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@kjdtarheel 138898 wrote:

In Alexandria, on Monroe Ave., just at the south end of Del Ray, the city had resurfaced the road and then striped in new bike lanes. As part of the rehab, they also replaced the speed humps in the car lanes. This, however, only led to cars avoiding the speed humps by weaving through the bike lanes. I even saw cops do it.

That said, as of last week, there are three new speed humps through the parking lane and part of the bike lane. So, thank you Alexandria for recognizing this problem and acting quickly to address it.

I like that stretch because with the humps there it’s easy to go as fast or faster than the car traffic and take the lane all the way up to Mt. Vernon.

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@bentbike33 138782 wrote:

@creadinger:

Not to try and excuse the inexcusable, but having used one of these marvels of German engineering since I bought myself one for Christmas last year (Busch & Müller Luxos U), I think I might know what set him off (not that there would have been anything reasonable for you to do to prevent it).

I have observed from non-ninja-pedestrians’ reflective clothing that when you are above oncoming traffic because you are cresting a hill, the brightest part of the beam (the top) can hit much higher than when you are on level ground. I don’t know how your light works, but my light has a kind of high-beam setting that basically maxes out all the LEDs using the standlight battery reserve, and switching to “low-beam” at night does not actually cut the brightness of the top of the main beam.

Anyway, he was still a jerk, as he didn’t bother to notice that your light was no longer in his face as you got closer to passing him.

Oddly, the only complaints I get about my light are during daylight hours.

I had considered this possibility as well, since like I said I crested the little hill on the bridge. I also have a Luxos-U light and while it’s pretty bright, it may have shone in his face from 60+ yards away. Just as he did with his light. So what the hell was the point of blinding the oncoming traffic? I could have swerved and plowed right through him. Idiotic! Also, this is a problem with all cars on all hills and society is surviving somehow! I think he was just an angry old man. Well, I’m not reaching down to cover my responsibly aimed and designed light so F him.

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Friday evening (9pmish)

Me: Riding south on MVT by the airport. I was heading home after completing a nice, looooonnng ride.
You: Pedestrian with a flashlight.

I’ve seen this before where peds will see a bike coming and flash them real quick to let you know they’re there. A reasonable strategy that works for me, if it works for them.

As I crested the bridge over the airport ramp, you flashed me from ~70 yards away, and I switched my dynamo light from high beam to low beam. Being a well crafted german engineered light it’s designed to cut the light off at a certain height so as to not blind people, and no one has complained to me yet about it being too bright.

As I got closer to you, you inexplicably lifted up your bright fucking light to shine directly in my face. You raised your arm to do so. I know because that’s the last thing I saw before I was completely blinded. What. The. Fuck?! What in your pea-brained mind made you think this was a good idea? Jesus Christ asshole. I got passed by hundreds of cars and trucks on Friday and you were the biggest asshole I saw all day. Congratulations.

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@kjdtarheel 138625 wrote:

Saw a similar thing on the W&OD last year – between MP 4.5-5 – Guy slow riding behind a woman jogger and filming it on his phone. He was so absorbed in his creepiness he ran straight into a lamppost. While he probably didn’t learn a thing, you never know.

FILMING?! WTF. I think karma in that scenario would have been riding off the trail and falling into the stream, which would have been several feet down and with lots of rocks. He got off easy with the lamp post. Right? That’s the stretch where you have the stream on one side, and the I-66 wall on the other?

How women don’t carry bear spray and an 8″ knife with them at all times, I’ll never know.

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@bentbike33 138453 wrote:

While you are at it, contact your county supervisor to see if they can ban the sale of alcoholic beverages in glass containers to get at the root cause of the problem.

I got so tired of glass on the roads in DC, I started buying beer in cans just to “be the change I wanted to see”. Haha. Didn’t help. People suck. And the glass is still 0.5″ deep in parts of DC.

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This was a while ago. But about halfway into my commute home from Bethesda to Silver Spring my chain broke.

So I whipped out my trusty chain tool, which I was using for the first time. I pushed the pin ALL the way out, and of course I couldn’t get the links back together again. Instead of screwing with it anymore I scootered/walked it home to play with it further.

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@cdjewell 138155 wrote:

Experienced trail users treat the narrow stretch under the Memorial Bridge as a single file situation. I was behind a jogger that had entered the tunnel first. Not only did he not wait for me to get through, he entered even before the jogger exited. As we were about to squeeze by each other, I told him something like “Single file, dude.” He stretched out his left arm and tried to hit/push me as we passed one another. During our argument after I had turned around and caught up to him, he insisted it was his turn to enter the tunnel.

Given that it precipitated this incident, can I also say that I think it’s ridiculous that one of the busiest trails in the region has a one-lane section for only single file traffic. I’m disappointed (but not at all surprised) that this hasn’t been remedied. NPS has much bigger issues and no budget to deal with them.

The only road analogy in the area I can think of is the bridge on MacArthur Blvd, which is also surprising. I would guess though that that one-lane bridge is self inflicted, intended to keep through traffic from using the area as much.

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@Sunyata 138343 wrote:

Did you by chance get the truck/engine number? (i.e. Truck 104, Ladder 112, Engine 206)

If you did (or even if you did not and just know the approximate time and location), please shoot an email to the Fire Chief. I know in our department, that stuff gets taken seriously, so I can only assume it does in Fairfax, too.

Ok, so Captain Bill Betz wrote back about my e-mail regarding the truck passing a bit too close… below is my e-mail from the little generic form, and his response.

