[UrbanEngineer]

Kansas is mostly down hill with on-street parking and a bike lane most of the way. Riding in the door zone is not a good idea; doing so while riding fast down a hill, even worse of an idea. Use your best judgement here. There are parts of Kansas that have a center median that won’t allow traffic to pull into an adjacent lane to pass you. Depends on the situation, but I take the lane on the down hill portions where on-street parking and a median is present.

I take the lane when I ride 13th. There are so many stop signs and red lights. Nobody is going anywhere fast. I get honked at from time to time on the up-hills (and yelled at by my fiance for being in their way), but typically I’m stuck in car traffic more than car traffic is stuck behind me. I don’t filter because the cars that do pass me don’t want to have to pass me again and because filtering requires one to ride between lanes, which puts me in a not so visible position. This isn’t typical, as I tend to get passed by filtering cyclists as I queue up in line with the traffic. I turn at Euclid and then ride to 14th because I don’t like the hill at 13th and Florida. It’s designed for destroying bikes and brakes.

I don’t like riding R because the bike traffic almost always flows faster than the car traffic. It isn’t so bad, but you definitely need to be alert and expect to be right hooked. If you’re riding drops, don’t ride with your hands on the tops.

21st street. A blissful few blocks in the downtown area. One lane of traffic that could be as wide as 30 feet and very few motor vehicles. Nice ride.

On M-Street I take the lane, I don’t filter, nor do I go straight in the right turn only lanes. It’s worked for me so far. Not sure what the best way to cross Key Bridge. I’ve only rode it once and I did so by hopping the sidewalk (at a curb cut, not bunny hop style) at 34th, and then crossed at the crosswalk to then ride the sidewalk on the far side of the bridge to the custis trail/sidewalk.

I do a route similar to this frequently, and I take 13th to Euclid to 14th to Florida to New Hampshire to R to Florida to P.

I then ride Q Street all the way back to 15th up and over the hill to Euclid then onto 13th.

[UrbanEngineer]

I ride the L street cycletrack to the 15th street cycletrack all the way up past the hill at Meridian Hill Park every day on my daily commute home. Riding on these cycle tracks gives a lot of opportunities for slower, red light jumping riders to jump ahead of me at the red lights. When they do, I tend to catch up to them and draft off them with my brighter lights for a bit before passing and saying “on your left…again”. It seems like a passive way to voice my displeasure with their red light jumping. My drafting may not be the safest thing, but given how narrow 15th street is and how much traffic is on L, it’s probably safer than pulling along side them and talking to them about how their red light jumping ahead of faster cyclists is annoying.

[UrbanEngineer]

@Bilsko 41316 wrote:

You’re talking about this intersection? http://goo.gl/maps/iwdnc

Agreed that its not fun to be on a bike there (especially since you’ve just slogged uphill from the bridge over RCP). However, if the lane is clearly marked as both straight and turning (which, if we’re talking about the same one, it is) then the driver had no right to honk at a bike (or car) waiting to make a left turn there. Left turns from that lane are controlled by a left turn arrow which has a delayed start compared to the straight-on-Penn arrow – if you want to go straight and are in a lane that is open to people who are waiting to turn, then that’s your tough luck (not specifically yours, UrbanEng. – anyone using the road). I can’t speak to the cyclists erratic behavior, but the way you describe it, I’m struggling to see how she was wrong to yell at the motorist.

The lane furthest to the left is for turns onto L St. and northbound onto 25th and the next lane over (straight+left) is for getting onto L. St only.
As a cyclist, you’re best off in the furthest left lane because that dumps you into the cycletrack on the far left side of L St., but its not always possible to get all the way into the left lane on Penn – I know, occasionally, I’ll get stuck in that mixed lane and have to work my way across the two lanes of vehicle traffic on L to get into the cycletrack.

Anybody, whether in a car or bike, who is turning from a left/straight lane, and does not signal so, is in the wrong. The vehicle behind them was given no indication of them turning. Is this worthy of a honk? Maybe, maybe not. Do I think she should have yelled at the driver for honking? Definitely not. I think an apology for not signaling would’ve been more appropriate.

I bet when you work your way across two lanes of vehicle traffic, you wouldn’t recommend doing so blindly without signaling.

[UrbanEngineer]

You: Lady riding down Pennsylvania Ave trying to turn left onto L-Street. You got honked at for not signaling your turn when you were in the straight/left turn lane and the vehicle behind you was going straight. I really wish you had thought about that before yelling at the driver. This will happen to anybody who does this, whether in a car or on a bike.

Me: In a taxi telling the driver to watch out for you because you were not in the proper lane and will probably be swerving in front of us to get to the bike lane shortly. I really wish you had checked over your shoulder or signaled before making those ill-advised lane changes. I’m not in every car around here.

