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@lordofthemark 187496 wrote:

You want parking protected bike lanes in place of door zone lanes? So do I and so does every bike advocate I know. But there are places where a door zone bike lane fits but a pbl does not. Because gutters can be under parking, but not part of a bike lane. Also because as I hope you agree, a parking protected bike lane requires day lighting at intersections to be safe. But some areas on street parking is scarce. Now we can say get rid of parking anyway. Have you ever gotten in the face of some guy who doesn’t bike and thinks driving is freedom and has never read “The High Price of Free Parking” and told him that parking is going to get harder for the sake of cyclists? Whom he thinks are either A. Reckless scofflaws B Entitled elitist hipsters or C. Simply nonexistent

I actually agree with much of the resistance to removing parking, though more in residential areas. This can have real effects on real estate value and its not unreasonable for property owners to want to protect those values. However in areas such as Ballston, Crystal City, and Pentagon City with large volumes of off-street and low priced hourly parking, it’s quite reasonable to pull on-street spots to put in bike ways. In residential areas where traffic volumes are much lower, I believe there is a lot of opportunity in re-striping travel lanes or moving some of the two-way streets to one-way to accommodate safe biking facilities.

@lordofthemark 187496 wrote:

Meanwhile door zone bike lanes are more attractive to most riders than a street with no bike infra. And just as safe 8n places with little parking turnover.

I don’t ride within the door zone of bike lanes, and highly discourage others from doing it. The risk is too high of getting hit, thrown into the travel lanes, and ran over by a car, even in low parking turnover areas. You’re much safer just taking the lane and making cars pass you correctly.

@lordofthemark 187496 wrote:

We could also discuss the locations and utility of sharrows but unless you’re going to join those of us in the trenches I’m not sure I want to bother.

I’m not against sharrows as a communication’s reminder tool to drivers that cyclists are about. What I’m against is using sharrows to create “safe” bike routes, when they are absolutely not safe for anyone who is not an experienced rider. Even worse is putting the sharrow routes on the bike comfort map and advertising the routes as somewhat comfortable routes for any age. A couple examples are roads such as Walter Reed or Army Navy Drive which have speed limits of 30mph with a lot of commuter traffic, and a lot of drivers going well in excess of those speed limits.

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@dasgeh 187461 wrote:

Please, SPEAK UP. What outside of the box thinking is missing from Arlington’s draft Bike Element? Is it more trails? Because the “environmental” lobby is already gearing up to fight any new trail and any trail widening. Is it more PBLs on the major arterials (Lee, Mason, Glebe, Wilson)? Because County staff fought against this (because parking) and what’s in there (building bike facilities that meet NACTO guidelines) is the best we could get — unless the public will stand up and say they want better. What else?

If you speak up here, people who VOLUNTEER THEIR TIME to work on these sorts of things are listening and will take suggestions back. If you write in, your comments will be included in the summaries and taken into consideration.

If you stew silently about how you have better ideas, nothing will happen.

I submitted comments to the master plan, and submit comments on other projects as well. Most of my comments on the master plan were around the types of facilities being proposed, as very few of them actually meet NACTO guidelines. There are better designs used in other countries that could be adopted and provide safer bike facilities without sacrificing auto mobility and parking. The use of sharrows and narrow striped lanes next to park cars should not be endorsed by any advocacy group and should not be put on maps as “safe” bike routes, when they are not safe for the majority of citizens. The only way to get bike share up in any significant amount is end to end protected facilities for cyclists of all ages and abilities; not just trails, and not bike lanes to nowhere.

[zsionakides]

@lordofthemark 187424 wrote:

You can do a hell of a lot more damage at 28mph on a 50+ lb e-bike than at 12mph on a 20lb regular bike.

I wish I had a 20 lb regular bike. In fact I ride a bike closer to 30lbs and most of my miles I am riding with a backpack carrying clothes, and sometimes lunch, and sometimes papers. Though I guess differences in rider weight matter more. Unless there is a new physics where only the weight of the bike itself matters.

E-bikes should be encouraged for road use by building appropriate biking (and scooter) lanes and cycle tracks within the current roadway structure. Those facilities are appropriate for the higher speed traveling that e-bikes encourage.

have you ever actually done advocacy for a new cycle track? One that involves either taking away a genral travel lane, or parking? here are some quotes

We are not a quaint village where everyone can bike to work and shopping centers.

