The Bike Lobby is too powerful in DC...

[Anonymous]

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Transit surveys show biking is becoming less popular in DC. The government is spending more and more money on fewer and fewer people.

Which, you know, is kind of weird, because year by year, I see more people biking in DC. Well, who am I going to trust, some anonymous rando on DCUM or my lying eyes?

Neither! You could just look at the data. It's not that hard. The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments puts out an annual transit report. TL;DR: Every form of transportation is becoming less popular, except driving, which is way up. It also says cyclists are exactly who you'd think: white, young, upper income and (because of that) they live close to wear they work. Drivers are disproportionately Black and Hispanic.

This isn't in and of itself a reason to oppose bike lanes, though. And actually, people who live near to where they work are a good universe to target with policies that might get them not to drive, because then they're not adding to congestion on the roads (if they're in a protected bike lane, they are not interfering with car trips by people driving from farther away) and it may not be a significantly longer commute to bike rather than drive. Obviously, the main users of bike lanes are not going to be people coming from 15 or 20 miles away, it's going to be people who live and work relatively near where they're biking.

Basically you're saying we should spend billions of dollars building up an entirely separate transportation system for white cyclists who are rich enough to live in the most desirable parts of the city, and if that makes car traffic a whole lot worse for predominantly black and brown drivers who don't live within such easy distance of their jobs and other places they need to go, then I guess you'd just say that's too bad. Seems kind of racist, doesn't it?

Except that I was saying it would NOT make traffic worse, because it would remove those white people from the car lanes. The Connecticut Avenue plan won't make traffic worse, because it doesn't remove car driving lanes, it only removes parking.

(If it were up to me, I'd say anyone who's healthy enough to bike and lives less than 5 miles from their white-collar office should not be allowed to drive to work, but it isn't up to me.)

Bike lanes make car traffic worse -- a lot of worse. Isn't that the point? The city is trying to make driving so miserable that people will switch to bikes. Of course, there is zero evidence that is happening. Transit data shows driving is becoming more popular, and the number of people on bikes is shrinking.

That is not the point, and bike lanes do not make car traffic worse if you're not removing a lane of car traffic. The Connecticut Avenue plan isn't removing any car traffic and, in fact, it's adding turn lanes. No one thinks people will switch from driving to biking just because traffic is bad. They want people who live close enough to work to bike to feel safe biking.

There will be four travel lanes. One of them on each side also will be used by buses that will have to stop to let off and pick up passengers on "bus islands." No doubt they will also be blocked by delivery trucks and and others. The turn lanes will likely just encourage slow Connecticut Avenue traffic to divert into side streets. The plan is poorly thought through.

Have you ever driven north/south on any of the side streets off Connecticut? On any of them, does it seem likely you could conceivably go faster than you can on Connecticut? MAYBE Reno, but definitely not any of the others. There are four-way stops all over the place, speed humps on some, etc. There's no way significant traffic is diverting to side streets.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Tyranny of the Minority (2020-2023) RIP.

You had a god run. The adults are finally back in charge in 2024. Drive, bus, walk, or Metro. Those are your choices.

Anonymous rando on DCUM on a Friday night, deciding which modes of transportation people should get to use.

Love these entitled white guys who are like, I don’t want to walk or ride the subway or take the bus or drive. You have to spend billions of dollars building me my own separate transportation system because I just really like riding my bicycle. Because a city with one quarter of its kids living in poverty doesn’t have anything better to spend its money on.

Hey jerk, paint and a little concrete isn't billions of dollars. All that asphalt and signaling is. The bike infrastructure costs next to freaking nothing compared to the subsidized car infrastructure.

Not billions of course. But if some touch up paint on the mayor’s “BLM plaza” will cost $300K, what do you think bike lanes with the barriers and infrastructure changes nearly the length of Connecticut will cost? That would certainly pay for some needed cops and reading teachers

Look at the budget. The city routinely spends a quarter billion dollars each year on bike infrastructure. They’ve been spending at this rate for 15 years.

I don't see how that's possible when Bowser's budget proposal last year proposed spending $6 million per year on 10 miles per year of protected bike lanes, over the course of six years: https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/04/01/dc-transportation-budget/

Either the city hasn't actually spent $250 million per year on bike infrastructure, or there are actually many, many more miles of protected bike lanes than any of us is aware of.

The city's budget is a public document. You can just look it up. Here's a *small* sampling of what you'd find:

$36 million for bike lanes
$15 million for Capital Bikeshare
$800,000 for electric bike rebates
$56.4 million for Vision Zero
$39.1 million for bike and pedestrian safety
$18.5 million for signs
$32 million for intersections for intersections with safety concerns
$52 million Long Bridge bicycle connection

Remember all this money is being spent on a tiny number of people. It would be cheaper for the taxpayer if the government bought every cyclist in the city a Porsche.

If the city spent money on poor people like it spends it on cyclists, there would be no poverty in D.C.

It is amazing how much money the city spends on bicyclists. $185 million for bike trails? Are they made of gold?

[Anonymous]

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Transit surveys show biking is becoming less popular in DC. The government is spending more and more money on fewer and fewer people.

Which, you know, is kind of weird, because year by year, I see more people biking in DC. Well, who am I going to trust, some anonymous rando on DCUM or my lying eyes?

Neither! You could just look at the data. It's not that hard. The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments puts out an annual transit report. TL;DR: Every form of transportation is becoming less popular, except driving, which is way up. It also says cyclists are exactly who you'd think: white, young, upper income and (because of that) they live close to wear they work. Drivers are disproportionately Black and Hispanic.

This isn't in and of itself a reason to oppose bike lanes, though. And actually, people who live near to where they work are a good universe to target with policies that might get them not to drive, because then they're not adding to congestion on the roads (if they're in a protected bike lane, they are not interfering with car trips by people driving from farther away) and it may not be a significantly longer commute to bike rather than drive. Obviously, the main users of bike lanes are not going to be people coming from 15 or 20 miles away, it's going to be people who live and work relatively near where they're biking.

Basically you're saying we should spend billions of dollars building up an entirely separate transportation system for white cyclists who are rich enough to live in the most desirable parts of the city, and if that makes car traffic a whole lot worse for predominantly black and brown drivers who don't live within such easy distance of their jobs and other places they need to go, then I guess you'd just say that's too bad. Seems kind of racist, doesn't it?

It’s not a coincidence that the biggest advocates of bike lanes on the city council represent lily white neighborhoods and the biggest critics of bike lanes come from wards 7 and 8

Vince Grey supports bike lanes. The majority of Ward 8 residents want more bike infrastructure despite their councilmember.

