lordofthemark
Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
lordofthemarkParticipant@rcannon100 191337 wrote:
Appreciate the assimilation but the small group of us who have coffee on Fridays is not a “Coffee Club.” The Friday Coffee Club is, or was, at Java Shack. Have coffee where ever you like…. but please consider the etiquette of crashing some else’s social experience.
Northside not that Social.
lordofthemarkParticipant12. Think how much bike gear you can buy saving $40 on tolls regularly Trail
lordofthemarkParticipant@baiskeli 191216 wrote:
Yes, we kvetch to warn others of similar behavior or situations, or because we couldn’t catch the rude person to confront them, or the transgression was very small and not worth a confrontation, or we don’t want to risk a violent encounter. or we just don’t have time because we need to get to work. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
No no no no no.
We kvetch because if we did not, it might appear that we thought the world is fine as it is – that we ignore the exile, the destruction of the Temple, the unredeemed state of the world. By kvetching we make it clear that the world needs perfecting and that we long for the coming of moshiach. In other words the proper answer to “are you okay?” is “You don’t want to know!” Or at best “not so bad”.
lordofthemarkParticipantlordofthemarkParticipant@scoot 191212 wrote:
“Safely practicable” is the language used in ยง 46.2-905. A non-exhaustive list of exceptions is provided, indicating many examples of situations that permit riding further left than is necessary merely to be safely practicable. Depending on design and scene conditions, PBL facilities are often safely practicable only for low-speed cycling (~10MPH).
Would state law forbid a cyclist from riding 20MPH (i.e. less than the normal speed of traffic) in the general travel lane due to the presence of a PBL that is only safe at half that speed? Has a court ever weighed in on this?
1. Until quite recently there were no PBLs in Virginia
2. I doubt any police force in any city or county in Virginia WITH a PBL would cite a cyclist for riding in the general travel lane near a PBL – probably even a slow cyclist. So it would only come to court in a civil case, I guess. If a driver hit a cyclist taking the lane adjacent to a PBL and their attorney chose to invoke 46.2
3. I don’t know if we have even had any collisions in that kind of location in those kinds of circumstances.edit – the first protected bike lanes in Arlington were Hayes and Eads Streets in 2014. Those were certainly the first in NoVa. The first in Richmond was in 2018, so I guess there were none before 2014. And the total “lane mile – years” of PBLs in Virginia is pretty small.
lordofthemarkParticipant@rcannon100 191201 wrote:
That’s my point. Kvetching pretty much is pissing in your own water stream.
Blasphemy.
https://www.amazon.com/Born-Kvetch-Yiddish-Language-Culture/dp/0061132179
I am thinking of a new idea for a pointless prize.
lordofthemarkParticipantIt IS regulatory. What may be confusing people is the use of pictures as short hands for the law.
Does anyone think that the presence of a bike symbol, but no scooter symbol, with the pointer to the bike lane means scooters are banned from those lanes? Clearly they are not.
The symbols mean – the lane on the right is a “bike lane”. It is open to all vehicles eligible to use bike lanes under Virginia Law and local codes – which means human powered bikes, ebikes, scooters – but NOT cars, motorcycles, etc.. The lane on the left is a general travel lane – it is open to all vehicles eligible to use general travel lanes under Va law and local codes – cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles, bikes, ebikes, escooters, etc.
It not practical or necessary to have a symbol for each type of vehicle. A “bikes may use full lane sign” sign can be added if there is an actual problem with harassment.
lordofthemarkParticipant@scoot 191135 wrote:
I think (hope?) we all agree that Arlington cannot legally prohibit bicyclists from taking the lane on Quincy. However, that is precisely the message communicated by this sign. If you interpret this sign as an indication that motorists are forbidden to use the bike lane, then by symmetry the sign also indicates that bicyclists are forbidden to use the general lane.
Many cyclists will not want to use the separated facility. Signage like this could encourage harassment from aggressive or uninformed drivers, possibly including police. If such a sign is needed to keep motorists out of the bike lane, then the left side should be depicted for cars and bikes, with the right side for bikes only. Also it would be helpful to paint sharrows in the general travel lane to emphasize that message.
I think painting BOTH sharrows in the general travel and bike symbols in a bike lane would be confusing to inexperienced riders, if it is done anywhere in the country I am not aware of it, and I am not sure there are models for that in NACTO or AASHTO guides.
I think most riders who would be inclined to take the lane in lieu of a PBL such as the ones mentioned know the law and understand what the signs mean.
I am not sure a sign with bikes and cars on the left, and bikes on the right, would not also be confusing, but welcome both images of such signs in place and positive experiences with them.
As for harassment, I have yet to see evidence that its impacted by the presence of segregated infrastructure (we all have our anecdotes).
As for police, there is a simple policy answer, which is to educate the police about the bike laws. Police leadership who take this seriously and are bike riders themselves can accomplish this, I think.
lordofthemarkParticipant@dasgeh 191109 wrote:
Doesn’t painting sharrows automatically revoke Vision Zero policy?
Not on a neighborhood bikeway, like Wilkes Street, where it is a good treatment.
But this is an arterial (as the antis keep pointing out) where traffic routinely goes 35 to 40MPH, and the T&ES proposal includes nothing to address speed west bound, and nothing to address speed west of St Stephens.
