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I’m guessing that three is Big Wheels (but it could be one). Four I’m guessing Pappillon. Five is Freshbikes. I’m not sure I have a guess for two.

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chris_s: will do on the photos. I have plenty of opportunities.

run/bike: I think it’s all part of the same thing that’s causing the schools and sports programs in North Arlington to burst at the seams, i.e., a huge increase in the number of kids in the area. It’s really been profound demographic shift and the absolutely incredible success of the Jhoon Rhee program — hundreds of kids showing up during the hours you mention — is a big part of the traffic chaos in that parking lot.

They can’t expand the parking which means either the problem will self-correct as people take their business elsewhere or the problem can correct (or at least stabilize) in a positive way by making walking and biking viable and perhaps rethinking traffic flow a bit. Right now biking through that lot isn’t the most pleasant experience, even if there was parking.

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There is now a tiny serpentine rack immediately north of Harris-Teeter. So that’s an improvement, I guess. It’s always full. Today when I made the earlier post it was impressively crammed. The parking garage isn’t a good option I admit, but I don’t think some genuine bike parking on the surface lot is too much to ask especially given how the lot is overwhelmed with cars. Small increases in biking to the shops would help the parking situation for cars a lot. It’s been a while since I tried to lobby that center for bike parking. It’s time to try again perhaps.

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Multiple times per day. In fact I’m in Jhoon Rhee right this second. If only there were better bike parking at the Harrison shops. The new pattern is better for biking (though I’ve never had problems there) and marginally better for pedestrians. The impact on car traffic is neutral to negative, but I think mainly negative. The problem is with people trying to turn left out of the Harrison shops onto Harrison. That was always a problematic situation but the new pattern seems to have made it worse because the lane backs up all the way past the Harrison shop entrance/exit. But so far this sort of situation seems fairly rare and probably will resolve itself as people learn the new pattern.

The big problem with Harrison, though, was not this spot but the Harrison-26th Street intersection. At certain times of day that place is a nightmare for pedestrians, cyclists, and cars trying to cross Harrison.

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Thanks, dasgeh, I didn’t know that about citizen complaints. I know how to get dozens of people to complain about the crosswalk I was referencing (Lee Highway at John Marshall) as the Overlee pool fully opens this weekend.

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@Brendan von Buckingham 52883 wrote:

Washington Post reported the cyclist has died.

For those who still read the WaPo in paper form, that page of the Post was really depressing. Aside from the sparse article on the cyclist was an article about a woman who was killed on Viers Mill road. She was crossing the section near Georgia Ave and got hit while in the median. (A car accident led to a vehicle swerving into her.) The sheer randomness of it is bad enough, but it highlights just how ridiculously vulnerable we are as pedestrians (and cyclists, of course) because of the way walking and cycling is simply shoehorned into an infrastructure that’s 99.2% for cars. If this happened where I think it happened then it’s at a pedestrian crosswalk where walkers pretty invariably have to wait at the median for cars to clear. It reminds me a bunch of a crossing at Lee Highway that I frequently make (and my son will make in 3 hours on the way to swim practice) where cars are way over the speed limit and flat won’t stop and you’d be foolish to test them. So what walkers do every day is wait for one direction to clear, scurry to the median, wait for the next direction to clear, and then scurry to the other side. Ugh.

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It’s a bit of an annoyance for sure. Here’s a discussion with some info.

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Here’s another positive Missed Connection. Yesterday at GW campus I saw a lady wearing an expensive business suit, designer shoes, and sporting well-coiffed silver hair riding a CaBi with a big ole smile on her face. You could almost see the speech balloon over her head saying, “This is so cool!”

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@AMRunBike 51944 wrote:

Was it a woman? I feel like I have ridden past her on 4 Mile Run before, ha. I did the same thing — called out twice — and she flew into a rage. It unnerved me!

While I was doing time in Missouri I was riding a local trail and approached three women walking side-by-side. The one on the far left — I’ll call her Bertha — was talking a mile a minute, very loudly. We’re talking whiny gossip mode here. The other two women are completely silent. 100 or so feet out I called a loud, “passing on your left.” The two other women clearly heard me and moved a bit to the right but Bertha kept going and kept talking. 50 and 25 feet out I put out very loud, “I am about to pass you on your left” calls. One of the ladies tried to tug Bertha a bit out of the way, but Bertha just kept trucking on, oblivious. I managed to squeeze between Bertha and a bramble-filled ditch. Then Bertha really let loose. “You #$%&% you’re supposed to #$%^&#$ warn people, you @@#&4” I started to yell back when I heard a quiet voice say, “He did warn us. You were just too busy yakking to hear it.” Hysterical.

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I’m often in that vicinity around that time and will keep an eye out. What color saddle bags? The world is full of sad and angry people. Unfortunately some of them are cyclists.