This debate shouldn’t be about pro bike lanes or anti bike lanes. People may support bike lanes in many places but location and context matters. Constraining Northwest Washington’s major arterial road and diverting traffic into lesser capacity streets is simply not smart transportation planning.

The police have said the bike lanes will lead to MORE accidents. Which is completely obvious to just about everyone except the bike bros.

The police union assertion is factually incorrect, as has already been explained a billion times previously on this and the many other DCUM threads started and maintained by the small number of people whose weird hobby is hating on the Connecticut Avenue plan anonymously online.

Look, in the middle of the current crime wave that shows no signs of receding you have to listen to the rank and file police. Any project that could potentially increase response time is irresponsible and dangerous. The mayor finally understands this.

Even when they're wrong!

Or, you know, maybe we shouldn't listen to them when they're wrong.

So the stated purpose of the bike lanes is to slow down cars. But this will have no impact on the police, fire, and EMS vehicles? This all sounds very magical.

That's what's been stated: That bike lanes will make Connecticut Avenue "safer" by slowing down the speed of vehicle traffic substantially.

One of the goals of the redesign is to change the "design speed" to more closely match the posted speed (25). Right now you have people driving the design speed+ and others going "merely" 30ish, leading to lots of aggressive lane changes and passing. This is what creates danger, the variability in speed and the "racing to the next stop light" mentality.

By reducing variability in speed, you increase safety, and paradoxically increase throughput of a road by reducing average speed. This should make it easier for emergency vehicles to proceed, as fewer intersections should be blocked (by cars, not bikes).

This - I don't recall the average speeds on Connecticut Avenue but in other DDOT traffic studies I've read the average speeds on major mixed use corridors is surprisingly low - usually in the range of 10-12 miles per hour.

Sure there are brief open stretches where you can hit or even exceed the speed limit but most of the time you are sitting at a traffic light in a queue of cars so the only benefit to gunning it in the open stretches I guess is you have more time to check your phone sitting at a light.

Slowing down cars can actually improve traffic and it definitely reduces accidents and improves air quality if it reduces queuing and again it has no impact on the carrying capacity of a road - that is solely determined by the thru put at intersections which as has been stated hundreds of times now in this thread will be improved along Connecticut Avenue by the addition of turn lanes which will prevent a single turning car from narrowing the road from 2 lanes to 1 which commonly happens now.

There is actually a great example of this on Connecticut Avenue just across the line in MD. Since Chevy Chase MD added the two speed cameras on SB Connecticut Ave about 10 years ago magically everyone now drives the speed limit between Bradley and Chevy Chase Circle and guess what happened - traffic is now slowed and spread out as it approaches the circle rather than arriving in a high speed knot of cars and that enables cars to smoothly merge and negotiate the circle rather than everyone slamming on the brakes when they get there because they were going 40 MPH and there is a back-up because everyone arrived together - and guess what - there are rarely any back-ups SB at the circle anymore while they used to be persistent.

This is a horrible example. Chevy Chase, MD is a high functioning local government that collects a large percentage of those photo tickets. DC, on the other hand, currently has over 3,000,000 billion unpaid tickets totaling almost $2 billion. This is another reason the bike lane plan is fatally flawed. Without actual enforcement it will be traffic Armageddon.

This has nothing to do with level of functioning of the local government and everything to do with the fact that if a Maryland jurisdiction issues a Maryland driver a photo ticket, they have to pay it or risk consequences to their license, whereas if D.C. does the same, they don't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tyranny of the Minority (2020-2023) RIP.

You had a god run. The adults are finally back in charge in 2024. Drive, bus, walk, or Metro. Those are your choices.

Anonymous rando on DCUM on a Friday night, deciding which modes of transportation people should get to use.

Love these entitled white guys who are like, I don’t want to walk or ride the subway or take the bus or drive. You have to spend billions of dollars building me my own separate transportation system because I just really like riding my bicycle. Because a city with one quarter of its kids living in poverty doesn’t have anything better to spend its money on.

Hey jerk, paint and a little concrete isn't billions of dollars. All that asphalt and signaling is. The bike infrastructure costs next to freaking nothing compared to the subsidized car infrastructure.

Not billions of course. But if some touch up paint on the mayor’s “BLM plaza” will cost $300K, what do you think bike lanes with the barriers and infrastructure changes nearly the length of Connecticut will cost? That would certainly pay for some needed cops and reading teachers

Look at the budget. The city routinely spends a quarter billion dollars each year on bike infrastructure. They’ve been spending at this rate for 15 years.

I don't see how that's possible when Bowser's budget proposal last year proposed spending $6 million per year on 10 miles per year of protected bike lanes, over the course of six years: https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/04/01/dc-transportation-budget/

Either the city hasn't actually spent $250 million per year on bike infrastructure, or there are actually many, many more miles of protected bike lanes than any of us is aware of.

The city's budget is a public document. You can just look it up. Here's a *small* sampling of what you'd find:

$36 million for bike lanes
$15 million for Capital Bikeshare
$800,000 for electric bike rebates
$56.4 million for Vision Zero
$39.1 million for bike and pedestrian safety
$18.5 million for signs
$32 million for intersections for intersections with safety concerns
$52 million Long Bridge bicycle connection

Remember all this money is being spent on a tiny number of people. It would be cheaper for the taxpayer if the government bought every cyclist in the city a Porsche.

If the city spent money on poor people like it spends it on cyclists, there would be no poverty in D.C.

It is amazing how much money the city spends on bicyclists. $185 million for bike trails? Are they made of gold?

The city spent $4 million building a place at union station for cyclists to tie their bikes up.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Transit surveys show biking is becoming less popular in DC. The government is spending more and more money on fewer and fewer people.

Which, you know, is kind of weird, because year by year, I see more people biking in DC. Well, who am I going to trust, some anonymous rando on DCUM or my lying eyes?

Neither! You could just look at the data. It's not that hard. The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments puts out an annual transit report. TL;DR: Every form of transportation is becoming less popular, except driving, which is way up. It also says cyclists are exactly who you'd think: white, young, upper income and (because of that) they live close to wear they work. Drivers are disproportionately Black and Hispanic.

This isn't in and of itself a reason to oppose bike lanes, though. And actually, people who live near to where they work are a good universe to target with policies that might get them not to drive, because then they're not adding to congestion on the roads (if they're in a protected bike lane, they are not interfering with car trips by people driving from farther away) and it may not be a significantly longer commute to bike rather than drive. Obviously, the main users of bike lanes are not going to be people coming from 15 or 20 miles away, it's going to be people who live and work relatively near where they're biking.

