[LhasaCM]

Likewise – hope you can get well soon. And get Internet back.

Since I wasn’t able to make it to the happy hour, and depending on where folks are may not get to make a formal in person introduction, I may as well introduce myself a bit here (so folks don’t have to piece it together from the handful of posts I’ve had here). As noted in my 2017 Bike Goals post (http://bikearlingtonforum.com/showthread.php?11407-2017-Biking-Goals&p=151852#post151852) and the follow-on conversation before it was derailed by the oddities of Federal transit subsidy distributions, I’m a short-ish distance bike commuter (just over 5 miles round trip) with a trailercycle that is occupied for half of that commute. Therefore, as I’m not a “high volume” rider, I won’t be of much help in racking up big points (my goal is consistency), though I hope to at least meet or exceed my expectations from when I first signed up for this. For stalking purposes, I’m Chris M on the leaderboard (https://www.strava.com/athletes/12125159 on Strava) – I think my Strava heatmap is basically the MBT between Union Station and Brookland, with the occasion diversion.

In addition to not being a high mileage rider, I’m also terrible at coming up with clever team names. I can sometimes help improve good ideas to make them very good, but even that is usually beyond my capabilities. However, in the interest of kicking things off, I thought I may as well share what came to mind with the number six:

* Six Degrees of Separation Below Freezing
* Six Bikeways on Sunday (play off of six ways to Sunday)
* Central Park Loop (a full lap around Central Park in NYC is just over 6 miles)
* Small and Perfect (6 is the smallest perfect number – meaning it is the smallest number where the sum and product of its factors are the number)

[LhasaCM]

@Steve O 151976 wrote:

As you probably already know, you don’t really pay for these trailer things; you just rent them. I had two different trail-a-bikes (consecutively, not simultaneously), each of which I bought used and then sold used. I believe the net cost–purchase price less sales price–over 10 years was $70.

Very true. Or, there’s my master plan (we’ll see if it pans out) where once my daughter doesn’t need to be towed any longer, we’ll pop off the tow arm and put on the front fork, wheel, and brakes, and convert her trailercycle into a bicycle. We started using it (a Burley Piccolo) when she was around 4 and use it almost every day for her commute home from school. (My office isn’t too far from her school so I just keep it attached, but it is easy on/easy off if need be, or if I want to just take a ride myself).

[LhasaCM]

@chuxtr 151923 wrote:

Brett,

Appreciate the Excel help. May be beyond my feeble skills. Also the Ride Days doesn’t have all the info I need to calculate standings (and tiebreaker). Cheers,

Chuck

It has the main ingredients, you just have to supply a little math.

You have # of days and # of miles, and you’d just have to apply the formula (10x days plus miles rounded down) to get points. Then you can divide points by rounded down miles to get the standings, then look at your tiebreakers.

[LhasaCM]

@chuxtr 151907 wrote:

Just for grins and to give y’all an idea of how this pointless prize works, I hand jammed the data from the leaderboard (as of earlier this morning) and this is how the top 20 ends up looking.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]13142[/ATTACH]

Very different, huh? Almost like a race to the bottom. No one anywhere near the top of the leaderboard makes the cut. The highest placed person on the points leaderboard is Sam W who is sitting at #160. And the current points per mile leader is Tania P who is sitting at #245 on the points leaderboard.

It’s worth noting that not everyone in the top 20 (including the leader) is on track to ride 30 days (note that I changed the last tiebreaker to days ridden, not rides, and the requirement is now a minimum of 30 days ridden) based on ~3 rides per week (they should’ve ridden at least 3 rides by now). But’s it’s still very early with plenty of time for folks to catch up.

Also, this was a total PITA to do so I’m not doing it again.:p But hopefully we’ll be able to create an actual leaderboard. Stay tuned.

FWIW – as a backup plan to a live leaderboard, it’s not a total PITA to do if you use the ride day table (http://www.freezingsaddles.com/people/ridedays), which can be cut and pasted into Excel very easily.

[LhasaCM]

@Steve O 151888 wrote:

Back in the days when one received a paper farecard each month that never expired, I imagine there may have been some bike commuters who saved them up for years until they left their agency in 2006 and milked those babies for about five years afterward.

