconds after moving the map around, before trying to zoom in. If you rush it, you are likely to press an existing rack location or Google Maps featured area. This causes a pop-up window to open. While you can easily close that window, it’s aggravating and it slows down the process. If you wait and let the site adjust to the new map location, then you will avoid the pop-ups and the extra delays.

– Log-in status. While I can usually switch back and forth between the website, the camera app and a note-taking app without any problems, occasionally the website will log me out when I switch between apps. There doesn’t seem to be a pattern, other than it’s more common if I take a longer time between visits to the website and browser. If you see the key icon has gone dim, just log in again. On some occasions, you might try to add a bike rack and be unable to press Submit at the end. You could have been logged out. Logging-in again will resolve the issue.

– Comments. There is a 10-character minimum for comments. The site won’t let you add a comment shorter than 10 characters. Add an extra word or two to any comment you post, to reach the 10-character minimum. If you have added the name of a restaurant, add the word “restaurant” at the end. Or add “building” to a comment about a specific office building, and so on.

– Mapping areas. If I add a lot of bike racks to a neighborhood, I try to follow certain patterns, to help me or someone else in the future determine what has and what hasn’t been covered. If I’m adding racks on a particular street, I try to cover both sides of the street. Usually this means heading down the street (on bike or on foot) then turning around and covering the other side. Sometimes you can see the other side without crossing the street, but usually there are parked cars that block the view of possible bike racks on the other side of the street. If I don’t have time to cover both sides of the street, I add a brief note in a separate note app on the phone. This reminds me to cover that side of the street at a later date. Or you can post a brief comment on this thread, so that someone else can pick up the trail, if you don’t have time to go back to that street yourself.

I’ve tried to cover central areas comprehensively, meaning that I will eventually check every street and block (except those that are off-limits, such as at key gov’t facilities). There are more bike racks in central DC than in the residential neighborhoods, so it makes more sense to do a comprehensive sweep there. For neighborhoods that are primarily residential, there usually aren’t as many bike racks. Often, there are none at all, other than on small retail strips in the center of the neighborhood. In those areas, I am more likely to look at only those retail/entertainment strips. If you live in one of those neighborhoods and want to cover that area more completely on the RackSpotter map, there’s certainly no reason not to.

[I’ll add to this list as I think of other points.]

[PotomacCyclist]

LIST OF MAPPED AREAS on RackSpotter

I thought it would be helpful to have a list of neighborhoods and streets/roads that have been mapped already. While the map may never be complete (because new bike racks will get added to the numerous new construction sites in the area, and local organizations have been adding bike racks to non-construction zones too), we can still list areas that are largely mapped. In areas like NoMa, the Southwest Waterfront and the Capitol Waterfront in DC where many new buildings are being constructed, I take down quick notes on a note app on my phone, so that I can return at a later date.

DC

– Downtown (Farragut Square/McPherson Square/Franklin Square): I’ve checked all the streets in those areas. But more bike racks are on the way because of new construction.
– Metro Center
– Gallery Place
– Federal Triangle
– Mt. Vernon Triangle
– NoMa (west of the railroad tracks): Many new bike racks are likely to be added at the numerous construction sites.

ARLINGTON

– Pentagon City
– Crystal City

ALEXANDRIA

MONTGOMERY COUNTY

PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY

FALLS CHURCH

FAIRFAX COUNTY

PARTIALLY MAPPED AREAS (with unmapped bike racks)

– Old Town Alexandria

[PotomacCyclist]

I saw more new bike racks along Connecticut Ave. in downtown DC. The Golden Triangle BID is definitely adding new racks, perhaps to fill in the gaps in bike rack coverage. The area has a lot of bike racks, but there was a noticeable lack of racks along Connecticut Ave., just up the street from the Farragut North Metro entrances. There are a lot of offices, boutiques, restaurants and small businesses, so there is likely to be a lot of demand for bike racks.

I passed by those blocks several weeks ago and mapped the existing racks. This month, I’ve passed by that block and some nearby blocks and found brand new bike racks. They look new to me because the surface is still shiny and unscuffed, as if they just left the factory.

I’ve added the new racks to the map.

======

I’ve also noticed that we had a bump in people contributing after the GGW article was posted. Now we are getting coverage in even more areas, including Pennsylvania Ave SE, H St NE, Columbia Heights and Petworth. There are a lot of cyclists in some of those areas, according to CaBi data. (Demand for bikes is very high in Columbia Heights, Petworth and nearby neighborhoods in the AM rush. All the CaBi stations empty out quickly. Then many of those stations fill up quickly in the evenings.)

[Author]

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