Basically you're saying we should spend billions of dollars building up an entirely separate transportation system for white cyclists who are rich enough to live in the most desirable parts of the city, and if that makes car traffic a whole lot worse for predominantly black and brown drivers who don't live within such easy distance of their jobs and other places they need to go, then I guess you'd just say that's too bad. Seems kind of racist, doesn't it?

Except that I was saying it would NOT make traffic worse, because it would remove those white people from the car lanes. The Connecticut Avenue plan won't make traffic worse, because it doesn't remove car driving lanes, it only removes parking.

(If it were up to me, I'd say anyone who's healthy enough to bike and lives less than 5 miles from their white-collar office should not be allowed to drive to work, but it isn't up to me.)

Bike lanes make car traffic worse -- a lot of worse. Isn't that the point? The city is trying to make driving so miserable that people will switch to bikes. Of course, there is zero evidence that is happening. Transit data shows driving is becoming more popular, and the number of people on bikes is shrinking.

That is not the point, and bike lanes do not make car traffic worse if you're not removing a lane of car traffic. The Connecticut Avenue plan isn't removing any car traffic and, in fact, it's adding turn lanes. No one thinks people will switch from driving to biking just because traffic is bad. They want people who live close enough to work to bike to feel safe biking.

There will be four travel lanes. One of them on each side also will be used by buses that will have to stop to let off and pick up passengers on "bus islands." No doubt they will also be blocked by delivery trucks and and others. The turn lanes will likely just encourage slow Connecticut Avenue traffic to divert into side streets. The plan is poorly thought through.

Have you ever driven north/south on any of the side streets off Connecticut? On any of them, does it seem likely you could conceivably go faster than you can on Connecticut? MAYBE Reno, but definitely not any of the others. There are four-way stops all over the place, speed humps on some, etc. There's no way significant traffic is diverting to side streets.

Department of Wishful Thinking here. Of course people will go around. They're not going to just sit there in traffic. Waze will come up with all kinds of alternative routes.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Transit surveys show biking is becoming less popular in DC. The government is spending more and more money on fewer and fewer people.

Which, you know, is kind of weird, because year by year, I see more people biking in DC. Well, who am I going to trust, some anonymous rando on DCUM or my lying eyes?

Neither! You could just look at the data. It's not that hard. The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments puts out an annual transit report. TL;DR: Every form of transportation is becoming less popular, except driving, which is way up. It also says cyclists are exactly who you'd think: white, young, upper income and (because of that) they live close to wear they work. Drivers are disproportionately Black and Hispanic.

This isn't in and of itself a reason to oppose bike lanes, though. And actually, people who live near to where they work are a good universe to target with policies that might get them not to drive, because then they're not adding to congestion on the roads (if they're in a protected bike lane, they are not interfering with car trips by people driving from farther away) and it may not be a significantly longer commute to bike rather than drive. Obviously, the main users of bike lanes are not going to be people coming from 15 or 20 miles away, it's going to be people who live and work relatively near where they're biking.

Basically you're saying we should spend billions of dollars building up an entirely separate transportation system for white cyclists who are rich enough to live in the most desirable parts of the city, and if that makes car traffic a whole lot worse for predominantly black and brown drivers who don't live within such easy distance of their jobs and other places they need to go, then I guess you'd just say that's too bad. Seems kind of racist, doesn't it?

Except that I was saying it would NOT make traffic worse, because it would remove those white people from the car lanes. The Connecticut Avenue plan won't make traffic worse, because it doesn't remove car driving lanes, it only removes parking.

(If it were up to me, I'd say anyone who's healthy enough to bike and lives less than 5 miles from their white-collar office should not be allowed to drive to work, but it isn't up to me.)

Bike lanes make car traffic worse -- a lot of worse. Isn't that the point? The city is trying to make driving so miserable that people will switch to bikes. Of course, there is zero evidence that is happening. Transit data shows driving is becoming more popular, and the number of people on bikes is shrinking.

That is not the point, and bike lanes do not make car traffic worse if you're not removing a lane of car traffic. The Connecticut Avenue plan isn't removing any car traffic and, in fact, it's adding turn lanes. No one thinks people will switch from driving to biking just because traffic is bad. They want people who live close enough to work to bike to feel safe biking.

There will be four travel lanes. One of them on each side also will be used by buses that will have to stop to let off and pick up passengers on "bus islands." No doubt they will also be blocked by delivery trucks and and others. The turn lanes will likely just encourage slow Connecticut Avenue traffic to divert into side streets. The plan is poorly thought through.

Have you ever driven north/south on any of the side streets off Connecticut? On any of them, does it seem likely you could conceivably go faster than you can on Connecticut? MAYBE Reno, but definitely not any of the others. There are four-way stops all over the place, speed humps on some, etc. There's no way significant traffic is diverting to side streets.

Department of Wishful Thinking here. Of course people will go around. They're not going to just sit there in traffic. Waze will come up with all kinds of alternative routes.

Waze already does. That isn't new and it won't change.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Transit surveys show biking is becoming less popular in DC. The government is spending more and more money on fewer and fewer people.

Which, you know, is kind of weird, because year by year, I see more people biking in DC. Well, who am I going to trust, some anonymous rando on DCUM or my lying eyes?

Neither! You could just look at the data. It's not that hard. The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments puts out an annual transit report. TL;DR: Every form of transportation is becoming less popular, except driving, which is way up. It also says cyclists are exactly who you'd think: white, young, upper income and (because of that) they live close to wear they work. Drivers are disproportionately Black and Hispanic.

This isn't in and of itself a reason to oppose bike lanes, though. And actually, people who live near to where they work are a good universe to target with policies that might get them not to drive, because then they're not adding to congestion on the roads (if they're in a protected bike lane, they are not interfering with car trips by people driving from farther away) and it may not be a significantly longer commute to bike rather than drive. Obviously, the main users of bike lanes are not going to be people coming from 15 or 20 miles away, it's going to be people who live and work relatively near where they're biking.

Basically you're saying we should spend billions of dollars building up an entirely separate transportation system for white cyclists who are rich enough to live in the most desirable parts of the city, and if that makes car traffic a whole lot worse for predominantly black and brown drivers who don't live within such easy distance of their jobs and other places they need to go, then I guess you'd just say that's too bad. Seems kind of racist, doesn't it?

