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17. “Fairfax Unconcerned. Cyclists Killed? Try Highways As Trails” Trail
18. “Soundwall Hides Icky Treadlers” Trail

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@mstone 191266 wrote:

seeing the trail route highlighted is depressing.

14. The “Route Designer’s Day Job Is Drawing Legislative District Boundaries” Trail

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@Sunyata 191246 wrote:

Wait… You mean for once the media is not victim blaming the cyclist…. But the two cyclists that commented on this thread have… 😡

Absolutely not my intent.

Rather, I was making the observation that reports have somehow refrained from impugning the victim yet. Not only have they not blamed the victim; they’re also seeking witnesses. Which I thought was noteworthy, given that the few details we do know about this scenario (i.e. high-speed road, after dark) make it sound like it would be especially easy for police and media to just write this one off as another SMIDSY. It’s a positive departure from the usual story one reads after an incident like this.

I apologize if I communicated these thoughts poorly.

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If I were driving in that time and place, I’d expect I might encounter deer but not a bicyclist.

What’s bizarre is the lack of info about lights/helmet/reflective clothing/etc. Usually that’s the first thing we learn when we read stories like this one.

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@zsionakides 191149 wrote:

I think the law is unclear in VA if you would be allowed to use the regular travel lane for traveling. Bikes are supposed to stay to the right under VA law, unless impractical. To me, that means by law you probably have to use the bike lane, unless there was some issue that makes it impractical – e.g. turning left at some location along Quincy, the bike lane was blocked or flooded, etc.

“Safely practicable” is the language used in § 46.2-905. A non-exhaustive list of exceptions is provided, indicating many examples of situations that permit riding further left than is necessary merely to be safely practicable. Depending on design and scene conditions, PBL facilities are often safely practicable only for low-speed cycling (~10MPH).

Would state law forbid a cyclist from riding 20MPH (i.e. less than the normal speed of traffic) in the general travel lane due to the presence of a PBL that is only safe at half that speed? Has a court ever weighed in on this?

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@Steve O 191195 wrote:

14.2-65.1 seems like it could be problematic. Unless it is continually updated (it’s now 4 years old), someone driving a car on a bike lane that is not on the list might make the claim that they were not operating illegally.

That list also contains some errors/omissions regarding bike lanes that definitely existed in 2014.

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@baiskeli 191141 wrote:

At least that’s the intent that I perceive.

I agree this is the intent. But the white sign color indicates that the information is regulatory, per MUTCD.

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I think (hope?) we all agree that Arlington cannot legally prohibit bicyclists from taking the lane on Quincy. However, that is precisely the message communicated by this sign. If you interpret this sign as an indication that motorists are forbidden to use the bike lane, then by symmetry the sign also indicates that bicyclists are forbidden to use the general lane.

Many cyclists will not want to use the separated facility. Signage like this could encourage harassment from aggressive or uninformed drivers, possibly including police. If such a sign is needed to keep motorists out of the bike lane, then the left side should be depicted for cars and bikes, with the right side for bikes only. Also it would be helpful to paint sharrows in the general travel lane to emphasize that message.

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For sake of discussion, this is one of the new signs (looking northbound on N Quincy Street from the intersection with 5th Rd N):

[ATTACH=CONFIG]20113[/ATTACH]

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@Judd 190973 wrote:

These buttons can often make crossing roads easier for people with vision impairments. The project website doesn’t seem to have specifics on any changes to signals.

The auditory info I hear at some crosswalks must be very helpful. But the buttons?

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Also here are links to a couple of old threads that discuss parts of the routes I posted above:

http://bikearlingtonforum.com/showthread.php?11825-Springfield-to-Georgetown
http://bikearlingtonforum.com/showthread.php?12101-Eisenhower-Ave-Connector-to-Ballston/

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I live near Penrose Square (close to Ft Myer Hatfield Gate) and I used to commute to Fort Belvoir. Here are two Google Maps links corresponding to my favorite bicycling routes from my morning (southbound) and evening (northbound) commute. If you are reasonably comfortable with road riding and don’t mind adding one extra hill climb each direction, you might like these alternatives.

