Options for opposing Connecticut Avenue changes?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How many active regular bicycle commuters are there in DC? How many people bike, rather than drive, for 1 mile or greater transportation?

A few hundred. The number is tiny.

I'd give them a thousand maybe. But would like to hear from them. Without knowing that number the validity of the 3,000-10,000 range cannot be established

The point is, if you make it safe and attractive, more people will do it.

Also, as housing prices and the cost of living continue to escalate, people ditch the expense associated with owning and operating a car. As a result they need other safe ways of getting around. Or is your contention that only the wealthy should be living, working and shopping along Connecticut Avenue?

Cars = wealth

What an inane trope. A used card costs less than moped or the fancy bikes the bicyclists making these arguments ride.

With increasing housing expenses working people have to live further away from population centers. A bicycle, even the multi-thousand dollar ones commuters use, is not substitutable if one has to get five or more miles away. The utility of bikes as a mode of transport is limited to 1-3 miles in practice. If it's less then the vast majority of people walk. If it's more then the vast majority of people need to drive or take mass transit. I'm not even going to get into cargo or passenger space. If anything bikes are a luxury.

There is no way most bike commuters use “multi-thousand dollar” bikes, You’re conflating, deliberately or not, recreational riders with fancy bikes and commuters. The bikes I see commuting to work and in the bike cage at my office cost multi-hundreds of dollars. No one is taking high end carbon fiber racing bikes out on city streets every day.

Replying to myself to add that of course 5 miles is not the limit of a bike commute. I ride 6 miles each way to and from work. It’s faster than Metro going to work and about 5 minutes slower going home, because it’s uphill.

Good for you. I walk 2 miles to the metro and hike 10 miles most weekends. That does not mean that I pretend that either of those distances are mass market walkability distances.

The role of bicycles in transportation infrastructure is sold as a finishing complementary piece to mass transit and walkability. To fill in the transit gap between 1 and 3 miles that is currently served by buses, which are being reduced ironically. One of the big problems with this plan is that Connecticut, north of Van Ness, does not have a metro station. What's more 16th street doesnt have any at all. Focusing on bicycles, the luxury finishing piece, without addressing the glaring mass transit problem of 16th street is emblematic of the miplaced priorities of the DC Government regarding mass transit. Virginia is building the silver line. Maryland the purple line. DC is taking away roads to build a bike lane that even under the most optimistic use estimates will increase traffic. The worst part is that 16th/North Capitol is perfectly situated for a light rail system connecting the purple line from Silver Spring to Union Station. And yet we're talking about removing two lanes of roadway and adding bike lanes to Connecticut.

Don't think anyone who supports the bike lanes would be upset if you made one lane for cars and one lane for buses only while you were redesigning the street. The people who get up in arms about any changes to the existing uses of these streets -- i.e., heavily dominated by private cars -- are also the same people who objected to the bus lanes on 16th.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How many active regular bicycle commuters are there in DC? How many people bike, rather than drive, for 1 mile or greater transportation?

A few hundred. The number is tiny.

I'd give them a thousand maybe. But would like to hear from them. Without knowing that number the validity of the 3,000-10,000 range cannot be established

The point is, if you make it safe and attractive, more people will do it.

Also, as housing prices and the cost of living continue to escalate, people ditch the expense associated with owning and operating a car. As a result they need other safe ways of getting around. Or is your contention that only the wealthy should be living, working and shopping along Connecticut Avenue?

Cars = wealth

What an inane trope. A used card costs less than moped or the fancy bikes the bicyclists making these arguments ride.

With increasing housing expenses working people have to live further away from population centers. A bicycle, even the multi-thousand dollar ones commuters use, is not substitutable if one has to get five or more miles away. The utility of bikes as a mode of transport is limited to 1-3 miles in practice. If it's less then the vast majority of people walk. If it's more then the vast majority of people need to drive or take mass transit. I'm not even going to get into cargo or passenger space. If anything bikes are a luxury.

Please direct us to those cheap used cars. I was dumb enough to sink a few thousand dollars into what I thought was a well-loved high-mileage used car and in a few months I've already shelled out more than what I paid for it on various critical maintenance items. Everyone else I know who has similarly thought they got a good deal on a used vehicle has ended up getting routinely reamed by repairs.

For the true necessities of getting to work, school, and after-school activities, we use bus / metro and bikes almost exclusively. Doing 15 miles on the bike in an evening at least once or twice a week is standard. The car is actually for the luxuries - the weekend getaways and what not. I've learned the hard way that renting periodically is a much more economical option than owning.

