Virginia governor issues stay-at-home order

[bentbike33]

I think the point is that even new or less confident riders can in most cases find decent places to ride without flocking to the W&OD, Custis, 4MRT, or MVT, etc., especially in the current light traffic. This 9-mile ride kept me entirely within 2 miles of my house, involved crossing Rte. 7 only at light-controlled intersections, and didn’t even hit all the neighborhood streets.

[zsionakides]

@bentbike33 199869 wrote:

I think the point is that even new or less confident riders can in most cases find decent places to ride without flocking to the W&OD, Custis, 4MRT, or MVT, etc., especially in the current light traffic. This 9-mile ride kept me entirely within 2 miles of my house, involved crossing Rte. 7 only at light-controlled intersections, and didn’t even hit all the neighborhood streets.

Just because a on-road route exists doesn’t mean it will be used by all but a small minority. It’s a barriers to entry issue, so people are going to go with what they know or can easily find. Drawing up a neighborhood route that is safe and within someone’s skill level is a lot of work if they’ve never given thought to it. Driving down to the W&OD and going for a ride or walk takes little mental effort. This is why parks and recreational facilities should be kept open as much as safely possible – to spread people out. Even better would be to add more facilities, such as closing off all the NPS roads to vehicular traffic. Those would be easy for people to understand and absorb capacity during this period.

[mstone]

@zsionakides 199871 wrote:

Just because a on-road route exists doesn’t mean it will be used by all but a small minority. It’s a barriers to entry issue, so people are going to go with what they know or can easily find. Drawing up a neighborhood route that is safe and within someone’s skill level is a lot of work if they’ve never given thought to it. Driving down to the W&OD and going for a ride or walk takes little mental effort. This is why parks and recreational facilities should be kept open as much as safely possible – to spread people out. Even better would be to add more facilities, such as closing off all the NPS roads to vehicular traffic. Those would be easy for people to understand and absorb capacity during this period.

Or, if people can’t figure out any place to ride than the W&OD, they should just not ride and take a walk instead. The parks are closing specifically because people aren’t dispersing, and instead are all flocking to the same places and overcrowding them. The response shouldn’t be to park as close as possible and bull-headedly try to go there anyway, it should be to take a hint and go/do something else.

[zsionakides]

@mstone 199873 wrote:

Or, if people can’t figure out any place to ride than the W&OD, they should just not ride and take a walk instead. The parks are closing specifically because people aren’t dispersing, and instead are all flocking to the same places and overcrowding them. The response shouldn’t be to park as close as possible and bull-headedly try to go there anyway, it should be to take a hint and go/do something else.

The problem with some parks closing is it’s exacerbating the problem elsewhere. The better solution is to open up more spaces for people to go and be able to spread out. MVT is too crowded, shut down the GWPW to traffic so everyone can spread out. Too many people in the tidal basin, shut down Ohio Dr and Independence Ave to traffic.

[mstone]

@zsionakides 199874 wrote:

The problem with some parks closing is it’s exacerbating the problem elsewhere. The better solution is to open up more spaces for people to go and be able to spread out.[/quote]
There is already plenty of room for people to spread out, even if they simply don’t like the room that’s available. I don’t understand your apparent fixation on making sure everyone can have an epic bike ride in the middle of a major pandemic which is causing massive disruptions to global civilization. This is really simple: if you can’t make riding your bike work within the current parameters, just do something else. I personally think is a great time for people to explore their neighborhood and try new trails and routes they wouldn’t normally pick, but regardless of that it’s unreasonable to complain about the measures various parks are taking in the interest of public safety specifically in response to problems they are seeing at those parks.

[zsionakides]

@mstone 199875 wrote:

There is already plenty of room for people to spread out, even if they simply don’t like the room that’s available. I don’t understand your apparent fixation on making sure everyone can have an epic bike ride in the middle of a major pandemic which is causing massive disruptions to global civilization. This is really simple: if you can’t make riding your bike work within the current parameters, just do something else. I personally think is a great time for people to explore their neighborhood and try new trails and routes they wouldn’t normally pick, but regardless of that it’s unreasonable to complain about the measures various parks are taking in the interest of public safety specifically in response to problems they are seeing at those parks.

