parkingdirty.com – Crowdsourcing Arlington’s Blocked Bike Lanes

[chris_s]

How often are Arlington’s bike lanes blocked? Let’s quantify it.

1) Go to http://parkingdirty.com/help
2) You’ll be shown a photo of an Arlington bike lane and asked if it’s blocked. Pick Yes, No or Unsure.
3) Repeat as often as you’ve got time.

Should work on PC, Phone, Tablet, whatever. Waiting for the bus or waiting for your fellow coffee-club-ers to arrive? Categorize a couple of photos to pass the time and make a difference in your community.

The data will be compiled, analyzed, & used to advocate for better bike lane designs and increased parking enforcement. Found a bug? Got an idea to make it better? Let me know!

[bobco85]

I played around with it for a minute or two. It’s really easy to go through a bunch of photos, and sadly, there are a LOT of “yes” answers to the “Is this bike lane blocked?” question showing everyone’s favorite loading zone- er, I mean, Crystal Drive bike lane.

Will other bike lane traffic cams be featured?

Note: of my time going through the images, my record for number of simultaneous bike lane blockers has been 6 vehicles so far.

[chris_s]

@bobco85 147796 wrote:

Will other bike lane traffic cams be featured?

I have data on 4 spots. I have two of them “prioritized” right now since data for an entire day for one lane is more useful than data for a couple hours spread across multiple lanes. So if you continue to click through, you’ll likely get some photos of Clarendon Blvd in front of the County building as well. You won’t get Hayes by Pentagon City mall or Joyce by Pentagon Row until I’ve got full day data for at least two days for Crystal Dr & Clarendon Blvd.

[chris_s]

@bobco85 147796 wrote:

there are a LOT of “yes” answers to the “Is this bike lane blocked?” question

Responses so far this morning: 653 YES, 415 NO, 42 UNSURE

[chris_s]

@bobco85 147796 wrote:

there are a LOT of “yes” answers to the “Is this bike lane blocked?” question

Responses so far this morning: 653 YES, 415 NO, 42 UNSURE

[Judd]

Cool! Can you write a program so that when a picture of Crystal Drive is shown it automatically clicks yes for me?

It was about two thirds blocked after 5 minutes of clicking including this fourfer:

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[LeprosyStudyGroup]

This is awesome. The view switching back and forth every picture between the two streets is starting to give me a headache tho so I’m gonna stop.

[chris_s]

@LeprosyStudyGroup 147818 wrote:

This is awesome. The view switching back and forth every picture between the two streets is starting to give me a headache tho so I’m gonna stop.

I had it focused more heavily on one camera at a time initially and got tons of people asking what they needed to do to see a different spot so I switched it up. I agree going back and forth every picture is annoying. I need to find a good algorithm to give you like 5 in a row of one camera and then 5 in a row of the next.

[chris_s]

Some preliminary results are coming in and…wow. Just wow.

Take this with a grain of salt, as many of those classifications haven’t yet been verified by a 2nd person, but…

That spot on Crystal Dr blocked around 62% of the day on 9/21/2016 (day being defined in this instance as 7am-7pm)

[DrP]

@chris_s 147822 wrote:

Some preliminary results are coming in and…wow. Just wow.

Take this with a grain of salt, as many of those classifications haven’t yet been verified by a 2nd person, but…

That spot on Crystal Dr blocked around 62% of the day on 9/21/2016 (day being defined in this instance as 7am-7pm)

Seems kind of low to me. I used to work just above that area and would look out the window several times during the day. I rarely found the bike lane completely free. Must have been the rain apparent in the pictures keeping the drivers from venturing on the roads. Those car lanes can be pretty dangerous in the rain.

[chris_s]

More preliminary results, same “grain of salt” warning applies as above – many classifications haven’t been confirmed by a second user:

Clarendon Blvd @ Wayne blocked around 56% of the day on 9/21/2016 (day being defined in this instance as 7am-7pm).

[LeprosyStudyGroup]

Bike lane? What bike lane? It’s often so blocked it forces the two lane road into a one lane road.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]12620[/ATTACH]

Does this dumbass guy going the wrong way count as a block? aheee
[ATTACH=CONFIG]12621[/ATTACH]

[elbows]

I was a little unclear how to draw a line for partially blocked – as in the parked and driverless car is over the line (I might have said blocked but they weren’t completely so). Also, wasn’t sure about buses that were over the dashed line but also in the dark line boxed out bike lane.

Cool tool. Thanks.

[Steve O]

I didn’t count as blocked when cars were clearly passing over the lane to park or unpark. I think that’s just how it is for an unprotected bike lane. I also did not count it blocked when the bus was stopped to board or de-board passengers, since it was doing exactly what buses are supposed to do.

That said, the bus was “blocking” the lane, so which is it? :confused:

Parked cars that were a little on the line I was generously lenient on. Clearly encroaching on the lane, not.

This is definitely cool. Thanks.

[scoot]

@Steve O 147831 wrote:

I didn’t count as blocked when cars were clearly passing over the lane to park or unpark. I think that’s just how it is for an unprotected bike lane. I also did not count it blocked when the bus was stopped to board or de-board passengers, since it was doing exactly what buses are supposed to do.

That said, the bus was “blocking” the lane, so which is it? :confused:

Parked cars that were a little on the line I was generously lenient on. Clearly encroaching on the lane, not.

I haven’t participated yet, but I would count all of those cases as blocked.

The point is to calculate what fraction of the day would compel a cyclist to merge into the general travel lane in order to traverse the area. The in-process parkers and stopped buses may each have a small effect individually, but they do add up. Also, these lanes are both narrow enough that even the slightest encroachment over the line by a parked or idling vehicle effectively blocks them: I always end up merging into traffic to get around such vehicles because the alternative is the door zone.

[Author]

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