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@lordofthemark 134641 wrote:

Also I kind of don’t think the motorists who live in the pocket around Braddock and Van Dorn are going to be as vocal as the folks who use Wilson.

I strongly support this road diet, but I would definitely expect opposition. And I don’t think the opposition will be limited to locals (was it on Wilson?). It will reduce the number of northbound vehicles that are able to get through the latter half of each cycle of the traffic signal at King St. (Presently vehicles coming off Van Dorn are not required to stop at Menokin; they whip around that corner side by side headed toward King.) This will vex the large number of commuters who cut through Van Dorn to avoid the constant congestion on 395 between Duke and King. Some of this traffic will probably switch over to Braddock/Early/Menokin if they think it will get them through the new 3-way stop sooner.

Our communities will need to take a stand for the safety of our local streets, which must not be compromised in a misguided attempt to alleviate freeways that are failing due to suburban sprawl.

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@lordofthemark 134593 wrote:

The King Street Bike lanes were controversial because there were specific people who lost something of value, their parking spaces (never mind that legally they did not own the spaces ) who loses here? A generic issue of funding will not elicit the same degree of passion , I think. And how much does it really cost to put in some flex posts and a painted buffer(were you expecting more protection than that?)

Some people continue to complain about the Wilson Blvd road diet. I have no idea whether or not traffic congestion has actually increased there, but that’s the argument those people are making.

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And yes, you read that correctly. It’s a PBL that I actually like.

If only we could get rid of parked cars and commercial driveways on every other street…

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@bobco85 134555 wrote:

IMO it’s a very odd location for bike infrastructure

But is it an odd infrastructure for the location? I think it’s a great design and will improve things considerably there.

However it is a small piece of the puzzle. This is already the least awful part of Van Dorn St (in fact, it’s the only section of Van Dorn that I ever ride on now). To become much more useful, this should be extended down to at least Sanger. That would provide connectivity to the Holmes Run valley. Actually what would be cool would be a new MUP nestled between 395 and Van Dorn (from Braddock to Sanger, then continuing to HRT).

One day last year I was driving up 395 and saw a guy riding in the ultimate makeshift PBL (barricaded by a jersey wall that blocked off the shoulder of 395 N). I have no idea how he got on or how he was getting off there, but he did have a nice wide paved trail to himself. 😎

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@jrenaut 134276 wrote:

Every time I get on a bike in DC, I am safer because of Capital Bikeshare. The increase in bikes on the road, due in no small part to CaBi, means I’m less likely to be run over. If he would like to debate the value of my life and those of my family and fellow DC cyclists vs 65 cents, I’d like to cordially invite him to go **** himself.

Perhaps Mr. Sargent should demonstrate his disapproval of transportation subsidies by repaying the government 45 cents for every mile that he has driven.

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@Kitty 133485 wrote:

Ironically enough, my biggest “ask” would be access to the Teddy Roosevelt bridge, or at very least Memorial, from North Arlington. They can plow all of Custis, but if it deadends at the bike counter, it doesn’t really help.

I try to avoid any commute through Georgetown via M street on a good day, but right now it seems to be the only connection into the city (from Key). Under best conditions I would only recommend this to a confident (if not foolhardy) cyclist at M street quickly devolves into “Thunderdome.” Based off of yesterday you’d better have a steel spine and think like a Jeep because there is no “shoulder” or room for error.

I’m about to try it again this morning… If I don’t make it, tell Teddy I loved him (and his bridge).

I’ll take the contrarian viewpoint here.

I find that TR crossing (too narrow, fence is too low, guardrail even lower) to be scary enough when the surface is dry. I’d be terrified to try it when there are irregular ruts of ice. Because there is zero room for error: if you fall, you might end up either in the highway or the river.

On the other hand, I’ve always found M Street drivers to be very respectful. Grudgingly respectful, perhaps, but I insist on claiming the center of the lane, and I’ve never had a close call there. The cars aren’t going very fast, so there isn’t much of a speed differential to worry about. And because the speed differential isn’t high, it’s not difficult to switch lanes when necessary (to pass double parked cars or turning vehicles) just like a driver would.

Disclaimer: I haven’t been across the river since the snow, so I haven’t seen any of these routes in their current conditions. Also, since I don’t commute that direction, my experience on M Street is mostly off-peak (late evenings and weekends). Getting through heavy congestion on M Street would present different challenges, for sure.

