Connecticut Ave bike lanes are back!

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:This was stupid on the part of DC. They should be making it harder to get into the city from the suburbs by car. Not easier. Increases the chances of people moving into the city and decreases the number of dangerous drivers.

Great idea! DC has not been the center of the DMV business community for decades. Your idea will have the opposite effect. It will encourage remote workers even more. If I am unable to drive into and park in DC for a lunch meeting or for dinner, I will not do so. There are plenty of entertainment options in the burbs.

It will also encourage businesses to further set up their offices outside of DC, which is exactly what the city doesn’t want. That’s the problem with the “let’s make driving harder” argument.

The smart play by the city is to make it easier to get downtown and make the downtown environment attractive enough to make people want to go and linger. Bike lanes on Connecticut may or may not fit that goal, but getting metro back to pre-pandemic functionality would be a big step in the right direction. I don't think its coincidental that the bike lane push came while metro was cratering.

Metro is actually better now than before the pandemic. The trains are ontime, plentiful and it is a pleasure to ride.

Except it’s filled with thugs and people openly smoking pot on the trains.

Right, and this is what's going to keep people driving as much as reliability and headways. Its also what's going to stop people from lingering in the city after dark. This is what the city, metro and business communities should be focused on.

You realize crime is down, right?

Believe it or not, people with a choice will avoid unpleasant situations that fall short of documented crime. For some people, it takes as little as foul language or offensive "music" blasting to tip them away from public transit. You can control the vibe in your car in a way you can't on transit. I say this as a transit supporter who has felt the vibe shift on metro over the years from "kid arrested for eating a french fry" to "Do as thou wilt."

Honestly, I wish they'd enforce the no eating rules. I've seen filthy cars with oozing food garbage left behind on seats and floors. Metro was once clean and pleasant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This was stupid on the part of DC. They should be making it harder to get into the city from the suburbs by car. Not easier. Increases the chances of people moving into the city and decreases the number of dangerous drivers.

Great idea! DC has not been the center of the DMV business community for decades. Your idea will have the opposite effect. It will encourage remote workers even more. If I am unable to drive into and park in DC for a lunch meeting or for dinner, I will not do so. There are plenty of entertainment options in the burbs.

It will also encourage businesses to further set up their offices outside of DC, which is exactly what the city doesn’t want. That’s the problem with the “let’s make driving harder” argument.

The smart play by the city is to make it easier to get downtown and make the downtown environment attractive enough to make people want to go and linger. Bike lanes on Connecticut may or may not fit that goal, but getting metro back to pre-pandemic functionality would be a big step in the right direction. I don't think its coincidental that the bike lane push came while metro was cratering.

Metro is actually better now than before the pandemic. The trains are ontime, plentiful and it is a pleasure to ride.

Except it’s filled with thugs and people openly smoking pot on the trains.

Right, and this is what's going to keep people driving as much as reliability and headways. Its also what's going to stop people from lingering in the city after dark. This is what the city, metro and business communities should be focused on.

You realize crime is down, right?

Barely. And it's still way up from its pre-2020 levels.

[Anonymous]

Agreed that building another Ward 3 north-south bike trail makes the most sense on Wisconsin Ave or Reno Rd., not on Connecticut Ave.

[Anonymous]

Maybe we should change the name of this thread. Connecticut Avenue bike lanes are definitely not back after Monday's presentation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe we should change the name of this thread. Connecticut Avenue bike lanes are definitely not back after Monday's presentation.

Bike lane containment thread is a better name change.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Here's another fun tidbit directly from the hard data.

The prevalence of accidents is directly related to rush hour. In otherwords, not speed but congestion.

During rush hour, the likelihood of an accident is greater on Connecticut than Wisconsin. Outside of rush hour the liklihood was less. Although it should be noted that those numbers are not weighted for volume and Connecticut has higher volume. The most common accident involved left turns during rush hour.

That's pretty misleading. Wisconsin only leads Conn Ave in crashes that are both amongst cars alone and without injuries. Conn Ave typically has 1.5x to 2.5x more crashes involving bikes and pedestrians than Wisconsin. For crashes amongst just cars with injuries Conn Ave is typically between 1.1-1.5x worse than Wisc.

DP. Talk about “misleading”. You folks always include pedestrians with bikes in your stats when you know that you cannot make your case with bikes alone. It’s been pretty definitely proven over this thread and through the course of this whole public policy debacle that the cycling community doesn’t care about the safety of pedestrians.