There was quite the black market for paper farecards back in the day. I also remember some guy at Union Station trying to sell my mom a $100 farecard for $10. He had done the old “put a piece of tape where the running tally is printed” trick, then removed the tape to make it look like an original card, and was very upset when I asked to check the balance at the machine before we made the purchase.

[LhasaCM]

@ian74 151894 wrote:

Also be aware you can be audited by your organization, I was at full subsidy amount since I lived far away and would need all of it. Then I started biking more frequently and now only take metro once or twice per month. Our parking and transportation emailed me and said I was being audited, and reduced my subsidy to $64 a month. Apparently they get dinged for having lots of money left in the pot at the end of the year since the unused funds are taken back by the organization (but not given back to the fed) but doled out annually based on a reported need. It makes the organization look like they are asking for too much money.

Or something…If I need more than my subsidy allows though I can email some guy in the office and he’ll give me some hours if I explain why I need them.

That varies from agency to agency, and how the subsidy program is funded vs. managed and at what level. Like anything, agencies have a contract with WMATA to provide the SmartBenefits. Any benefits not used in the prior month are credited back in the subsequent invoice so, if you’re managing that contract appropriately, can be recaptured in later months by not adding as much money to it.

[LhasaCM]

@Judd 151863 wrote:

Also, the $255 is an “up to” amount. You fill out paperwork detailing where you commute from, which method and how much it costs. The benefit then becomes average commute days per month times daily cost. It’s deposited direct to a SmartTrip card and anything unused at the end of the month is pulled back. Interestingly there are a lot of controls in place for the puny $20 a month bike benefit and relatively few controls in place for the regular transportation benefit. There’s not really anything stopping me from applying for the transportation benefit, riding my bike every day and letting my roommate use my SmartTrip card for her commute.

Or using your card for social travel outside of work, as your benefits are used first before any money you’ve loaded on the card, and the system isn’t smart enough to know what a commute is vs. a late night bar crawl (for example). Heck, even the DC One cards are smart enough not to use the free student rides for trips outside DC and the border stations….

But again…the administrative burden of the bicycle benefit is not your agency’s fault (unless you work for Congress).

[LhasaCM]

@secstate 151860 wrote:

Just out of curiosity, how much is the regular transportation or Metro subsidy?

The current IRS limit is $255/month (though, due to budgetary constraints, some employers/agencies/etc. don’t offer the full amount).

https://www.irs.gov/publications/p15b/ar02.html#en_US_2017_publink1000193740 has more

[LhasaCM]

@Judd 151855 wrote:

That’s awesome! On days that you only commute one way to find yourself mostly choosing the downhill route?[/quote]
Most definitely. Generally, my wife does morning drop-off and I do evening pick-up. So in the evening, if I’m at an offsite meeting or otherwise cutting it too close to get to school, or if the weather is too nasty, we would take Metro home and leave my bike parked at work. In the morning, unless the weather is horrific, it’s too easy of a ride to pass up, even if my bike is at work and I have to go CaBi. Besides, where we live, the walk to metro plus train ride is about 20 minutes each way when things are working well. Walking to the nearest bikeshare plus ride down the MBT plus walking into the office is about the same in the morning, and taking my own bike isn’t much more than just the walk to Metro, so it’s a pretty easy decision in the morning.

Also, for our situation, to do the commute one way uphill (so the evening) it’d have to be either after having left my bike at work (so I have the trailercycle to get our daughter home) or because, for whatever reason, I’ve been absolved of my pick-up duties that evening and, for some reason, I got to work through some other means in the morning. Offhand, I think that only happened once last year (during Safetrack where my wife met us for dinner after school so I left my bike at work, then because of Safetrack there were no CaBi bikes nearby nor any trains running nearby, so I ended up taking a Car2Go to get to work).

Now that my daughter is geared up enough for most weather scenarios (latest purchase was a pair of snow goggles so her “eyeballs wouldn’t freeze out”), we’re losing the evening weather excuse, at least for cold and/or wet conditions.

@Judd 151855 wrote:

This is probably the most challenging biking goal of all time. At my agency it’s $20 a month and administratively burdensome. Have to keep a log of commute days, provide receipts and fill out a monthly certification form and then another form every 6 months to stay enrolled. I’ve decided it’s not worth the hassle and I still get the regular transportation benefit as an emergency back up. (Like the time I worked so late that the bike room was locked up for the night.)

