[PotomacCyclist]

We have been discussing National Harbor occasionally. There’s a thread somewhere. I posted a couple months ago that the spokesperson for NH officially announced their enthusiasm and support for Capital Bikeshare at NH. That’s a big change from a few years ago when they seemed downright hostile to cycling.

I biked over there a couple months ago. I discovered that they installed bike racks all over the area. I was very surprised. I think I posted on the RackSpotter thread.

Prince George’s County and National Harbor have both spoken in favor of adding bike stations and joining Capital Bikeshare in the future. However, there is no set timetable yet and no official deal. I’m sure it will help to voice your support for bikeshare at NH. Many of us have been doing so for more than five years. You can vote on the CaBi crowdsource map for proposed bike stations. The link is located on the bike station map on the Capital Bikeshare website. I added multiple pins on the map for suggested locations at NH. Others have also added suggested locations. Vote in favor of those and/or add new locations on the map. The more support, the better.

[PotomacCyclist]

I have to agree that there may not be too many new bike commuters tomorrow. Unless people have short commutes, say within 1 or 2 miles, or are already an occasional bike commuters, they aren’t likely to take up bike commuting on such short notice. They may not know about trails or (relatively) bike-friendly roads and routes to work. At least with Bike to Work Day, there is a long lead-up to the event, with people leading newbie groups and more time to prepare mentally for the idea of bike commuting. I think back to 2008 before I started biking as an adult. There is a significant mental barrier to cross for many non-cyclists. It had never occurred to me that people actually biked from Arlington to DC. I wasn’t opposed to the idea back then. It simply never crossed my mind.

That may be how many non-bike commuters think. If they change their view, it takes time. It won’t happen in the short timeframe tonight, with the news first breaking around 3:30 or 4 pm. That’s not enough time for non-bike commuters to decide to bike.

One big difference between this week and 2008 is the widespread presence of Capital Bikeshare. The free 24-hr memberships tomorrow may spur many non-bike commuters to give it a try. But that will only work for people who live and work near bike stations, and who only have short commutes. A spur-of-the-moment first-timer is not going to be riding for 10 miles, 5 miles or even 3 miles in such a situation. At best, it will be people who live relatively close to downtown DC or other work centers.

But if CaBi’s response is seen as a fall-back option for future Metro outages, then perhaps more people will think about CaBi and personal bikes the next time. Or even next week, if they hear about how easy it was to bike to work during the Metro closure.

I was trying to think about how I would be able to take my own bike to work, but the building doesn’t allow bikes inside and I can’t find the key to my U lock. There’s no way I would leave my bike out on the street all day with just a cable lock. So I would have to go with CaBi. I figured that the demand for stations would be much higher than usual in downtown DC, and the regular bike corrals hadn’t started up yet.

Good thing that CaBi was on the ball and came up with the emergency bike corrals, not just at Foggy Bottom and Franklin Square (one block away) but also at Union Station. The free daily membership idea is an interesting one too. I’m not sure how many people will take them up on the offer. It might be a lot, or it could be relatively few.

Perhaps if CaBi pulls off an outstanding performance, it will generate even more goodwill (and less hatred from the vocal minority) and lead to even more financial support. There’s still plenty of room for expansion of the system. If large employers like the federal government decide to fund more stations, that will benefit many people, not just the agencies and their employees. Extra or expanded stations in L’Enfant Plaza, Federal Triangle, etc. and the first stations at the Pentagon would be great. Large private employers might be motivated to help pay for new stations near their locations.

(It would also be nice if Metro had a dedicated revenue source, like every other large transit system does. While there are other issues such as the building of the Silver Line-which supposedly shifted the focus from maintenance to expansion, mismanagement, etc., the lack of stability has caused many of Metro’s problems.)

[PotomacCyclist]

Expect crowded bike stations downtown for those who use Capital Bikeshare. The bike corrals haven’t started up yet this year. They should try to find a way to set up an emergency CaBi corral tomorrow.

[PotomacCyclist]

Sounds like part of the issue is the long distance. While two 14-mile trips might not be considered a lot for a Tour de France cyclist, it can grind away at people who have non-cycling full-time jobs and other responsibilities. I know I probably wouldn’t bike commute 28 miles every workday.

When I train for various racing events (bike, run, triathlon), when I start to mess up the nutrition and overdo the activity level, I start to get cranky, nervous and irritable. I also start to dislike cycling. Some advanced athletes talk about doing unfed workouts (on an empty stomach) but that can get tricky. If you mess it up, especially on a repeated basis, it can cause problems. I’ve gotten sick and badly overtrained on a couple occasions while doing that (not eating nearly enough for very long workouts). Bike commuting may not be quite the same as training, but 14 miles twice a day is still a solid ride, especially five days a week (plus any additional recreational rides on the weekends).