I don't know who "you folks" is, but it is completely appropriate to talk about crashes involving non-motorists. That's what the police do, in fact.

Actually I also don't know who the "cycling community" is, but I know a lot of people who advocate for safe streets, and the people who advocate for safe streets for bicyclists are the exact same people who advocate for safe streets for pedestrians.

Do you ever stop lying. DDOT doesn’t believe and there is no data that backs up what you say. But you try your best to deceive people anyway. Why are you still even doing this? It’s kinda sad to be honest.

But I digress, here is an example of why you present bikes with pedestrians. The DDOT vision zero dashboard shows 4 cyclist crashes in the corridor in 2024. All four were minor injury crashes and none of them involved cars. So they were cyclists crashing themselves in what are essentially single vehicle accidents.

You're wrong. All of the crashes involved cars. If it were just someone falling off their bike, there wouldn't be a police crash report. In addition, the dashboard only shows injury crashes.

Wrong. The crash reports are captured because the injured called 911.

That doesn’t make the data comprehensive. I’ve been (slightly) injured in a bike crash, where a car hit me in a bike lane, and I didn’t call police, because it was raining and I didn’t want to wait around, and my only injury was an ache on my arm where the car hit me that I knew I didn’t need medical treatment for. It wasn’t on Connecticut, but it doesn’t show up in the stats for downtown, either.

It's also wrong. The data come from police crash reports. You don't get a police crash report just from calling 911.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I want dedicated bus lanes with buses that circulate every 10 minutes. Works for commuters, works for shoppers. Moves more people than bikes do and maybe more than cars, depending on ridership.

Cool, cool. That’s not what you’re going to get though.

So our choice is a horrible plan that increases congestion, increases accidents, diverts large amounts of traffic onto side streets and provides a bike lane that will be used by two dozen people or a horrible plan that increases congestion, increases accidents, diverts large amounts of traffic onto side streets and provides parking for one hundred people?

Forget that. Doing absolutely nothing is the way to go.

I don’t love either plan and think Connecticut should not be narrowed. But among the two choices, the better one seems to be the new plan which helps local businesses and people, especially less mobile citizens, who are more car dependent.

+1. This should be great news for homeowners in Petworth and other areas with existing bike infrastructure. Property values are about to soar given how much pent up demand it sounds like there is for bike lanes in this city.

Have you been to Petworth? No one uses the bike lanes, and housing prices have nearly doubled in the past five years or so.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I want dedicated bus lanes with buses that circulate every 10 minutes. Works for commuters, works for shoppers. Moves more people than bikes do and maybe more than cars, depending on ridership.

Cool, cool. That’s not what you’re going to get though.

So our choice is a horrible plan that increases congestion, increases accidents, diverts large amounts of traffic onto side streets and provides a bike lane that will be used by two dozen people or a horrible plan that increases congestion, increases accidents, diverts large amounts of traffic onto side streets and provides parking for one hundred people?

Forget that. Doing absolutely nothing is the way to go.

I don’t love either plan and think Connecticut should not be narrowed. But among the two choices, the better one seems to be the new plan which helps local businesses and people, especially less mobile citizens, who are more car dependent.

+1. This should be great news for homeowners in Petworth and other areas with existing bike infrastructure. Property values are about to soar given how much pent up demand it sounds like there is for bike lanes in this city.

Have you been to Petworth? No one uses the bike lanes, and housing prices have nearly doubled in the past five years or so.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I want dedicated bus lanes with buses that circulate every 10 minutes. Works for commuters, works for shoppers. Moves more people than bikes do and maybe more than cars, depending on ridership.

Cool, cool. That’s not what you’re going to get though.

So our choice is a horrible plan that increases congestion, increases accidents, diverts large amounts of traffic onto side streets and provides a bike lane that will be used by two dozen people or a horrible plan that increases congestion, increases accidents, diverts large amounts of traffic onto side streets and provides parking for one hundred people?

Forget that. Doing absolutely nothing is the way to go.

I don’t love either plan and think Connecticut should not be narrowed. But among the two choices, the better one seems to be the new plan which helps local businesses and people, especially less mobile citizens, who are more car dependent.

+1. This should be great news for homeowners in Petworth and other areas with existing bike infrastructure. Property values are about to soar given how much pent up demand it sounds like there is for bike lanes in this city.