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@lordofthemark 132577 wrote:

To clarify, I was comparing occasions when I have ridden in a bike lane (as I do on Eye Street) generally on the left side of the lane, though not on the edge, to occassions when I have taken the lane on streets without bike lanes. In the past Dasgeh has suggested that she is actually passed more safely by motor vehicles when she is taking the lane (and cars are crossing the yellow line to pass) than when she is in a bike lane. I fully respect that that is her experience, but it has not been mine, based on my rough estimates of passing distances.

Okay, that is what I thought you meant. My experience has been closer to dasgeh’s then. It seems to me that many drivers would rather pass a bicycle too closely than use the oncoming lanes, even if there is no oncoming traffic. They are probably not bicycle riders and are underestimating the danger of a close pass. If they think they can squeeze through, they will try it. (I suppose similar logic would suggest that, for streets with painted bike lanes, drivers would rather stay closer to the white line than the yellow, and that many will continue to do so even while passing a bicycle.

That’s why best practice, whenever a lane is too narrow to share, is to fully claim it by riding in the center. So that it will be very obvious to drivers that they need to use the other lane if they wish to pass. FWIW, while taking a lane, I often try to increase drivers’ passing clearance from me by moving about a foot to my right, after a driver has already decided to pass and has chosen his line in the adjacent lane, but slightly before he actually catches up to my back wheel. I try to do this in bike lanes too when possible, but in bike lanes such a maneuver is often either impossible or unsafe, due to narrow spaces, door zones, road debris, etc. So this could be affecting my results too…

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@PotomacCyclist 132479 wrote:

An interesting article about why mornings remain dark in early January, even though the total time of sunlight increases each day in January (after the winter solstice). All of the extra daylight time is “added” onto the back end, in the evening.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/01/15/why-does-the-sun-still-rise-so-late-the-dark-mornings-of-january-explained/

But after Jan. 11, sunrise started to arrive earlier each day while sunset continued to fall later each day. Thus daylight hours are now extended at both ends.

Nice little animation included with that article.

The text is a bit misleading though. The two driving factors for the analemma (Earth’s 23-deg rotational axis tilt relative to the orbital plane along with the eccentricity of its orbit) both contribute to longer days (i.e. the time interval from one solar high noon to the next) near the winter solstice, so the effect is strongest now, and each day is about 24h 30s. But the effect on the equation of time due to the 23-deg axis tilt is actually larger than the effect due to perihelion/aphelion. This is glossed over in the article, because it’s easier to explain how eccentricity affects day lengths than to explain how an axis tilt affects day lengths, if you don’t want to show any math.

About 20 of those extra seconds at the winter solstice are due to axis tilt and the other 10s are due to higher orbital angular velocity at perihelion. The dominance of the axis tilt effect is why the time from one solar high noon to the next is also greater than 24 hours near the summer solstice. Aphelion would subtract 10s from day length, but the axis tilt again adds 20s since it’s a stationary point for solar declination, so the overall effect is days about 24h + 10s long at the summer solstice. The shortest days occur at the equinoxes, when the Earth’s rotational axis becomes perpendicular to the Earth-Sun vector: here the axis tilt subtracts about 20s (and eccentricity doesn’t do anything because we’re at the midpoint in distance from the Sun) so each day is about 24h – 20s long. If you closely examine the solar noon table accompanying the article, you can see how this all plays out.

I solved this physics problem from scratch one weekend in grad school when I had far too much time to kill. If only I had owned a bicycle then instead…

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@lordofthemark 132416 wrote:

That is also my experience, when there is no striped bike lane. Not so much when there is. I checked for this again when I rode on Eye Street yesterday (which has no median) and it seemed like most cars were 2 to 3 feet from the left stripe of the bike lane (perhaps I was not judging distance accurately?) Perhaps the visual cues associated with an urban setting, the frequent traffic signals, etc moderate driver behavior? Because that is my experience.

So you were riding in the bike lane, but near the left edge, and drivers were on the other side of the white line, but less than 3 ft away? Also, I’m guessing your left-edge bike lane riding position is to avoid the door zone? If so, you weren’t actually taking the (motor vehicle) lane, so that is not the situation we were discussing.