It’s not a coincidence that the biggest advocates of bike lanes on the city council represent lily white neighborhoods and the biggest critics of bike lanes come from wards 7 and 8

Vince Grey supports bike lanes. The majority of Ward 8 residents want more bike infrastructure despite their councilmember.

This debate shouldn’t be about pro bike lanes or anti bike lanes. People may support bike lanes in many places but location and context matters. Constraining Northwest Washington’s major arterial road and diverting traffic into lesser capacity streets is simply not smart transportation planning.

The police have said the bike lanes will lead to MORE accidents. Which is completely obvious to just about everyone except the bike bros.

The police union assertion is factually incorrect, as has already been explained a billion times previously on this and the many other DCUM threads started and maintained by the small number of people whose weird hobby is hating on the Connecticut Avenue plan anonymously online.

Look, in the middle of the current crime wave that shows no signs of receding you have to listen to the rank and file police. Any project that could potentially increase response time is irresponsible and dangerous. The mayor finally understands this.

Even when they're wrong!

Or, you know, maybe we shouldn't listen to them when they're wrong.

So the stated purpose of the bike lanes is to slow down cars. But this will have no impact on the police, fire, and EMS vehicles? This all sounds very magical.

That's what's been stated: That bike lanes will make Connecticut Avenue "safer" by slowing down the speed of vehicle traffic substantially.

One of the goals of the redesign is to change the "design speed" to more closely match the posted speed (25). Right now you have people driving the design speed+ and others going "merely" 30ish, leading to lots of aggressive lane changes and passing. This is what creates danger, the variability in speed and the "racing to the next stop light" mentality.

By reducing variability in speed, you increase safety, and paradoxically increase throughput of a road by reducing average speed. This should make it easier for emergency vehicles to proceed, as fewer intersections should be blocked (by cars, not bikes).

This - I don't recall the average speeds on Connecticut Avenue but in other DDOT traffic studies I've read the average speeds on major mixed use corridors is surprisingly low - usually in the range of 10-12 miles per hour.

Sure there are brief open stretches where you can hit or even exceed the speed limit but most of the time you are sitting at a traffic light in a queue of cars so the only benefit to gunning it in the open stretches I guess is you have more time to check your phone sitting at a light.

Slowing down cars can actually improve traffic and it definitely reduces accidents and improves air quality if it reduces queuing and again it has no impact on the carrying capacity of a road - that is solely determined by the thru put at intersections which as has been stated hundreds of times now in this thread will be improved along Connecticut Avenue by the addition of turn lanes which will prevent a single turning car from narrowing the road from 2 lanes to 1 which commonly happens now.

There is actually a great example of this on Connecticut Avenue just across the line in MD. Since Chevy Chase MD added the two speed cameras on SB Connecticut Ave about 10 years ago magically everyone now drives the speed limit between Bradley and Chevy Chase Circle and guess what happened - traffic is now slowed and spread out as it approaches the circle rather than arriving in a high speed knot of cars and that enables cars to smoothly merge and negotiate the circle rather than everyone slamming on the brakes when they get there because they were going 40 MPH and there is a back-up because everyone arrived together - and guess what - there are rarely any back-ups SB at the circle anymore while they used to be persistent.

This is a horrible example. Chevy Chase, MD is a high functioning local government that collects a large percentage of those photo tickets. DC, on the other hand, currently has over 3,000,000 billion unpaid tickets totaling almost $2 billion. This is another reason the bike lane plan is fatally flawed. Without actual enforcement it will be traffic Armageddon.

This has nothing to do with level of functioning of the local government and everything to do with the fact that if a Maryland jurisdiction issues a Maryland driver a photo ticket, they have to pay it or risk consequences to their license, whereas if D.C. does the same, they don't.

Step 1. Install license plate reader on DC side of Chevy Chase Circle to detect cars with overdue tickets.

Step 2. Station MPD units 100 yard south on Connecticut Ave.

Step 3. Initiate traffic stop into WMATA bus turnaround.

Step 4. Dolla dolla bills y’all!

That’s what a functional government would do.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tyranny of the Minority (2020-2023) RIP.

You had a god run. The adults are finally back in charge in 2024. Drive, bus, walk, or Metro. Those are your choices.

Anonymous rando on DCUM on a Friday night, deciding which modes of transportation people should get to use.

Love these entitled white guys who are like, I don’t want to walk or ride the subway or take the bus or drive. You have to spend billions of dollars building me my own separate transportation system because I just really like riding my bicycle. Because a city with one quarter of its kids living in poverty doesn’t have anything better to spend its money on.

Hey jerk, paint and a little concrete isn't billions of dollars. All that asphalt and signaling is. The bike infrastructure costs next to freaking nothing compared to the subsidized car infrastructure.

Not billions of course. But if some touch up paint on the mayor’s “BLM plaza” will cost $300K, what do you think bike lanes with the barriers and infrastructure changes nearly the length of Connecticut will cost? That would certainly pay for some needed cops and reading teachers

Look at the budget. The city routinely spends a quarter billion dollars each year on bike infrastructure. They’ve been spending at this rate for 15 years.

I don't see how that's possible when Bowser's budget proposal last year proposed spending $6 million per year on 10 miles per year of protected bike lanes, over the course of six years: https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/04/01/dc-transportation-budget/

Either the city hasn't actually spent $250 million per year on bike infrastructure, or there are actually many, many more miles of protected bike lanes than any of us is aware of.

The city's budget is a public document. You can just look it up. Here's a *small* sampling of what you'd find:

$36 million for bike lanes
$15 million for Capital Bikeshare
$800,000 for electric bike rebates
$56.4 million for Vision Zero
$39.1 million for bike and pedestrian safety
$18.5 million for signs
$32 million for intersections for intersections with safety concerns
$52 million Long Bridge bicycle connection

Remember all this money is being spent on a tiny number of people. It would be cheaper for the taxpayer if the government bought every cyclist in the city a Porsche.

If the city spent money on poor people like it spends it on cyclists, there would be no poverty in D.C.

It is amazing how much money the city spends on bicyclists. $185 million for bike trails? Are they made of gold?

The city spent $4 million building a place at union station for cyclists to tie their bikes up.

And it was stupid to let the lease on that space expire and waste a one-time capital expense.

DDOT spends $600 million on a year on repaving DC roads and 80% of the cars on our roads are driven by suburbanites.

DDOT spends less than 5% of its annual budget on bike and pedestrian infrastructure, most of which is for one time capital expenses, unlike paving which is an on-going never ending expense.