Have you been to Petworth? No one uses the bike lanes, and housing prices have nearly doubled in the past five years or so.

Go plant yourself on any street on Petworth, any time of day. Sit there for an hour and count how many cyclists pass you by. You won't need two hands to count them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I want dedicated bus lanes with buses that circulate every 10 minutes. Works for commuters, works for shoppers. Moves more people than bikes do and maybe more than cars, depending on ridership.

Cool, cool. That’s not what you’re going to get though.

So our choice is a horrible plan that increases congestion, increases accidents, diverts large amounts of traffic onto side streets and provides a bike lane that will be used by two dozen people or a horrible plan that increases congestion, increases accidents, diverts large amounts of traffic onto side streets and provides parking for one hundred people?

Forget that. Doing absolutely nothing is the way to go.

I don’t love either plan and think Connecticut should not be narrowed. But among the two choices, the better one seems to be the new plan which helps local businesses and people, especially less mobile citizens, who are more car dependent.

+1. This should be great news for homeowners in Petworth and other areas with existing bike infrastructure. Property values are about to soar given how much pent up demand it sounds like there is for bike lanes in this city.

Have you been to Petworth? No one uses the bike lanes, and housing prices have nearly doubled in the past five years or so.

Go plant yourself on any street on Petworth, any time of day. Sit there for an hour and count how many cyclists pass you by. You won't need two hands to count them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Agreed that building another Ward 3 north-south bike trail makes the most sense on Wisconsin Ave or Reno Rd., not on Connecticut Ave.

Except Reno doesn't have any commerical activity and doesn't really connect anything. You end up at Mass Ave and then what?

Wisconsin has a huge hill in its narrowist part coming out of Georgetown and then obviously goes up to Western, but there aren't easy connections to downtown and the grade difference coming up Mass or Wisconsin to the Cathedral is not really an "easy ride" for most people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I want dedicated bus lanes with buses that circulate every 10 minutes. Works for commuters, works for shoppers. Moves more people than bikes do and maybe more than cars, depending on ridership.

Cool, cool. That’s not what you’re going to get though.

So our choice is a horrible plan that increases congestion, increases accidents, diverts large amounts of traffic onto side streets and provides a bike lane that will be used by two dozen people or a horrible plan that increases congestion, increases accidents, diverts large amounts of traffic onto side streets and provides parking for one hundred people?

Forget that. Doing absolutely nothing is the way to go.

I don’t love either plan and think Connecticut should not be narrowed. But among the two choices, the better one seems to be the new plan which helps local businesses and people, especially less mobile citizens, who are more car dependent.

+1. This should be great news for homeowners in Petworth and other areas with existing bike infrastructure. Property values are about to soar given how much pent up demand it sounds like there is for bike lanes in this city.

Have you been to Petworth? No one uses the bike lanes, and housing prices have nearly doubled in the past five years or so.

Go plant yourself on any street on Petworth, any time of day. Sit there for an hour and count how many cyclists pass you by. You won't need two hands to count them.

I'm biking to get where I'm going, not sitting around watching people. But according to you I don't exist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agreed that building another Ward 3 north-south bike trail makes the most sense on Wisconsin Ave or Reno Rd., not on Connecticut Ave.

Except Reno doesn't have any commerical activity and doesn't really connect anything. You end up at Mass Ave and then what?

Wisconsin has a huge hill in its narrowist part coming out of Georgetown and then obviously goes up to Western, but there aren't easy connections to downtown and the grade difference coming up Mass or Wisconsin to the Cathedral is not really an "easy ride" for most people.

I don't know, Reno connects fine for most purposes -- take a safe bike lane on Reno to the cross-street where the store you're going to intersects Connecticut, and then you're there. It's like two blocks from Connecticut. I'd take bike lanes on Reno over no bike lanes at all, which is what we're going to get now.

[Anonymous]

Agree -- Reno is equidistant between all the commercial activity on Connecticut AND Wisconsin. Makes more sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Agree -- Reno is equidistant between all the commercial activity on Connecticut AND Wisconsin. Makes more sense.

Why just close the avenues to cars and have them on Reno and then the peds, buses and bikes can have the avenues and the motorists can just take the side streets. Seems like a more equitable solution.

(and yes, this is sarcastic, but it shows how ridiculous the "reno or bust" position is)