But, please, go on to tell me about the life you think everyone else is living.

I am sorry you bought a lemon. My decade plus car has almost 100,000 miles on it and is going strong. I have saved more money by having a car than I would have without it. The ability to buy in bulk and have access to cheaper shopping options has more than made up the annual maintenance cost. But I commend you for discovering your own way to save. I make yoghurt. It's far cheaper, tastier and healthier than what you would buy in the store but it does take time and effort. I also walk a lot, far more than the regular person, which is even cheaper and healthier than biking. I have friends that raise chickens and let me tell you a fresh egg is sublime and the manure does wonders for the tomatoes. That doesn't mean I think that those things are anything but a niche idiosyncracy or that public policy should try and force people into building chicken coops. People aren't going to bicycle 5+ miles each way for regular errands. You yourself say you use mass transit for that. I am all for bike lanes where they don't cause harm and where they are complementary to metro and walking.

The Connecticut Avenue plan does not do that. It causes massive harm by significantly increasing traffic and will only be used by a self-selecting few that already have alternate routes to everywhere they would concievably want to go. For instance, the absolute best case scenario is Woodley Park. An area that has direct easy
access to Rock Creek Parkway, the oldest, most popular and best maintained bike path in the city. If it was only an add on that wastes government resources it wouldn't be that big a deal. But it's not, the plan dramatically downsizes an already popular and congested road to make room for a luxury vanity project that is neither necessary nor increases aggregate transportation access. It will substantially increase traffic and most ironically make bicycling less easy in the parts of town where it is popular. The reason why people don't bike on Connecticut is because they bike throughout the side streets. More traffic on the side streets hurts bicyclists most of all.

This is clearly not the case. When I first started bike commuting years ago, I used to ride on the Rock Creek bike path from Mt. Pleasant to Georgetown -- which actually may be the most convenient, direct way to get from point A to point B in my case. But the path isn't lit at all, which meant that by late fall, it was dark enough to require a light with a separate battery pack. The pavement was cracked all over the place from tree roots breaking it. And God forbid you'd want to ride on it after any leaves fell and/or it had rained or snowed, because it was totally impassable then. I switched to riding on city streets because at least then you knew you could see where you were going and wouldn't crash into a pothole filled with ice or covered with leaves.

This was about 15 years ago, and I no longer live or work in those neighborhoods. So it's possible that bike path is in much better shape now. But considering it's maintained by the National Park Service, which doesn't usually even bother mowing the grass in the parks it owns, I sort of doubt it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How many active regular bicycle commuters are there in DC? How many people bike, rather than drive, for 1 mile or greater transportation?

A few hundred. The number is tiny.

I'd give them a thousand maybe. But would like to hear from them. Without knowing that number the validity of the 3,000-10,000 range cannot be established

The point is, if you make it safe and attractive, more people will do it.

Also, as housing prices and the cost of living continue to escalate, people ditch the expense associated with owning and operating a car. As a result they need other safe ways of getting around. Or is your contention that only the wealthy should be living, working and shopping along Connecticut Avenue?

Cars = wealth

What an inane trope. A used card costs less than moped or the fancy bikes the bicyclists making these arguments ride.

With increasing housing expenses working people have to live further away from population centers. A bicycle, even the multi-thousand dollar ones commuters use, is not substitutable if one has to get five or more miles away. The utility of bikes as a mode of transport is limited to 1-3 miles in practice. If it's less then the vast majority of people walk. If it's more then the vast majority of people need to drive or take mass transit. I'm not even going to get into cargo or passenger space. If anything bikes are a luxury.

There is no way most bike commuters use “multi-thousand dollar” bikes, You’re conflating, deliberately or not, recreational riders with fancy bikes and commuters. The bikes I see commuting to work and in the bike cage at my office cost multi-hundreds of dollars. No one is taking high end carbon fiber racing bikes out on city streets every day.

Replying to myself to add that of course 5 miles is not the limit of a bike commute. I ride 6 miles each way to and from work. It’s faster than Metro going to work and about 5 minutes slower going home, because it’s uphill.

Good for you. I walk 2 miles to the metro and hike 10 miles most weekends. That does not mean that I pretend that either of those distances are mass market walkability distances.

