[mstone]

As long as similar charges are filed against motorists who kill people, fine. (note that orders of magnitude more people are killed by cars, so we should be seeing a lot of charges.)

[mstone]

@rcannon100 22416 wrote:

The Intersection of Lynn St and Lee Hwy is so bad….

The Intersection is so bad…. that even the traffic lights caught fire!!! 😡

http://www.arlnow.com/2012/06/15/lights-blinking-at-intersection-after-fire-in-walk-signal/

Hmm. It says they had police doing traffic control. Maybe the solution is to set the lights on fire every day?

[mstone]

@Greenbelt 22399 wrote:

I’m thinking about upgrading the wheels on my commuter bike. The wheels that came stock are starting to get annoying — broken spokes getting more common and getting harder to keep in true.

I heard about these last night — made for 700 size and disk brakes. Anyone have experience with these wheels? They’re not cheap so wanted to get some opinions if possible before I order. -Jeff

My immediate reaction would be that with the problems you’re describing you’re going in the wrong direction with a 24 spoke 2x wheel. I’ve heard of people liking them, but I’m old fashioned and I want more metal under me. More info on the bike might help.

[mstone]

unless it’s a high-end seatpost with serviceable components, most suspension seatposts should be considered consumables

[mstone]

I’m happy as long as they’re not doing their crazy ninja thing in the street.

[mstone]

@DismalScientist 22302 wrote:

I am not suggesting a one or another “solution.” I think you and mstone are creating this straw man where we vehicular cyclist think that cyclists should take the most direct way and travel on roads that are inappropriate. mstone suggests that people who live anywhere near 50 and 29 can only get anywhere by bicycle by actually riding on 50 and 29.

Well, once you get outside the beltway, there are pretty significant chunks which are connected only by high-speed multilane roads or very circuitous detours. It’s a big region, and the situation outside the urban core is different than it is downtown. E.g., how many safe beltway crossings are there, excluding separated infrastructure like the W&OD? Fairfax is in the process right now of creating a master plan which will (hopefully) be a guide to getting better bike infrastructure over (probably) the next 3 or 4 decades. The process of getting that approved and on the books is only made harder if opponents can say “hey, look, even bike people don’t want this bike infrastructure” (ignoring the very different realities on the ground in one area vs another).

[mstone]

@5555624 22172 wrote:

I guess I just interpreted “there are many people who simply won’t bike without separate” as meaning there were people who won’t bike without separate facilities. My mistake.

I guess I’d assumed that could reasonably be assumed to not extend from door to door, and would take effect once you get out of the quiet back streets and onto the main roads.

[mstone]

@DismalScientist 22154 wrote:

I think the point that is missed is that most (i.e. with the exception of freeways) car infrastructure is also bike infrastructure.

Which is a ridiculous position given the speed of the local car infrastructure; the line between freeways and non-freeways doesn’t exist around here, and the only through way between two points is often a multi-lane high-speed arterial.

Furthermore, the local attitude on all infrastructure (with the exception of privately-funded and Metro) seems to be that “well, the money isn’t there to do it all right now …, so screw it”

As far as the local attitude on infrastructure, you’re wrong–implementation of stuff that was planned 40+ years ago is still moving quietly along. Short-term politics gets a lot of press and big projects get a lot of excitement, but the day-to-day work of putting in new roads just keeps plugging along every time a developer embarks on a project. You either get on the plans now or face an even harder problem in the future.

[mstone]

@DismalScientist 22135 wrote:

I think you are setting up a straw man. My point is that separate infrastructure as designed is often less safe than non-segregated.

And in other cases the road infrastructure is inherently unsafe. Cherry picking examples leads nowhere. There’s also an evolution in the design of any infrastructure; we’re certainly not building roads the same way we did 100 years ago–because lessons have been learned. If we took the approach you seem to be suggesting (“well, the first try wasn’t a complete success, let’s give up”) we’d be trying to get around on the rotting remnants of corduroy roads and going nowhere fast.

I also don’t see building substantial amounts of segregated infrastructure (except perhaps bike lanes) as sufficiently inexpensive to be likely.

