[PotomacCyclist]

I just didn’t want the spammer to have the benefit of taking over the top of the index completely. At one point, he/she/it had filled up 2 or 3 entire pages of the index. I’m not sure why they do that, especially when none of the text was in English or even English characters. Do they think that someone on a U.S. website will see a huge wall of text and garbled computer symbols and think, wow, that sounds like a great deal?

[PotomacCyclist]

Still more “illegal dumping” (spam) on the forum too.

[PotomacCyclist]

The forum index is looking a little funny (or annoying) today too. We need an anti-spammer spray or zapper.

[PotomacCyclist]

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue… SE

[ATTACH=CONFIG]10925[/ATTACH]

[PotomacCyclist]

@gibby 134614 wrote:

High tide on 4MR under Rt1 made for a real eeewwwww cruise thru all sorts of ummmmm ‘debris.’

E. coli is good for your bike. OK, I made that up. But it’s true that you’re likely riding through a lot of untreated sewage there. Millions of gallons of sewage have probably overflowed into the rivers and streams since yesterday.

[PotomacCyclist]

@vern 133958 wrote:

I lived in New York for six years, where everything imaginable gets transported on the subway, any time, day or night…pets in carriers, bikes, furniture – you name it. And the subway is way more congested than the Metro. And it works, and everybody deals with it, and it’s OK. Metro rules are dumb.

But NYC is only just starting to add bike racks on their buses. They are the last major U.S. city not to have bike racks on their buses. Some of the DC-area jurisdictions have had bus bike racks for a decade or more. Even Prince George’s (which hasn’t always been the most bike or transit-friendly) added bike racks to their regional buses last year.

http://www.streetsblog.org/2015/08/31/mta-bike-racks-are-coming-to-buses-over-the-verrazano-narrows-bridge/

The lack of bike racks on buses is a major omission in NYC, especially for the boroughs other than Manhattan where the subway coverage isn’t as extensive.. Everything in NYC isn’t always better. I never used bike racks on buses until this winter. Now that I’ve tried them out, I don’t know why I didn’t use them before. They make it a lot more convenient to travel longer distances in the DC region without having to bike the entire trip.

There are various reasons for doing this: not wanting to be exhausted before even arriving at the destination (where someone might want to bike, instead of riding through areas with poorer bike infrastructure), being able to travel much farther without having to drive and still getting to ride the bike, traveling through areas with poor bike infrastructure but heading to bike-friendly destinations. Casual cyclists may want shorter overall bike trips. Or they may want to avoid certain hilly areas on the bike. If WMATA and the regional bus fleets didn’t have bike racks on their buses, that would make traveling by bike much more difficult for many trips in the region. Or it would make some of those trips impractical with a bike. Bikeshare helps with some of those types of trips, but not all of them, since there are still many areas in the region that aren’t part of CaBi. Some neighborhoods in participating jurisdictions don’t have any bike stations or the bike stations are placed very far apart.

[PotomacCyclist]

A few weeks ago, I found a pair of touchscreen-compatible gloves at Modell’s. I think the brand is 180s. They aren’t that thick, but they are OK down to about 40F. So far the touchscreen function is working. It took me a couple days before I figured out the best way to press on buttons and type while wearing the gloves. On some of the rows of the keyboard, I have to poke straight at the screen. On the upper rows, it helps if I tap with more of the flat part of the fingertip. It’s starting to become second-nature, where I just use the most effective movement without thinking about it too much. I guess that happens after the tenth time poking at a virtual keyboard, trying to type a letter or add a space.

On colder days, I’ve been using them as glove liners for my thicker ski gloves. I can’t really go with the ski mittens idea because I’m mapping bike racks for the RackSpotter website. I need to be able to get the phone out quickly and type. Mittens would be far too cumbersome. If I were doing longer rides every day in sub-40F weather, I might think about getting lobster gloves or mittens. I haven’t used the Bar Mitts at all, although part of the reason is that I just skip riding on sub-35F days. There are a few of those coming up this week. If I ride at all on those days, it will probably just be some shorter rides on CaBi.

CaBi also helps to solve the problem of freezing toes. I just wear regular winter shoes/low-cut boots. They have a solid sole, unlike bike shoes, so it’s much easier to keep my toes warm.

