Bike lanes violate disability access laws, new lawsuit says

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bicyclists in DC are SO MEAN. The most road rage Ive seen in DC is from cyclists to drivers (I am a pedestrian--no wheels for me)

You definitely don't live where I live

As I'm sitting here reading this, two or three cars (hard to tell) are laying on their horns for longer than 10 seconds at each other right outside my apartment on Conn Ave. Go figure. But its gotta be a damn cyclist with an airhorn right. Couldn't possibly be a car. All car drivers are every so respectable and safe. They never speed or run lights or blow through stop signs or cheat crosswalks with pedestrians in them or pass to close to cyclists in their lane. No never. It's why our rate of traffic deaths in this country is so low, almost none. We just have the best drivers.

Oh wait, we aren't freaking a Scandanavian country where that little fable is true and our accident rates suck and drivers kill like 35,000-45,000 people a year.

Our rate of traffic deaths in this area is indeed low.

There will only be more horns outside your apartment when congestion is increased.

11.10 deaths per 100,000 in the US.
1.76 in Norway.
2.57 in Sweden.
4.58 in Canada.

Yep, seems real low there.

We're not talking about the entire country. We're talking solely about the Washington Metropolitan Area and specifically upper NW DC.

Is that stretch of 17th considered Upper NW?

What is the rate there? Smart ass

No matter how much you deflect. How much you lie. How much you distract? The truth still remains. There is not actually an epidemic of traffic deaths in the region.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bicyclists in DC are SO MEAN. The most road rage Ive seen in DC is from cyclists to drivers (I am a pedestrian--no wheels for me)

You definitely don't live where I live

As I'm sitting here reading this, two or three cars (hard to tell) are laying on their horns for longer than 10 seconds at each other right outside my apartment on Conn Ave. Go figure. But its gotta be a damn cyclist with an airhorn right. Couldn't possibly be a car. All car drivers are every so respectable and safe. They never speed or run lights or blow through stop signs or cheat crosswalks with pedestrians in them or pass to close to cyclists in their lane. No never. It's why our rate of traffic deaths in this country is so low, almost none. We just have the best drivers.

Oh wait, we aren't freaking a Scandanavian country where that little fable is true and our accident rates suck and drivers kill like 35,000-45,000 people a year.

Our rate of traffic deaths in this area is indeed low.

There will only be more horns outside your apartment when congestion is increased.

11.10 deaths per 100,000 in the US.
1.76 in Norway.
2.57 in Sweden.
4.58 in Canada.

Yep, seems real low there.

We're not talking about the entire country. We're talking solely about the Washington Metropolitan Area and specifically upper NW DC.

Is that stretch of 17th considered Upper NW?

What is the rate there? Smart ass

No matter how much you deflect. How much you lie. How much you distract? The truth still remains. There is not actually an epidemic of traffic deaths in the region.

Traffic fatalities are down 32 percent this year. You're far more likely to be murdered.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bicyclists in DC are SO MEAN. The most road rage Ive seen in DC is from cyclists to drivers (I am a pedestrian--no wheels for me)

You definitely don't live where I live

As I'm sitting here reading this, two or three cars (hard to tell) are laying on their horns for longer than 10 seconds at each other right outside my apartment on Conn Ave. Go figure. But its gotta be a damn cyclist with an airhorn right. Couldn't possibly be a car. All car drivers are every so respectable and safe. They never speed or run lights or blow through stop signs or cheat crosswalks with pedestrians in them or pass to close to cyclists in their lane. No never. It's why our rate of traffic deaths in this country is so low, almost none. We just have the best drivers.

Oh wait, we aren't freaking a Scandanavian country where that little fable is true and our accident rates suck and drivers kill like 35,000-45,000 people a year.

Our rate of traffic deaths in this area is indeed low.

There will only be more horns outside your apartment when congestion is increased.

11.10 deaths per 100,000 in the US.
1.76 in Norway.
2.57 in Sweden.
4.58 in Canada.

Yep, seems real low there.

We're not talking about the entire country. We're talking solely about the Washington Metropolitan Area and specifically upper NW DC.

Is that stretch of 17th considered Upper NW?

What is the rate there? Smart ass

No matter how much you deflect. How much you lie. How much you distract? The truth still remains. There is not actually an epidemic of traffic deaths in the region.

Traffic fatalities are down 32 percent this year. You're far more likely to be murdered.

Not if you’re white and this is exactly the point.

[Anonymous]

With any luck, the lawsuit will be upheld and the city will be forced to remedy the situation by raising the bike lanes to the same level as the sidewalk (as on Virginia Ave SE and The Wharf). This will have the added benefit of preventing cars and other motorized vehicles from parking or driving in them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:With any luck, the lawsuit will be upheld and the city will be forced to remedy the situation by raising the bike lanes to the same level as the sidewalk (as on Virginia Ave SE and The Wharf). This will have the added benefit of preventing cars and other motorized vehicles from parking or driving in them.

