[lordofthemark]

Wait only one Street per day? Dang, I forgot and too pics of several street signs in West ALX this morning. I will tag the pics for the day, but leave the others up, is that okay?

[lordofthemark]

I don’t know what team I will be on, but I will freely offer you my idea for a team name, if most of your members live in Virgnia.

Barr Mitts, Va

[lordofthemark]

@SarahBee 203280 wrote:

I am organizing a Civil War Forts of DC ride(s), so stay posted. It’s a longish full route even with no stops and super hilly since all the forts are on the ridgeline. At least 2 rides, maybe 3. We’ll see, but this is on my bucket list after hearing about it during my tour of the Congressional Cemetery.

As a proud resident of Fort Ward Heights, I am quite aware that all the forts were sited based on military tactics, and not on bikeability.

[lordofthemark]

@BicycleBeth 203208 wrote:

Lord of the Mark,

Yay! I used to live in Foxchase on Taney Ave, a street that would count for this challenge since Chief Justice Taney ruled in the Dred Scott case. Crazily enough, I didn’t even realize the streets in my old neighborhood were all named after Confederate generals until recently—Pickett, Van Dorn, Beauregard, etc.

Thank you for playing!

Beth

When the City annexed the West End (previously in Fairfax) around 1950 they passed a law saying all new North South streets had to be named after Confederates. That law was only repealed relatively recently. I find it particularly worthy of note that we have a street named after Bloody Bill Quantrell, arguably a terrorist. (the street is not terrible to ride on, though getting to it is – interesting)

[lordofthemark]

@cvcalhoun 203133 wrote:

I believe Zoom has a “mute all” button.

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

Will there be at least one admin monitoring the mute all button, the break out rooms, etc and doing nothing else? My synagogue has found that very helpful for large Zoom gatherings – we call the individual the “Tech Gabbai” (think “Tech Beadle”) We do something similar at work (though we use MS Teams, not Zoom)

[lordofthemark]

@Rootchopper 202849 wrote:

$20K and 2 bikes or no deal.

Has to be a green bike. A green new bike. So its green new deal. Or a new green deal.

[lordofthemark]

OMG! I’m verklempt!

Thoughts – living in West Alexandria gives some of us kind of an unfair advantage? https://www.alexandriava.gov/uploadedFiles/manager/info/Confederate%20Street%20Name%20Inventory%20revised%2002-08-2016.pdf

Special West ALX sub challenge – Fort Ward loops.

Honestly though, this is my excuse to look for markers, and maybe to do something with the forts in DC. Or to find a way to schlep my bike out to Manassas.

[lordofthemark]

@LuisFilipe 202990 wrote:

We are back from the future. Go tell your old self to buy some TP.

I am sponsoring the Wormhole prize this year again, and recognize Boomer, bikenick as winners of the 2020 edition and SteveO has the OG of Wormholes.

Could we have the #FSWormhole added to the leaderboard?

RULES:

Have you ever bent the spacetime continuum on a ride and wondered how did I get there so fast and yet it seemed slow?

If the concept of time is just something to be toyed with, then this prize is for you!

WhatÂ’s a wormhole? ItÂ’s kinda like you know it when you ridden through it.

Once a wormhole has been identified, that is it others can go interstellar on it but they wonÂ’t get a further point.

Claim your spatial discovery on Strava with #FSWormhole and give it NAME (ie: The universe’s most inadvisable wormhole) and describe it here, post photos etc.

We have some previous explored wormholes from the past edition, which if you get to ride them this year you can claim but as always there are extra points for novelty and quality of wormholes.

What makes a quality wormhole? You know it once you ridden through them, if it brings a smile to you face you are doing it right, if it almost kills you talk to Steve.

Ride on,

Filipe

So, I am not going to sponsor a reindeer game this year, but it might be fun to give side commentary.

Wormholes is one of my favorite games – not only because when I was a newbie, and considerably more cautious about road riding, I relied more on wormholes to get places without riding on arterials – but because they relate to an interesting urban planning phenomenon.

As many of you know, a lot of urban planners and “urbanists” like street grids – they provide a lot of routes to walk and ride that avoid major roads, they diffuse cars on multiple streets so that the arterial (where most businesses are located) does not become so hostile to walking and riding (or so congested). Some people find them aesthetically pleasing (there are curvilinear grids – think Fairlington – where hills make a rectilinear grid a bad idea) The rectilinear grid was the most common form for American cities and even small towns from the mid 18th century on through the 1920s or so.

OTOH many Americans prefer the cul de sac form. While it can mean long detours for trips within the neighborhood (thus bad for walking and biking) it means that many parts of the neighborhood have minimal auto traffic, and people like to live in those parts – its quieter, it can be very easy to walk right near their house, they are comfortable with kids playing in the street. Thats more important to them than walkable arterials, because walking for transportation is not important to them.

A compromise between the two forms is the Radburn design. Founded in 1929, it today can be seen as an alternative to the classic cul de sac (though some see it as influencing the classic cul de sac) Like the cul de sac design, streets end in dead ends, feed into collectors, which feed into arterials. But there is an alternative system of paths that connect areas, providing walkers a seperated, and usually more direct, route through neighborhoods. While it does not solve the problem of the “traffic sewer” arterial, it at least avoids the long circuitous routes to get around within the neighborhood.