On another note, let’s get some sharrows in the far left turn lane on Pennsylvania so riders like this will have better direction on how to execute this turn safely.

[UrbanEngineer]

There are plenty of southbound options in the area, so I’m not going to complain about the lack of available routes, but some of the infrastructure on these routes is poorly maintained, not respected, and incapable of meeting their intent. I would include the contraflow portion of the 15th street cycletrack in this due to the amount of debris in the lane. A heavily trafficked cycletrack will run into safety issues at the pinch points caused by the debris. The light timing of the contraflow portion is a nuisance but not really a safety risk unless you consider tempting cyclists to jump the red a safety risk.

[UrbanEngineer]

@DaveK 38313 wrote:

I look at it as the latent demand for the M Street cycletrack.

I get they want to ride West bound in a cycle track but doing so in the East bound cycletrack is dangerous. Much better off using any of the other east bound roads.

[UrbanEngineer]

Been seeing wrong way cyclists on the cycletrack far too often. I tend to let them know that they’re going the wrong way but I get the feeling they’re well aware of that already.

[UrbanEngineer]

There are supposed to be bike boxes at the front of every East Bound L-Street intersection to accommodate cyclists who need to get over ahead of time to turn right up the road.

On a different note, I’ve been noticing a lot of cars taking up half the green painted bike lane when turning left. Sometimes it’s a tighter squeeze than I would recommend trying to ride in.

[UrbanEngineer]

It’s a one way east bound cycle track.

Other than the parked cars in the bike lane and left turning vehicles in the straight only motor vehicle lane, which these two issues will be quite prevalent until the signage gets finished, the other issues I noticed were:

At stop lights, with left turning vehicles to your left and straight traffic to your right, you may have as little as 4 feet of clearance for the bike lane. So when that green light comes, you may have moving traffic within a foot of you on other side.

Continuing a few blocks beyond the completed portion of the bike lane, there is a huge pot hole right where the bike lane will be. Clearly they’ll fill it up during construction of the lane, but at this point, it’s a fine place to go flying over your handle bars. Watch out for it.

[UrbanEngineer]

I feel it’s worthwhile to note where the bikes ended up because if me and my bike had gone under it could have ended completely differently, as I was hit about 10 feet before the other cyclist. Not sure what to take away from this though. Why his bike went under and mine didn’t. Just dumb luck? Bike/car geometry? Clipless vs. platform? Who knows. It’s an odd feeling. Hope it never happens again.

The driver was ticketed. Not sure with what. 3-5 days is the timeline I was given for when the police report would be ready.

I already received a call from somebody asking if I’m looking into getting legal counsel. I’m not use to these situations (I’m happy for this, who wants to be use to getting hit by cars). I don’t care if you feel fine or not, don’t tell somebody you don’t know whether or not you’re seeking legal counsel. Wish I knew calls like this were coming.

[UrbanEngineer]

or anywhere else that doesn’t have an Idaho Stop law

[UrbanEngineer]

Thanks for the link. I did some further digging from there and the wording of the bill as it’s provided in that link is that if it is to be enacted, it will take effect on October 1st 2012. So at this point, it is still illegal in Maryland. I could not find whether or not it was enacted. There appears to be some conversation taking place between different parties about the meaning of some of the words in the bill that may have held it up.

[UrbanEngineer]

On L street, the left most lane has many left turn only lanes. If your plan is to go straight, don’t ride there. If you plan on turning left and you see that the 2nd most lane is also a left turn lane, I wouldn’t trust it, because many drivers go straight from the left turn only lane and will pancake you. Wish I had time to do a study on the number of cars in the left turn only lane at 18th and L that go straight. Here it’s especially dangerous because there are two left turn lanes.

My advice about lane splitting. Don’t do it. Just because you can fit, doesn’t mean you should. More of a courtesy issue than a legal issue in my mind. Everybody else is waiting, who am I to skip the queue and go to the front. Lane splitting also tends to place you within the crosswalks while you wait at the light (or not wait, depending on your scofflawiness), which is not a place for vehicles. You’re better off just riding with the traffic and queueing up with them at the lights.

[UrbanEngineer]

As a hard of hearing cyclist, I find audible warnings to be a secondary gesture. I often times don’t hear people calling out and I almost never hear bells. My advice is to treat audible warnings as a secondary gesture. Pass at a safe distance and at a reasonable speed and the audible signal won’t really matter.

[UrbanEngineer]

I’d put money on it that it was a u-turning taxi that hit him. I’ve had a few close encounters with the front bumper of a taxi along that strip.

[Author]

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