The issue is safe social distancing on all those routes, not having epic bike rides. One of my main running routes is along 4MR, which before had very light traffic most any time of the week. Now it’s packed every day and very hard to maintain social distance. Going onto Glebe or George Mason which are hardly a walker’s paradise and now there’s people every block and no way to safely social distance from them when going by on the narrow sidewalks.

This is a problem created by the policies put in place. People need fresh air and exercise to maintain health, but the solutions have made the social distancing problem worse, not better.

[CBGanimal]

Strava even updated their app to help find new routes!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[AlanA]

I guess you people in VA have it much worse than us in MD. I have many different roads that I can ride on (but then again, I chose a home that was convenient to work AND bike friendly). Yes, I was actually aware of that when I bought my home. I choose a home that was not near a lot of major roads, was close enough to shopping, and close enough to the country.
With the closure of schools and lack of a rush hour, I have a cornucopia of routes. At this point, roads are far safer than trails.
And I would also like to add that these are unusual times. When was the last time that we had even anything close to this? 9/11 was scary, but it certainly didn’t stop me from riding or going about my usual routine. The sniper shootings of 2002 were a very close 2nd to this. I was terrified of even going out then. But my head got a good workout from looking back and forth and across the street all at the same time.
I am still going out daily (thanks to the solo bike exercise exclusion), but I am avoiding human contact at all costs.
The bottom line is, if you aren’t comfortable going out, don’t! And if you do go out, please avoid contact with any other humans. I saw a group of seven people today doing a group workout and they were all very close to each other. It’s groups like this that cause these stringent rules to go into place. Just be smart.

[dasgeh]

When you live in a house or even a townhome that has its own separate outdoor space, it’s easy to say “just stick to *your* space if there are no safe options”. But lots of people in this area live in high rises. They don’t have their own outdoor space. To get fresh air and exercise (both important for health), they have to go out. The point a lot of us are making is this: we don’t need to dedicate so much space to cars right now. Cars aren’t using it. We can instead dedicate that space to giving people an option to walk, run, bike, BE outside, in fresh air, but separate from others.

I’m not concerned with closing a lane on (e.g.) Military Road, which runs through neighborhoods of mostly SFHs, and is flanked by neighborhood streets. But Lynn and Fort Myer, Four Mile Run Drive, Joyce and Hayes, etc — those streets that run through areas with lots of multifamily housing — We should use the space that we don’t need for cars right now and use it like trails – open to people walking, running, scooting, and biking, where people later on that list have to yield to people earlier on that list.

[mstone]

@dasgeh 199886 wrote:

When you live in a house or even a townhome that has its own separate outdoor space, it’s easy to say “just stick to *your* space if there are no safe options”. But lots of people in this area live in high rises. They don’t have their own outdoor space. To get fresh air and exercise (both important for health), they have to go out. The point a lot of us are making is this: we don’t need to dedicate so much space to cars right now. Cars aren’t using it. We can instead dedicate that space to giving people an option to walk, run, bike, BE outside, in fresh air, but separate from others.

I’m not concerned with closing a lane on (e.g.) Military Road, which runs through neighborhoods of mostly SFHs, and is flanked by neighborhood streets. But Lynn and Fort Myer, Four Mile Run Drive, Joyce and Hayes, etc — those streets that run through areas with lots of multifamily housing — We should use the space that we don’t need for cars right now and use it like trails – open to people walking, running, scooting, and biking, where people later on that list have to yield to people earlier on that list.

It’s a ridiculous ask to have DOT people out putting up cones so people can play outside right now. I’m sorry, I don’t believe that the sidewalks anywhere in the region (that is, not desirable destinations that people are flocking to and causing the closures) are so crowded that they are life-threatening.

Advocacy is great, but at some point it’s counterproductive. Making “needs more bike space” the answer to every problem just makes that solution less credible when it actually is appropriate.