Are you eating enough, before and after the rides? It wouldn’t need to be a huge amount, especially if you’re on a faster road bike. (I’ve been doing nearly all of my rides on CaBi or the mountain bike over the past year, so 14 miles would be considered a fairly long ride on those bikes.) Is your overall nutrition solid? When you stress yourself (with something like ten 14-milers a week, plus other rides), overall nutrition starts to become more important. Both quantity and quality matter here.

====

As for the broken glass, I know about that. I’ve ridden through the East of the River neighborhoods quite a bit this past winter, as well as in many of the Prince George’s suburbs. There is a lot of broken glass on the sidewalks. It’s a shame that the County and local governments don’t do more clean-up, even if it’s weekly. Or perhaps they could have an online reporting form that is well-promoted where people can quickly report locations where broken glass and other debris can be cleaned up.

I also know about some of the EOTR neighborhoods. The area north of Naylor Rd Metro is in rough shape. Parts of Barry Farm are also run-down, along with other areas. But many of the areas were much cleaner and nice-looking. You don’t always hear about that in local and national reports. Even in the rougher-looking areas, I haven’t had any issues, although it might be different with very early morning or late evening rides. I also wouldn’t want to ride through there every day. It’s interesting to explore the region, but Naylor Rd wouldn’t be my choice for a daily ride. The hills provide a good workout though.

Crime rates are higher in many of those areas, but many if not most of the worst incidents are at night, I believe, and many involve individuals who know one another. Even if there are some random attacks, I would also consider car-cyclist collisions to be random incidents where the two or more parties were not acquainted before the collision. Those collisions can and do happen anywhere. Some of the closest calls I’ve had (mostly as a pedestrian) have been in affluent areas like Bethesda and Clarendon. If we are to consider the risk of crime, we should also include the risk of car collisions too, as part of the overall risk assessment. That tends to even out the risk quite a bit from neighborhood to neighborhood.

Of course, a huge factor is the state of bike infrastructure in a particular area. I haven’t really sought out off-road trails while riding around those areas in DC and MD. On higher-speed roads, I always ride on the sidewalks. (I’m not riding on 35-45 mph road lanes, no matter what any signs say about “Bikes May Use the Full Lane.”) I’d agree that bike infrastructure tends to be lacking EOTR and in the adjacent MD suburbs, although I did come across some decent bike lanes. (Yes, they are sometimes in the door zone, but I think it’s better to have that lane than to be stuck on a straight road where most of the drivers are speeding and the speed limit is already uncomfortably high.)

====

Have you thought about mixing up the trip? Not necessarily MetroRail, but Metrobus. All buses in the region are now equipped with front bike racks. Perhaps you could ride for part of your trip and then take a bus for part of the trip. That can get you through some uncomfortable areas (whether because of a concern about crime or unsafe road infrastructure). I’ve done this frequently on rack mapping trips, mostly because of the greater distances involved in the suburbs and also to get through some intersections and stretches that are outright hostile to cycling (such as highways and highway crossings).

You would still be able to bike each day, if you want, while avoiding some of the worst sections of your trip. You could type up a short list of bus arrival times at particular bus stops and add them to a note on your phone. (I use Evernote. It works fairly well. Once you sync up your phone and computer apps, when you type something on the computer and sync it, it shows up on your phone too. I have noticed that longer notes and notes with a lot of formatting, such as bold type and font colors, can slow up the app, to the point where it is very difficult to edit a note. A good workaround is to have the longer apps as read-only, with shorter notes for quick edits. You can also Simplify Formatting, which seems to speed up the performance of a particular note.)

You can back that up with the DC Metro Transit app (Android) or a similar iPhone app. DC Metro Transit is invaluable for checking MetroRail and Metrobus schedules on the road. You can find the next train or bus in near-real time. It’s not 100 percent accurate but it’s fairly close. It also tells you the next available two or three buses. Or if there are no buses in the next 20 min. or so, it offers up alternate routes as options. The app is free.

Placing a bike on the Metrobus racks is easy, once you figure it out. It’s awkward the first time, but you’ll learn quickly.

http://www.wmata.com/getting_around/bike_ride/bikes_bus.cfm

There are many videos on YouTube, but I didn’t see one from WMATA. Most of the racks are the same or very similar. Squeeze the handle in the center of the rack to release the rack and pull it down from the front of the bus. Lift the bike onto the rack, putting the tires into the holders, front wheel toward the right. Pull out the lever toward the right and lift it over the front wheel. Place the handle directly on the top of the front wheel. That’s it.

