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@jrenaut 179419 wrote:

One block before that about a month ago I had a lovely interaction with a driver making a blind right turn without even imagining that I might be there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEAiBNOKtWM

I would blame the street design more than the driver here. That car does not appear anywhere in your video until you emerge from behind the last SUV. If you hide the bike lane behind parked vehicles, it shouldn’t be surprising that more drivers will forget about its existence.

If DDOT wants protected bike lanes on these streets, they should eliminate all of the parking. There are too many intersections and driveways. Otherwise, they should keep the bike lane to the left of the parking, so that drivers will actually see it.

I feel much safer taking the lane than riding the PBL on M Street. I will use the bike lane to bypass congestion (and I wish it continued through Georgetown for this reason!), but only very slowly and cautiously.

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@DismalScientist 177950 wrote:

Alternatives: 1) Cross at Wakefield
2) Cross half of Glebe and turn left onto Fairfax from the left turn lane.

Another alternative which avoids the wrong-side problem entirely:
Exit Custis onto 10th St near N Edison, right onto George Mason to cross 66, immediate left onto the 4800 block of Fairfax, then follow the sidewalk over to the Holiday Inn.

This one obviously requires some comfort with vehicular cycling. And rear visibility is poor after you pass the high point of the bridge. However the portion on George Mason is so short that you can time it so that you won’t get passed by any thru-drivers before reaching the turn lane. I reach the left turn lane before drivers who had been north of the 11th St crosswalk at the time of my right turn.

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@dasgeh 177848 wrote:

Today, a dude stopped to ask if I was ok because I was STOPPED AT A RED LIGHT. Seriously?

I was once pulled over by a police officer who turned on his flashers after driving up behind me while I was stopped to wait at a red light. I can only guess that my choice to use a bicycle instead of a car was an indicator that I might either need help or be up to something suspicious. In any case, the stop was non-confrontational and the officer very quickly ended it and returned to his car upon determining neither of these to be the case. Although I did then have to sit in front of him for another two minutes because we both missed the brief green cycle.

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@Emm 177785 wrote:

Friday evenings and weekends it’s a MESS … WAY too many pedestrians who have no idea bikes are around and therefor are walking all over the bike lane without looking, and the street/parking garage crossings are crazy with cars flying across the sidewalk and bike lanes without looking … Sure, if you’re meandering very slowly and are ok with constantly starting, stopping, and almost getting hit by cars you’ll be fine. Otherwise, it’s safer to be on the street during peak hours.

It’s worth noting that we face all of these same problems riding any other DC-area PBL. Pedestrians stepping off the adjacent sidewalk without looking and loitering in the lanes. Drivers darting out from parking garages looking only at the sidewalk. Heightened risks of right hooks and left cross collisions, especially when the PBL is hidden behind parked cars. Turning vehicles blocking the PBL while waiting for a gap in either sidewalk or street traffic. Idling or parked vehicles blocking the lanes.

The only real difference on Maine Ave is that the sheer volume of pedestrians and tourist atmosphere magnify the above issues. (Also perhaps the fraction of drivers who are not regulars to the area may be higher, especially on weekends; that could be a factor too.)

PBLs are useful for slow riding and for filtering through car jams, but how many are safe above 12MPH? Or for any non-hyper-vigilant rider, for that matter?

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Attempting to pass two bicyclists with oncoming traffic? A malicious swipe at the head is obviously an unacceptable response, but the victim here is bound to hurt himself and/or others if he keeps riding like that.

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@SarahBee 177595 wrote:

Agreed – Irving sucks.

This right here is evidence that Arlington is far more bike-friendly than DC. Come ride our Irving Street. It’s pretty awesome.

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@DismalScientist 177555 wrote:

I think the Virginia standard is to not enter the street unless you can safely get across without drivers modifying their speed and direction.

Although my pedestrian experience makes evident that quite a few honking drivers believe that to be the standard, ACPD’s crosswalk enforcement stings indicate otherwise. Pedestrians at unsignalized crosswalks must allow an alert driver reasonable time to react but are not required to wait all day for a long gap between vehicles or to scurry across just to avoid delaying any drivers.

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@bobco85 177492 wrote:

Here’s the route I got into the habit of taking: https://goo.gl/maps/mgKoTzuwkrB2

Thanks. I didn’t realize there were bike lanes on Heritage now also. On the whole it looks more comfortable than Americana.

The door-zone bike lanes north of Patriot, as shown on StreetView, do look terrible though. A road diet would have been a much better choice. It’s hard to believe that Heritage Dr would need four car lanes, since traffic levels will so obviously be limited by the throughput of the intersection at LRT anyway.

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What was the recommended route between 236 and the Wakefield Park ped bridge?

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For that route, you can avoid all the bad crossings along 50 by substituting Pershing to Fillmore instead.

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For one thing, it is important to keep in mind that this video displays only a subset of the data that would have been available to the AV sensors and its human driver. It is trivial to play with video histograms or display settings so that they show or hide exactly what the person releasing a video wants them to. Even if nothing was altered intentionally, it is extremely unlikely that any display configuration chosen for presentation would manage to encompass the entire dynamic range of the scene that was actually perceptible to the sensors and/or to human vision.

But let’s ignore that argument for a second, and assume that the victim could in fact not have been detected at all before the instant she appears in the video. What this now means is that this vehicle is driving way too fast for its own headlights. The dashed lines are disappearing at about 90 Hz. When the victim’s feet are first perceptible in this video, she is a little over 1.5 dashed-line cycles ahead of the car. The car covers that distance in a little over one second and strikes her.

This pedestrian did not jump out from behind an obstacle; she had already crossed the super-wide area where the left lane opens up into two turn lanes. She had probably been in the northbound roadway for five seconds before impact.

Is it responsible to drive at a speed that allows you to see only one second in front of you? The recommended highway following distance is two seconds, and that’s when you’re behind someone who’s moving the same direction you are!

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Driving home late one night several months ago, I passed three CaBi riders who were in the far right lane of US-50 heading uphill from Rosslyn. I think I encountered them near the pedestrian bridge between the N Lynn and N Queen exits. Unlike the I-93 tunnel, that spot is perfectly legal for cyclists, but I couldn’t imagine why they chose to ride there rather than Fairfax Drive (or even the sidewalk in between…)

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How do the road closures impact pedestrians and bicyclists? I see a lot of information for drivers, but are there any restrictions on pedestrians crossing at all the other intersections? Will I at least be able to walk my bike across the route tomorrow on my way to Capitol Hill?

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@chris_s 175231 wrote:

It’s part of trying to complete the 12 St Bike Boulevard to the point of it actually being useful.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]17177[/ATTACH]

You know what would be even more useful? A bicycle route that is direct/straight, continuous across the county, and actually serves all of the businesses in this corridor.

I know a street just two blocks north with these exact properties…

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I typically use the sidepaths on Key Bridge itself, but I ride the roadways in Virginia (Lynn / Ft Myer) and DC (M St) leading to the bridge. So I use the downstream sidewalk inbound and the upstream sidewalk outbound. When the sidewalks were intermittently closed for construction last year, I took the right-most open lane across the bridge rather than try to cross over to the “wrong” sidewalk. I can’t say it was comfortable (especially on a CaBi at 6pm), and I did get honked at, but I experienced no dangerously close passes.

Key Bridge desperately needs a bicycle lane in each direction. Those sidewalks are inadequate for the growing number of users.

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