Oh and most of the people walking and biking in DC are actually tax-paying DC residents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tyranny of the Minority (2020-2023) RIP.

You had a god run. The adults are finally back in charge in 2024. Drive, bus, walk, or Metro. Those are your choices.

Anonymous rando on DCUM on a Friday night, deciding which modes of transportation people should get to use.

Love these entitled white guys who are like, I don’t want to walk or ride the subway or take the bus or drive. You have to spend billions of dollars building me my own separate transportation system because I just really like riding my bicycle. Because a city with one quarter of its kids living in poverty doesn’t have anything better to spend its money on.

Hey jerk, paint and a little concrete isn't billions of dollars. All that asphalt and signaling is. The bike infrastructure costs next to freaking nothing compared to the subsidized car infrastructure.

Not billions of course. But if some touch up paint on the mayor’s “BLM plaza” will cost $300K, what do you think bike lanes with the barriers and infrastructure changes nearly the length of Connecticut will cost? That would certainly pay for some needed cops and reading teachers

Look at the budget. The city routinely spends a quarter billion dollars each year on bike infrastructure. They’ve been spending at this rate for 15 years.

I don't see how that's possible when Bowser's budget proposal last year proposed spending $6 million per year on 10 miles per year of protected bike lanes, over the course of six years: https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/04/01/dc-transportation-budget/

Either the city hasn't actually spent $250 million per year on bike infrastructure, or there are actually many, many more miles of protected bike lanes than any of us is aware of.

The city's budget is a public document. You can just look it up. Here's a *small* sampling of what you'd find:

$36 million for bike lanes
$15 million for Capital Bikeshare
$800,000 for electric bike rebates
$56.4 million for Vision Zero
$39.1 million for bike and pedestrian safety
$18.5 million for signs
$32 million for intersections for intersections with safety concerns
$52 million Long Bridge bicycle connection

Remember all this money is being spent on a tiny number of people. It would be cheaper for the taxpayer if the government bought every cyclist in the city a Porsche.

If the city spent money on poor people like it spends it on cyclists, there would be no poverty in D.C.

It is amazing how much money the city spends on bicyclists. $185 million for bike trails? Are they made of gold?

The city spent $4 million building a place at union station for cyclists to tie their bikes up.

And DC spends $20 million+ every year just so people have a place to put their trash cans (alleys).

[Anonymous]

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Transit surveys show biking is becoming less popular in DC. The government is spending more and more money on fewer and fewer people.

Which, you know, is kind of weird, because year by year, I see more people biking in DC. Well, who am I going to trust, some anonymous rando on DCUM or my lying eyes?

Neither! You could just look at the data. It's not that hard. The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments puts out an annual transit report. TL;DR: Every form of transportation is becoming less popular, except driving, which is way up. It also says cyclists are exactly who you'd think: white, young, upper income and (because of that) they live close to wear they work. Drivers are disproportionately Black and Hispanic.

This isn't in and of itself a reason to oppose bike lanes, though. And actually, people who live near to where they work are a good universe to target with policies that might get them not to drive, because then they're not adding to congestion on the roads (if they're in a protected bike lane, they are not interfering with car trips by people driving from farther away) and it may not be a significantly longer commute to bike rather than drive. Obviously, the main users of bike lanes are not going to be people coming from 15 or 20 miles away, it's going to be people who live and work relatively near where they're biking.

Basically you're saying we should spend billions of dollars building up an entirely separate transportation system for white cyclists who are rich enough to live in the most desirable parts of the city, and if that makes car traffic a whole lot worse for predominantly black and brown drivers who don't live within such easy distance of their jobs and other places they need to go, then I guess you'd just say that's too bad. Seems kind of racist, doesn't it?

It’s not a coincidence that the biggest advocates of bike lanes on the city council represent lily white neighborhoods and the biggest critics of bike lanes come from wards 7 and 8

Vince Grey supports bike lanes. The majority of Ward 8 residents want more bike infrastructure despite their councilmember.

This debate shouldn’t be about pro bike lanes or anti bike lanes. People may support bike lanes in many places but location and context matters. Constraining Northwest Washington’s major arterial road and diverting traffic into lesser capacity streets is simply not smart transportation planning.

The police have said the bike lanes will lead to MORE accidents. Which is completely obvious to just about everyone except the bike bros.

The police union assertion is factually incorrect, as has already been explained a billion times previously on this and the many other DCUM threads started and maintained by the small number of people whose weird hobby is hating on the Connecticut Avenue plan anonymously online.

Look, in the middle of the current crime wave that shows no signs of receding you have to listen to the rank and file police. Any project that could potentially increase response time is irresponsible and dangerous. The mayor finally understands this.

Even when they're wrong!

Or, you know, maybe we shouldn't listen to them when they're wrong.

So the stated purpose of the bike lanes is to slow down cars. But this will have no impact on the police, fire, and EMS vehicles? This all sounds very magical.

That's what's been stated: That bike lanes will make Connecticut Avenue "safer" by slowing down the speed of vehicle traffic substantially.

One of the goals of the redesign is to change the "design speed" to more closely match the posted speed (25). Right now you have people driving the design speed+ and others going "merely" 30ish, leading to lots of aggressive lane changes and passing. This is what creates danger, the variability in speed and the "racing to the next stop light" mentality.

By reducing variability in speed, you increase safety, and paradoxically increase throughput of a road by reducing average speed. This should make it easier for emergency vehicles to proceed, as fewer intersections should be blocked (by cars, not bikes).

This - I don't recall the average speeds on Connecticut Avenue but in other DDOT traffic studies I've read the average speeds on major mixed use corridors is surprisingly low - usually in the range of 10-12 miles per hour.

Sure there are brief open stretches where you can hit or even exceed the speed limit but most of the time you are sitting at a traffic light in a queue of cars so the only benefit to gunning it in the open stretches I guess is you have more time to check your phone sitting at a light.

Slowing down cars can actually improve traffic and it definitely reduces accidents and improves air quality if it reduces queuing and again it has no impact on the carrying capacity of a road - that is solely determined by the thru put at intersections which as has been stated hundreds of times now in this thread will be improved along Connecticut Avenue by the addition of turn lanes which will prevent a single turning car from narrowing the road from 2 lanes to 1 which commonly happens now.

