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@bobco85 126983 wrote:

I also wanted to mention that the signage on George Mason Drive has been improved going west from Columbus St all the way to the top of the hill at Frederick St (across from Wakefield HS).

Good news. Sharrows would be helpful too. Maybe those will go in with painting?

That hill is the location of perhaps my most egregious driver harassment to date. At 10:30 on a Saturday morning a few years ago, a driver came up behind me laying on the horn, cut over closely between two cars that were calmly passing in the left lane, then floored the accelerator as soon as there was enough space to get back in front of me. Only finally releasing the horn when he managed to “escape” the situation. Did at least give me ~18 inches of clearance, IIRC.

I hope that the new signs are not motivated by others having similar experiences on that climb.

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Me: Pennsylvania Avenue NW, riding in the right lane westbound starting at 17th Street, Sunday at 5:30pm
You: MPD cop driving eastbound on Pennsylvania, between 18th and 17th. Making a sudden U-turn and pulling up in the lane alongside me. Precisely matching my extremely slow speed for 3 blocks. (Granted the signals were red on approach to each intersection, so there was nothing to be gained by going any faster.) Finally running the light at I to make a left onto 21st without activating your lights or siren.

WTF?

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To be clear, my post was intended to summarize the present engineering standards regarding “rest-in-walk”, not to advocate for or against them.

For biking, I usually choose between the Irving and Fillmore crossings based on traffic levels and direction. Most of my northbound crossings are during evening rush hour, and I prefer Irving. Fillmore can be uncomfortably busy during these times. There are usually a few vehicles at Irving in rush hour, so I don’t need to use the beg button. Most of my southbound crossings are later in the evening, and then I prefer Fillmore. It’s more direct to my destination, more reliable, and not totally devoid of activity. Plus no ride is complete without at least one little hill climb before getting home!

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My understanding of “rest-in-walk”, after a few minutes of googling:

Where a major road and a minor intersect at a sensor-actuated signal, it is only used for walk signals parallel to the major road. The reason: green phases for the minor roads actuated by vehicle detectors are often too short to accommodate pedestrians trying to cross the large highway. So for crossings that are used by more vehicles than peds, triggering the walk cycle automatically would increase wait times and delays on the arterial. A beg button is used so that pedestrians can request the extra time when they are present.

Irving and 50 is a good example of such an intersection. I have been automatically detected with a CaBi over the sensor, but it is sporadic at best. So if there are no other vehicles waiting, I just push the button. It’s inefficient though: Since I can ride across the intersection in a few seconds, Arlington Blvd traffic is then stuck watching an empty intersection for another 25 seconds. Rest-in-walk is already used for pedestrians parallel to 50 crossing Irving, but would not work for Irving crossing 50.

Some of the other signals discussed in this thread, while problematic for various reasons, are also not candidates for rest-in-walk behavior. The Arlington Boulevard trail crossings at Glebe and George Mason are a special case, but they too might be a tough sell. Because those roads don’t intersect 50 at-grade, they become the major roads where they intersect the trail and off-ramps/service roads. IIRC, most of the intersections in Crystal City are on automatic cycles, not sensor-actuated, so those could incorporate rest-in-walk (and should, since it’s an urban area with lots of peds).

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Does anyone know if people can bike across Memorial Bridge during this event?

Specifically, I’m hoping to get from Arlington to the Metro Center area between 1 and 1:30 pm. Is Fort Myer to Arlington Cemetery to Memorial Bridge an option? The official closure list says nothing about Memorial Bridge. WUSA9 does include it (along with Constitution and 23rd Sts, but curiously not Henry Bacon Drive) but doesn’t provide any closure times.

It looks like the marathon route uses VA-110 and Ohio Drive, so I wouldn’t be crossing the course itself at grade. Should I also expect the bridge sidewalks to be crowded with spectators?

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@dasgeh 126407 wrote:

Also weird that the guy didn’t realize that the protection of the driver v. vulnerability of a person on a bike is one of the reasons that we should focus enforcement on drivers and not cyclists: drivers are less likely to be the ones injured by their actions. In other words, physics/biology tend to do a good job of enforcing safe cycling behavior. We need the police to help enforce good driver behavior.

I think we agree, though I’d express it a bit differently. Enforcement should be proportionate to the destruction that can be wrought upon all potential innocent bystanders, not tied to the vulnerability of the misbehaving road users themselves. Bad drivers kill numerous innocent people every day. Bad cyclists very rarely hurt anyone other than themselves.

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Saturday afternoon around 4:30.
Me: riding westbound on Beauregard just entering the intersection with Braddock/NVCC on a green light.
You: woman driving down the hill from NVCC, making no effort to stop before turning right on red, then only slamming on your brakes after the front half of your vehicle was already in my lane.

Thankfully the wind and the grade kept my speed low enough that I could react in time.