Seminary is a major hub to not only the highway, but to the hospital and the Mark Center, all of which are economic drivers for the city and we ant to stifle that for a couple of yuppies that want to show off their $5k bianchi bicycles…

It looks like we are devoting a lot of resources to bike lanes, while almost no one appears to be commuting by bike in hilly West Alexandria.

If I had a dollar for every time someone mentioned the lack of riders as a reason to oppose complete streets (even when the road diet would largely improve safety for walkers and drivers) I would be well on my way to that 20 lb Bianchi.

We need more folks in the bike lanes we have. More acoustic bikes, more ebikes, more scooters, more hoverboards, whatever. And if that means ALSO allowing them on trails, so be it. I will listen to advice from people on the need for more bike lanes for ebikes (while banning them from trails) from folks who have been in the trenches fighting for bike infra.

The issue with only focusing on increasing usage of the existing trails is they don’t go anywhere near enough places to bump up the biking percentage of commuters, even throwing e-bikes in the mix. We need to build a lot more safe, separated on-road biking facilities to get anywhere with increasing bike usage.

I fully agree that the pushback to bike facilities is relentless, but on the advocacy side the proposals are way too tepid. There are lots of places that cycle paths could be built that would have trivial effects on driving or parking. However when you go into documents such as the new Arlington Bike Master Plan, it basically advocates for minimal facilities, though the county could be cris-crossed with cycle paths with a little outside the box thinking.

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@smb9600 187382 wrote:

I agree this is the worst I’ve seen since commuting on the MVT. I had also associated it with the construction on the Memorial Bridge, but was told (by a very smart person in the science world [emoji6]) it was due to the extreme amount of rainfall we had last year (remember, we were doing water rescues on the GW parkway last year!)

So was the non-profit they mention the Friends of the MVT???

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

My thought is that the water in that spot is pooling in the soil and not draining into the river. It would probably take a pretty sizeable re-grading of the overall soil in that area to fix this issue, and I agree it’s getting worse. The trail could potentially be re-routed higher up the hill near the parkway, but that may only be a temporary fix.

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@dplasters 187370 wrote:

Any rider can be dangerous. You CANNOT be as dangerous on an analog bike as the fit rider. You can’t do 30 (presuming based upon your story). By being on an e-bike you have added a new dangerous ability.

*Edit to be clear here – I think the e-bike argument is that you do a hell of a lot less damage to people on an e-bike at 20mph than in a car at 40. Less people in cars is great. I want e-bikes on trails. But there are going to be more incidents because of them. More traffic, heavy/larger, higher speeds (even if only for a minority of e-bike riders, thats still more people at unsafe speeds). It’s why i’m open to the idea that the rate of incidents will decrease. Perhaps so many new users will be out that that the rate actually decreases? I dunno. But saying you cannot be any more dangerous on an e-bike vs an analog bike just isn’t true. Given the opportunity to do dumb things, people will do them.

You can do a hell of a lot more damage at 28mph on a 50+ lb e-bike than at 12mph on a 20lb regular bike.

E-bikes should be encouraged for road use by building appropriate biking (and scooter) lanes and cycle tracks within the current roadway structure. Those facilities are appropriate for the higher speed traveling that e-bikes encourage.

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@mstone 187385 wrote:

I don’t think there’s any accident reconstruction science to tell that someone was doing 12MPH on a bike vs 22MPH on a bike.

I still oppose a 15MPH speed limit because it’s stupid.

The incident where a cyclist clothes-lined another oncoming rider was reconstructed using Strava data. A lot of fast riders have computer data that could be pulled into an accident investigation if needed. Witnesses can also see the difference between a rider going 12 and 22mph.

15mph is the speed limit on the CCT and MVT. It’s not unreasonable for the W&OD which is full of people walking, kids learning to ride bikes, and people’s pets around.

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@lordofthemark 187359 wrote:

I have to point out that most advocates (myself included) have emphasized that the the MUTs ARE commuter routes. That is one justification for getting more MUT’s and widening those that exist. It’s a reason that some localities have agreed to remove snow from them in winter. In many cases (like the W&OD) there aren’t any other relatively low stress routes.

I certainly want more low stress routes that are not MUTs for a variety of reasons. I would like to see options for faster riders, whether recreational or commuters, around the parts of MUTs with lots of peds and slow riders (I personally like to use Eads to avoid the crowded part of the MVT between 4MRT and the 14th street bridge, though I am not a particularly fast rider)

But a big help in getting more in street bike routes (whether PBLs, conventional bike lanes, or slower streets) would be more people who ride, period. Including more ebikers, who may need trail access to decide to start riding.