So certainly not in line with some standard or other (I don’t think our VZ gets that far in the nuts and bolts of bike infra)
The Transportation Master Plan DOES call this an “enhanced bicycle corridor” – the form of infra is not specified, but certainly does not mean sharrows.
lordofthemarkParticipant@Brendan von Buckingham 191121 wrote:
According to DOT sign standards white signs indicate requirements (speed limit, one way, etc.), yellow signs indicate advice (curve ahead, reduce speed ahead, etc.). By using a white sign they are saying that it is required for bikes to use the bike lane.
It IS a requirement that cars not enter the bike lane, so a yellow sign would not be appropriate.
lordofthemarkParticipant@peterw_diy 191116 wrote:
I hope someone was able to attend last night. If so, did City staff explain the rationale behind that center section using seven foot buffers plus sharrows on the travel lanes? ISTM if you have seven feet between the main travel lane and the curb, you’d want to make that a painted bike lane. The proposed design looks more expensive (in addition to painting the lines at the edge of the main travel lane and the buffer and the bike logos, it requires lots of diagonal striping), more dangerous (advocating mixing modes of travel into the same lane), slower (when folks like Ken & I take the lane), and more dangerous (as motorists swerve into the other travel lane to pass us).
Is there some engineering guidance from AASHTO or some other organization explaining when you’d choose a no-man’s-land buffer plus sharrows over a normal painted lane?
I just don’t understand that part of the recommended design at all.
Re guidance. Standard FHWA guidance would have suggested a 4 to 3 road diet with a center turn lane the entire way from Howard to Quaker (probably all the from Jordan, but there the volumes are closer to where FHWA says the road diet is marginal, and we don’t yet know the impact of the I395 HOT lane opening) But it allows for differences based on local conditions. Which T&ES chooses to read as including community sentiment.
As for the issues of cyclists slowing traffic by taking the lane uphill, I think they do not expect there to be many cyclists. Certainly the opposition assumes no bike lanes = no cyclists.
lordofthemarkParticipant@zsionakides 191118 wrote:
Is the city even following it’s own policies in this design. If they aren’t, that would be the strongest place to start. Staff can try and accommodate outspoken critics of bike/pedestrian infrastructure, but if Vision Zero or Complete Streets policy state otherwise, this wouldn’t meet those policies.
The critics are suggesting all these policies (and also the bike/ped chapter of the transportation master plan, and the sustainability plan) have been passed by stealth and with the support of the evil bike lobby. When someone from T&ES mentioned that the City has a goal to reduce VMT and auto commute mode share, about a dozen voices shouted “why?” Fun times.
(note the outspoken critics of bike/ped infra do NOT like the City proposal – it still makes too many changes to the road for their taste, and it does not keep Seminary 4 lanes for the entire length. The politics as this goes to Traffic and Parking Board, and then to Council, will be interesting)
lordofthemarkParticipant@peterw_diy 191116 wrote:
I hope someone was able to attend last night. If so, did City staff explain the rationale behind that center section using seven foot buffers plus sharrows on the travel lanes? ISTM if you have seven feet between the main travel lane and the curb, you’d want to make that a painted bike lane. The proposed design looks more expensive (in addition to painting the lines at the edge of the main travel lane and the buffer and the bike logos, it requires lots of diagonal striping), more dangerous (advocating mixing modes of travel into the same lane), slower (when folks like Ken & I take the lane), and more dangerous (as motorists swerve into the turn lane to pass us).
Is there some engineering guidance from AASHTO or some other organization explaining when you’d choose a no-man’s-land buffer plus sharrows over a normal painted lane?
I just don’t understand that part of the recommended design at all.
There is no sidewalk part of the way there (the uphill side) . The City has a policy to fill sidewalk gaps. This is a priority gap to fill (one of the few in the City on a street with volumes this high) They can call the striped buffer “filling the gap” (They say that they want to build a real sidewalk someday, but that will take over a million dollars the City does not have at the moment) Makes less sense on the other side where a sidewalk exists, but since that’s downhill the sharrows is not quite as unattractive as on the uphill side. Oh, and by not calling them bike lanes, they can hope to assuage the claim that this is about bike lanes and the evil bike lobby. The disadvantage, in my view, is that when people ride in them (as they will) there will be no treatments at intersections and transitions – those are not always great in the City (what good DOES a “bike lane ending” sign really do?) but here we will have none. (I guess one reason to not call it a “bike lane” is because where the road diet ends, at St Stephens, the transition to the sharrows WILL be awkward, and this way they can avoid blame for the transition, by claiming the sharrows was the bike route for the whole way) Also the legal status is not clear (at least to me). If a person on a bike and a walker or runner have a conflict, will this be treated as a sidewalk where the ped always has ROW? Will dockless escooters (legal in bike lanes, not on sidewalks per the MOUs) be legal in these lanes?
So er yeah, its convoluted. I still prefer option 3. But you asked for an explanation. There is a video of the whole meeting here https://www.facebook.com/TESAlexandriaVA/
The next step will be ANOTHER community survey – link coming soon.
lordofthemarkParticipant@mstone 191103 wrote:
In my experience there was always someone on the warpath about something on nextdoor, my solution was to leave.
Oh its not just nextdoor, its on the FB pages of the Mayor and all the hyper local new sites, it’s at Council meetings, etc.
BTW, last night as I was walking home, the crosswalk was blocked by a car at North Hampton and Strutfield – not parked, the driver was there – but not waiting to turn – I think he was an Uber driver checking his phone. No better place to do that than right across the crosswalk I guess.
-
AuthorPosts