Is there enough space between the double-yellow and the parked cars so that motor vehicle drivers can allow good clearance without crossing the double-yellow, even while you are riding far enough out to avoid the door zone? If not, it might be safer to treat it as if it were a sharrows, i.e. ride so far left (in the vehicle lane) as to leave drivers no doubt that they will have to cross the double-yellow if they wish to pass. Unfortunately, we have a lot of streets with bike lanes that fit these criteria, and the striping can send a dangerous message about where to ride. (such as N Quincy in Cherrydale).

It also sounds like your experience could be an example of the “obstacle is not in my lane, so I will drive as if I don’t notice it” phenomenon. It would be interesting if one could investigate whether passing distances would change at all (on the same road and with the same riding position) if the bike lane stripe were removed.

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@dasgeh 132378 wrote:

I get buzzed by cars much more often when I’m in the bike lane than not, especially when the car would have to wait for a couple seconds to give me the proper 3 feet (either because a car is in the oncoming lane, or because there’s a median — there’s one spot on Quincy just north of the ramp to the Custis where the entire width of the road narrows to make room for a median. So curb-to-median there’s only the minimum width for the parking lane, bike lane and travel lane. I don’t stay in the bike lane any more if there’s a parked car there and I see a car behind me, because the car coming up will buzz me every time.

Yes, this part of Quincy is awful. It renders the bike lane totally useless. If you ride far enough left to stay out of the door zone, drivers have to either stay behind you or buzz you. No surprise that many choose the latter if you give them the chance.

The reality of the present road configuration there means that it really should be marked as a sharrows and not a bike lane. The bike lane paint is telling cyclists to ride in the most dangerous portion of this street where they’re likely to get buzzed and/or doored. Not only that: it’s telling drivers that cyclists should be getting out of their way and into that danger spot. Better solutions would include removal of parking from at least one side of the street to create space for safe bike lanes, plus maybe removal of the median so drivers would have more space to pass. But if you’re not willing to take away any parking, at least mark the street to encourage riders to choose the safest line (which in this case is taking the lane).

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@lordofthemark 132385 wrote:

I often see cars that fail to give a complete 3 feet, but as I said above, I see the same thing when I am taking the lane (IE even if they go over the yellow line to pass, they do not go far enough over to give 3 feet)

This is not my experience at all. There is a huge increase in the percentage of cars that pass me too close when I’m not riding far enough left to fully claim a lane. All of my closest buzzes have been drivers trying to avoid crossing into the next lane, when I mistakenly give them just enough space to encourage them to try it.

What boggles my mind is that many drivers will do this even when the adjacent lane is completely empty of traffic. When I’m driving a car, I maintain situational awareness so that I know whether or not someone is next to me and who’s passing whom. Yet I see too many drivers who seem to take the attitude that they don’t need to be aware of anything in the next lane over. I am amazed at how long it takes some drivers to finally realize they can use the left lane to pass on multi-lane sharrow roads such as Walter Reed or George Mason. It’s like they’re waiting for me to slip up and move too far to the right, so that they could then squeeze through without having to check traffic in the other lane (the horror!).

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And it’s just common sense. There isn’t room to pass side by side anyway within the width of most bicycle lanes.

Yet I see a surprising number of people doing this, and many of them are ninjas too. I usually just take the lane and go around them. However, it’s much more difficult to do that if you’re using protected or segregated infrastructure, which limits opportunities for merging.

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@mikoglaces 131818 wrote:

“Motorists may not drive, stop or park in a bicycle lane. Drivers may cross a bicycle lane to access on-street parking but may not stop or stand in a bicycle lane for any reason.”

Unless they just feel like doing it… Then it’s totally okay.

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Without knowing the color scale, it’s tough to draw many conclusions from this visualization.

Some of the increases are certainly expected due to new or improved infrastructure:
e.g. Pershing Drive heading toward Route 50 trail

Others seem to have occurred without significant infrastructure changes:
e.g. Beauregard between Duke and Armistead

Other spots appear to have lost a lot of riders:
S Van Dorn between Duke and Pickett (I’m surprised to see so many riders here…)
S Pickett St

Also, who’s been riding up and down the southern half of 395? 😮

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@lordofthemark 131380 wrote:

Lanes that are less than 2 meters wide. Has someone told the Alexandria Complete Streets program about that?

I think the plus signs mean ‘in addition to the distance from the previous pic’.

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