The MUPs may be used as commuter routes, but MUPs most certainly are not chartered as commuter highways. Nothing in NOVA Parks mission is about creating facilities to allow high speed commuting by bike (or e-bike). Their mission is around recreation, not transportation.

Moving the MUPs to a commuter route model, starts creating the same issues that exist with Rock Creek Parkway, Beach Dr, or the GW Parkway. They’ve become so essential to commuters that doing anything that improves the experience for park users, which is the primary mission, is a huge fight because it can slow down commuters. I don’t want to see the same thing happen with MUPs where high speed bikes and e-bikes crowd out all other recreational uses.

There are a good number of non-MUP places to ride fast. I see lots of cyclists at Hains Point or on Beach Drive, and those are quite appropriate places to ride fast.

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@Sunyata 187349 wrote:

I try hard to keep out of these controversial threads. However, I would like to point out that 20 mph is not that fast in context with many sections of the W&OD. I wish folks would remember that the trail is 45-ish miles long and many parts of the trail are very flat and very sparsely populated. On Sunday, I went out for a “recreational” ride (i.e. not exactly commuting) on my gravel bike (i.e. not an e-bike, but definitely not a road bike) and hit 20 mph easily in many sections and it was perfectly safe. I ended up passing a few folks on e-bikes as well. No big deal.

The W&OD has many purposes. For me, it is a safe and easy way to get places (whether it be to work, to a brewery, or out to LoCo gravel). I never use the W&OD to “enjoy the park”. The W&OD is not a nature trail. It is a multi-use trail that is used for recreation, commuting, and exercise. While on the trail, I have had bad experiences with pretty much every mode of user, including pedestrians, clueless dog owners, runners, cyclists, and e-cyclists. Banning e-bikes is not going to make the jerks go away.

So, instead of banning e-bikes or putting in useless speed limits (seriously, who is going to enforce ANY of this?), I think we should just put big signs up about Casey’s Rule #1: DO NOT BE AN ASSHOLE. (If you have ever been on a group ride led by me, you know the drill!)

I agree that 20mph is not fast in certain sections, but the policy discussion is about making a uniform speed limit on the trail. If NOVA Parks isn’t going to sectionalize the speed limits, then the overall speed limit should be 15mph.

The speed limit is not going to be enforced, however the speed limits and vehicle regulations do matter in cases where an accident occurs and someone is injured. The regulations helps in determining liability, particularly against those who are violating various regulations. Those regulations are one of the reasons I personally recommend to people I know against using an e-bike anywhere they are not authorized by law and regulation. You open yourself up to liability if you hit someone, and you won’t have a strong defense if you are knowingly riding the e-bike somewhere illegally.

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@dasgeh 187311 wrote:

We’ve gone over why speed is better set at 20mph (to keep up with traffic for the inevitable times when ebikes are on roads; also, it’s super easy for an adult to clear 20mph even on a CaBi on a downhill). But why not treat class 2s like class 1s? They have the same speed limitations as class 1, the only difference is the throttle. Throttles are super important for those carrying heavy loads (aka parents) and people with disabilities (who can’t always pedal or have a hard time balancing to start). I don’t know of anywhere in the U.S. that treats class 1s differently than class 2s.

This whole policy discussion is about e-bikes going on trails, and 20mph is too high safety wise. For riding ebikes on the street, you can make them as fast as you want, though I’d highly recommend motorcycle safety courses at that point.

Class 2’s on trails basically means the trail is a commuter highway and not a recreational trail. It’s a slippery slope that turns the MUPs into roads that become about how fast one can go safely and not about enjoying the park. My advocacy on the W&OD is not for high speed commuters, but for people walking, running, or out with small children. Class 2+ ebikes that are basically small motorcycles don’t fit in with a recreational park.

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@buschwacker 187140 wrote:

I am one of those of who you speak, commuting on an e-bike primarily using the region’s trails as a fit young person. I’m curious whether you think that e-bikes should be allowed on trails and whether that opinion has anything to do with the e-bike user’s motivation for using the trail. Perhaps I’ve got the wrong idea from your post, but it seems wrong-headed and judgmental to distinguish between “legitimate” and “illegitimate” use of an e-bike on a trail, with the elderly and kid-hauling on one side and young and healthy on the other.

I’m asking because as a regular e-bike rider that uses MUPs daily as part of my commute, I acknowledge that e-bikes are sometimes misused on bike trails whether from traveling too fast for conditions or lack of etiquette, or both. I’ve seen it happen, but surely there’s a sensible way for e-bikes to co-exist with other users. Already, MUPs are shared by many users whose motivations are already at odds, case in point hardcore time trailers versus parents-with-strollers (or really, everyone else on the trail). What’s the difference with e-bikes?

