Penn Ave Zebras Are Endangered; Park-its to Come

[bobco85]

Interesting news on the Pennsylvania Ave cycletrack: DDOT will be removing the zebras because they were not very effective and replacing them with park-its like the ones currently on the 1st Ave NE cycletrack.

Here’s the article I got this news from: http://wamu.org/news/14/07/07/ddot_abandons_zebras_designed_to_stop_illegal_u_turns_in_pennsylvania_avenue_cycle_track

For more information on park-its: http://www.gnrtech.com/parking_curb.php

According to the article, the park-its are 6 feet long, will be installed between 15th St NW and Constitution Ave, and will be spaced 8 feet apart. The plan currently is for park-its to be installed along the PA Ave cycletrack and L St cycletrack by the end of summer, but I did not see anything more specific. From the manufacturer’s website, the warranty for park-its is 3 years for the rubber stop and 1 year for the striping.

I think this will be great. The zebras were not installed properly (15 feet spaced apart is almost twice the recommended distance of 8 feet by the manufacturer) and were pretty useless. However, I do hope that the park-its are staggered on either side of the cycletrack because I think that having a gap of 8 feet would be enough of an invitation for some drivers to still try to turn through the cycletrack.

A fitting quote from the WAMU article to show the situation at hand:

As this reporter interviewed bicycle commuter Dave Salovesh at the corner of 12th and Pennsylvania Monday afternoon, within a span of 20 seconds first a delivery van and then a cab driver made illegal U-turns over the zebras and through the cycle track. The cab managed to violate the crosswalk at the end of the block, too.

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[skins_brew]

@Bill on Capitol Hill 90201 wrote:

How about spacing them zero feet apart? Emergency vehicles could still make U-turns at the intersections.

I kinda want to say that emergency vehicles are designed for jumping curbs. Hell, your regular car can usually safely drive over a curb (if you drive slow enough). Emergency vehicles have suspensions that are beefed up. I think if you read the product pages for some of the popular models of police packages, I think it even talks about a heavier suspension to handle curbs, etc.

[Author]

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