My destination was South Post Belvoir, but I much preferred to ride down from Telegraph Gate and cross on the Gunston Rd bridge rather than to follow MVT to 235 around to Walker Gate. The Beulah Street bike lanes are way more pleasant than Highway 235 at rush hour …

If I were riding the opposite directions, I would have made a few different choices, because traffic patterns vary a lot based on time of day. For instance, the short stretch of Franconia Road between Van Dorn and Beulah: tons of fun to ride full speed westbound at 6:15am, but a parking lot eastbound during evening rush hour. So I would just squeak through that mess on the sidewalk on my way home. The subsequent left turn into Brookland was a big challenge too, usually I stuck with the sidewalk east of Van Dorn and then waited for the Edison HS traffic signal to stop Franconia traffic so I could get across it more easily.

I strongly agree with dbb’s advice: do some test rides on the weekend before trying it as a commute. Some of the gates won’t be open, so you’ll have to go around, but it’s a great way to become familiar with all the turns and possible hot spots before you have to combine them with commuter car traffic.

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@jrenaut 190857 wrote:

Speed cameras and automated ticketing can’t be attached to a driver – just a car.

Yes, one can identify the car more reliably than the driver. A vehicle owner could claim that someone else was driving the car, and that person could dispute it. For this reason, Dutch law 185 WVW assigns civil liability to the vehicle owner when vulnerable road users are involved in collisions with vehicles. (Are criminal penalties treated similarly in the Netherlands?) Could we figure out how to do something similar? Assume the vehicle owner is responsible unless he/she can prove that someone else was driving the car. Don’t lend your car to people that you cannot trust to take responsibility for their actions. Given all the data sources that could be probed (cameras / credit cards / cell phone records / etc.) in the case of a dispute, I would guess that most cases would be easily resolvable with a preliminary investigation.

Even if there would be more disputed cases than I expect, how much does that matter? Is it worth letting more pedestrians and bicyclists die on account that the law that could have saved them is occasionally difficult to enforce? “Beyond a reasonable doubt” is a great standard for prosecutions with potential jail time. However, when driving privileges are the only thing at risk for the defendant and public safety hangs in the balance, perhaps it is an unnecessarily generous standard?

@jrenaut 190857 wrote:

I don’t want … people to lose their livelihood for parking tickets.

I am suggesting confiscating licenses for dangerous driving behaviors that directly put the public at great risk. Not for parking tickets: those are nuisance violations that increase public endangerment only indirectly. That said, the impunity with which people can park illegally is appalling. If license revocation is the only effective deterrent for someone who has amassed dozens of parking tickets and yet continues to park illegally, it could be considered as a last resort.

@jrenaut 190857 wrote:

What if suspending a license for a few speeding tickets, even egregious ones, means the driver loses their job and then their home? I just don’t think an equitable solution can be to suspend all these licenses.

Is it worth sacrificing more victims to traffic violence, in order to make life easier for repeat offenders who will be driving while already knowing that their privileges are on thin ice before the last straw? When a clear pattern of egregious driving has been identified, the driver should be well aware that they are in danger of losing their license before the final violation. Anyone who can’t avoid egregious speeding, all the while knowing that they are on their final strike that will cost them their driver’s license, deserves the consequences.

“Three strikes” laws that have imprisoned many drug offenders have been justifiably panned, but this is very different. Aggressive/negligent drivers pose a much greater danger to innocent bystanders than nonviolent drug addicts. And we’re not discussing incarceration here but a mere loss of driving privileges.

Equity is a major concern. The metric for license suspension/revocation will need to be as objective as possible. Speed cameras, if fairly distributed around the city, could be unbiased
data collectors.

@jrenaut 190857 wrote:

Our transit system is so bad that many people simply can’t live their lives without driving.

