Remove Useless Bollards (RUB)

[Dirt]

Ha! You think those are bad. Wait till you see the ones thy put in the middle of the cross walks. Bwahahahaha

[RideTheWomble]

Those particular bollards are confusing and redundant, but I’m in favor of keeping them in other places. I can’t count the number of times I have seen cars driving on trails to go places like the picnic pavilions in parks like Bluemont and Barcroft. If you hang out in any of the parks with facilities on a weekend, I promise you’ll see cars driving on the trails.

Drivers need some indication that it’s not OK to drive on multi-use trails. It’s not safe, and the bridges and trail surfaces aren’t designed for it. Expecting someone to haul the cooler from the parking lot to the picnic table isn’t exactly asking them to clean the Augean Stables, either. There are definitely people who maliciously disregard the rules, but for the others, it’s important to give them a clue that, even though the trail is paved, their car is not welcome. I’m a proponent of the design principle, “never underestimate the Power of Stupid.”

Four or five (six?) years ago, someone drove an automobile on the W&OD from the Custis intersection to approximately the Red Caboose in Bluemont Park. They put tire-tracked shaped trenches in the wooden decks of two of the bridges. Who knows how many tens of thousands of dollars were diverted from other uses to rebuild those bridges? Any cavalry scout or civil engineer can tell you that driving over a bridge in a vehicle that is too heavy can cause hard-to-see, permanent damage that only an expert can find.

It looks like Arlington tried more flexible bollards last year, but the snow came, they got plowed up, and now most of them are gone. They were a pretty good solution — an authorized vehicle could drive over them, but they’d pop back up, to tell people not to drive on the trail. As it turns out, though, they just weren’t all that durable. As Dirt’s post on crosswalk signs shows, designing this stuff is hard.

[jabberwocky]

A few weeks ago I was riding the W&OD out in Loudoun County. I ran into a confused looking old lady driving towards me on the W&OD immediately before the bridge over 28. She had just done a 3 point turn in the middle of the trail. I threw up my hands in a “wtf are you doing” expression and she just laughed and accelerated around me. Very surreal.

As womble pointed out, some people are dumb.

[dasgeh]

When I was getting onto the Anacostia River Trail (while playing hooky, enjoying the weather, and chasing bridges), I saw that this beautiful, wide curb cut onto the trail was bollard-free, and I thought of Steve.
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Then, I rolled a few feet down the trail, and ran into this bollard nonsense.

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Note that they are at both forks of the trail, and look newly painted. Ugh

[Steve O]

@dasgeh 74633 wrote:

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Note that they are at both forks of the trail, and look newly painted. Ugh

Should blend in nicely on a snowy day, too.

[Steve O]

Also, any vehicle could easily just drive around them on the grass. They are Useless.

[83b]

@dasgeh 74633 wrote:

When I was getting onto the Anacostia River Trail … I saw that this beautiful, wide curb cut onto the trail was bollard-free….

I see a fair number of cars up on that stretch of trail on nice weekends. People throw some epic BBQs at those picnic shelters and will haul in all manner of stuff. They always seem mildly shocked to see a cyclist come through.

The bollards farther down where you pass under the bridge are worse. The contrast from bright light to the utter darkness underneath can really mess with you. And one of the “trails” that leads underneath changes abruptly into rocky path.

[Author]

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