The role of bicycles in transportation infrastructure is sold as a finishing complementary piece to mass transit and walkability. To fill in the transit gap between 1 and 3 miles that is currently served by buses, which are being reduced ironically. One of the big problems with this plan is that Connecticut, north of Van Ness, does not have a metro station. What's more 16th street doesnt have any at all. Focusing on bicycles, the luxury finishing piece, without addressing the glaring mass transit problem of 16th street is emblematic of the miplaced priorities of the DC Government regarding mass transit. Virginia is building the silver line. Maryland the purple line. DC is taking away roads to build a bike lane that even under the most optimistic use estimates will increase traffic. The worst part is that 16th/North Capitol is perfectly situated for a light rail system connecting the purple line from Silver Spring to Union Station. And yet we're talking about removing two lanes of roadway and adding bike lanes to Connecticut.

This is contrary to fact. DC just put in a dedicated bus lane on 16th St NW. DC is making huge efforts for all kinds of transit projects right now - bike lanes are just one piece of it. However bike lanes DO get an extremely disproportionate share of public attention because they really trigger people in an irrational way. Just because you are not paying attention to everything else DC is doing doesn't mean it's not happening.

But sure - I welcome your advocacy to extend the metro within DC. Have at it! Just don't pretend it's some kind of trump card to defeat traffic projects you have an irrational dislike of.

Please tell us. What are these mass transit projects? Where are the mass transit gaps being filled by mass transit projects? Local bus service has been cut and the plan is to decrease stops even further.

Wait, do you mean besides the 16th Street bus lanes that the poster you're replying to specifically mentioned? https://dcist.com/story/21/03/17/16th-street-bus-lanes-dc-construction/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
What a long, boring thread.

Folks, it's time to move on with the times. Bike lanes are here to stay. Get ready for more bikes and more walking and less driving.

DC has had protected bike lanes for 15 years. How many people use them? Maybe 300? You would have thought that if biking was going to catch on, it would have caught on by now. Instead, it remains the city's least popular mode of transportation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
What a long, boring thread.

Folks, it's time to move on with the times. Bike lanes are here to stay. Get ready for more bikes and more walking and less driving.

DC has had protected bike lanes for 15 years. How many people use them? Maybe 300? You would have thought that if biking was going to catch on, it would have caught on by now. Instead, it remains the city's least popular mode of transportation.

~5% of DC commutes by bike to work. Less than 5% of DC infrastructure land is dedicated to bikes. By that standard we should also convert more streets/avenues to bus-only. Off the top of my head, on Georgia ave, more trips are done by either walking or bus than cars. I think the same holds on 18th st. I don't have the data on CT ave, but no matter how you spin it, too much space if for cars. Now I agree there can be a convo if we should get ride of parking for bigger sidewalks or bike lanes. But car lanes for driving and parking seem excessive.

[Anonymous]

Let us bring some data to this (using 2018, since DC traffic data is mostly from then)

15th street has a cycle track. It gets 1.5K users per day at R street. It get 6K cars. There is one car lane equivalent for bikes and 5 car lane equivalents for cars.

So there is too much land dedicated for cars.

Now I dont have pedestrian data there, but I'm sure it will go even further against car use.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
What a long, boring thread.

Folks, it's time to move on with the times. Bike lanes are here to stay. Get ready for more bikes and more walking and less driving.

DC has had protected bike lanes for 15 years. How many people use them? Maybe 300? You would have thought that if biking was going to catch on, it would have caught on by now. Instead, it remains the city's least popular mode of transportation.

~5% of DC commutes by bike to work. Less than 5% of DC infrastructure land is dedicated to bikes. By that standard we should also convert more streets/avenues to bus-only. Off the top of my head, on Georgia ave, more trips are done by either walking or bus than cars. I think the same holds on 18th st. I don't have the data on CT ave, but no matter how you spin it, too much space if for cars. Now I agree there can be a convo if we should get ride of parking for bigger sidewalks or bike lanes. But car lanes for driving and parking seem excessive.

That five percent number is bogus. There's so few cyclists the city and the Census Bureau throws them in a miscellaneous category. In 2020, Census said 6.7 percent commute by taxi, motorcycle, bike or some other form of transportation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:used car index up 44%

Because people avoided mass transit during the pandemic and realized that a bicycle was not a substitute for trips over 3 miles. If bicycling did not increase during the pandemic when everything was in its favor why would it increase when its over?

Once can go 3 miles in like 8 minutes at a slow pace on a bike. I mean, You really have to get closer to 6-8 miles on a bike before an average person would begin to tire.

