Two Interesting Articles That Came Across My Desk:

[GB]

@cyclingfool 69821 wrote:

No doubt. Many of us would be up in arms that the the 2.5 km green wave for cyclists on the arterial street Nørrebrogade is designed to facilitate travel at a 12 mph speed, when we (ELITE cyslists?) ride faster and thus have to stop at lights along the way or slow down.

The ELITE ride at 24 mph and never stop.

Not even when they (we?) get to work.

[culimerc]

@GregBain 69822 wrote:

The ELITE ride at 24 mph and never stop.

Not even when they (we?) get to work.

I dont know about you, but if I’m doing 24 mph on my commuter, I am doing work

[consularrider]

@culimerc 69827 wrote:

I dont know about you, but if I’m doing 24 mph on my commuter, I am doing work

That’s only on a downhill for me on my commuter, so I already did the work and am enjoying the reward.

[dasgeh]

@lordofthemark 69794 wrote:

What I’m getting it, is IF we really want to increase bike share (which is, after all, Copenhagenize’s main concern) we probably won’t get it focusing on long commutes. We may have not have plateaued on them, but we aren’t going to get huge increases in transportation cycling from them.

We also have to figure out a way to count multimodal commutes. As I understand it, if you bike a mile to Metro, Metro 10 miles, then walk half a mile to work, you’re counted as having used Metro to get to work.

It would be great if we could count trips, and of those, know which are commutes, involve kids going to school, involving “necessary” shopping, involve “fun” shopping, involve entertainment, etc, and know how each of those trips is taken.

Short of a detailed survey, I don’t know how we’d get that…

[jrenaut]

Probably not possible. How do I count when I walk my bike to school with the kids then ride to work? Or when I stop at the grocery store on the way home? Might be better to count it from the other direction, as in “I went to the grocery store X times this month and Y were by bike, Z by car, etc”.

[dasgeh]

@jrenaut 69833 wrote:

Probably not possible. How do I count when I walk my bike to school with the kids then ride to work? Or when I stop at the grocery store on the way home? Might be better to count it from the other direction, as in “I went to the grocery store X times this month and Y were by bike, Z by car, etc”.

I think it’s possible, just annoyingly detailed. Basically you’d ask people to write down every trip, and for each trip, you’d ask where it was from/to (home, work – possibly with multiple sites, errands, etc; multiple choices allowed for the to) and mode (again, multiple choices allowed). I think it’d have to be similar to the American Consumer Survey.

[lordofthemark]

@dasgeh 69830 wrote:

We also have to figure out a way to count multimodal commutes. As I understand it, if you bike a mile to Metro, Metro 10 miles, then walk half a mile to work, you’re counted as having used Metro to get to work.

It would be great if we could count trips, and of those, know which are commutes, involve kids going to school, involving “necessary” shopping, involve “fun” shopping, involve entertainment, etc, and know how each of those trips is taken.

Short of a detailed survey, I don’t know how we’d get that…

I beleive MWCOG did surveys in several selected areas on mode for non commute as well as commute trips, but i do not think they want into all those distinctions, and I dont recall if they even addressed length of trip by mode.

WMATA surveys their rail riders for info on how they reached the station. They have that by mode, and I think they ask for home and workplace by Zip, so they could probably calculate rough mileage. I think they’ve published some of the modal data. It would take some effort, but that could be massaged into regional numbers on bike to metro trips, and maybe even show some local patterns. I think that would be a good addition to the ACS data on journey to work.

[dasgeh]

@lordofthemark 69801 wrote:

But to some extent there is competition for resources between shorter and longer trips.

This is true to some extent, though I still believe the biggest single thing that improves bike safety is more butts on bikes. So even infrastructure projects that immediately benefit only short trips (e.g. bike parking at Metro), they make us all safer, as long as they get more butts on bikes.