If you bothered to respect disabled people enough to read the complaint or even an article about the lawsuit, you would learn that they contend that exiting into a bike lane is unsafe and that this the core ADA violation. Secondary to that I’d navigating the curb. Elevating the bike lanes would not cure the ADA violation. What would cure the violation is providing curb access to sidewalks for disabled people to disembark safely.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With any luck, the lawsuit will be upheld and the city will be forced to remedy the situation by raising the bike lanes to the same level as the sidewalk (as on Virginia Ave SE and The Wharf). This will have the added benefit of preventing cars and other motorized vehicles from parking or driving in them.

If you bothered to respect disabled people enough to read the complaint or even an article about the lawsuit, you would learn that they contend that exiting into a bike lane is unsafe and that this the core ADA violation. Secondary to that I’d navigating the curb. Elevating the bike lanes would not cure the ADA violation. What would cure the violation is providing curb access to sidewalks for disabled people to disembark safely.

So we can reserve a space on each block for disabled pickup/drop off. Right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With any luck, the lawsuit will be upheld and the city will be forced to remedy the situation by raising the bike lanes to the same level as the sidewalk (as on Virginia Ave SE and The Wharf). This will have the added benefit of preventing cars and other motorized vehicles from parking or driving in them.

If you bothered to respect disabled people enough to read the complaint or even an article about the lawsuit, you would learn that they contend that exiting into a bike lane is unsafe and that this the core ADA violation. Secondary to that I’d navigating the curb. Elevating the bike lanes would not cure the ADA violation. What would cure the violation is providing curb access to sidewalks for disabled people to disembark safely.

So we can reserve a space on each block for disabled pickup/drop off. Right?

Why don’t you ask disabled people. Better yet, DDOT should have asked disabled people before instituting these designs. The article in DCist was quite clear that disability groups have been trying to communicate their needs to the Mayors office and DDOT and were ignored, which is why they had to sue. It’s unfortunate that it has had to come to this for the district to take the rights of the disabled seriously.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:With any luck, the lawsuit will be upheld and the city will be forced to remedy the situation by raising the bike lanes to the same level as the sidewalk (as on Virginia Ave SE and The Wharf). This will have the added benefit of preventing cars and other motorized vehicles from parking or driving in them.

How will that solve the problem?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With any luck, the lawsuit will be upheld and the city will be forced to remedy the situation by raising the bike lanes to the same level as the sidewalk (as on Virginia Ave SE and The Wharf). This will have the added benefit of preventing cars and other motorized vehicles from parking or driving in them.

How will that solve the problem?

It would solve the problem of cars parking and driving in bike lanes very much. It would also provide parked / stopped vehicles with direct access to the curb. Set the bike lane back a few feet from the curb and add a sidewalk across the lane and it's as good as gold. Some other ideas here: https://www.ourstreetsmpls.org/ada_compliant_protected_bike_lanes. I'm not here to be an apologist for DDOT, who mess many things up, but the notion that bike lanes are generally incompatible with the ADA is just silly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With any luck, the lawsuit will be upheld and the city will be forced to remedy the situation by raising the bike lanes to the same level as the sidewalk (as on Virginia Ave SE and The Wharf). This will have the added benefit of preventing cars and other motorized vehicles from parking or driving in them.

If you bothered to respect disabled people enough to read the complaint or even an article about the lawsuit, you would learn that they contend that exiting into a bike lane is unsafe and that this the core ADA violation. Secondary to that I’d navigating the curb. Elevating the bike lanes would not cure the ADA violation. What would cure the violation is providing curb access to sidewalks for disabled people to disembark safely.

These designs work quite well: https://www.ourstreetsmpls.org/ada_compliant_protected_bike_lanes

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With any luck, the lawsuit will be upheld and the city will be forced to remedy the situation by raising the bike lanes to the same level as the sidewalk (as on Virginia Ave SE and The Wharf). This will have the added benefit of preventing cars and other motorized vehicles from parking or driving in them.

How will that solve the problem?

It would solve the problem of cars parking and driving in bike lanes very much. It would also provide parked / stopped vehicles with direct access to the curb. Set the bike lane back a few feet from the curb and add a sidewalk across the lane and it's as good as gold. Some other ideas here: https://www.ourstreetsmpls.org/ada_compliant_protected_bike_lanes. I'm not here to be an apologist for DDOT, who mess many things up, but the notion that bike lanes are generally incompatible with the ADA is just silly.

Are disabled people suing because cars are parked in “protected bike lanes”? It’s honestly pretty disturbing that you can be so self centered as to think that the “solution” is to improve your experience using bike lanes. Do you bother to listen to yourself?

