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@DismalScientist 22082 wrote:

I can’t think of many areas in the inner suburbs that are not accessible by bikeable streets (except perhaps bridge access) With the lack of through side streets, many areas of Fairfax are a disaster for biking. The arterials likely need to be widened for any bicycle-friendly treatment of the road, but the question is whether to put in bike lanes or call the wider lanes sharrows. Claiming that anti-segregated facility cyclists are against making bike friendly investments is disingenuous.

Putting some paint on the street and claiming that just anyone can ride a bike next to traffic going 50+ MPH is disingenuous.

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There’s a pretty good segment of the population that, for various reasons, can’t get to where they want to go on a bike if their only option is to ride on a route 50 or a route 29. I consider it fairly selfish to argue against building facilities for those people because it might (only might!) interfere with someone else’s ability to ride there.

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@rsewell19 22067 wrote:

However, when I hear someone complain about not having the time to ride I feel insulted

Maybe it’s not about you?

When someone complains about not having time to ride, that’s implicitly within the context of their own priorities, and there’s really no reason for them to get into the gory details.

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@jnva 22034 wrote:

Really? I’m not trying to be sarcastic here, but I thought the wod/custis/ 4mr trails were recreational first and foremost. If its a transportation corridor then why aren’t motorized vehicles allowed?

All of the local MUPs are the result of trying to check off as many boxes as possible without spending much money. There is no “first and foremost” except “make sure it’s as cheap as possible”. Even that tiny expenditure needs to be justified by pretending that one trail will meet the needs of commuters, recreational cyclists, equestrians, roller bladers, joggers, mommies with strollers, marching bands, etc. The neat thing is, unlike roads, you don’t even need to maintain the MUP! It’s a one-time expense!

For project local to me, the original design called for sidewalks on either side of the road and an MUP connecting to the FFX county parkway trail. That’s been pared down to one sidewalk and one MUP, and we’ll probably be lucky if we get the MUP at all. Sure as hell we’ll get all four travel lanes plus turn lanes, though. At least one engineer at VDOT saw the benefit of separate cyclist and pedestrian infrastructure, even if it got killed.

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@JeffC 22008 wrote:

If anybody has a Skuut type bike suitable for a 6 year old (that I could also use by the time my younger daughter turns 3 or so) let me know. I started my oldest daughter, now 6, on the more traditional training wheel bike. She is very good at handling and turning on our concrete patio or on a quiet street but way too absent minded for longer rides. I tried to get her to go without training wheels once and she got very panicky so back on with the training wheels. My youngest is still on a trike.

From what I have read recently, I think it is better to teach balance first on a skuut and then pedaling on a regular bike but I cannot go back now. Unfortunately, my wife puts this all on me and does nothing to teack biking skills.

I’m pondering buying a kids razor type scooter hoping that might teach balance as well. Anybody have experiece with that teaching balance to kids and crossing over to bikes?

A friend of mine with kids hypothesized that boys take more readily to biking as a daredevelish type thing whereas girls tend to learn when there is some peer pressure involved.

My daughter was a bit quicker than my son, so YMMV–kids are individuals. How did you try taking the training wheels off? I pull them off, then start by running around holding the seat and move to running around holding their shoulder. I also adjust the seat relatively low to lower the center of gravity and make it a bit less scary. The running around is just a few minutes at a time until they’re ready for longer. With #2, he just wasn’t ready so we gave it a break for a month at a time and would give it another shot. One day, he just did it. Note: running around bent over holding onto a bike is much harder on the dad than the kid, and my back is usually the limiting factor for session length.

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@JimF22003 21972 wrote:

Can anyone recommend a bell that has a quick-release that works well? I’d put one on while on the MUP but there’s no way I’m riding out on the road with one

Why?

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@pfunkallstar 21940 wrote:

16″ or bust. Also, I really like the idea of single speeds to start out, coaster brakes can be confusing though.

Oh, yeah, start somewhere flat. If they already know how to pedal, the idea of pedaling backward to stop is fairly intuitive; the hard part is modulation. (We burned through one back tire pretty fast…) In my experience it can take a while before they have the simple strength to make the handbrake work, and hands large enough to get more than fingertips around the lever. The really nice thing about ditching the coaster brakes is how much less time you spend on pedal positioning with each stop.

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@5555624 21971 wrote:

I see this often on the Custis Trail — riders going faster than they can make some of those turns and stay in their “lane.”

That’s even more exciting now that they’ve repaved without restriping.