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@dasgeh 51452 wrote:

Why wouldn’t you take Custis –> Quincy (which becomes Military in about 4 blocks, and has a bike lane) –> L to stay on Military –> Glebe –> Chain Bridge

Doesn’t that take you through that awful Lee Hwy/Old Dominion intersection?

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This has turned into a quite thoughtful thread (something I couldn’t really imagine happening at, say, letsrun or slowtwitch). I fully agree with runbike’s comments regarding a runner’s responsibility and 83(b) on how our attitudes in the present are shaped by what we’ve experienced earlier. I had to drive in today and honked at a guy who tried to cut in a bit aggressively. I thought afterwards that I was really mad not at the guy I honked at but at the two earlier drivers who cut me off on the TR bridge.

That said, my reason for running in the road isn’t really about the hard surface issue. For starters, sidewalks come and go. The 3/4 mile walk from my home to the nearest grocery features some blocks with sidewalks on both sides, some blocks with a sidewalk on one side, and some blocks with no sidewalks at all. I once figured out that to stay on a sidewalk I’d have to cross the street 5 times and I’d still have three blocks where I’d have no choice but to walk in the road.

Then there’s the safety issue (aside from crossing the road all the time). Sidewalks are dangerous. Not so much for major trauma, sure, but for strains, sprains, torn soft tissue, and broken bones very much so. Sidewalk surfaces are notoriously uneven as they dip down for driveways, jut up over roots, and crack due to poor materials or maintenance. Then there’s debris — sticks, rocks, toys — and other obstacles like kids. Then there are low hanging limbs and major dangerous obstacles such as telephone poles, guy wires, and fire hydrants in the sidewalk. (Yes, in the sidewalk.) Many of these problems — and the issue of possible assault — are compounded at night as sidewalks are not lit.

Then you have cars bursting out of driveways without looking. (Thankfully this problem is less now that so many kids live in my area and drivers have started to pay attention to sidewalk traffic.)

None of this absolves me from the need to stay the heck out of the way of cars and cyclists (especially cyclists ). Nor does it free me from the possibility of receiving a ticket (which I would pay without complaint).

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Sounds like really bad news is about to get announced. Reportedly there’s a body in the water near Gravelly Point.

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There was a large police and tv station presence at TR island this morning. Some twitter feed suggests it’s related to the missing lady. Hope for the best.

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@hozn 50851 wrote:

Interesting article this month in Bicycling mag on helmets. Apparently they do little for concussions (concussion rates increase despite helmet usage increasing), since regulations are focused on big impacts. Anyway, I fell asleep last night before I could finish it (no reflection on the quality of the article) but it was interesting — if a little depressing.

I finally got around to reading the article in Bicycling. It’s a surprisingly good. (I’d link to it for those who don’t subscribe but haven’t been able to find it.) However, I do want to point out a misperception that relates to the finding on helmets and concussions. We have to be very careful with studies like the one the authors cites. (This comic helps illustrate my point.) The study looks at cyclists who come to the hospital with a head injury. It then contrasts outcomes for the helmeted and non-helmeted. There’s nothing wrong with that as long as it’s kept clear that the population being studied is not cyclists in crashes BUT cyclists in crashes who came to the hospital with head injuries. Problems occur when we do what this author does which is to slip into generalizing to all cyclists in crashes. What we need to know is what happened to those crashed cyclists who didn’t go to the hospital. I think it’s plausible that plenty of helmeted cyclists in crashes would have had a head injury had they not worn the helmet, but they don’t show up in the data because they don’t go the hospital. The crash I described a few days ago in this thread is a perfect example. I think that that cyclist gets a major head injury for sure without his helmet. So the helmeted riders who end up in the hospital with a head injury are the ones who took a really good lick (or wore their helmet improperly, more on that in a moment).

Furthermore there is the issue of minor non-concussive head injuries. I suspect that most of these consist of scalp wounds. As we all know, cuts in the scalp can bleed like crazy and frequently require stitches. Who is more likely to get this kind of wound? Someone not wearing a helmet. It can certainly happen to a helmeted rider, too (e.g., face plant), but I suspect that it’s a bit more likely with non-helmeted riders. So you could easily end up with the most minor head injuries and the most major head injuries occurring to non-helmeted riders and the middle category (concussion but not major trauma) including more helmeted riders.

The other problem is that most of these studies can’t evaluate whether the rider was wearing the helmet correctly. In some cases an incorrectly worn helmet can be worse than nothing.

So we have to take care when interpreting these sorts of studies. It would be great if we had more data on crash outcomes that don’t involve hospital trips but this usually require gathering self-reported data which are notoriously noisy.

All that said, I think the absolutely correct takeway from this article is that we can and should get better helmets, but helmets can’t prevent anywhere close to all head injuries. That’s just reality, but it’s one I don’t think we have fully accepted. It’s a reality with important policy implications. We can never eradicate crashes but better biking infrastructure (and legal protections) and augmented emphasis on teaching safe biking and “safe” crashing might do far more than, say, helmet requirements.

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