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!

Topic

[ShawnoftheDread]

I bet we could pool our resources and hire a few trials pros to ride around town going up and over all cars blocking the bike lanes. Maybe do a few hops on each roof and hood.

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[chris_s]

Is this an effective presentation for the results?

Crystal Drive 2016-09-21
Crystal Drive 2016-09-28

Clarendon Blvd 2016-09-21

[Judd]

It’s pretty good. Maybe move the big white spaces with the time out of the slider so you get a really good idea of when a lane is blocked for hours at a time. It also looks like there aren’t pictures presented for when the lane isn’t blocked. I’d kind of like to see this. It would also be cool if there was a play button that would cause all the pictures to cycle through from the start of the day to the end of the day. It would provide a good quick view of what a day in the life of a blocked bike lane is like.

I appreciate you putting this together. It seems like it’s going to be a great advocacy tool. I was on Crystal Drive going northbound tonight and there were four cars parked in the bike lane, including a Park Service Police vehicle. Not exactly sure what business the Park Service had on Crystal Drive unless they’ve annexed the water park.

[Guus]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]12644[/ATTACH]Very cool! Awesome data.

I think the presentation is great, but I agree with Judd that it might have more visual impact if you move out the “hour” markers to the right or left of the bar, and so the green/red becomes contiguous.

Also, given that the screen is wider vertically and that you’re displaying a timeline, perhaps a vertical bar is worth trying out?

[DrP]

This is very nice. The colored bar clearly shows that the lane is blocked for large periods of time, which is what is needed to show people who make decisions.

Comments:
For the legend in the gray bar, I believe you mean “data not yet final” (“note” doesn’t make too much sense).

On 9/21 for Crystal City, the 1300-1400 hour seems to be lacking – I only see a thin red line.

Orientation of the timeline; Hmm, depending on what medium you are using to present, a horizontal graph rather than vertical (as per Guus) might make more sense. I usually plot time on the horizontal.

I was having problems seeing the “clear” images, but that may have had more to do with not being able to hover my mouse over such a narrow line and have the computer recognize it – and that for the later times in the day, the image was off the top of my screen when I hovered (another reason to make time horizontal). Some locations definitely provided me with a “broken” image symbol so maybe there are multiple issues. The idea of stepping through the images is a good one, although I know any kind of replay takes a bit of work to put together and easily go forwards and backwards in time as someone is likely to try to do.

[chris_s]

Thanks for the all the feedback guys. My life’s busyness and stress level is set to 11 right now, but once things calm down (or if I just need a break) I’ll incorporate your comments.

[chris_s]

Crystal Drive 2016-09-21
Crystal Drive 2016-09-28
Crystal Drive 2016-10-05

Clarendon Blvd 2016-09-21
Clarendon Blvd 2016-09-28
Clarendon Blvd 2016-10-05

UPDATED!

[DrP]

Wow. Proof that Southbound Crystal Drive has a double parking lane rather than a bike lane. More than 60% each day. It always looked like that from offices overlooking it, but I did not spend all day looking out the window. Really.
Clarendon is bad too (25% was the “best” day), but not as consistently.

[LeprosyStudyGroup]

If there is a wide work vehicle parked all day with a couple wheels in the bike lane, and some cones set out at the bumpers (in the bike lane) is that a blockage or not? I kept waffling on how to answer in this situation which seems to be very common at that Clarendon spot. When there’s no traffic nearby it’s free and easy to avoid but if there is heavy traffic it’s a scary situation…

Unrelated moment of Zen:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]12811[/ATTACH]

[DrP]

@LeprosyStudyGroup 149148 wrote:

If there is a wide work vehicle parked all day with a couple wheels in the bike lane, and some cones set out at the bumpers (in the bike lane) is that a blockage or not? I kept waffling on how to answer in this situation which seems to be very common at that Clarendon spot. When there’s no traffic nearby it’s free and easy to avoid but if there is heavy traffic it’s a scary situation…

I just went through a bunch of such images (one is a work vehicle and another is a badly parked car that I wasn’t at first sure was in the process of parking). I started them out as “unsure”, but once it was a few and the vehicle hadn’t moved, I have to say it is blocked. I run into this on Fairfax Dr both by the metro station (both sides of the street – the Metro buses are usually there) and by the construction site by Glebe. As a cyclist, I need to go into the travel lane or very, very carefully pass while in the bike lane. The latter is not preferred for fear of being clipped, so I would say, “Yes, the lane is blocked.”

[KLizotte]

@LeprosyStudyGroup 149148 wrote:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]12811[/ATTACH]

I’ve just downloaded that photo to my computer and I’m going to submit it the comments in news articles where people are complaining about scofflaw cyclists. I mean for real people?!

The only way I can see fixing the situation is to install a protected bike lane. Oh please Santa, please!

[bobco85]

Tonight’s a “Let’s nap and chillax” kinda night, so I spent some time going through pics, and I’ve got a new record! At first, when I saw 5 in a row I said “Yahtzee!” until seeing a few images later with 6 in a row.

Here is the Crystal Drive double-parking lane on 9/22/16 around 11:40-11:45 am:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]12814[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]12815[/ATTACH]

[Judd]

@KLizotte 149159 wrote:

I’ve just downloaded that photo to my computer and I’m going to submit it the comments in news articles where people are complaining about scofflaw cyclists. I mean for real people?!

The only way I can see fixing the situation is to install a protected bike lane. Oh please Santa, please!

I actually think removing the bike lane and replacing it with a sharrow would reduce the issue. People are mostly reluctant to park in a traffic lane.

[DrP]

@Judd 149162 wrote:

I actually think removing the bike lane and replacing it with a sharrow would reduce the issue. People are mostly reluctant to park in a traffic lane.

Unfortunately not in that location. They were double parking there long before the bike lane. No one wants to go into a parking garage and pay a fortune (something like $6/hr) to pick-up lunch.

[Judd]

@DrP 149165 wrote:

Unfortunately not in that location. They were double parking there long before the bike lane. No one wants to go into a parking garage and pay a fortune (something like $6/hr) to pick-up lunch.

Another great idea destroyed by historical knowledge.

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[Author]

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