[Brendan von Buckingham]

Sounds like the closing ceremonies for National Police Week 2014 which wrapped up Saturday.

[Brendan von Buckingham]

@Brendan von Buckingham 85518 wrote:

I’m just going to throw out there that bike commuting is the smart choice, so bike commuters are generally smart, reasonable people. I live at Lubber Run right before it joins Four Mile Run and I’ve never seen it roar so high before as I just saw now. It’s actually whirlpooling and flowing backwards. Did I mention it’s cold too? No way. WP’s radar though does show promise that the train of rain might pass by DC’s western burbs by 7:30. So maybe there’s still a glimmer of hope.

Screw that. The rain paused for 10 minutes at 7:45 so I hit the bike. Then it started to pour again. Only a couple people at the Canal Park Pit stop at 3rd and M Street SE, but the volunteers were able to set up under some steps so they had decent cover.

And maybe it’s not that God hates bicycles, but that God hates guns. Memorial Avenue is the road that connects Memorial Bridge with Arlington Cemetery. Where it crosses crosses the channel west of the circle is the District/Virginia line. DC government set up crowd control barriers at the border and blocking the sidewalk. The barriers had signs warning people of DC’s statutes against certain types of guns. Apparently a gun rights group was planning a march on Washington today. They had eight people.

[Brendan von Buckingham]

I’m just going to throw out there that bike commuting is the smart choice, so bike commuters are generally smart, reasonable people. I live at Lubber Run right before it joins Four Mile Run and I’ve never seen it roar so high before as I just saw now. It’s actually whirlpooling and flowing backwards. Did I mention it’s cold too? No way. WP’s radar though does show promise that the train of rain might pass by DC’s western burbs by 7:30. So maybe there’s still a glimmer of hope.

[Brendan von Buckingham]

There’s plenty of times when it’s not insane to not stop for a red light. Any right on red situation with no pedestrians present, for instance. My commute has three or four of those each way. The traffic regulation paradigm is broken beyond recognition. Cyclists are on their own.

[Brendan von Buckingham]

Maine Ave has been my regular commute for a few years now. Inbound: Memorial Bridge, Independence, Maine. Outbound: Maine, 12th ever so briefly, back to Maine, merge with the traffic off of 395, to Independence. Never had a problem inbound (except for a black Porshe, VA tags “Army 77,”). Outbound takes a bit to get the hang of, but usually jammed with traffic that I just split.

[Brendan von Buckingham]

I think Monday a.m. (May 5) Memorial Bridge downriver side had a bunch of fluorescent vested surveyors out. Looked like they were asking passing cyclists for comments. I was late for an 8:30 meeting and couldn’t stop. Any idea what was going on?

[Brendan von Buckingham]

@G_bikeDC 84001 wrote:

Brendan: like I said in the post, the lane to my left was full of moving cars, stretching back a few blocks. I would have moved over if I could.

I still can’t believe you couldn’t have just changed lanes. Changing lanes is fundamental ability and that part of 11th is not a complicated, steep, or fast block. I think it’s more likely you’re exaggerating a disability after-the-fact as an excuse for tapping what turned out to be a hornet nest.

[Brendan von Buckingham]

As the cyclist, you should have changed lanes one to the left and moved with the flow of traffic. Take the center of the lane. The bike lane is nice and all, but it’s not the only lane.

Also, similar to the Rock Creek incident described a couple of threads ago, getting off your bike to engage someone is a momentous decision. By dismounting you give up a major advantage. You have to be absolutely right and be prepared for a no-holds-barred irrational “debate.” Instead, keep the cyclist’s advantage by saying your piece on the fly and getting out of there.

[Brendan von Buckingham]

@83(b) 83532 wrote:

Do note that to take a left onto East Capitol from 11th you’ll have to ride onto the sidewalk for half a block at the SW corner of Lincoln Park. Traffic only circulates around the park counter-clockwise.

That’s a good route, but alternative #2 could be: left on Penn to right on 7th to left on East Capitol. That puts you past Eastern Market (which augments the DC experience for a temporary resident). Crossing North Carolina looks difficult on map, but street view shows its no problem for bikes/peds.

[Brendan von Buckingham]

I’ve been there. Got clipped by an overtaking side mirror on L Street. Caught up with the driver and told them what I thought about it. She was pretty cold, insisting she didn’t clip me because if she wanted to hit me she would have made sure. Then some random cabbie pulled up and got out to pile on me. Just because.

Remember: you are the only cyclist in DC, every pedestrian has had a near miss with you in the last 6 years that they still talk about, pedestrians and drivers insist you follow regulations that don’t exist anywhere in reality, but they still swear by. Drivers and pedestrians don’t understand how we possibly survive out there, let alone go faster than them. We’re there and then we’re gone. If they ever get us off our bike, they all have the chance they’ve been dreaming of to let us have it.

If you’re going to stop, first make sure you’re correct, then explain it as assertively as you can, as if you’re talking to a child. Base it on regulations, or explain you were responding to some other element of the intersection or trail user. Expect anyone who joins the conversation to be looking to pile on you as well. If you do it right, and the other person isn’t completely off their nut, you might actually achieve something, but that’s not the likely outcome.

[Brendan von Buckingham]

You asked for it: http://www.rpi.edu/academics/engineering/files/cee/cee-newsletter-winter2013.pdf

Or this since I’m not an engineer in any way, maybe this

[Brendan von Buckingham]

Shoaling is a law of nature.

My theory is that bikes in traffic are like round grains of sand in an aggregate mix where cars and trucks are like sharp angle stones of granite. Each has its own Angle of Repose. Sand slumps at lower angles, i.e. gets moving sooner and fits in smaller spaces. Sharp angled stones need steeper angles to get moving and jam together sooner, i.e. stop, because they can’t fit in smaller spaces.

The natural tendency of the cyclist, or any vehicle, is to move as far as they naturally can until forced to stop. The only thing more impossible than trying to get stopping cyclists to stop in an orderly single file line is to get a landslide of sand to stop in an orderly single file line of sand grains. Stopping cyclists don’t need lanes to keep themselves in line because they have no problem untangling and moving again. Cars need lanes to organize stops because without them they’d gridlock and never be able to untangle and get moving again in any efficient way.

Thinking of vehicles as different sized pieces of aggregate also explains why it’s naturally right that bikes filter through lanes of stopped cars. So props to all you geotechnical engineers out there.

[Brendan von Buckingham]

We all know the reason why drivers lose their minds when bikes go through reds: it means they’re losing the race. What race? I don’t know. I like to think we’re all on the same team.

[Brendan von Buckingham]

Unfortunately too many of the commentators keep talking about “pedestrian” safety. This was not an issue of what is normally referred to as pedestrian safety, it was a driver hitting a parked car, something we were taught not to do in drivers education. The appropriate place to drive your truck is in the travel lane. The collision was terrible and while the police statement seems to go out of its way to try and not blame the truck driver, he clearly hit the car a little bit with a little bit of his truck and the mother is now a little dead.

If this mother doesn’t get justice, we’re insane to think we’ll ever get it. We might as well quit and go home and be satisfied with saying a prayer before every ride. That’s as much protection as we deserve I suppose.

[Brendan von Buckingham]

Second.

@shannon 74138 wrote:

On the 110 trail along Arlington Cemetary, some reflective striping (or just the yellow line down the middle of the trail would be nice. It is hard to see where the path ends and the grass starts.

heading west/north at night is impossible to see trail edge with on coming headlights from cars. An edge stripe would help tremendously.

[Author]

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