“Message: Dear Fairfax Fire Officials,

On Monday evening (4/11) approximately 5:50pm, I was riding my bike in the bike lane northbound on Beulah Rd near Morning View Ln when a fire truck passed me very close. Much closer than the three feet that is mandated by VA law. Due to a backup of vehicle traffic at a stoplight, the truck actually passed me twice in this manner. I don’t recall any names or numbers on the truck, but given the size of it I considered the passes to be quite dangerous to a bicyclist like myself. The truck was basically driving on the right most white line of vehicle lanes when they could easily have moved left a few feet to give me a little breathing room. I would hope that in the future Fairfax City officials including the emergency responders would act as good examples of driver behavior. Not bad. Thank you for your time and attention.

Submitted By: Chris Readinger”

“Mr. Readinger,

Thank you for taking the time to provide your concern to the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department (FRD) about the driving behavior that you observed and I apologize that this event occurred compelling you to contact us. The vision of our department encompasses dedication to being a premier community-focused Fire and Rescue Department ensuring a safe environment to everyone. We strive to ensure our personnel are meeting our everyday standards to provide outstanding service to our county residents and visitors.

I have passed this information on to the Shift Deputy Fire Chief in charge of the personnel on the day in question. They will work to identify the crew that was on duty this day and speak with them about the concerns you brought forward ensuring an understanding of the need to share the road in a safe manner with cyclists.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions and thanks again for taking the time to bring your concern to forward.

Have a good day.

Bill”

Overall, a good response. As you said, they seem to take this stuff seriously. And while I definitely wouldn’t call the driving erratic or especially dangerous in a general sense, but given the size of the truck, one minor error by either him or me, and I’d be dead. So thanks for the tip. Beulah is one of the few suburban highways which is a viable bike route south of Alexandria, so it’s important that we keep it safe enough to use.

I’ll write back a thank you e-mail.

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@Sunyata 138343 wrote:

Did you by chance get the truck/engine number? (i.e. Truck 104, Ladder 112, Engine 206)

If you did (or even if you did not and just know the approximate time and location), please shoot an email to the Fire Chief. I know in our department, that stuff gets taken seriously, so I can only assume it does in Fairfax, too.

Wow, the Fire Chief?? I found a generic contact us e-mail form. Hopefully that works. I don’t recall any truck info… but I do know the date/time.

Yeah I can do that. Thanks for the tip. I’ll let ya’ll know what they say.

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Me: Riding north on Beulah Road in the bike lane on Monday evening during my post-work ride.

You: Big-ass Fairfax County fire truck who passed me twice (stoplight timing…) and failed to give me 3ft.

Dude – seriously?! That truck is huge and you drove it with your right side tires ON the white line. I watched you. You were giving the cars in the left lane 3ft. Why not me? The one who’s not surrounded in air bags and steel safety cages and shit. You really need to learn to drive that thing before you take it out for a spin. For comparison, I’ve been passed that close by a-hole dump truck drivers and those guys get the finger. I guess since you’re a fire fighter you got a break, but come on. How about try to be a good example, instead of a bad one.

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@cdjewell 138097 wrote:

Witnesses would have noticed two dudes shouting and swinging fists at each other and a bike lying on its side with a child still strapped in his bike seat. While my focus was on AWM, I know some cyclists and joggers passed by.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I certainly hope there were witnesses to this craziness, but it seems odd to me that no passersby didn’t jump in to at least ask what the F was going on. It’s SOOOO outside the norm to see 2 guys with bikes lying on the ground swinging at each other on the MVT… And with all the active duty military folks who traverse the trail who are trained to deal with unruly situations like this. I just find it odd that no one stopped. These days it seems like you’re lucky if you don’t get filmed doing something stupid.

But nonetheless, this is a decent place to ask for witnesses. Hopefully someone will step forward and this person won’t bother anyone else again.

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@scoot 138099 wrote:

Also note that within each infrastructure type, the examples are cherry-picked:

– the “high-stress” bike lane segment is shot right after a traffic signal lets the herd loose
– the “low-stress” sidewalk has no conflict points with turning vehicles, nor any pedestrians
– the “no-stress” trolley trail segment includes no interactions with joggers / children / dogs / etc.

The high-stress isn’t even that bad given that you DO in fact have a bike lane and some space. High stress for me is climbing a hill on a high speed, 2 lane road with little to no shoulder.

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@americancyclo 138057 wrote:

Why would’t they use my pic of the same intersection?

https://www.instagram.com/p/2t2yzSg3wq/?taken-by=americancyclo

[ATTACH=CONFIG]11454[/ATTACH]

Haha. I’m sure orange cone slalom teams (you know who you are, I’m sure they exist in Europe) drool at pictures like that, but to the rest of us, that picture makes it one of the worst rail-trails in the country. Not best.

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@peterw_diy 138041 wrote:

Not on the list through June 2018 – https://www.alexandriava.gov/PublicWorks#FY2016PavingProgram

Thanks for the link. The “good” news is that my street is on the list to get re-paved next year I guess… so that’s something. Parts of it will be just gravel by then, but oh well. Same with Commonwealth north of Reed.

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@KLizotte 138038 wrote:

Unfortunately the map also highlights the fact that if you actually want to get out of your neighborhood you have to ride a moderate or high stress route at some point. Most of the blue and green routes are cul de sacs or circles within a residential neighborhood. An example of unintentional consequences of suburban street design.

It’s the big problem with the suburbs and sprawl right? I see this all the time as I try to design bike rides around the area. Neighborhoods are never connected to each other on small, back roads. Always highways. It’s really frustrating. Thus the need for planners to make bike routes on or next to them.

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