Introducing the Arlington County Bicycle Comfort Level Map

[bobco85]

At first glance, I find the orange and yellow lines to basically say “warning, not cycling friendly, stay away.” It makes a lot of areas look less appealing for cycling, especially in areas like the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor where it looks almost dangerous to attempt to access the Metro stations.

I like Steve O’s idea on expanding the comfort levels displayed, and I think that it should be rephrased in a way that communicates the comfort level versus difficulty to better help with route planning. The line colors could be on more of a gradient to help with assessing comfort level.

My interpretation of Steve O’s idea:
(Key: Old description -> Comfort Level – Line color)

Easy -> Very Comfortable – Carolina Blue
Medium -> Somewhat Comfortable – Lime Green
Difficult -> Less Comfortable – Yellow
Strongly Discouraged -> Not Comfortable – Orange

Still, this looks pretty great! I think that once some revisions are made, this will be very useful to a lot of people (perhaps even more useful than the regular Arlington bike map).

[lordofthemark]

@KLizotte 122846 wrote:

It would also be super awesome if Alexandria and Falls Church got on board since our little county is small and one might assume dragons and sea monsters are on the other side of the border.

Hmmm. Alexandria would have too many roads that, to be consistent, would have to be labeled “riding discouraged”? They should have the resources, since a lot of this stuff was looked at as part of the Bike Ped Master Plan update. If I make it to the next BPAC meeting, I will bring it up.

[americancyclo]

I’d recommend one consistent outline or border color for ‘bike lanes’ instead of the darker blue, yellow and orange borders. Maybe a black outline or thicker green outline? Something that makes the bike lanes pop from the map a bit more. As an interested but concerned person trying to ride from Rosslyn to Ballston, I may be more sensitive to the continuity of a bike lane, rather than the changes from medium to difficult and back.

[Tim Kelley]

@americancyclo 122956 wrote:

I’d recommend one consistent outline or border color for ‘bike lanes’ instead of the darker blue, yellow and orange borders. Maybe a black outline or thicker green outline? Something that makes the bike lanes pop from the map a bit more. As an interested but concerned person trying to ride from Rosslyn to Ballston, I may be more sensitive to the continuity of a bike lane, rather than the changes from medium to difficult and back.

Maybe I’m missing what you’re saying, but the whole point of the comfort map is to minimize the bike facilities in favor of comfort. If someone wants to do route planning based on in ground facilities, the regular map is better for that. Or are you saying something else?

[dasgeh]

@bobco85 122952 wrote:

At first glance, I find the orange and yellow lines to basically say “warning, not cycling friendly, stay away.” It makes a lot of areas look less appealing for cycling, especially in areas like the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor where it looks almost dangerous to attempt to access the Metro stations.

I like Steve O’s idea on expanding the comfort levels displayed, and I think that it should be rephrased in a way that communicates the comfort level versus difficulty to better help with route planning. The line colors could be on more of a gradient to help with assessing comfort level.

My interpretation of Steve O’s idea:
(Key: Old description -> Comfort Level – Line color)

Easy -> Very Comfortable – Carolina Blue
Medium -> Somewhat Comfortable – Lime Green
Difficult -> Less Comfortable – Yellow
Strongly Discouraged -> Not Comfortable – Orange

Still, this looks pretty great! I think that once some revisions are made, this will be very useful to a lot of people (perhaps even more useful than the regular Arlington bike map).

LOVE IT. That with black bike lane markings, and having the easy streets be the boldest lines and the not comfortable be the thinnest lines. And for all of the currently white streets, maybe outline them in blue (unless they warrant a different color) to show that they’re all comfortable, just not heavily used routes.

I would consider making Less Comfortable = Orange and Not Comfortable = Red (because yellow is hard to see, and honestly, yellow and orange tend to look alike)
I would make the last category (currently gray) only for those that actually prohibit cycling (I66, GWMP)

And another reason not to use the term “Strongly discouraged”: we live in a contributory negligence state. We don’t need to give any fodder to lawyers, e.g., for a driver who hits a cyclists on the Pike, then argues the cyclist shouldn’t have been there because BikeArlington discourages it.

[DismalScientist]

I think the map should separate the concepts of comfort and hilliness–perhaps with a color coding for comfort level and a grayness scale for terrain (not that I think there are any hills around here at all:rolleyes:). This gives the impression that McKinley Road is less comfortable than Army Navy–that is ridiculous.