Furthermore, the Plaintiffs are clear and say repeatedly that they DO NOT believe that bike lanes are incompatible with the needs of the disabled.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With any luck, the lawsuit will be upheld and the city will be forced to remedy the situation by raising the bike lanes to the same level as the sidewalk (as on Virginia Ave SE and The Wharf). This will have the added benefit of preventing cars and other motorized vehicles from parking or driving in them.

How will that solve the problem?

It would solve the problem of cars parking and driving in bike lanes very much. It would also provide parked / stopped vehicles with direct access to the curb. Set the bike lane back a few feet from the curb and add a sidewalk across the lane and it's as good as gold. Some other ideas here: https://www.ourstreetsmpls.org/ada_compliant_protected_bike_lanes. I'm not here to be an apologist for DDOT, who mess many things up, but the notion that bike lanes are generally incompatible with the ADA is just silly.

No one here has said that. The suit doesn't say that. The suit says that specific sections of bike lanes as currently constructed in DC aren't compatible with the ADA.

But the problem isn't cars parking and driving in bike lanes. The problem this thread is about is that cars can't get close to the curb and wheelchairs and ramps need to be set up in bike lanes. Raising the lane doesn't solve that at all.

That doesn't mean that there isn't some solution that includes raised lanes, but simply raising the existing lanes is not a solution to this problem.

I'll note that if I'm unloading my kid, and there's a bike lane between the parking lane and the sidewalk, I'd much rather move my van into the bike lane and extend the ramp from there (getting it to the curb), because my van is much easier for a cyclist to see and stop, whereas, it's easy to miss the end of the extended ramp, especially since it's going to still be extended while I walk my kid all the way down to the curb cut.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With any luck, the lawsuit will be upheld and the city will be forced to remedy the situation by raising the bike lanes to the same level as the sidewalk (as on Virginia Ave SE and The Wharf). This will have the added benefit of preventing cars and other motorized vehicles from parking or driving in them.

How will that solve the problem?

It would solve the problem of cars parking and driving in bike lanes very much. It would also provide parked / stopped vehicles with direct access to the curb. Set the bike lane back a few feet from the curb and add a sidewalk across the lane and it's as good as gold. Some other ideas here: https://www.ourstreetsmpls.org/ada_compliant_protected_bike_lanes. I'm not here to be an apologist for DDOT, who mess many things up, but the notion that bike lanes are generally incompatible with the ADA is just silly.

Are disabled people suing because cars are parked in “protected bike lanes”? It’s honestly pretty disturbing that you can be so self centered as to think that the “solution” is to improve your experience using bike lanes. Do you bother to listen to yourself?

Furthermore, the Plaintiffs are clear and say repeatedly that they DO NOT believe that bike lanes are incompatible with the needs of the disabled.

Leave it to cyclists to make everything about them. That’s sort of the problem and why this lawsuit happened in the first place.

[Anonymous]

My elderly father is disabled and cannot walk. He lives overseas, but i know getting him in and out of a car is diffcult and the transfer can be dangerous. We cannot ignore the plight of the disabled— all of us may one day face immobility or helping a loved one with immobility. This is truly short sighted and does harm.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bicyclists in DC are SO MEAN. The most road rage Ive seen in DC is from cyclists to drivers (I am a pedestrian--no wheels for me)

You definitely don't live where I live

As I'm sitting here reading this, two or three cars (hard to tell) are laying on their horns for longer than 10 seconds at each other right outside my apartment on Conn Ave. Go figure. But its gotta be a damn cyclist with an airhorn right. Couldn't possibly be a car. All car drivers are every so respectable and safe. They never speed or run lights or blow through stop signs or cheat crosswalks with pedestrians in them or pass to close to cyclists in their lane. No never. It's why our rate of traffic deaths in this country is so low, almost none. We just have the best drivers.

Oh wait, we aren't freaking a Scandanavian country where that little fable is true and our accident rates suck and drivers kill like 35,000-45,000 people a year.

Our rate of traffic deaths in this area is indeed low.

There will only be more horns outside your apartment when congestion is increased.

11.10 deaths per 100,000 in the US.
1.76 in Norway.
2.57 in Sweden.
4.58 in Canada.

Yep, seems real low there.

We're not talking about the entire country. We're talking solely about the Washington Metropolitan Area and specifically upper NW DC.

Is that stretch of 17th considered Upper NW?

What is the rate there? Smart ass

No matter how much you deflect. How much you lie. How much you distract? The truth still remains. There is not actually an epidemic of traffic deaths in the region.

Traffic fatalities are down 32 percent this year. You're far more likely to be murdered.

What does murder have to do with bike lanes, exactly?