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@Greenbelt 21943 wrote:

One thing I try to remind myself is that it’s OK to ride off trail to avoid an erratic or unexpected move on the trails. At least in most places it’s just grass, and worst case scenario if I lose it is a dirty bruise or two. (Most of the time I don’t lose it though.) I often just take to the grass anyways when there are kids on training wheels or a group of teenagers. It’s more fun and safer than coming to a complete stop, which is often the only option especially where there’s a whole peleton of kids on tiny bikes.
Of course, some of it is circumstance — trails in Prince George’s seem to have lots of strollers and walkers when the weather’s nice, but fewer bikes and high-speed runners, so it’s a little different dynamic. And I realize some of the trails in VA are much tighter and don’t have grassy or level areas on the sides.

Yeah, most of my trail miles involve a multi-inch drop and gravel, sometimes steep gravel. I’ve wiped on that before, and I’d rather just stop.

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@Tim Kelley 21929 wrote:

The ARLnow story has been updated to include the following:

“The cyclist, a 62-year-old man, suffered only minor injuries and did not require transport to the hospital. He was riding a NEXT Power Climber mountain bike at the time of the accident, according to Sternbeck. No charges have been filed against the cyclist, he said.”

I’m fairly surprised they didn’t mention whether he was wearing a helmet. I also wonder if anyone on that ARLnow thread will take back some of the snark about privileged cyclists on carbon racing bikes.

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agree the newer one is inferior, but the old one won’t fit on my new bike. It is fairly easy to position them somewhere convenient; I keep mine mostly under the bar with the thumb thing pointed up so I can ding it from the flat. Can squeeze in right next to the computer that way.

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@MCL1981 21888 wrote:

From the sounds of it, the cyclist was not acting recklessly and was in fact being responsible. It is just a terrible accident that probably could not have been prevented (other than using a bell instead). The speed of the cyclist could have been 10, 15, or 20 and the result would have been the same. You can not stop a bike going down a hill in that short amount of time and even a low speed hit is going to knock down a 70yr old woman.

I agree about the bell. I’ll quibble about the speed. If you’re on a steep hill with a pedestrian present, and poor sightlines, 20 is too fast, 15 is too fast, and 10 may be too fast. If you lay on the brakes you can easily slide down the hill at 5 or 6 or 8. This is no different from what we think about cars speeding on roads, and the same advice about “you’ll get there eventually” applies.

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@KLizotte 21895 wrote:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1183[/ATTACH]
Explaining why a 30 km/h street in Assen has a wide cycle-path next to it. This is not uncommon and arises where the cycle-route is more important than the driving route. [Note the pedestrian sidewalk next to the bike path – KL]

I’m somewhat amused that they’re parked all over the sidewalk and the bike lane.

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First, remember that every kid is different, and there are no rules. Next, better too small a bike than too big a bike. That said, I personally wouldn’t spend money on a bike less than 16″ (kids grow really fast when they’re small, and I waited until they were big enough). I see some kids riding around on a 12″ or whatever, so I guess that works for some. I started them out on a trike rather than a bike–pedal motion first, balance later. Both our older kids went through a training wheel stage on the 16″ bikes. I tried to keep that as short as possible, but it depends on the kid. One lost the training wheels right about 5 years, the other more like 5.5. They’ll know when they’re ready. Even before he lost the training wheels the second one was doing 5-6 miles, building strength and allowing more interesting trips than a trike or balance bike. Even a 16″ these days should come with a hand brake. Make sure they’re checked out on that before moving off coaster brakes. I just this past weekend moved the oldest from twist shift to thumb shift on her 20″ bike, and I should have done that a long time ago. (A lot of 7/8 year olds don’t have a strong enough grip to use the twist shift properly.) It’s an easy swap, and I’d recommend doing that right off. I’d also recommend avoiding anything with gears until they’ve been on a single speed for a couple of years–develop basic reflexes before adding more distractions. That said, once they’re on a multispeed it’s easier to go further & faster, which is nice. The most important thing is to let them set their pace, and keep it fun. I just got back from a seven or eight mile family ride (cut short by darkening skies) with the 8 year old, the 6 year old, and the 2 year old in the wee-hoo, and we all had a blast.

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@DismalScientist 21841 wrote:

A similar fundamental tradeoff involves tire width, with wider tires being more comfortable, perhaps more flat resistant, but harder to push.

More fundamental than the width is the design. A smoother tire will have less rolling resistance, and less traction off-road. A two inch deep-tread MTB tire is going to be more work to pedal at a given speed on pavement than a two inch invert-tread with a smooth contact patch intended for on-road use. (You’ll also have a nifty buzzing coming from one tire at speed and not the other.) There is a good correlation between width and tread design, but you’re not locked into an off-road tire if you want something wider.

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