There is actually a great example of this on Connecticut Avenue just across the line in MD. Since Chevy Chase MD added the two speed cameras on SB Connecticut Ave about 10 years ago magically everyone now drives the speed limit between Bradley and Chevy Chase Circle and guess what happened - traffic is now slowed and spread out as it approaches the circle rather than arriving in a high speed knot of cars and that enables cars to smoothly merge and negotiate the circle rather than everyone slamming on the brakes when they get there because they were going 40 MPH and there is a back-up because everyone arrived together - and guess what - there are rarely any back-ups SB at the circle anymore while they used to be persistent.

This is a horrible example. Chevy Chase, MD is a high functioning local government that collects a large percentage of those photo tickets. DC, on the other hand, currently has over 3,000,000 billion unpaid tickets totaling almost $2 billion. This is another reason the bike lane plan is fatally flawed. Without actual enforcement it will be traffic Armageddon.

This has nothing to do with level of functioning of the local government and everything to do with the fact that if a Maryland jurisdiction issues a Maryland driver a photo ticket, they have to pay it or risk consequences to their license, whereas if D.C. does the same, they don't.

Because of the dumbass Council (non-functioning) and Bowser (non-functioning) failing to get reciprocity from MD and VA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Transit surveys show biking is becoming less popular in DC. The government is spending more and more money on fewer and fewer people.

Which, you know, is kind of weird, because year by year, I see more people biking in DC. Well, who am I going to trust, some anonymous rando on DCUM or my lying eyes?

Neither! You could just look at the data. It's not that hard. The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments puts out an annual transit report. TL;DR: Every form of transportation is becoming less popular, except driving, which is way up. It also says cyclists are exactly who you'd think: white, young, upper income and (because of that) they live close to wear they work. Drivers are disproportionately Black and Hispanic.

This isn't in and of itself a reason to oppose bike lanes, though. And actually, people who live near to where they work are a good universe to target with policies that might get them not to drive, because then they're not adding to congestion on the roads (if they're in a protected bike lane, they are not interfering with car trips by people driving from farther away) and it may not be a significantly longer commute to bike rather than drive. Obviously, the main users of bike lanes are not going to be people coming from 15 or 20 miles away, it's going to be people who live and work relatively near where they're biking.

Basically you're saying we should spend billions of dollars building up an entirely separate transportation system for white cyclists who are rich enough to live in the most desirable parts of the city, and if that makes car traffic a whole lot worse for predominantly black and brown drivers who don't live within such easy distance of their jobs and other places they need to go, then I guess you'd just say that's too bad. Seems kind of racist, doesn't it?

It’s not a coincidence that the biggest advocates of bike lanes on the city council represent lily white neighborhoods and the biggest critics of bike lanes come from wards 7 and 8

Vince Grey supports bike lanes. The majority of Ward 8 residents want more bike infrastructure despite their councilmember.

This debate shouldn’t be about pro bike lanes or anti bike lanes. People may support bike lanes in many places but location and context matters. Constraining Northwest Washington’s major arterial road and diverting traffic into lesser capacity streets is simply not smart transportation planning.

The police have said the bike lanes will lead to MORE accidents. Which is completely obvious to just about everyone except the bike bros.

The police union assertion is factually incorrect, as has already been explained a billion times previously on this and the many other DCUM threads started and maintained by the small number of people whose weird hobby is hating on the Connecticut Avenue plan anonymously online.

Look, in the middle of the current crime wave that shows no signs of receding you have to listen to the rank and file police. Any project that could potentially increase response time is irresponsible and dangerous. The mayor finally understands this.

Even when they're wrong!

Or, you know, maybe we shouldn't listen to them when they're wrong.

So the stated purpose of the bike lanes is to slow down cars. But this will have no impact on the police, fire, and EMS vehicles? This all sounds very magical.

That's what's been stated: That bike lanes will make Connecticut Avenue "safer" by slowing down the speed of vehicle traffic substantially.

One of the goals of the redesign is to change the "design speed" to more closely match the posted speed (25). Right now you have people driving the design speed+ and others going "merely" 30ish, leading to lots of aggressive lane changes and passing. This is what creates danger, the variability in speed and the "racing to the next stop light" mentality.

By reducing variability in speed, you increase safety, and paradoxically increase throughput of a road by reducing average speed. This should make it easier for emergency vehicles to proceed, as fewer intersections should be blocked (by cars, not bikes).

This - I don't recall the average speeds on Connecticut Avenue but in other DDOT traffic studies I've read the average speeds on major mixed use corridors is surprisingly low - usually in the range of 10-12 miles per hour.

Sure there are brief open stretches where you can hit or even exceed the speed limit but most of the time you are sitting at a traffic light in a queue of cars so the only benefit to gunning it in the open stretches I guess is you have more time to check your phone sitting at a light.

Slowing down cars can actually improve traffic and it definitely reduces accidents and improves air quality if it reduces queuing and again it has no impact on the carrying capacity of a road - that is solely determined by the thru put at intersections which as has been stated hundreds of times now in this thread will be improved along Connecticut Avenue by the addition of turn lanes which will prevent a single turning car from narrowing the road from 2 lanes to 1 which commonly happens now.

There is actually a great example of this on Connecticut Avenue just across the line in MD. Since Chevy Chase MD added the two speed cameras on SB Connecticut Ave about 10 years ago magically everyone now drives the speed limit between Bradley and Chevy Chase Circle and guess what happened - traffic is now slowed and spread out as it approaches the circle rather than arriving in a high speed knot of cars and that enables cars to smoothly merge and negotiate the circle rather than everyone slamming on the brakes when they get there because they were going 40 MPH and there is a back-up because everyone arrived together - and guess what - there are rarely any back-ups SB at the circle anymore while they used to be persistent.

This is a horrible example. Chevy Chase, MD is a high functioning local government that collects a large percentage of those photo tickets. DC, on the other hand, currently has over 3,000,000 billion unpaid tickets totaling almost $2 billion. This is another reason the bike lane plan is fatally flawed. Without actual enforcement it will be traffic Armageddon.

This has nothing to do with level of functioning of the local government and everything to do with the fact that if a Maryland jurisdiction issues a Maryland driver a photo ticket, they have to pay it or risk consequences to their license, whereas if D.C. does the same, they don't.

Step 1. Install license plate reader on DC side of Chevy Chase Circle to detect cars with overdue tickets.

Step 2. Station MPD units 100 yard south on Connecticut Ave.

Step 3. Initiate traffic stop into WMATA bus turnaround.

Step 4. Dolla dolla bills y’all!

That’s what a functional government would do.