The base map for this appears to be the Arlington County Bike Map, which looks specifically at infrastructure and “signed” bike routes. I think that this map should identify unsigned bike routes as well–specifically looking at well-biked routes from Strava heat maps. (Actually, I think the county should rethink what it wants to identify as a signed route.) For example, 20th Street is a quiet alternative to 23rd from Crystal City over the hill to Army Navy. Using 7th Street South is good for accessing the WOD and crossing George Mason at 8th and eventually 2nd Street to Fort Meyer. (The gravel path between 7th Street and the WOD should probably be paved.)

I agree that you should get rid of the difficult/discouraged language.
On the back of the map under medium comfort, the diagram shows a sharrow with one lane, with a car passing a bike in that one wide lane. Lanes with sharrows aren’t actually that wide and this illustration shows dangerous behavior.

Nits: Boundary Channel underneath 395 doesn’t deserve orange (of course it is blue on the Crystal City inset). Fairfax is yellow on the main map, but blue in the R-B inset.

[lordofthemark]

I think the map is fine, afaict (I don’t know ArlCo well enough to say for sure)

but – this being 2015 and all – really what we should have is an interactive tool – wherein you put in weights (this could be done with words, and the machine would turn it into weights) of how important to you traffic volume/speed is, hills, and things like turns and visibility and other things that tend to matter when you are riding quickly. You would then get your own personalized comfort map. I mean would that be that hard to code?

I find my own weights for those factors have changed as I ride more. I can tolerate a higher level of traffic proximity than I could three years ago – and as I go faster, various sharp turns and so forth become much more annoying than they used to be – and slowly but surely, hills get more doable.

[Anonymous]

1) This is great! Much more useful than maps of bike lanes and “designated bike routes” that don’t necessarily tell you much about what the conditions are really like.

@Tim Kelley 122831 wrote:

Thanks for the feedback. That’s a tough one–there are virtually no cars on it (which on any other street would make it an “easy” or on par with a off street trail) but it is very steep.) We ended up making it a medium and adding the hill markings since the alternative is straight up Chain Bridge. Up for debate–we’ll mull it over for the next revision.

2) No opinion from me on what 41st should be, but I would suggest against letting the available alternatives influence designations, if that’s what you’re saying here. If all available routes between A and B happen to not be very good, that’s important to know as a cyclist planning a trip, and more important if policy planners happen to start using your map to identify needs. (which hopefully they would! It’s great information!)

@Tim Kelley 122820 wrote:

The map’s ranking factors include volume and speed of cars, whether or not there is bicycle infrastructure in place and landscape considerations (ex. hills).
(FYI–we’ll be taking input on this map going forward so please pass along any comments, corrections or updates!)

3) If you’re not already, I’d also include condition of pavement as part of the evaluation. Riding alongside traffic in a bike lane or shoulder, or sharing a lane with traffic, is much more nervewracking (for me, at least) if you also have to dodge potholes and debris. I am acutely aware of behaving in a manner more unpredictable to drivers in the presence of large or numerous potholes.

4) I agree with dasgeh that differentiating between “here is a hill you might want to know about” and “this is a really super hard hill” would be informative, though I’m not sure about 5% being the cutoff. I’m thinking something along the lines of the hill at mile 0 of MVT. Based on my observations, that’s a hill that many casual cyclists find challenging but most (though not 100%) people can make it up without walking. I’d think that would be a good dividing line. Strava claims it has a max grade of 9%, so assuming that is accurate maybe something like 7-8%?

[americancyclo]

@Tim Kelley 122957 wrote:

Maybe I’m missing what you’re saying, but the whole point of the comfort map is to minimize the bike facilities in favor of comfort. If someone wants to do route planning based on in ground facilities, the regular map is better for that. Or are you saying something else?

Aren’t most decisions based on facilities AND comfort/tolerance? Why sacrifice one for the other, or require cross-referencing two maps. Don’t bike facilities contribute to comfort level? Isn’t that the going argument among advocacy folks?

Can you play with the hue and saturation to make the easiest sections pop out a bit more to the eye? The black roads pop a bit too much I think, and that’s the last place we want people focusing.