The $20/month and at least some of the administrative burden is an unfortunate effect of the IRS rules/regulations based on what Congress passed for transportation benefits, so it’s not just your agency. What’s really annoying is that to claim the $20/month you cannot receive any other benefit during that month (thanks, Congress!), so it becomes an all or nothing thing on a month-to-month basis, and has to be planned for in advance (i.e., I can’t just not use my Metro benefits, which get returned to the agency as a credit on the next SmartBenefits invoice so didn’t actually cost anything but still was a benefit provided, and be able submit a claim for bicycle expenses). And yes, it requires receipts and all sorts of other annoying paperwork, so odds are I just wouldn’t bother because I hate that sort of paperwork and like the people that have to process it. Or I’d short change the amount and just include my CaBi membership and maybe one other receipt.

I think really, that goal is more about fully embracing the idea of “I’m going to ride my bike” every day and actively removing the crutch of “well, it’s a little windy/rainy, so let’s just take Metro since that’s a benefit that’s already paid for.” If we had a longer/more arduous commute, it’d be a silly goal to get rid of that emergency backup, but given where we live (with no plans of moving) and where my agency is (with no plans of moving, at least for the next few years…), I think it’d be good for me. In other words, the goal is really just the tangible outcome of cementing a broader shift in philosophy.

[LhasaCM]

I’ve been giving this a lot of thought the past several days, and while I’m clearly coming at this from a different point than a lot of folks here, so these may not seem like overly ambitious for many, everyone’s gotta start somewhere, right?

2016 Highlights
Commuted via bicycle at least one way each day I went to work since mid-April (It’s only 2.6 miles, mostly downhill, to get to work.)
Started to keep track of my mileage on Strava
Rode just over 600 miles for the second half of the year

2017 Goals
90%+ participation (ride at least 70 days) during Freezing Saddles
Participate in one or more organized rides (e.g., DC Bike Ride or 13 Colonies)
Ride more “unhitched” (w/o the trailer cycle) and “loaded” (w/ the kid on the trailer cycle) than in 2016
At least 1500 miles total for the year (that’s less than 30 miles a week!)
Cross a state line on bike
Ride the MBT north of Catholic U
Avoid Metro enough to make switching from transit subsidy to bicycle subsidy worthwhile

[LhasaCM]

@consularrider 151671 wrote:

A good day to stay out of downtown DC.

Not just day…some of the closures start Wednesday (the 18th) and continue into the weekend. Yay DC!

[LhasaCM]

@bobco85 151661 wrote:

WABA reported this on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/WABADC/status/817454458590339072

Inauguration Day is January 20, so basically for at least 2 weeks the ramps will not be there. I don’t know if this means that using the sidewalk to get around it is off-limits or not.

http://mpdc.dc.gov/release/2017-presidential-inaugural-transportation-plan-0

There are also a TON of road closures around inauguration day…

[LhasaCM]

@SarahBee 151653 wrote:

According to the PM:
Closure has been rescheduled because of more coordination required with WMATA & DDOT. Closure will be just between N St NE & M St. NE. They are reviewing the needs for alternate paths and detour signs with WMATA & DDOT. M St. NE will continue to have construction traffic into 2018.

Hope this helps!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks for the info! I imagine this will end up funneling traffic down the exit ramp near the Elevation (leaving the MBT just north of Florida Avenue) and then folks would either head under Florida to 3rd or head down 2nd/N Street/1st to join the cycletrack at M, assuming riding under the MBT between N and M isn’t an option during construction, either.

[LhasaCM]

Chris M – let’s go with an even 1,000

[LhasaCM]

@jrenaut 151187 wrote:

Those look interesting. Might have to stop by REI and check them out.

I don’t know if any of the local REIs have the Lezyne units in stock to check. I bought mine (the Super GPS) from them but it was an online purchase shipped to the store in NoMA, and the entry models are listed as online only. I watched a lot of YouTube videos and read online reviews before deciding to give it a whirl. (I really wanted something with actual buttons and not a touchscreen.)

I’ve never had a Garmin or other device (just used my Android watch to start the ride on my phone before which was getting annoying and often flaked out on me) so I can’t really give any sort of comparison, but for an overall impression: it has been working pretty well for me. Pretty quick getting a signal. Sometimes a bit flaky in uploading through the app (it will sync just fine to my phone but the cloud upload will just give up) but the second try has always been good.

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