While its not exactly the same thing, I see the wormholes linking cul de sacs and other lower volume streets as having parallel benefits – creating more direct, and low stress, walking and biking routes in an otherwise classic “mid century” suburban environment. One big advantage of them – its a lot easier to retrofit a suburb with them, than it is with a classic urban street grid.

Cutting a new street to connect up cul de sacs pretty much means condemning and tearing down a house – both financially and politically a huge obstacle – and all the objections from everyone who will now have “cut through” traffic they didn’t have before (indeed we continue to see places where existing street connections are cut) New street grids in old suburbs are virtually always done where a big parcel is redeveloped (see Mosaic District for example, Potomac Yard in ALX, or the efforts in Tysons)

Connecting them up with a short trail, as is done in quite a few parts of Fairfax County, requires condemning an easement on only a small piece of someone’s yard, and is not as objectionable to everyone. (though I don’t think most FFX wormholes were created quite that way). It can give us many of the benefits of a grid. while being something acheivable.

[lordofthemark]

nothing to report now, thank goodness. Just wanted to say this is perfectly appropriate to post here. BTW, I am on BPAC, and know Mike Doyle. There are quite a few folks on this forum who are connected to Alexandria FFSS, and I guess some of the other Families For Safe Streets groups.

[lordofthemark]

@mstone 202415 wrote:

They can claim anything. The story was that the magic of private industry would fix everything.

I know something professionally about the P3 world, and there is abundant discussion of different approaches (as with any form of procurement) to structuring a P3. IIUC Governor Hogan decided to focus on cost in choosing the private partner, rather than a broader set of criteria. That kind of approach has drawbacks in a conventional procurement as well as a P3 (and IIUC at the time people said the Governor was making a mistake in focusing on cost – just as he did other changes to original Purple Line plans to reduce the cost to the State of Md)

Also the NIMBYist delays did not help.

Whoever said that P3s are magic (cite?) was of course wrong. P3s have advantages and disadvantages, which I would rather not debate here, but no procurement technique is magic.

[lordofthemark]

After a water break on 8th street I headed towards the new Crosstown bikeway. I first tried Monroe to Michigan – took a look at Michigan and headed back down into Brookland – made my way to 4th and picked up the new PBL there. Google maps was confusing, but I managed to find the little SUP on the north side of Michigan, and then proceeded onto the Crosstown cycletrack. It was great, and I think a game changer connecting NE and NW.

After another water break at Bruce Monroe park, which involved a certain amount of circling around on one way streets to reach, I headed down 14th Street, to see the new PBLs with the floating bus stops, etc, that I think people have complained about. It did make it easier to ride 14th for me, though it required more vigilance than many PBLs, and I would almost always pick 15th Street in preference. I noted that the bike lanes on 14th made the streeteries appear to be more pleasant than streeteries in some other places, which are adjacent to general travel lanes.

[lordofthemark]

@Judd 202320 wrote:

I don’t want to encourage people to call for tolls on the MVT to pay for it. [emoji1787]

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Now, if the tolls were variable, and kicked in only when the trail was overcrowded ……

[lordofthemark]

Thanks, I did not ride K beyond 6th Street NE, and I had already ridden the new PBLs around Union Market (except for the extension to Mt Olivet, I think), etc, so I headed back to get on the MBT.

I want to add that I was impressed by the progress on the developments along the trail since I had been there last. I hope they will help activate the trail further, and I look forward to the “bike lobby” that I hope is still part of the project at Florida Avenue.

[lordofthemark]

So, after riding K Street NW, I rode on K Street NE through NOMA. Those bike lanes are new I think? Conventional painted lanes, but IIRC part of them was not in a door zone, and I guess they help with traffic calming on K?

From there I rode up the Metropolitan Branch to Brookland. I loved the improvements thus far – wider and straighter. And the new park was lovely and seemed to be quite well used (I did not take the time to stop and explore it though)

[lordofthemark]

From the time QOTM and I became a household, in 1989, until 1993, we had two cars. From 1993 to 2014 we went back and forth between having two cars and being car lite with one – not out of idealism but becaue we tended to shop for cars rather slowly. During the car lite times we relied on transit, walking and the occasional car rental to supplement. Generally it was annoying – from 1995 to 2001 I worked in suburban locations which made a second car important for us, and when I began to work in DC we moved to Fairfax, which tended to make being car lite challenging. I did not realize the potential of transportation biking.

In 2014 we moved back to Alexandria, and I began to bike commute more frequently (with encouragement and advice from this community). Transportation biking, plus improved bus service around here, have made car lite living very comfortable – we have not even rented a car once since 2014 (we have rented vans or trucks a couple of times to move furniture). I can’t imagine wanting a second car.

The opening of a supermarket within easier walking distance (by summer 2021? the work on HT build out has started this last week) and QOTM dipping her toe into transportation biking, will mean we use our car even less than now. Given that its paid off, and parking (for the first car) at our building is fairly cheap (and being avid walkers, we can usually find free parking where ever we want to drive to) we probably will not go car free anytime soon (plus – “I do own a car, I just don’t want all car centric policies, and oh yeah, it IS more comfortable to drive on the road dieted streets” – is an argument I would like to still be able to use)

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