I would be ok with class 1 e-bikes on trails if they were limited to 15mph for pedal assist. I think 20mph is a little high safety wise – for reference in the Netherlands I believe e-bikes are limited to 30kph (18mph) on bikeways.

Class 2 and 3 e-bikes should be illegal on all trails and class 3 illegal on all 2-way cycletracks and PBLs.

For comparison, I think DC’s scooter speed restriction of 10mph is too restrictive, and based on most the scooter riders I see on the trails, the 15-18mph top speed range is generally a safe operating speed.

My main concern is riders going 20mph+ on trails, including regular bikes, but class 2 and 3 e-bikes makes that speed way too easy for the average person to attain. At least with a regular bike, you have to be really fit to average high speeds which narrows the population of high risk/high speed riders.

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@lordofthemark 187133 wrote:

Is that not relevant for policy? I mean I don’t intend to buy an ebike until I am far less fit than I am now. If the population of ebike riders is heavily older less fit folks, or folks schlepping kids (despite the marketing about a new paradigm for ebikes), then does that not suggest that the negative impact of allowing them on trails is less, and the gains more? Its not worth comparing apples to apples if what we are going to allow is mostly oranges.

The population is relevant for a study, and the study is being used to justify policy. You can’t draw accurate conclusions where two different sample groups are used as extraneous variables could be the actual cause. To do a proper study, you’d need to hold steady external variables such as fitness (e.g. FTP), time of day, and weather conditions between the two sample groups.

I don’t agree that the e-bike population is heavily older, less fit folks or folks schlepping kids. Most the e-bikes I see while commuting (and even during recreational times) are healthy aged individuals using a vehicle that is faster than a regular bike and doing so to save time/energy on their trip.

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@dasgeh 187127 wrote:

But they studied who was using the trail. It’s irrelevant _why_ they were using the trail.

It’s relevant that they have a controlled population for the study, particularly if they are going to draw an unexpected conclusion.

I’ve seen plenty of e-bikes on the trails around and it’s rare that they are going slower than regular bikes. If we’re going to write policy based on that study, it better be really well done, and stand up to scrutiny. I know personally if I rode an e-bike my average speeds on anything that was uphill or flat would be higher than a similar regular bike in identical conditions.

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@Judd 187069 wrote:

I would too, but from a sample size of me and at the risk of turning this in to a repeat of the e-bike thread: I compared my CaBi average speeds to my CaBi Plus average speeds and I tend to ride a Plus slightly slower than an acoustic CaBi.

For your Cabi example, you’d need to compare the average speeds on the same routes under the same conditions.

My gut, without being able to review the study itself, is that the study wasn’t controlled or they aren’t measuring the same activity that someone is doing on an e-bike vs a regular bike. The population of riders on regular bikes vs riders on e-bikes are generally not the same people. If they are measuring a bunch of fit riders on regular bikes and a bunch of unfit to normal riders on e-bikes, or if regular bikes are naked while the e-bikes are outfitted for commuting, it’s quite possible they could see regular bikes with higher speeds.

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@Judd 187057 wrote:

According to the meeting materials observed speeds of people on e-bikes is lower than those on regular bikes.

I’d love to know the research basis for that claim. From my experience, I almost never pass e-bikes, but see e-bikes zoom by me and others all the time.

The 20mph proposed speed limit is a little concerning, as it’s pretty high for that busy a trail that has people walking and running on. I think other trails with speed limits have it at 15mph, which is more reasonable.

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I rode through it both ways yesterday, and while it’s largely fine going northbound, southbound is a different story. Going northbound the cycle track connects to the side path, which is fine since that’s the only route you can bike. Going southbound, if you use the road, which I’d guess over 50% of riders do due to the pedestrian volumes on the side path, you’ll probably need to take the regular lanes all the way to the 14st bridge ramps or cut into the cycle track between posts. If you use the cycle track going south and are going to the 14th st bridge, you also have to look back over your should to check for traffic and work out who is yielding to who since a proper connection wasn’t built from the 14th st bridge ramp to the cycle track.

They should have connected the south end of the cycle track to the bridge similarly to what was done near T.R. park on the MVT and made traffic yield to bikes/pedestrians. Instead they built an incongruent design that will probably lead to unnecessary accidents or close calls due to unclear right of way.

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