Unlike with MetroRail, you can choose how far you want to travel on that route. Bus stops are more frequent than MetroRail stops are. If you’re more tired than usual, ride the bus for a longer stretch. If you have more energy and want to ride more, shorten the bus segment or skip it altogether. You can decide each day.

The only possible issue is that each bus only has space for two bikes. I rarely see buses with both racks in use at the same time, but I guess it might happen. If it does, you would be forced to wait for the next bus, or you could continue riding along the route.

I don’t know about all the possible routes, but a bike/bus combination could open up the Wilson Bridge. You could ride over the bridge and then a short distance to Oxon Hill. (The NH1 bus only connects National Harbor with the Southern Ave Metro station.) From there, you could take the Harborview Ave path and then the Oxon Hill Rd sidewalk past Livingston Rd. A couple hundred feet further, you’ll see a bus stop for the D12 bus. That takes you straight to the Suitland Metro station. That would let you avoid riding on St. Barnabas Rd, which appears to be a high-speed arterial, and Silver Hill Rd.

The D12 timetable shows that the bus stops at the Livingston Rd. location around 5:25, 5:55, 6:25, 6:59, 7:29, 7:59, 8:29 and 8:59 am. The bus trip takes about 20-30 min., depending on the time of day. The bus runs about hourly in midday. The route continues to run 11:36 pm (the last westbound departure from Suitland Metro station). There is also hourly service on the weekends, if you ever need to work then.

http://www.wmata.com/bus/timetables/md/d12-14.pdf

http://www.wmata.com/pdfs/bus/PG_County_System_Map.pdf?

http://www.wmata.com/bus/timetables/timetables-state.cfm?State=MD

[PotomacCyclist]

You: CaBi Speed Racer on the sidewalks at Mt Vernon Square (in DC, not on the Mt. Vernon Trail in Virginia).

What the heck? Some guy was screaming down the sidewalks on a CaBi bike, telling people to get out of the way. This was during rush hour when there were pedestrians everywhere on the sidewalks. He weaved through a group of pedestrians at high speed (for a CaBi) and screaming for me to get out of the way. I was also on CaBi, but I was stationary as I was waiting for a green light. While we’re allowed to ride on the sidewalks north of downtown, we should never be treating crowded sidewalks as if they were empty high-speed bike trails or rural straightaways. That guy was ridiculous. The fact is that one guy like that can create a dozen sworn enemies of cycling in just one trip. I almost became an enemy of cycling and Capital Bikeshare myself, until I remembered that I like CaBi and I was actually using one of the bikes at that moment.

To the speed racers out there: If you’re riding on a crowded sidewalk, slow the *&^# down!

[PotomacCyclist]

Photo of North-North Arlington, as seen from Tysons by a morning commuter

[ATTACH=CONFIG]11153[/ATTACH]

[PotomacCyclist]

bobco85;136103 wrote:

[edited] “if someone thinks there’s even a remote chance that a car can fit somewhere, someone will eventually drive there.”

edited

[PotomacCyclist]

I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to ride in Arlington. I’ve actually done far more riding in Maryland and DC this winter. On many of the trips, I take Metro from Arlington so I might not bike at all in Arlington on those days.

This is after barely riding in Maryland for a few years.

[PotomacCyclist]

Sort of a road conditions item: NPS peak bloom prediction for cherry blossoms at the Tidal Basin, March 31 to April 3.

http://www.nationalcherryblossomfestival.org/about/bloom-watch/

[PotomacCyclist]

I went on a couple of their group runs. Those were fun. Not too long and open to everyone. They also had a free membership discount program, which I used occasionally. Mostly for Clif bars and gels (back when I used gels).

Now it seems that a new ownership group wants to revive the brand. I think it could be a good idea, depending on whether they can make the business profitable. I found it convenient to have their stores in Gallery Place, downtown and elsewhere, even if they didn’t have much for cyclists. Their winter gear was useful for both runners and cyclists.

I hope they will consider opening up a store in the Pentagon City/Crystal City area. There’s a sizable market there and not a lot of options currently. Modell’s has some general training apparel but only a limited selection of bike items, if any at all. Sports Authority carries big-box store generic bikes and some cycling gear but they are located in Potomac Yard, Alexandria. It’s not too long a bike ride from PC/CC, but sometimes people go shopping when they aren’t riding, or when they don’t have the time for a longer detour.