I just remembered the first winter since I started cycling as an adult. I only had triathlon bike shoes, which have far less material and coverage than even regular summer road bike shoes. Nearly a third of the top is uncovered, to help cool off on long hot rides. But that’s not too helpful when trying to ride on sub-40F days. I did a ride or two in those shoes with medium-thick socks. Not a recommended set-up. Even after I got neoprene shoe covers, none of it worked at all on cold days. I finally got Shimano mountain bike pedals and mtn bike shoes, which helped a lot on winter rides. But even those still don’t quite work on sub-40F days. So it’s regular non-bike winter shoes for me when it gets below 40F. I wouldn’t say my feet stay warm, but they don’t seem to get painfully cold like they do in bike shoes.

[PotomacCyclist]

At first I thought this was about recruiting a volunteer snow removal brigade for the MVT.

[PotomacCyclist]

The location of some other bike fixit stands, although the map doesn’t show the Clarendon or Ballston stands.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zQ2afKAN3BFs.kF4MbMC33A1c&hl=en_US

[PotomacCyclist]

Another article from the Tax Foundation about road spending subsidies in 2013, including the federal subsidy sourced from federal gas tax revenue:

http://taxfoundation.org/blog/road-spending-state-funded-user-taxes-and-fees-including-federal-gas-tax-revenues

The Share of Federal, State & Local Road Spending Covered by User Taxes and User Fees (2010 data):

D.C. 4.8% (not a typo, at least on my part)
Maryland 45.8%
Virginia 47.7%

U.S. average 50.7%

[PotomacCyclist]

The accounting for transportation spending is muddled. There are road and bridge costs at the federal level, state level and municipal level. At the federal level, “Highway Trust Fund” spending also includes transit spending. The total is subsidized heavily from non-gas tax revenue, but the breakdown is unclear.

I’ve read wildly varying reports about the road subsidy at the federal level. One obscure federal report I read indicates that highway users actually paid more into the system, but that doesn’t seem right. I’ve never heard that before, or anything close to it. Even so, that report doesn’t cover streets or roads.

At the state level, the amount of road subsidy varies by state. I believe that in Virginia, transportation spending has been delinked from consumer gas taxes. The system was switched over to more reliance on wholesale gas taxes. I didn’t follow the story too closely since I never buy gasoline. I remember reading articles that indicated only a minority of Virginia road spending costs would be covered by gas tax revenue but I don’t have the sources on hand.

This article from the Tax Foundation (which is considered to have a conservative bias) indicated in 2014 that drivers (road users) only covered 50.4 percent of road costs (construction and maintenance) at the state and local level, nationwide. Part of the “subsidy” came from federal gas tax revenue though. Those drivers paid the federal gas tax revenue as well, but the accounting is garbled. Even so, total gas tax revenue and tolls still do not cover the state/local cost of road spending.

Mass transit is more heavily subsidized, when looking solely at tax/fee revenue versus direct spending. But transit is more efficient at moving large numbers of people in densely-populated areas and it doesn’t involve the costs of pollution or death that car driving does.

http://taxfoundation.org/article/gasoline-taxes-and-user-fees-pay-only-half-state-local-road-spending

But such analyses don’t include the very significant expenses and subsidies related to free/subsidized parking or parking minimums, or the imbalanced subsidy for drivers compared to transit users. (That imbalance was addressed recently, as transit users now have the same or about the same monthly tax benefit as drivers do.) The analysis doesn’t cover other expenses (externalities) either. Single-occupant car driving has massive negative costs not directly accounted for in these studies, although they are examined in other articles and studies. This includes the death rates on roads, primarily caused by drivers. (Most of the fatalities are also drivers.) About 33,000 Americans die each year in traffic collisions and incidents. Most of them involve cars. (I’ve never seen any stats on how many deaths are caused by cyclists, but the numbers are exceedingly low. Most estimates are in the 5-6 range, nationwide. NYS did a multi-year study. Over 5 years in the entire state, cyclists only caused 2 or 3 deaths total, thus less than one a year across the entire, heavily-populated state.)

I’ll let others figure out how to account for the economic toll of all those deaths, but that’s a shockingly high number. (It was even higher 40 years ago, before seat belt use was mandated. Thus, when I read about people saying, “we never wore seat belts when I was a kid and no one died,” I can only shake my head. If 10,000+ fewer deaths per year, largely because of seat belt use, is the same as “no one died” when people didn’t wear seat belts, then I’m missing something.) There are also tens of thousands of serious but non-fatal car injuries, and hundreds of thousands of less serious car-related injuries each year, just in the U.S.