3 miles in 8 minutes at a slow pace. Really? Let's do the math. That would equal an average speed of 22.5 mph. The average speed of the winner of the Tour de France is 25mph. The average speed of regular bicyclists is 15 mph. The average speed of beginners and seniors is 10 mph. The default speed limit in DC is 20 mph. The newly lowered speed limit on Connecticut is 25 mph.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Let us bring some data to this (using 2018, since DC traffic data is mostly from then)

15th street has a cycle track. It gets 1.5K users per day at R street. It get 6K cars. There is one car lane equivalent for bikes and 5 car lane equivalents for cars.

So there is too much land dedicated for cars.

Now I dont have pedestrian data there, but I'm sure it will go even further against car use.

15th street is a great location for a bike route since it is inbetween the important roads of 14th and 16th Streets, in a densely populated part of town and located below the higher elevation areas. Connecticut between Calvert and Chevy Chase Circle is not 15th Street. If the apparent sucess of the 15th St cycle track wants to be replicated the clear and obvious parallel is Reno Road.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
What a long, boring thread.

Folks, it's time to move on with the times. Bike lanes are here to stay. Get ready for more bikes and more walking and less driving.

DC has had protected bike lanes for 15 years. How many people use them? Maybe 300? You would have thought that if biking was going to catch on, it would have caught on by now. Instead, it remains the city's least popular mode of transportation.

~5% of DC commutes by bike to work. Less than 5% of DC infrastructure land is dedicated to bikes. By that standard we should also convert more streets/avenues to bus-only. Off the top of my head, on Georgia ave, more trips are done by either walking or bus than cars. I think the same holds on 18th st. I don't have the data on CT ave, but no matter how you spin it, too much space if for cars. Now I agree there can be a convo if we should get ride of parking for bigger sidewalks or bike lanes. But car lanes for driving and parking seem excessive.

That five percent number is bogus. There's so few cyclists the city and the Census Bureau throws them in a miscellaneous category. In 2020, Census said 6.7 percent commute by taxi, motorcycle, bike or some other form of transportation.

It is only bogus because you don't like it. Personally, I think it is an undercount, so I agree that it is bogus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
What a long, boring thread.

Folks, it's time to move on with the times. Bike lanes are here to stay. Get ready for more bikes and more walking and less driving.

DC has had protected bike lanes for 15 years. How many people use them? Maybe 300? You would have thought that if biking was going to catch on, it would have caught on by now. Instead, it remains the city's least popular mode of transportation.

~5% of DC commutes by bike to work. Less than 5% of DC infrastructure land is dedicated to bikes. By that standard we should also convert more streets/avenues to bus-only. Off the top of my head, on Georgia ave, more trips are done by either walking or bus than cars. I think the same holds on 18th st. I don't have the data on CT ave, but no matter how you spin it, too much space if for cars. Now I agree there can be a convo if we should get ride of parking for bigger sidewalks or bike lanes. But car lanes for driving and parking seem excessive.

That five percent number is bogus. There's so few cyclists the city and the Census Bureau throws them in a miscellaneous category. In 2020, Census said 6.7 percent commute by taxi, motorcycle, bike or some other form of transportation.

It is only bogus because you don't like it. Personally, I think it is an undercount, so I agree that it is bogus.

*or* you could just look at the actual numbers the government reports

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
What a long, boring thread.

Folks, it's time to move on with the times. Bike lanes are here to stay. Get ready for more bikes and more walking and less driving.

DC has had protected bike lanes for 15 years. How many people use them? Maybe 300? You would have thought that if biking was going to catch on, it would have caught on by now. Instead, it remains the city's least popular mode of transportation.

~5% of DC commutes by bike to work. Less than 5% of DC infrastructure land is dedicated to bikes. By that standard we should also convert more streets/avenues to bus-only. Off the top of my head, on Georgia ave, more trips are done by either walking or bus than cars. I think the same holds on 18th st. I don't have the data on CT ave, but no matter how you spin it, too much space if for cars. Now I agree there can be a convo if we should get ride of parking for bigger sidewalks or bike lanes. But car lanes for driving and parking seem excessive.

That five percent number is bogus. There's so few cyclists the city and the Census Bureau throws them in a miscellaneous category. In 2020, Census said 6.7 percent commute by taxi, motorcycle, bike or some other form of transportation.

So now you are showing everyone that you just ignore posts that prove you to be wrong. If you bothered to go on the Census Bureau website and look up the relevant data, you would see a separate ‘Bicycle’ category as clear as day. Someone upthread posted the link for you and you continue to ignore it. The estimate of commuters who bike was 5% as of 2017 IIRC. It fell a bit (within the sampling error) to 2019. We don’t have the post-pandemic data yet, but the proportion of non-WFH commuters who bike or use other personal mobility devices has likely increased since 2019.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
What a long, boring thread.