[americancyclo]

some good design comments on the post over at GGW
http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/27889/want-a-stress-free-bike-ride-in-arlington-theres-a-map-for-that/

And if we’re talking about comfort, are the designations how I feel when I ride those roads? It kinda makes sense to me now…

I feel this is easy!
I feel this is medium!
I feel this is difficult!
I feel STRONGLY DISCOURAGED.

[Tim Kelley]

@lordofthemark 122977 wrote:

but – this being 2015 and all – really what we should have is an interactive tool – wherein you put in weights (this could be done with words, and the machine would turn it into weights) of how important to you traffic volume/speed is, hills, and things like turns and visibility and other things that tend to matter when you are riding quickly. You would then get your own personalized comfort map. I mean would that be that hard to code?

Didn’t RideTheCity do that when it first started? They had the triangle with the dot you could move around to change the distance/hills/traffic attributes of a route. Not sure why they don’t anymore. Looks like they do have a “rate the route” option now.

[Tim Kelley]

@Amalitza 122978 wrote:

2) No opinion from me on what 41st should be, but I would suggest against letting the available alternatives influence designations, if that’s what you’re saying here. If all available routes between A and B happen to not be very good, that’s important to know as a cyclist planning a trip, and more important if policy planners happen to start using your map to identify needs. (which hopefully they would! It’s great information!)

That’s not the case. Sorry if my wording came off that way.

If you’re not already, I’d also include condition of pavement as part of the evaluation. Riding alongside traffic in a bike lane or shoulder, or sharing a lane with traffic, is much more nervewracking (for me, at least) if you also have to dodge potholes and debris. I am acutely aware of behaving in a manner more unpredictable to drivers in the presence of large or numerous potholes.

That would be very difficult to keep up to date with any accuracy, even with an online/interactive map.

[Tim Kelley]

@americancyclo 122979 wrote:

Aren’t most decisions based on facilities AND comfort/tolerance?

Maybe? If the facilities actually make it feel safer? The example I like is the bike lanes on Wilson Blvd from Rosslyn to Clarendon are much less comfortable than riding on the parallel Key Blvd where there are no bike lanes or facilities.

The black roads pop a bit too much I think, and that’s the last place we want people focusing.

Or is it? Telling brand new riders to watch out for Columbia Pike and Glebe is pretty important, right? We’ve had a couple professional bike advocates in other jurisdictions say how much they like the black lines and the “strongly discouraged” wording because of it’s honesty.

Also, have you seen a print version in person compared to an online pdf? Some people say that the PDF appears to be much more nasty.

That being said–we played with a bunch of different color schemes before settling on this one. We can certainly continue playing with in the future.

[dasgeh]

@Tim Kelley 122989 wrote:

Or is it? Telling brand new riders to watch out for Columbia Pike and Glebe is pretty important, right?

Not if you want to “highlight[] the most stress-free routes to get around Arlington”. Compare Columbia Pike to I-66. Your eye is immediately drawn to the Pike, and you don’t even consider I-66 (because it’s gray, like the background).

Imagine an online tool where you could set your level of “I will not bike there” and you were shown a map of only streets/trails that met your criteria. Gaps in the network would be very apparent, because the streets/trails actually wouldn’t connect to each other.

The current color scheme makes it more difficult to identify gaps, because the “bad” routes are the boldest (black) and least bold (gray) colors.

[Tim Kelley]

@dasgeh 122990 wrote:

Imagine an online tool where you could set your level of “I will not bike there” and you were shown a map of only streets/trails that met your criteria. Gaps in the network would be very apparent, because the streets/trails actually wouldn’t connect to each other.

Like this? http://www.northeastern.edu/peter.furth/connectivity-of-low-stress-bicycle-networks/ That’s what the $45K grant for the Low Stress Bicycling Mapping project Arlington County received is for: http://www.mwcog.org/uploads/committee-documents/lFxfXlpd20150716105445.pdf Don’t use the Comfort Map to identify gaps.

We played the color game for quite awhile throughout the design process. We wanted something that was intuitive–we tried a traffic signal (green, yellow, red) system, a ski slopes system (green, blue, black) and a couple variations in between. Ultimately we decided on the current setup and we thought it important to inform new riders of both good places to ride and bad places to ride.

Like I’ve said before, we’re open to potential changes for future revisions, but we’re pretty happy with how things turned out.

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