Of course, we’ve heard about some of the safety issues on Metro and Amtrak, but transit still tends to be far safer per vehicle mile traveled than car driving is. A fatal incident every few years on Metro is terrible. But why isn’t it even more terrible that someone dies on the roads every day or two in this area?

Then there is the significant toll of air pollution and related diseases. This is a tough one to nail down because coal burning for electricity generation is also a major contributor to air pollution. But cars are also a major source of that pollution. The cost in the U.S. was estimated at $131 billion in 2011.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/01/29/the-staggering-economic-cost-of-air-pollution/

None of that is included in the true cost of car driving, but it absolutely should be.

Then there is the problem of creating systems that almost force people to drive, even for short distances. While this isn’t so much the case in many parts of DC and Arlington, it is true for certain areas, and much more the case in many suburbs, here and across the U.S. This leads to sedentary lifestyles, which along with junk food diets, costs the U.S. an estimated $250-300 billion a year in AVOIDABLE health costs (from type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome/obesity, early-onset heart disease and so on). In addition, Alzheimer’s is now thought to be diabetes type 3, meaning that its onset may be related to sedentary lifestyles and junk food/high sugar diets. That costs another $100-150 billion a year, some of which might be avoidable through more active lifestyles and better diets. None of this is included in the economic/societal cost of driving, but it should be.

Then there is the problem of reliance on oil and petroleum products. This is a harder one to nail down, or as difficult as some of the other calculations. Much of our overseas military spending is related to protecting oil supplies. There are human rights violations and aggressive military actions around the world, but we only tend to get involved in the Middle East, because of oil. Our reliance on petroleum is a national weakness so we do need to keep an eye on major oil-producing areas. But this cost should also be considered as part of the true subsidy of car driving and gasoline consumption. But it isn’t. We’ve spent trillions of dollars on military actions over recent decades (primarily the Iraq War) without improving national security. Some may object to this, but those costs are undeniable and most parties agree that the supposed rationale for the war was deeply flawed. There are always objections to subsidizing research and production of alternative fuel sources, but why? Some military leaders agree that our reliance on petroleum is a huge security vulnerability and that we should be subsidizing alternative fuel production, even if it’s “expensive.” As noted, there are huge unaccounted-for subsidies of car driving that leave the entire country very vulnerable. While car driving doesn’t have to be tied directly to petroleum consumption, currently it is and it will remain so for the foreseeable future.

The 2015 transportation bill covers the next five years, moving the federal level away from the short-term agreements that had been used recently. It includes one-time revenue sources to pay for the overall transportation subsidies. More of the same, but at least there will be better medium-term planning for transportation projects. Subsidy levels appear at levels similar to those currently in place, meaning subsidies for all.

If anyone objects to subsidies for bikeshare, then those objections should also apply to car driving, parking, mass transit, passenger rail and flight. If anyone points to the Bixi bankruptcy as a sign that bikeshare is not sustainable, then they should also point to the frequent bankruptcies in other transportation sectors. Both GM and Chrysler have faced bankruptcy and collapse in the very recent past. The government had to bail out GM with tens of billions of dollars and an eventual $11 billion loss. Chrysler also underwent reorganization in bankruptcy during the Great Recession.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-gm-treasury-idUSBREA3T0MR20140430

Many car manufacturers have disappeared over the decades. Almost every airline has gone bankrupt over time. Some more than once. All of the three current largest airlines (and their predecessor companies) have gone through bankruptcy in the past 14 years.

http://money.cnn.com/infographic/news/companies/airline-merger/

Passenger railroads disappeared because of a lack of viability, which is why Amtrak was created. Privately-built roads have gone bankrupt. The debt for the privately-built Dulles Greenway had to be restructured. The bottom line is that transportation does not pay for itself through user fees, ever. No transportation mode does. But some transportation modes have very significant negative costs that do not figure into official calculations. Everyone has to live with the harm from those negatives, so we absolutely should be concerned about those costs.

I don’t see any of those negatives coming from bikeshare though, aside from minor annoyances among some drivers (some of whom don’t seem to mind that so many Americans get killed by texting, speeding, red-light running or drunk drivers). I’m perfectly fine with bikeshare getting subsidies. It doesn’t kill, and every other transportation mode is also subsidized. In fact, bikeshare has turned out to be THE safest mode of transportation of them all. (I can’t say I was expecting that, but that’s what has happened.) Not a single U.S. bikeshare death. The total number of bikeshare trips was 23 million in Aug. 2014. That number has to be in the 25-28 million range by now, and still no reported deaths.