You could do this, but there would be more bang for the buck if they did this at gateway roads into DC from PG County. A lot of criminals arrested in DC live in PG and so do scofflaws. If you're going to try to catch fish, try to do it in a barrel.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Transit surveys show biking is becoming less popular in DC. The government is spending more and more money on fewer and fewer people.

Which, you know, is kind of weird, because year by year, I see more people biking in DC. Well, who am I going to trust, some anonymous rando on DCUM or my lying eyes?

Neither! You could just look at the data. It's not that hard. The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments puts out an annual transit report. TL;DR: Every form of transportation is becoming less popular, except driving, which is way up. It also says cyclists are exactly who you'd think: white, young, upper income and (because of that) they live close to wear they work. Drivers are disproportionately Black and Hispanic.

This isn't in and of itself a reason to oppose bike lanes, though. And actually, people who live near to where they work are a good universe to target with policies that might get them not to drive, because then they're not adding to congestion on the roads (if they're in a protected bike lane, they are not interfering with car trips by people driving from farther away) and it may not be a significantly longer commute to bike rather than drive. Obviously, the main users of bike lanes are not going to be people coming from 15 or 20 miles away, it's going to be people who live and work relatively near where they're biking.

Basically you're saying we should spend billions of dollars building up an entirely separate transportation system for white cyclists who are rich enough to live in the most desirable parts of the city, and if that makes car traffic a whole lot worse for predominantly black and brown drivers who don't live within such easy distance of their jobs and other places they need to go, then I guess you'd just say that's too bad. Seems kind of racist, doesn't it?

It’s not a coincidence that the biggest advocates of bike lanes on the city council represent lily white neighborhoods and the biggest critics of bike lanes come from wards 7 and 8

Vince Grey supports bike lanes. The majority of Ward 8 residents want more bike infrastructure despite their councilmember.

This debate shouldn’t be about pro bike lanes or anti bike lanes. People may support bike lanes in many places but location and context matters. Constraining Northwest Washington’s major arterial road and diverting traffic into lesser capacity streets is simply not smart transportation planning.

The police have said the bike lanes will lead to MORE accidents. Which is completely obvious to just about everyone except the bike bros.

The police union assertion is factually incorrect, as has already been explained a billion times previously on this and the many other DCUM threads started and maintained by the small number of people whose weird hobby is hating on the Connecticut Avenue plan anonymously online.

Look, in the middle of the current crime wave that shows no signs of receding you have to listen to the rank and file police. Any project that could potentially increase response time is irresponsible and dangerous. The mayor finally understands this.

Even when they're wrong!

Or, you know, maybe we shouldn't listen to them when they're wrong.

So the stated purpose of the bike lanes is to slow down cars. But this will have no impact on the police, fire, and EMS vehicles? This all sounds very magical.

That's what's been stated: That bike lanes will make Connecticut Avenue "safer" by slowing down the speed of vehicle traffic substantially.

One of the goals of the redesign is to change the "design speed" to more closely match the posted speed (25). Right now you have people driving the design speed+ and others going "merely" 30ish, leading to lots of aggressive lane changes and passing. This is what creates danger, the variability in speed and the "racing to the next stop light" mentality.

By reducing variability in speed, you increase safety, and paradoxically increase throughput of a road by reducing average speed. This should make it easier for emergency vehicles to proceed, as fewer intersections should be blocked (by cars, not bikes).

This - I don't recall the average speeds on Connecticut Avenue but in other DDOT traffic studies I've read the average speeds on major mixed use corridors is surprisingly low - usually in the range of 10-12 miles per hour.

Sure there are brief open stretches where you can hit or even exceed the speed limit but most of the time you are sitting at a traffic light in a queue of cars so the only benefit to gunning it in the open stretches I guess is you have more time to check your phone sitting at a light.

Slowing down cars can actually improve traffic and it definitely reduces accidents and improves air quality if it reduces queuing and again it has no impact on the carrying capacity of a road - that is solely determined by the thru put at intersections which as has been stated hundreds of times now in this thread will be improved along Connecticut Avenue by the addition of turn lanes which will prevent a single turning car from narrowing the road from 2 lanes to 1 which commonly happens now.

There is actually a great example of this on Connecticut Avenue just across the line in MD. Since Chevy Chase MD added the two speed cameras on SB Connecticut Ave about 10 years ago magically everyone now drives the speed limit between Bradley and Chevy Chase Circle and guess what happened - traffic is now slowed and spread out as it approaches the circle rather than arriving in a high speed knot of cars and that enables cars to smoothly merge and negotiate the circle rather than everyone slamming on the brakes when they get there because they were going 40 MPH and there is a back-up because everyone arrived together - and guess what - there are rarely any back-ups SB at the circle anymore while they used to be persistent.

This is a horrible example. Chevy Chase, MD is a high functioning local government that collects a large percentage of those photo tickets. DC, on the other hand, currently has over 3,000,000 billion unpaid tickets totaling almost $2 billion. This is another reason the bike lane plan is fatally flawed. Without actual enforcement it will be traffic Armageddon.

It's also a horrible example because navigating Chevy Chase Circle has gotten worse not better. There are now frequent backups entering Connecticut from both sides that clog up the circle.

Also a horrible example because on the stretch of Connecticut in MD there are no high rise residential buildings or commercial areas that require constant deliveries, ride share drop off, mail, fire/EMS. It’s all country clubs with parking lots and large house with delivery access from side street. Connecticut Ave in DC is a totally different animal.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Tyranny of the Minority (2020-2023) RIP.

You had a god run. The adults are finally back in charge in 2024. Drive, bus, walk, or Metro. Those are your choices.

Anonymous rando on DCUM on a Friday night, deciding which modes of transportation people should get to use.

Love these entitled white guys who are like, I don’t want to walk or ride the subway or take the bus or drive. You have to spend billions of dollars building me my own separate transportation system because I just really like riding my bicycle. Because a city with one quarter of its kids living in poverty doesn’t have anything better to spend its money on.

Hey jerk, paint and a little concrete isn't billions of dollars. All that asphalt and signaling is. The bike infrastructure costs next to freaking nothing compared to the subsidized car infrastructure.

Not billions of course. But if some touch up paint on the mayor’s “BLM plaza” will cost $300K, what do you think bike lanes with the barriers and infrastructure changes nearly the length of Connecticut will cost? That would certainly pay for some needed cops and reading teachers

Look at the budget. The city routinely spends a quarter billion dollars each year on bike infrastructure. They’ve been spending at this rate for 15 years.