Folks, it's time to move on with the times. Bike lanes are here to stay. Get ready for more bikes and more walking and less driving.

DC has had protected bike lanes for 15 years. How many people use them? Maybe 300? You would have thought that if biking was going to catch on, it would have caught on by now. Instead, it remains the city's least popular mode of transportation.

~5% of DC commutes by bike to work. Less than 5% of DC infrastructure land is dedicated to bikes. By that standard we should also convert more streets/avenues to bus-only. Off the top of my head, on Georgia ave, more trips are done by either walking or bus than cars. I think the same holds on 18th st. I don't have the data on CT ave, but no matter how you spin it, too much space if for cars. Now I agree there can be a convo if we should get ride of parking for bigger sidewalks or bike lanes. But car lanes for driving and parking seem excessive.

That five percent number is bogus. There's so few cyclists the city and the Census Bureau throws them in a miscellaneous category. In 2020, Census said 6.7 percent commute by taxi, motorcycle, bike or some other form of transportation.

https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?q=Washington%20city,%20District%20of%20Columbia&t=Commuting&tid=ACSST1Y2021.S0801

You have no shame. None at all. Just like every other silly NIMBY who makes statistics up out of thin air, gaslights others trying to engage in meaningful discourse, and ignores every single piece of evidence that undermine their position.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
What a long, boring thread.

Folks, it's time to move on with the times. Bike lanes are here to stay. Get ready for more bikes and more walking and less driving.

DC has had protected bike lanes for 15 years. How many people use them? Maybe 300? You would have thought that if biking was going to catch on, it would have caught on by now. Instead, it remains the city's least popular mode of transportation.

~5% of DC commutes by bike to work. Less than 5% of DC infrastructure land is dedicated to bikes. By that standard we should also convert more streets/avenues to bus-only. Off the top of my head, on Georgia ave, more trips are done by either walking or bus than cars. I think the same holds on 18th st. I don't have the data on CT ave, but no matter how you spin it, too much space if for cars. Now I agree there can be a convo if we should get ride of parking for bigger sidewalks or bike lanes. But car lanes for driving and parking seem excessive.

That five percent number is bogus. There's so few cyclists the city and the Census Bureau throws them in a miscellaneous category. In 2020, Census said 6.7 percent commute by taxi, motorcycle, bike or some other form of transportation.

https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?q=Washington%20city,%20District%20of%20Columbia&t=Commuting&tid=ACSST1Y2021.S0801

You have no shame. None at all. Just like every other silly NIMBY who makes statistics up out of thin air, gaslights others trying to engage in meaningful discourse, and ignores every single piece of evidence that undermine their position.

PP here. Thanks. I hadn't seen this. (I havent read every page of this thread).

These numbers seem bad for bicyclists though. Only two percent of commuters ride bikes? That's terrible, and it's also a major decline from previous years.

That's probably partly because so many people were working from home. But you'd think 2021 would have been a banner year for bicyclists, what with people avoiding the subway in droves, a lot fewer cars on the street (making it safer to ride bikes) and the DC government stepping up its campaign to harass drivers and relentlessly promote biking.

And yet, still, barely anyone rode bikes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
What a long, boring thread.

Folks, it's time to move on with the times. Bike lanes are here to stay. Get ready for more bikes and more walking and less driving.

DC has had protected bike lanes for 15 years. How many people use them? Maybe 300? You would have thought that if biking was going to catch on, it would have caught on by now. Instead, it remains the city's least popular mode of transportation.

~5% of DC commutes by bike to work. Less than 5% of DC infrastructure land is dedicated to bikes. By that standard we should also convert more streets/avenues to bus-only. Off the top of my head, on Georgia ave, more trips are done by either walking or bus than cars. I think the same holds on 18th st. I don't have the data on CT ave, but no matter how you spin it, too much space if for cars. Now I agree there can be a convo if we should get ride of parking for bigger sidewalks or bike lanes. But car lanes for driving and parking seem excessive.

That five percent number is bogus. There's so few cyclists the city and the Census Bureau throws them in a miscellaneous category. In 2020, Census said 6.7 percent commute by taxi, motorcycle, bike or some other form of transportation.

https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?q=Washington%20city,%20District%20of%20Columbia&t=Commuting&tid=ACSST1Y2021.S0801

You have no shame. None at all. Just like every other silly NIMBY who makes statistics up out of thin air, gaslights others trying to engage in meaningful discourse, and ignores every single piece of evidence that undermine their position.

This is some Grade A projection