Bike Friendly Arlington?

[Steve O]

@rcannon100 121948 wrote:

Chris Hamilton just tweeted:

Does Arlington deserve to be Gold?

No. Just a few months ago, the entire community of cyclists, including the BAC, this forum and others, had to vociferously argue NOT to cut bike staffing by 50%. Sorry, but for the most part County Board level support for bikes is mostly lip service. Until people on bikes are truly considered on an equal basis as people in cars, I vote continued Silver.

• There is no clear responsibility for fixing trail lighting, and there are lights that have been out for years.
• The signage program seems completely stalled out, and errors that I pointed out to the program manager more than two years ago have never been fixed.
• There is no bike education in the public schools curriculum.
• Bike commuting numbers don’t even reach the Silver level in the diagram
• Intersection of Doom project has been pushed into the next decade (at the earliest)
• Relationship with ACPD is better than it once was, but not yet what I would consider “gold”
• Oh, yeah. And the decal fee that was instituted in 2010 to specifically fund bike and ped projects keeps getting raided and is in danger of being completely reappropriated every year.
• (your rant here)

I think gold is still unwarranted. I also believe that getting silver is more likely to result in stronger efforts to actually improve in ways that get us to a deserved gold in the future rather than letting the County brag about their shiny, new Gold without actually doing all that much.

[Tim Kelley]

@rcannon100 121948 wrote:

When LAB does its BFB evaluation, historically they have consulted constituency to see if their views are in line with the application. Now might be a good time to let LAB know whether ArlCo is golden.

I’ll do you one better Bob–you can sign up to be a local reviewer yourself: http://bikeleague.org/content/become-local-reviewer

BTW, Platinum has been around for quite some time. The diamond level was the newest level introduced in 2012.

[americancyclo]

@rcannon100 121948 wrote:

What makes a community Bike Friendly? LAB lists the criteria here. LAB has a little diagram that helps show the criteria.

I’d love to see a matching chart with Arlington’s numbers filled in!

[lordofthemark]

@rcannon100 121948 wrote:

One thing that is interesting is that there is now Platinum and Diamond levels of BFB. So its sort of Grade Inflation. “Gold” seems more like a B grade.

I think they did that so places like Portland would still have something to aspire to. More like they instituted A+ for the gifted and talented kids.

[S. Arlington Observer]

Without getting into whether our County deserves the gold (my thought is “perhaps”), I will note that when a bike lane is blocked by a vehicle it as likely as not to be either an Arlington Transit bus (that could pull over more if it tried) or a County vehicle. Not to mention the way the County makes alternate provisions for cars when either (a) doing its own construction work in roadways or (b) permitting private contractors to impeded traffic lanes, but rarely makes provisions to retain the bicycle lane.

[chris_s]

Despite a lot of great work by BikeArlington and the Daves, Arlington does not deserve Gold at this time. I hope they remain Silver or get demoted to Bronze and the Board & OTHER DES Staff see it as a wake-up call to get serious. The rest of DES rarely pushes for good projects and when they do, the Board abandons them in the face of any opposition no matter how ridiculous.

[lordofthemark]

@chris_s 121980 wrote:

Despite a lot of great work by BikeArlington and the Daves, Arlington does not deserve Gold at this time. I hope they remain Silver or get demoted to Bronze and the Board & OTHER DES Staff see it as a wake-up call to get serious. The rest of DES rarely pushes for good projects and when they do, the Board abandons them in the face of any opposition no matter how ridiculous.

Seriously, take a look at other Silver communities. City of Alexandria is silver, and we are still definitely behind Arlington, IMO. DC is Sliver and is ahead on some metrics, but still has many of the problems people complain about in Arlington. NYC is Silver, and well … Bronze as far as I can tell is a locality doing really anything for bikes, in effect.

If Arlington is demoted to Bronze, without LAB doing a general tightening of standards nationally, I would be surprised.

[chris_s]

@lordofthemark 121985 wrote:

If Arlington is demoted to Bronze, without LAB doing a general tightening of standards nationally, I would be surprised.

I will be surprised if any city ever gets demoted.

It’s time for DC to make Gold.

[Jason B]

@Steve O 121958 wrote:

[*]There is no bike education in the public schools curriculum.
.

Gold, Silver, Bronze or Terracotta, I have no idea, but at W-L bike education is part of P.E. and I can assume the same is true for Yorktown and Wakefield. Heck, our P.E. teacher taught me to put my arm in a ‘L’ position for a right turn,,,,or was it left? Forget it, I’m going back to pointing

[Tim Kelley]

@Jason B 122012 wrote:

I have no idea, but at W-L bike education is part of P.E. and I can assume the same is true for Yorktown and Wakefield.

Don’t worry, we got all the APS bike education (including the camps and after school programming) into the application!

[Steve O]

@Jason B 122012 wrote:

but at W-L bike education is part of P.E.

Really? Did that include on-street riding? Or just classroom?

I think the BAC would benefit from knowing more about the bike curriculum. Who is in charge of that?

[Jason B]

I think they start on trainers in the gym (don’t get excited Tim, no tabatas just balance and familiarity). Then they move to the parking deck, Custis and eventually the street.

Also, as Tim said up there^^^^, BA has offered to come by the school any time. We have also stopped in for some bike edumacation. Also, we sent a couple kids to, sorry I forgot her name Z-something, for bike education classes. These were high school kids who were never on a bike. They wanted to learn before the P.E. bike rotation, to join our bike club rides.

[mstone]

I’m jealous–when I was a kid we had bowling and square dancing in PE, never bikes.

[consularrider]

@Jason B 122017 wrote:

I think they start on trainers in the gym (don’t get excited Tim, no tabatas just balance and familiarity). Then they move to the parking deck, Custis and eventually the street.

Also, as Tim said up there^^^^, BA has offered to come by the school any time. We have also stopped in for some bike edumacation. Also, we sent a couple kids to, sorry I forgot her name Z-something, for bike education classes. These were high school kids who were never on a bike. They wanted to learn before the P.E. bike rotation, to join our bike club rides.

Son was at Washington-Lee 2009-2013 (and was your student), and I don’t recall a bike ed unit in his PE. I had him take the WABA learn to ride his junior year. Of course, he hasn’t been on a bike since.

[Steve O]

@Jason B 122012 wrote:

at W-L bike education is part of P.E. and I can assume the same is true for Yorktown and Wakefield.

@consularrider 122029 wrote:

Son was at Washington-Lee 2009-2013, and I don’t recall a bike ed unit in his PE.

I’m guessing that bike ed is an elective, like table tennis or yoga. Offered, but only a percentage of students actually take it. Unlike swimming, which is required in middle school I believe.

As an elective, the Bike-Friendly-Community metric should be: percentage of graduating students who have received bike education while attending APS. I would guess it’s currently a single digit number. What should Gold be? I suggest 50% or higher.

[Author]

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