[Mark Blacknell]

Exists today, and lots of people use it.

The NPS-proposed location would be fine IF the hedge was trimmed back, the trail connection improved, and the station was located sufficiently west of that intersection.

[Mark Blacknell]

@creadinger 44311 wrote:

at least we don’t have to deal with this BS. The US Bicycle Route System posted this on facebook today.

http://www.bikingbis.com/2013/02/19/proposal-for-bicycle-ban-raised-in-missouri/

It is REALLY sad and discouraging to see potential legislation like this come up. Although it’s just a draft right now it’s absolutely mind-numbingly stupid, and in a whacky state like Missouri, crap like this could actually get passed.

Ha. Last week, I briefly took solace in the fact that we’re not (yet) facing that in Virginia. Then I reminded myself of the mandatory sidepath provision in the last Federal transportation bill.

~

Prompted by mstone – what would the #bikeDC crowd like to see Favola introduce next year, on behalf of cyclists?

[Mark Blacknell]

@sjclaeys 44307 wrote:

Asking for feedback the same week that the bill was introduced does not constitute meaningful outreach. I doubt that her interaction with Loudoun County officials was limited to that week.

Loudoun County had a lobbyist on the case, sent a Sheriff’s Deputy down to (ultimately not) testify, and her Legislative Assistant was presenting crash figures from a (erroneous, as best as I could tell) Loudoun-prepared fact sheet.

[Mark Blacknell]

@sjclaeys 44267 wrote:

I second the big thank you for everyone involved. My biggest frustration is with State Senator (former Arlington County Board Member) Barbara Favola for apparently not reaching out to the cycling community before introducing her bill.

Data point: She *did*. She specifically asked the ABAC and Arlington County staff for their feedback the same week it was introduced. And the feedback of the ABAC and AC staff pretty much reflected what you’ve seen here. We saw the result.

Extrapolate as you will.

[Mark Blacknell]

@mstone 44232 wrote:

No, there’s a big change: currently I can blissfully assume that the signs are BS. Once the legislation is signed, I don’t know whether a particular sign is BS unless I 1) figure out where I am 2) figure out what the ordinance is for that spot 3) check the speed limit on the road where the sign is posted. I may be missing additional steps–I was serious about “not knowing what to do”.

I’ll take your point (tho’ really, the lawyer in me wants to demonstrate how correct I was in my original characterization). But I’d also say that no, you cannot necessarily, from a practical standpoint, assume that the signs are BS right now. They’re still points of enforcement, and you could very well snag a legit ticket for entering in disregard of approaching traffic.

The long term hope for all this is that we can establish a reasonable standard of enforcement at properly placed stop signs along the W&OD. That’s going to take a bit of time and effort, and I’d like to think that WABA will get lots of support for it.

[Mark Blacknell]

@mstone 44224 wrote:

Ok, so it’s basically just waiting on a signature from the governor, and then we’ll have essentially no idea what to do at intersections on the W&OD. Is there any associated effort to get rid of those signs which are still clearly illegal, regardless of whether they say “required by law”?

Yes, just awaiting signature. If you happen to know Gov. McDonnell, do feel free to suggest that he veto it!

Remember, this is just enabling legislation. Nothing actually changes on the trails until the local jurisdictions pass conforming ordinances. Yes, WABA will be watching in the NoVA area (and VBF will be letting the rest of the state know about it). I’m not worried about Arlington or Fairfax. Falls Church, no more so than usual.

Loudoun will be the tricky place, as they’re the ones that pushed this whole thing and I expect they’ve probably already got a draft ordinance in hand. It won’t really help to have a bunch of cyclists from DC and Arlington head out to their county hearings, either. So please think about the people you may know in Loudoun, and be prepared to ask them to help us all out when the time comes.

(And yes, there are ongoing efforts to clean up improperly posted stop signs.)

[Mark Blacknell]

@mstone 44220 wrote:

I’m kind of disappointed that WABA doesn’t seem to be on top of the stop sign bill.