As others have pointed out, this is a generational question. Look at the amount of money that has been dumped into car infrastructure in the past 50 years, and consider what a small percentage of that redirected into bike infrastructure might look like. It’s somewhat frustrating if the response to planning for 50 years out is basically, “well, the money isn’t there to do it all right now and I don’t want it for myself anyway, so screw it”.

[mstone]

@5555624 22133 wrote:

And the “I WON’T RIDE ON THE ROAD PERIOD” crowd also sees this an either-or, too

Maybe, but it’s mostly a straw man that hasn’t been proposed in this thread.

[mstone]

@5555624 22129 wrote:

Okay, selfish. How do we satisfy the “many people who simply won’t bike without separate” facilities? How does these people get to a separate bike lane or trail? Let’s say I live at S Pershing Dr & S 3rd St and I am not willing to ride without separate facilities — do I walk three-quarters of a mile to the W&OD? Do I drive? Do I ride on the sidewalk (and doge pedestrians), even though it’s a longer route to the trail than the road? I think it is unreasonable to think that we are going to build separate facilities to everyone’s home.

Well, we’d do something reasonable and put in separate infrastructure where necessary, and promote surface routes where practical. It’s the “NOBODY NEEDS ANY SEPARATE INFRASTRUCTURE” crowd that sees this as an either-or.

[mstone]

@DismalScientist 22114 wrote:

I’m thinking roads like Idylwild and Cedar, not routes 50 and 29. Obviously sharrows on high speed highways are inappropriate.

Well, when you are going from point A to point B you have to deal with the roads that are there. Given that the existing infrastructure favors high speed auto traffic, and that we’re unlikely to see the traffic slow down en masse, you’re basically writing off the people in large parts of the area and telling them that they just can’t use a bike to get from A to B because in some other part of the area you can ride on the street and don’t want anyone else to have a different solution.

Cars get grade-separated infrastructure to let them go long distances without conflicts. If I’m going a long way on a bike, I’d like the same privilege. Part of this may be downtown myopia–yeah, there might be better ways to get a mile or two in the city on a street, but if you’re going from, say, reston to leesburg, the W&OD beats the alternatives with a stick. It would be even better with more seperation, of course, but it starts to hint at what a bike highway infrastructure to go along with the car highway infrastructure might look like. The biggest problem is that just like car highways, it needs to vary based on the traffic volume, and the local trails don’t change once they’re inside the beltway.

[mstone]

@Dirt 22049 wrote:

You can learn about some of my adventures scouting out a new commuting route…

That looks like the kind of sensible passage that VDOT won’t permit under the fairfax county parkway!

[mstone]

@Trollopian 22084 wrote:

There have been quite a few remarks about this victim’s “randomness” or “failure to follow rules.” I have no idea whether she suffered from hearing loss or from age-related delays in response time, or was a non-native English speaker, but please remember that there are many such people and they have a perfect right to be on the sidewalk or path. I myself wear two hearing aids and am slow to hear the standard “On your left!” yell….in fact, I have to turn to lip-read. Please have compassion. If there is a pedestrian ahead of you, do not assume that he or she knows “the rules.” When you are sharing the road, the right thing to do is slow down so that you could not cause injury in the event of a collision.

The counterpoint that has been made several times is that it might not be possible to slow down enough to not cause injury if someone does something unexpected and collides with you; this same thing could conceivably happened between two pedestrians. We simply do not know the speed of the cyclist involved or where the two people were positioned and how they moved at the time of the accident.

Most cyclists are cautious around pedestrians. (Yes, there are also jerks–the population of jerks in any subset of humanity is probably fairly constant.) But no matter how cautious cyclists are, pedestrians also need to take some responsibility not to move unpredictably across a multi-use path without looking. Always move to the right and off the path when stopping or turning, especially if you don’t know whether there’s someone right behind you due to a hearing or other impairment. There aren’t just cyclists out there–you might also have a jogger, rollerblader, stroller, etc. coming at you. Odds are that none of those things will actually be a problem at any given time, but someone does win the lottery every week, and every once in a while low-probability accidents turn tragic.

[mstone]

@5555624 22080 wrote:

Those people can drive to a MUP and ride. (Yeah, I know, I’m being blunt — sorry.)

That’s not blunt, that’s selfish.

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