I don't see how that's possible when Bowser's budget proposal last year proposed spending $6 million per year on 10 miles per year of protected bike lanes, over the course of six years: https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/04/01/dc-transportation-budget/

Either the city hasn't actually spent $250 million per year on bike infrastructure, or there are actually many, many more miles of protected bike lanes than any of us is aware of.

The city's budget is a public document. You can just look it up. Here's a *small* sampling of what you'd find:

$36 million for bike lanes
$15 million for Capital Bikeshare
$800,000 for electric bike rebates
$56.4 million for Vision Zero
$39.1 million for bike and pedestrian safety
$18.5 million for signs
$32 million for intersections for intersections with safety concerns
$52 million Long Bridge bicycle connection

Remember all this money is being spent on a tiny number of people. It would be cheaper for the taxpayer if the government bought every cyclist in the city a Porsche.

If the city spent money on poor people like it spends it on cyclists, there would be no poverty in D.C.

It is amazing how much money the city spends on bicyclists. $185 million for bike trails? Are they made of gold?

The city spent $4 million building a place at union station for cyclists to tie their bikes up.

And DC spends $20 million+ every year just so people have a place to put their trash cans (alleys).

Because alleys exist that justifies spending $4 million building something for people to lock their bikes to? You can’t build just build a post for, like, $500?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Transit surveys show biking is becoming less popular in DC. The government is spending more and more money on fewer and fewer people.

Which, you know, is kind of weird, because year by year, I see more people biking in DC. Well, who am I going to trust, some anonymous rando on DCUM or my lying eyes?

Neither! You could just look at the data. It's not that hard. The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments puts out an annual transit report. TL;DR: Every form of transportation is becoming less popular, except driving, which is way up. It also says cyclists are exactly who you'd think: white, young, upper income and (because of that) they live close to wear they work. Drivers are disproportionately Black and Hispanic.

This isn't in and of itself a reason to oppose bike lanes, though. And actually, people who live near to where they work are a good universe to target with policies that might get them not to drive, because then they're not adding to congestion on the roads (if they're in a protected bike lane, they are not interfering with car trips by people driving from farther away) and it may not be a significantly longer commute to bike rather than drive. Obviously, the main users of bike lanes are not going to be people coming from 15 or 20 miles away, it's going to be people who live and work relatively near where they're biking.

Basically you're saying we should spend billions of dollars building up an entirely separate transportation system for white cyclists who are rich enough to live in the most desirable parts of the city, and if that makes car traffic a whole lot worse for predominantly black and brown drivers who don't live within such easy distance of their jobs and other places they need to go, then I guess you'd just say that's too bad. Seems kind of racist, doesn't it?

Except that I was saying it would NOT make traffic worse, because it would remove those white people from the car lanes. The Connecticut Avenue plan won't make traffic worse, because it doesn't remove car driving lanes, it only removes parking.

(If it were up to me, I'd say anyone who's healthy enough to bike and lives less than 5 miles from their white-collar office should not be allowed to drive to work, but it isn't up to me.)

Bike lanes make car traffic worse -- a lot of worse. Isn't that the point? The city is trying to make driving so miserable that people will switch to bikes. Of course, there is zero evidence that is happening. Transit data shows driving is becoming more popular, and the number of people on bikes is shrinking.

That is not the point, and bike lanes do not make car traffic worse if you're not removing a lane of car traffic. The Connecticut Avenue plan isn't removing any car traffic and, in fact, it's adding turn lanes. No one thinks people will switch from driving to biking just because traffic is bad. They want people who live close enough to work to bike to feel safe biking.

There will be four travel lanes. One of them on each side also will be used by buses that will have to stop to let off and pick up passengers on "bus islands." No doubt they will also be blocked by delivery trucks and and others. The turn lanes will likely just encourage slow Connecticut Avenue traffic to divert into side streets. The plan is poorly thought through.

Have you ever driven north/south on any of the side streets off Connecticut? On any of them, does it seem likely you could conceivably go faster than you can on Connecticut? MAYBE Reno, but definitely not any of the others. There are four-way stops all over the place, speed humps on some, etc. There's no way significant traffic is diverting to side streets.

It's not a straight line on the side streets but it is faster and much more pleasant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tyranny of the Minority (2020-2023) RIP.

You had a god run. The adults are finally back in charge in 2024. Drive, bus, walk, or Metro. Those are your choices.

Anonymous rando on DCUM on a Friday night, deciding which modes of transportation people should get to use.

Love these entitled white guys who are like, I don’t want to walk or ride the subway or take the bus or drive. You have to spend billions of dollars building me my own separate transportation system because I just really like riding my bicycle. Because a city with one quarter of its kids living in poverty doesn’t have anything better to spend its money on.

Hey jerk, paint and a little concrete isn't billions of dollars. All that asphalt and signaling is. The bike infrastructure costs next to freaking nothing compared to the subsidized car infrastructure.

Not billions of course. But if some touch up paint on the mayor’s “BLM plaza” will cost $300K, what do you think bike lanes with the barriers and infrastructure changes nearly the length of Connecticut will cost? That would certainly pay for some needed cops and reading teachers

Look at the budget. The city routinely spends a quarter billion dollars each year on bike infrastructure. They’ve been spending at this rate for 15 years.

I don't see how that's possible when Bowser's budget proposal last year proposed spending $6 million per year on 10 miles per year of protected bike lanes, over the course of six years: https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/04/01/dc-transportation-budget/

Either the city hasn't actually spent $250 million per year on bike infrastructure, or there are actually many, many more miles of protected bike lanes than any of us is aware of.

The city's budget is a public document. You can just look it up. Here's a *small* sampling of what you'd find:

$36 million for bike lanes
$15 million for Capital Bikeshare
$800,000 for electric bike rebates
$56.4 million for Vision Zero
$39.1 million for bike and pedestrian safety
$18.5 million for signs
$32 million for intersections for intersections with safety concerns
$52 million Long Bridge bicycle connection

Remember all this money is being spent on a tiny number of people. It would be cheaper for the taxpayer if the government bought every cyclist in the city a Porsche.

If the city spent money on poor people like it spends it on cyclists, there would be no poverty in D.C.

It is amazing how much money the city spends on bicyclists. $185 million for bike trails? Are they made of gold?

The city spent $4 million building a place at union station for cyclists to tie their bikes up.

And DC spends $20 million+ every year just so people have a place to put their trash cans (alleys).

Obvious solution is to turn the alleys into bike lanes. We can save $185 million that way and people get a dedicated space to strut their spandex.