Sen. Favola’s bill was so popular – they voted for it before she even a had a chance to speak, despite her being at the lectern in committee – that it was a done deal. The floor vote in the House:

House: VOTE: PASSAGE (90-Y 6-N)
[HR][/HR]YEAS–Albo, Anderson, BaCote, Bell, Richard P., Bell, Robert B., Brink, Bulova, Carr, Cline, Cole, Comstock, Cosgrove, Cox, J.A., Cox, M.K., Crockett-Stark, Dance, Dudenhefer, Edmunds, Fariss, Farrell, Filler-Corn, Garrett, Greason, Habeeb, Head, Helsel, Herring, Hester, Hodges, Hope, Howell, A.T., Ingram, James, Joannou, Johnson, Jones, Keam, Knight, Kory, LeMunyon, Lewis, Lopez, Loupassi, Marshall, D.W., Marshall, R.G., Massie, May, McClellan, McQuinn, Merricks, Miller, Minchew, Morris, Morrissey, O’Bannon, O’Quinn, Orrock, Peace, Plum, Pogge, Poindexter, Purkey, Putney, Ramadan, Ransone, Robinson, Rush, Rust, Scott, E.T., Scott, J.M., Sherwood, Sickles, Spruill, Stolle, Surovell, Tata, Torian, Toscano, Tyler, Villanueva, Ward, Ware, O., Watson, Watts, Webert, Wilt, Wright, Yancey, Yost, Mr. Speaker–90.
NAYS–Byron, Gilbert, Kilgore, Landes, Morefield, Ware, R.L.–6.
ABSTENTIONS–0.
NOT VOTING–Hugo, Iaquinto, Krupicka, Lingamfelter–4.

Delegate Krupicka was recorded as not voting. Intended to vote yea.
Delegate Lingamfelter was recorded as not voting. Intended to vote nay.
Delegate Webert was recorded as yea. Intended to vote nay.

WABA was on top of it as soon as the bill became public, and put a lot of time into addressing this bill. The public action alerts are but one piece of the effort. In the end, no amount of member contact was going to change the result. WABA tries hard to make sure that its requests for action from its supporters are requests for effective action, so that folks know that when they’re asked to do something, it means something. That’s why the WABA action alerts came out when we thought there might be an actual chance to kill the bill – in committee. Unfortunately, it sailed through committee despite our opposition, and the final votes were just a formality, in the end.

And yes, you’ll be hearing more about it.

[Mark Blacknell]

Just to close things out for the season, SB1060 (amended to just prohibit a vehicle from following a bike/non-motorized vehicle too closely) was defeated on the House floor yesterday. The vote, per VBF’s Bud Vye:

YEAS–Anderson, BaCote, Brink, Bulova, Byron, Carr, Cole, Comstock, Dance, Fariss, Filler-Corn, Garrett, Greason, Habeeb, Herring, Hester, Hope, Howell, A.T., James, Keam, Kory, Krupicka, Lewis, Lopez, May, McClellan, McQuinn, Minchew, Morrissey, Plum, Rust, Scott, J.M., Sickles, Spruill, Stolle, Surovell, Torian, Toscano, Tyler, Ward, Ware, O., Watts–42.

NAYS–Albo, Bell, Richard P., Bell, Robert B., Cline, Cosgrove, Cox, J.A., Cox, M.K., Crockett-Stark, Dudenhefer, Edmunds, Farrell, Gilbert, Head, Helsel, Hodges, Iaquinto, Ingram, Joannou, Johnson, Jones, Kilgore, Knight, Landes, LeMunyon, Lingamfelter, Loupassi, Marshall, D.W., Marshall, R.G., Massie, Merricks, Miller, Morefield, Morris, O’Bannon, O’Quinn, Orrock, Pogge, Poindexter, Purkey, Putney, Ransone, Robinson, Rush, Scott, E.T., Sherwood, Tata, Villanueva, Ware, R.L., Watson, Webert, Wilt, Wright, Yancey, Yost, Mr. Speaker–55.

ABSTENTIONS–0.

NOT VOTING–Hugo, Peace, Ramadan–3.

