Cyclist Speeding Ticket NBC Report?

[Judd]

@Steve O 138595 wrote:

Yes, as any of the regular riders can tell you without using google. Even though 1% is pretty close to flat, that 1%–either up or down–actually makes a real difference.
This segment, for instance:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]11582[/ATTACH]

Which goes through the aforementioned tunnel. My PR on this segment n-bound is 19 mph; southbound 24.8 mph. Good thing no cops!

Imagine if they started ticketing jus by monitoring Strava. My last CCT ride would land me a ticket on the southbound. It would actually have been hard to go only 15 in lots of parts without traffic even at a light pedaling pace. Near the heavy foot traffic in Bethesda I went appropriately slow and delayed several passes although I saw a couple of folks splitting through pedestrians at high speed.

[Raymo853]

@Judd 138607 wrote:

Imagine if they started ticketing jus by monitoring Strava. My last CCT ride would land me a ticket on the southbound. It would actually have been hard to go only 15 in lots of parts without traffic even at a light pedaling pace. Near the heavy foot traffic in Bethesda I went appropriately slow and delayed several passes although I saw a couple of folks splitting through pedestrians at high speed.

A ban on bikes was implented on trails near LA after the Strava segment speeds were noticed.

http://www.losaltosonline.com/news/sections/news/199-city-affairs/52101

I fear some day the same thing could happen with the CCT and other trails here. (BTW, that is a secondary motivation for my flagging all those seents)

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

[Rod Smith]

Ride 25mph on the road.

[Crickey7]

I’m not totally buying the limited resources complaint. If it’s a problem, and this is a solution, then it’s worth the resources. It’s probably one of the less busy times for MoCo Park Police anyway.

Cyclist/other user interactions on this trail, and many others, is a problem. I see too many unsafe passes and I hear too few called passes (I find fast kit-wearing riders to be as frequent offenders as anyone). People are getting hurt. But I’m unconvinced that these sporadic enforcement efforts at a static location in the morning will curb speeds in a way that impacts this problem. It can’t catch unsafe passes. The biggest conflicts are in the early evenings and weekends, not mornings. And a single 15 mph is unrealistic. It’s too high for some locations at some times, and absurd for other locations at other times. The police happened to choose a particularly poor location and time, which rightly exposes them to some criticism.

I’d rather see a coordinated effort of greater enforcement (mobile units as well as static radar guns) and education for one week, rather than this inadequate once-a-week thing.

[Steve O]

@Rod Smith 138622 wrote:

Ride 25mph on the road.

Sorry, but when I was commuting the CCT through the winter there were times I would ride the entire section from Bethesda to Chain Bridge and not see a solitary other person–on bike, on foot; no one. Zero.
Ride safely for conditions. Crowded trail: ride slowly and courteously. Empty trail: zoom alertly.

I suspect most of these people, all deserving of tickets of course, navigated that segment of the trail safely.
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[huskerdont]

@Steve O 138649 wrote:

Sorry, but when I was commuting the CCT through the winter there were times I would ride the entire section from Bethesda to Chain Bridge and not see a solitary other person–on bike, on foot; no one. Zero.
Ride safely for conditions. Crowded trail: ride slowly and courteously. Empty trail: zoom alertly.

I suspect most of these people, all deserving of tickets of course, navigated that segment of the trail safely.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]11592[/ATTACH]

Really, you can do that with Strava? I’m so glad I live as if in a previous century without a smartphone.

That Tim Kelley guy is fast.

[Tim Kelley]

@Steve O 138649 wrote:

Sorry, but when I was commuting the CCT through the winter there were times I would ride the entire section from Bethesda to Chain Bridge and not see a solitary other person–on bike, on foot; no one. Zero.
Ride safely for conditions. Crowded trail: ride slowly and courteously. Empty trail: zoom alertly.

I suspect most of these people, all deserving of tickets of course, navigated that segment of the trail safely.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]11592[/ATTACH]

Not too many people on the trail on a cold day in February!

[dasgeh]

@Rod Smith 138622 wrote:

Ride 25mph on the road.

Happily, as long as the road is safe to ride on. I don’t think there’s an alternative to the CCT that is safe enough for most to ride on, even if you can easily go 18 mph.

That’s the problem: there aren’t alternatives that are safe and comfortable. Imagine if there were protected bike lanes on Wilson Blvd or Lee Highway. They would relieve pressure on the Bluemont & Custis Trails (respectively). Fast cyclists may stick to trails in the winter, but not when it’s miserably crowded with runners, etc…

[scoot]

@dasgeh 138720 wrote:

Happily, as long as the road is safe to ride on. I don’t think there’s an alternative to the CCT that is safe enough for most to ride on, even if you can easily go 18 mph.

That’s the problem: there aren’t alternatives that are safe and comfortable. Imagine if there were protected bike lanes on Wilson Blvd or Lee Highway. They would relieve pressure on the Bluemont & Custis Trails (respectively). Fast cyclists may stick to trails in the winter, but not when it’s miserably crowded with runners, etc…

I don’t see how that would help fast cyclists. It could reduce trail traffic, but you still have all the peds. And riding 18+ MPH in an urban protected bike lane is an attempt to book a date with either a hospital or a morgue. At those speeds you are much safer integrating with traffic.

[dasgeh]

@scoot 138736 wrote:

I don’t see how that would help fast cyclists. It could reduce trail traffic, but you still have all the peds. And riding 18+ MPH in an urban protected bike lane is an attempt to book a date with either a hospital or a morgue. At those speeds you are much safer integrating with traffic.

That’s a pretty big assertion. Any data behind that?

[scoot]

@dasgeh 138741 wrote:

That’s a pretty big assertion. Any data behind that?

Touché. It is a mere hypothesis, derived from my personal experience and observation of others’ experiences riding both integrated into traffic and in protected bike lanes.

Yet it seems obvious that, given a street and prevailing set of conditions, there exists a cycling speed above which the bicyclist is safer integrating with traffic than operating in a segregated facility. The question is: what is that speed? I am contending that, for an urban street with a typical PBL design, 18MPH is almost certainly above the critical speed.

I would like to research this problem further and estimate where the boundary lies, as a function of road geometry, traffic, etc. AFAIK, no data set exists that would be useful for such an analysis, and it would be extremely prohibitive to collect one. If anyone has any ideas or advice (about how to gather data or formulate a model), I’d love to chat.

[Author]

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