[PotomacCyclist]

No. That thread is there because someone found it useful. But you have reported that it isn’t that helpful in its current form. I suggested that you can address that yourself without much effort, instead of complaining that the forum dictionary isn’t useful. That’s not meant to be an insult. If something doesn’t work well on the forum and it’s not too difficult to fix, then anyone can start working on the solution. It’s just as easy for you to fix it then anyone else. I responded because you pointed out the number of posts on that thread and the difficulty in using it, as if you were expecting me to fix it for you.

As far as I know, there are only a handful of nicknames that beginners might not be familiar with. Actually, since I don’t ride past most of the nicknamed areas too often, I’m not aware of the exact locations of most of them.

These are the terms that I’ve seen over the years:

Intersection of Doom
Trollheim
Underpass of Doom (or something like that)
Corkscrew of Death

and maybe a couple others.

Someone can simply put together that list and add it into a single post on that thread. If you (or whoever wants to handle this) aren’t familiar with a particular term, then it’s a simple matter to ask. Then the post can be re-edited to include the definitions. The list can be added at the bottom (although future posts will push that new list to the middle of the thread). Or the initial poster or a forum administrator can add the list to the first post of that thread. Many people have addressed many minor issues or improvements on the forum. I would consider working on this one, but I’m not that motivated to work on this item (mostly because I rarely ride past any of those locations).

I would suggest that each term be put into bold-type for easier reading. Then the definition can follow. Simple. Like this:

INTERSECTION OF DOOM
The intersection of N. Lynn St., Lee Highway and the Mt. Vernon Trail in Rosslyn, Arlington. Frequent site of conflict among road/trail users, although recent improvements have made that intersection safer than before. Long-term improvements are also planned.

TROLLHEIM
Wooden bridge along the Mt. Vernon Trail in Arlington, near the entrance to Roosevelt Island. Surface can get very slippery when it rains or snows. Reference is to a mythical Potomac River troll who appears to knock over cyclists at that spot. Is it the slippery surface or the troll that causes so many wipeouts? [This text can be edited to be more precise. I haven’t ridden past the bridge in a while, so I don’t remember exactly where it is.]

UNDERPASS OF DOOM

CORKSCREW OF DEATH

HUMPBACK BRIDGE
The bridge that carries the GW Memorial Parkway and the Mt. Vernon Trail over the Boundary Channel, just north of the 14th St. bridges. While the bridge is located on the west bank of the Potomac River, most of the bridge is actually located in DC, because Columbia Island is part of the District, not Arlington. The nickname described the former configuration of the bridge, which resembled a humpback. That decreased visibility of the other side of the bridge, resulting in many crashes over the years. But the entire bridge was rebuilt. The MVT now runs across a smooth and protected path over the bridge. [The old configuration required cyclists to perform a short but steep climb up to the bridge at each end. The path used to run inches away from car traffic with no protection. But a solid stone wall now separates the bike/ped path from the road lanes.]

HUMPBACK GLACIER
A phenomenon that developed during the Jan. 2016 Snowzilla blizzard on the bike/ped path over the Humpback Bridge. Fortunately, the existence of this “glacier” was brief. No one will miss it.

and so on.

Feel free to copy this text or ignore it completely if you are upset with me. Either is fine. But if my text is used, a credit would be appreciated (as long as it isn’t too insulting).

P.S. I would suggest that an administrator maintain the Forum Dictionary thread, since it’s pinned to the main sub-forum. The first post can be edited to include all the definitions in one place. If the character limit is reached for that first post, then take over the 2nd post, if necessary. And a 3rd post, and so on.

[PotomacCyclist]

Poodles attack too

(Video contains PG-13 movie violence)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN-Q1fu8sWM

[PotomacCyclist]

There is always controversy about demonizing pitbulls and similar breeds of dogs. But the fact is that some people buy these dogs precisely because they are threatening and powerful. Some of these owners also mistreat the dogs and turn them into roving attack dogs. This would be less of a concern for a breed like a chihuahua, which is not going to be deadly. But an aggressive pitbull or German shepherd can cause serious injury. In these cases, the dogs have already attacked people and other pets.

[PotomacCyclist]

Well, let’s see if anything actually happens. It will probably have to be a program in coordination with Arlington, Alexandria and Fairfax, because NPS won’t take this on themselves, for various reasons. It’s a good sign though.

[Author]

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