30 D’s (all but Joannou of Norfolk/Portsmouth, and Johnson of Abingdon) voted for the bill, along with 12 R’s.

Didn’t do too well in the Richmond area as those who voted AGAINST the bill include John Cox (Hanover); Kirk Cox & Roxann Robinson (Chesterfield) Manoli Loupassi (Richmond): Peter Farrell, John O’Bannon, & Jimmie Massie (Henrico), Lee Ware (Powhatan), and Tommy Wright (Amelia).

While it’s setting a a *very* low bar for appreciation, if your delegate voted for it, you may want to let them know that their efforts were not lost on you (esp. if your delegate is a Republican). The only encouraging thing I can find in this is that road safety (when it comes to bikes) doesn’t necessarily have a bright-line partisan divide anymore (tho’ you can certainly see that a strongly partisan influence remains).

At some point in the near future, I’ll write up my thoughts on the legislative session as a whole and post/link it here.

I appreciate everyone’s time and assistance. Meet you back here next year.

[Mark Blacknell]

SB1060 was reported out of the House Transportation Committee this morning, with a 14-3 vote. Voting against were Dels. Cosgrove, Cox, and Rust. The bill will now face a vote by the full House.

Here’s a bit of Washington Post coverage about how SB736 went down, with a quote or two by yours truly.

[Mark Blacknell]

@sjclaeys 43793 wrote:

If it is now the case that SB1060 will be used by law enforcement as an excuse to ticket cyclists drafting, then I do not see why it should get any support from the cycling community.

I invite more discussion of this point. On one hand, I’d personally welcome the opportunity to explain that there’s nothing about drafting that puts it outside of the “reasonable and prudent” language of the proposed law. On the other, we just made the argument that failing to precisely define “stop”, for fear of local and unreasonable interpretations, was one of (many) flaws for SB959.

[Mark Blacknell]

Please see my update above, correcting earlier misinformation about SB1060. (Can we do strike-through, here? I’d have preferred to do that over simply deleting the old stuff, but I didn’t want to leave any room for misunderstanding.)

[Mark Blacknell]

@mstone 43790 wrote:

If this is a safety issue, why isn’t Loudon issuing tickets for entering the crosswalk in disregard of traffic?

This is an excellent question. When I asked this (several times, of a number of people) it was answered by noting that the Commonwealth’s Attorney in Loudoun is of the opinion that the trail-facing stop signs are not enforceable as regular stop signs, and that this needed to be fixed.

And if you noticed some gaps between the question and the response, well, yes.

~

There’s a longer post-mortem to be written on this, of course, but it’s just not something I can do right now.

[Mark Blacknell]

A couple of points:

1) To the best of my knowledge, Loudoun County brought this to her. It was something they wanted enough to have their lobbyist work on it (and they sent a deputy down as a (ultimately unused) witness, early on).

2) I believe that, at the start, she quite genuinely saw it as a fairly uncontroversial bill that could improve safety.

[Mark Blacknell]

@sjclaeys 43749 wrote:

Great, the anti-dooring law does not get passed and prospects for the 3 foot/following too closely bill do not look great, but Favola’s cycling harassment bill goes through. How does she defend sponsoring this ill considered legislation?

Not very well, I’d say. Her view is that it’s about safety, and Loudoun County told her it was needed for safety and that’s good enough for her. She was very well aware that “the bicyclists don’t like the bill.” Aside from suggesting that we all get in touch with Loudoun County (and every other jurisdiction that decides to act on this authority), she declined to substantively address or fix any of the other issues raised by us.

[Mark Blacknell]

It appears that SB1060 was stripped of its three foot passing provision, but the portion prohibiting a vehicle from following another vehicle (bikes included) too closely survived the House Transportation Subcommittee meeting this morning. I do not yet know the vote count. I believe that the next time SB1060 will be heard is in the full House Transportation committee *next* week.

Edit: the original version of this post passed along incorrect information about the exact nature of the amendment. The prohibition on following now reads to as vehicle v. vehicle. That is to say, it could be bike v. bike. Which, if left to the interpretation of a particularly aggressive LEO, could conceivably be read as prohibiting drafting. It is the opinion of one long-time VA House observer that one legislator very much plans to push that interpretation to his local law enforcement.

[Author]

Posts