Yes, too many are trapped in a car-dependent lifestyle. I’d argue that poor land use decisions by our governments are primarily responsible, and zoning reform is imperative to fixing the problem. But better transit service for our existing sprawl is also part of the solution, along with better infrastructure for pedestrians and bicyclists.

The basic challenge is this: although the poorest among us strive to minimize monetary costs of transportation, most transportation mode decisions today are made to minimize travel time instead. And driving alone is still the fastest way to get between most origin/destination pairs in our region. To curtail car dependency and increase the feasibility of alternative transportation for more people, we must increase the expense difference (so that more people choose the cheaper option) or make the alternatives more competitive timewise.

For the former, we need to start by recapturing all the externalities that the general public is presently paying to subsidize private vehicles and their drivers. This means ending oil subsidies, raising gasoline taxes, carbon pricing, stricter enforcement of moving/parking violations, instituting market-priced parking, congestion pricing, tolling, etc. For the latter, we need streets engineered to prioritize safety over vehicular throughput (road diets, narrower lanes, traffic calming, etc.), improved MUTs/sidewalks/crosswalks/bike lanes, dedicated transit lanes with signal priority, and more reliable transit service.

As vehicular capacity drops and transit experience improves, demand for transit will increase. Removing the worst apples from the driver pool should only help to accelerate the increase in demand for higher-quality transit. It might even help to attract some demand from communities that are presently opposed to transit funding, as they see that their car-dependent lifestyles are not a right but instead a privilege that they could lose.

How about the drivers who would be marooned by such a policy? Yes they might find themselves needing to consider major changes such as relocation and a new job if their present home and/or workplace is impossible to access without a car. But how many would even get to that point? They will have had ample opportunity to avoid that predicament by fixing their terrible driving when they see their history of recklessness piling up thus threatening to jeopardize their license. Such a wake-up call would hopefully convince most of these people to improve their driving behavior, thus solving our original problem without needing to suspend their licenses.

It all leads back to the original question: how many human lives is it worth to allow a lifestyle of convenience to those who have repeatedly demonstrated that they are either unwilling or unable to operate a motor vehicle in a socially responsible manner?

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Summary / TLDR version of the following post:

Yes, it is extremely complicated. Those are all very important issues that will require careful consideration. We do want to minimize any unintended consequences that could result from undertaking a serious attempt at Vision Zero.

Regardless, these complications are distractions. People are dying on our streets. If we make the difficult choices necessary to save most of these lives, some people will be inconvenienced. If we fail to make these choices, we will sentence more innocent bystanders to their deaths.

How many human lives is it worth to avoid inconveniencing dangerous drivers?

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@jrenaut 190855 wrote:

Wherever Dave is, I hope he’s laughing at the ghost bike they’re going to put up for his ghost bike.

I sent another letter to the Mayor, my councilmember, and the at-large councilmembers, asking them what they’re doing about DC’s unsafe streets. I urge all of you to do the same. If you don’t live in DC, write to your own elected officials – I’m sure there’s an unsafe street near you that they’re ignoring.

This is not about any individual street. I support street redesign that would reduce and narrow the driving lanes on Florida Ave and similar places. But witnesses estimate the speeds of the two drivers who have hit Dave Salovesh and his ghost bike at 70 and 80 MPH. What kind of traffic calming could ever have neutralized those guys? Speedbumps at every intersection?

The @howsmydriving result for this license plate shows several infractions issued in DC proper that are presently unpaid. The driver almost certainly has a far more extensive history of speeding dangerously than his record shows. We are lucky that no one was killed on Saturday morning. But if this person continues to drive, I fear that may happen soon enough.

Our traffic carnage cannot be stopped with infrastructure and engineering alone. We need more speed cameras collecting and pooling data from numerous locations that can be used to flag individuals with a pattern of reckless behavior. And we need the power to suspend or revoke licenses of the worst offenders based on these histories. Even if they haven’t killed anyone yet.

@howsmydrivingdc DC:EE5857
[ATTACH=CONFIG]20089[/ATTACH]

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