[lordofthemark]

@dasgeh 69841 wrote:

This is true to some extent, though I still believe the biggest single thing that improves bike safety is more butts on bikes. So even infrastructure projects that immediately benefit only short trips (e.g. bike parking at Metro), they make us all safer, as long as they get more butts on bikes.

mm hmm. At the FABB meeting a lawyer made a presentation about what to do in a crash, and the discussion drifted to bike law and how we change it. I didn’t say it then (we were running a bit late) but the answer is – bike laws will change, when more voters are bike riders (and it will be better when more judges are riders, and more jurors, and more police, etc) . In that, and in so many other ways, getting more folks riding a mile from home to the metro, or 3 miles from North Vienna to Tysons, or just using a bike to ride to the coffee shop or the car rental, will also benefit the folks commuting 30 miles a day, and the folks training for races, the folks doing long distance touring, etc, etc.

[PotomacCyclist]

@dasgeh 69830 wrote:

We also have to figure out a way to count multimodal commutes. As I understand it, if you bike a mile to Metro, Metro 10 miles, then walk half a mile to work, you’re counted as having used Metro to get to work.

It would be great if we could count trips, and of those, know which are commutes, involve kids going to school, involving “necessary” shopping, involve “fun” shopping, involve entertainment, etc, and know how each of those trips is taken.

Short of a detailed survey, I don’t know how we’d get that…

There may be even more multimodal trips as Capital Bikeshare expands in the suburbs, including places farther away from D.C. like Rockville and Shady Grove. Very few people are going to bike from Shady Grove to D.C. on a regular basis. But many more might bike from one of those CaBi stations to those Metro stations, then ride Metro to downtown D.C. and perhaps check out another CaBi bike in D.C. and ride that to their final destination. Fairfax is looking at adding stations to Reston at some point (though not in the immediate future). College Park will get stations in February. National Harbor could get stations at some point (although there are no official plans just yet).

While precise stats would be difficult to obtain, it would be a simple matter to track increased bike usage at the various stations and neighborhoods, at least for CaBi trips. This wouldn’t indicate the exact percentage of bike commuters among all commuters. But it would show how popular cycling in general is becoming in the area, including the more distant suburbs.

[lordofthemark]

@PotomacCyclist 69868 wrote:

. Fairfax is looking at adding stations to Reston at some point (though not in the immediate future).

If I understood Mr Strunk correctly last night, they are well along toward selecting a contractor for the feasibility study.

[PotomacCyclist]

But isn’t it going to be some time between the feasibility study and eventual rollout of the stations? A few months ago, someone from the Fairfax Board spoke about CaBi stations in Fairfax. At first, they had wanted bike stations in place for the opening of the new Silver Line Metro stations, but they said that wasn’t likely to happen. She said that it could be a while longer before stations were added to Reston, which is likely the first area for a Fairfax CaBi network. They have also mentioned Tysons and (I think) Merrifield/Mosaic as other possible locations, but nothing there right away.

[GB]

@lordofthemark 69869 wrote:

well along toward selecting a contractor for the feasibility study.

That’s unfortunately funny – You know government moves slowly when “well on their way to selecting a contractor for a feasibility study” is a sign of progress.

[lordofthemark]

@GregBain 69878 wrote:

That’s unfortunately funny – You know government moves slowly when “well on their way to selecting a contractor for a feasibility study” is a sign of progress.

oh dear, maybe I misstated myself

http://fabb-bikes.blogspot.com/2013/08/fairfax-bike-projects-receive-funding.html

They did receive funding. For actually implementing bike share. I perhaps was not paying close enough attention as what the contract is actually for. In fairness to myself, Mr Strunk covered a lot of ground, so to speak, in his update.

[PotomacCyclist]

From a WTOP article, dated 8/24/2013: http://www.wtop.com/149/3431303/Fairfax-County-pedaling-for-more-cyclists

“We chose Reston first because we feel as though we have the densities, the corporate base, and the Silver Line stations,” Strunk says.

“We’ve been toying with Capital Bikeshare, Arlington’s doing it, D.C. of course is doing it, Alexandria, Montgomery County – it takes a special area, special density to make it work,” he adds. “Tysons is obviously a good choice, Dunn Loring-Merrifield with the Mosaic District is also another good choice.”

Even the Reston bikes will not be rolling any time soon. “Realistically, I think it’s going to be at least two years,” Strunk says. Some Fairfax County leaders had hoped bikesharing would be available in time for the Silver Line’s opening early next year.

***
Has something changed in the past few months? If so, that would be great. If not, it doesn’t appear that Reston CaBi is on the way in the near term.

[Author]

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