Oh, and I also noticed the cell phone in your left hand that you were looking down at. 😡

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@americancyclo 126093 wrote:

10th St North between Fairfax Dr and Arlington Blvd (and more importantly to me, the ABT) is milled and has some loose gravel spots. I doubt many folks take this route, but it’s the fastest I’ve found from Memorial Bridge to the Custis in Ballston. It’s not on the 2015 Paving Map. Any idea where I can find out the paving schedule? Might alter my route while they are finishing.

Thanks for the heads-up. I often ride there also. Sounds like it’s time to check out the alternatives.

If you find the paving schedule, let me know!

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Nice work on this video!

Bobco85 gives me far too much credit for tagging along and absorbing the history that he shared. It was my pleasure to follow a brilliant bicycle tour guide along this route. He is a flawless navigator, extremely knowledgeable about the sites, and a joy to ride with.

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@dasgeh 125806 wrote:

IIRC, there’s room for cyclists to get by the vehicles being searched.

You’re right. But the policy still doesn’t make any sense. It’s definitely more dangerous to ride through the left lane in the bay if there are people standing around inspecting vehicles. (Unless the guard is right: drivers on the right side of the barrier really are treating the entrance to a military base as their own personal NASCAR track. :rolleyes:)

Why not just let cyclists ride around the outer loop like any other unsearched vehicle? Everyone in the outer lane gets their ID checked anyway.

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Yes the present configuration on N Quincy is poor (especially the Washington Blvd intersection). But would a protected bike lane make N Quincy safer?

Generally, protected bike lanes reduce the risk of being struck by overtaking vehicles while increasing the risk of being struck by turning vehicles. So they have the most utility on roads where vehicle speeds are high and turns are relatively rare. On the other hand, they are counterproductive on roads with slow traffic and a lot of turning vehicles. This street is a textbook example of the latter category.

The current overtaking hazard is negligible because traffic speeds are extremely low. The phrase “fast moving traffic” is not an accurate description of N Quincy Street. (North of Washington Blvd, traffic speeds do increase a little, but by then you’re out of Ballston.) Given all the pedestrian/turning/parking activity on this street and the series of signalized intersections with higher-volume arterials, drivers rarely exceed the 25MPH speed limit on Quincy anywhere between Glebe Rd and Washington Blvd. I’ve ridden on Quincy through Ballston hundreds of times at perhaps 15-18 MPH. On average I will be passed by one or two vehicles through the whole stretch (note that I primarily stay in the travel lane, to avoid all the car doors and double parkers, which does dissuade some drivers who would have passed me in the door-zone bike lane). In fact, I will often arrive at a traffic signal alone wondering what happened to everyone who was behind me at the previous one. Why? Because the vast majority of the vehicles using Quincy along this stretch do not stay on it for more than a block or two. Rather, most drivers are turning into or out of this road during this stretch, or else both.

I would like to see some data on this, but I doubt that anyone collects it at the level I’d be interested (e.g. what fraction of the northbound vehicles going straight through the intersection at Wilson Blvd are still on the road and continuing straight through Fairfax Dr, etc.).

Squeezing a protected bike lane between parked vehicles and the curb would compound the danger at the conflict points with all these drivers turning onto or off of Quincy. Many drivers turning onto Quincy will overlook the PBL and cross it without yielding; even those that do yield will then block it as they scan the street for an opening. Those turning off of Quincy will have compromised visibility of bicycles wherever there are parked cars. Given how many driveways and garages line this stretch of road, you would need to eliminate almost all of the parallel parking in order to mitigate these issues.

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And wait in line for the vehicle searches? Even cyclists with DOD ID? This doesn’t make any sense.

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I’m curious as to what was discussed about signals.

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I entered the 2nd Street (Hatfield) gate at 5pm Sunday. There were no other vehicles entering the base at that time. The guards at the hut glanced at my government ID and allowed me to proceed. I then rode around the outside lane, figuring I’d just go through the inspection bay. Nothing out of the ordinary so far.

Another guard ran out to stop me there, saying that this was where the actual ID check occurs, and that I shouldn’t have stopped at the first hut at all. This guard said that the left side is for vehicles that are being stopped for inspection, while vehicles on the right side do not stop. Bizarrely, he then also insisted that bicycles were required to go through the left side with the inspected vehicles even though they would not be inspected. Pointing to the right side, he said, “Cars go really fast through here; it’s a safety thing.” As in, vehicle speeds THROUGH THE INSPECTION BAY AT A MILITARY BASE are so high that bicycles cannot safely use that lane.

So let me get this straight. Every road on the installation is low-speed enough to be bicycle-friendly, except the lane going through an inspection bay. WTF?

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@chris_s 125640 wrote:

His secret: He reported a location that isn’t that busy during rush hour.

ACPD on Monday did a hilarious job of tap-dancing around the fact that they basically don’t do evening rush hour enforcement at Lynn & Lee because it would cause too much congestion.

Safety is our #1 priority… unless it inconveniences drivers.

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