[dasgeh]

@mstone 199887 wrote:

It’s a ridiculous ask to have DOT people out putting up cones so people can play outside right now. I’m sorry, I don’t believe that the sidewalks anywhere in the region (that is, not desirable destinations that people are flocking to and causing the closures) are so crowded that they are life-threatening.

Advocacy is great, but at some point it’s counterproductive. Making “needs more bike space” the answer to every problem just makes that solution less credible when it actually is appropriate.

Glad to see you’re habit of misstating my positions has not changed during these difficult times.

[secstate]

@mstone 199887 wrote:

I’m sorry, I don’t believe that the sidewalks anywhere in the region (that is, not desirable destinations that people are flocking to and causing the closures) are so crowded that they are life-threatening.

Perhaps not, but most people are making an effort to give each other room, and here in NW DC that’s pushing walkers & runners into the bike lanes and the roads. There’s a lot of demand for outdoors space right now, and relatively little demand for vehicular movement. People need and want to spread out, so why not give them some space?

[TwoWheelsDC]

@mstone 199887 wrote:

It’s a ridiculous ask to have DOT people out putting up cones so people can play outside right now. I’m sorry, I don’t believe that the sidewalks anywhere in the region (that is, not desirable destinations that people are flocking to and causing the closures) are so crowded that they are life-threatening.

Advocacy is great, but at some point it’s counterproductive. Making “needs more bike space” the answer to every problem just makes that solution less credible when it actually is appropriate.

This isn’t about bike space…at least not for me. Frankly, I cringe at the idea that this could somehow be an opportunity for creating space for “cyclists.” But everything I’m reading about CV transmission makes me want to stay as far away from people as possible (see here, in particular), and most sidewalks really just don’t have the space for that. I live in a dense-ish inner-suburb neighborhood (Park Fairfax), and several times each block I, or another oncoming sidewalk user, has to walk in someone’s yard to maintain distance. During peak jogging times, it’s even worse, and many joggers just run in the street so walkers/kids/normals can use the sidewalks. I don’t want road lanes closed for “epic bike rides,” but I would like to see *some* of them closed or modified so normal people can go out for a walk in their neighborhood without having to potentially walk through a virus cloud.

Having quieter streets for biking is a nice second-order effect, but the priority should just be for making extra space for normal people to get out of the house and still maintain social distancing.

[zsionakides]

@mstone 199887 wrote:

It’s a ridiculous ask to have DOT people out putting up cones so people can play outside right now. I’m sorry, I don’t believe that the sidewalks anywhere in the region (that is, not desirable destinations that people are flocking to and causing the closures) are so crowded that they are life-threatening.

Advocacy is great, but at some point it’s counterproductive. Making “needs more bike space” the answer to every problem just makes that solution less credible when it actually is appropriate.

Putting out cones for areas that people could walk/bike safely during this pandemic would be a great use of DOT personnel’s time. They are not nearly as busy operationally dealing with accidents, breakdowns, etc. as in normal periods.

What is a ridiculous use of resources is having police blocking anyone from walking/biking around the mall and tidal basin, including going to/from work, when simply shutting down the roads and parking lots in the area removes the vast majority of visitors and makes social distancing easily feasibly for the rest.

[Relwal Noj]

The W&OD, 4MR, Bluemont, and Custis Trails have all been packed lately. I talked to a Park Ranger in Bon Air park yesterday and as part of his job, he’s doing head counts on these trails and says that they’ve never been more crowded. Based on my experience using these trails for an hour per day these past 3 weeks, about 50% of the trail users aren’t making any effort at all to maintain 6′ separation, even though these trails are technically wide enough to allow for that. You routinely see two walkers walking abreast and when you have walkers approaching in opposing directions, bikers and joggers pass through between them in the area of the yellow centerline instead of waiting for the trail to clear on one side. I’m pushing a stroller, but this week, I’ve been generally walking and jogging in the grass shoulder next to the trail since my wife has an autoimmune disease. I probably shouldn’t be on the trails at all, but I don’t trust the science saying that you can catch COVID-19 outdoors and am disappointed in the lack of research on the issue.

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