A Pentagon City store could benefit from the large amount of shoppers at the mall and Pentagon Centre. Crystal City is located near the MVT and Long Bridge Park. Plus some people are working on bike projects at the TechShop makerspace on Crystal Drive. (I’ve seen bike frames and bikes in their bike room area, but since I was looking through the windows, I couldn’t see exactly what people were making or designing.)

The new group bought the brand, logo and website. They won’t have any of the debts, leases or other obligations of the bankrupt company.

Their website is running again. The contact address is in Eatontown, NJ. The old company was based in Boston. The individual webpages for some of the DC stores are still up, but maybe that just means the old company never got around to shutting those pages down.

A NY Post article (posted on the CS Facebook page) says they will reopen stores in urban areas in the Northeast U.S. That could include DC, which was one of the core markets for the old company. But they will avoid suburban locations because of higher costs.

http://nypost.com/2016/02/26/city-sports-comeback-plan-is-to-avoid-the-suburbs/

Would they consider Arlington suburban? Technically it’s a suburb, but the Metro corridors are urban in nature and basically a part of the close-in central DC market.

[PotomacCyclist]

I’ve seen plenty of reckless people in every mode of transportation, including drivers, cyclists and pedestrians. (I see plenty of people who jaywalk by stepping suddenly into high-speed traffic, for example.) But the fact is that car driving is the mode that presents the most danger to everyone on the roads, and that danger extends to drivers themselves. Most of the now 38,000 annual traffic fatalities are drivers.

Road deaths increased to 38,300 in 2015, from 35,236 in 2014. I had been citing 33,000 as the number of annual traffic/road fatalities in the U.S. but that’s far too low a figure now, unfortunately. That also means 105 Americans die each and every day, on average, in or because of cars. I had previously been saying 90 American deaths a day. It’s getting worse. I have no idea why that doesn’t shock and outrage more people. If 100 more Americans died over an entire year because of terrorism or food poisoning or Ebola, you would have near riots and maybe even concentration camps these days. There is one death on Metro over a six-year period and people go around calling it a disaster and a death trap. Really? (Someone dies on the roads in the D.C. region every couple days or so, every week of the year. Why don’t people consider that a death trap? Or at least a danger zone?)

But 5,000 more annual road deaths, compared to just a couple years ago? Barely a reaction from many. It’s almost as if they consider it collateral damage or acceptable losses, like they are playing a video game or waging war on any American civilians who happen to get in their way. When attempts are made to lower the death toll, some will scream and wail about a “war on cars.”

[PotomacCyclist]

Three more bike stations yesterday. Two in Arlington, one at the Medical Center Metro station in Bethesda.

[PotomacCyclist]

I posted about the two new Alexandria CaBi stations in the other thread. Today, they added a new bike station in North Arlington, at N. Woodstock St & Lee Hwy.

https://www.facebook.com/CapitalBikeshare/photos/a.138245472875449.17856.134700293229967/1159068274126492/?type=3&theater

That station extends the reach of the CaBi network farther west on Lee Hwy.

[PotomacCyclist]

I’m almost positive that you have not forward this to any of your colleagues and friends at DDOT…

[PotomacCyclist]

I still like doing both. Or actually all three, but not year-round.

(I haven’t done much of any of the three this winter, although I’m desperately trying to get back on track.)

To add on to the recommendation, while high-intensity intervals can be powerful sessions, too much can be counterproductive. Excess intensity can lead to injury or burnout. That may have happened with me and swimming last year. I ramped up the swim training last winter, and I did a lot of longer pull buoy sessions, something I never did before. I started to get noticeably stronger in the upper body. (I was suddenly able to do one-arm push-ups for the first time last spring, almost entirely because of the pull buoy workouts. Aside from the pulling sessions, I barely did any formal strength training at all — maybe one workout every 3 weeks — but I got better and better at push-ups without even practicing or training at push-ups.)

But I must have gotten sick of swimming subconsciously because one day in the late spring, I simply stopped swimming completely. No injury, no bad experience in a race (or any races at all). I just swam one day then never went back to the pool. I’ve only swam once in the last nine months.

I might get back to it again, sometime. If I start serious training for anything again, I will be careful not to overdo it. Not just because of injury concerns but also because of the possibility of burnout. That’s always a risk with too much high-intensity work. It doesn’t matter how fit you get in those workouts if they make you so sick of the sport that you quit it completely. The end result is less fitness, not more. I’m certainly a worse swimmer now than I was at this time last year. Nine months off will do that to you.

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