D.C. needs to get a lot more car friendly

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most recent available Census ACS data (2019) shows the following stats on commuting by DC residents
127k drive alone
21k carpool or vanpool
133k take mass transit
51k walk
25k ride bikes, motorcycles, or take taxi
28k worked from home

Fewer should be driving alone, more should be taking mass transit and other methods.

As indicated by this data, it would not even be justifiable if these were combined bicycle, motorcycle and taxi lanes. But they are solely bike lanes,

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are studies showing that safe bike infrastructure encourages ridership. Transportation Research Board: Dill, Jennifer, and Carr, Theresa. 2003. Bicycle commuting and facilities in major US cities – if you
build them, commuters will use them – another look. Transportation Research Record. 116-123

DDOTDC has the actual data. Your studies are not relevant. There is no appreciable increase in bike lane utilization over time in DC.

September is the most active month for bicycling. The 15th Street Cycletrack is the post popular bike lane in the city and one of the only bike lanes in the city to justify its existence and its ridership has only increased by 2.5% per year from 2015 to 2019. Meanwhile, again, only looking at pre-pandemic, the 11 ST NW bike lane saw a 10% decrease in utilization from September 2017 to September 2019.

But the impact of the pandemic has been devastating. There was an average of only 38 cyclists per day using the 11 ST NW bike lane in January 2022. Utilization of the Met Branch trail has declined 75% over the past to years. Utilization of the 1st ST NW bike lane decreased 80% from September 2019 to 2020.

The only signs of improved utilization is not from conversion of streets to bike lanes but recreational trails. The Anacostia River Trail is showing excellent and growing utilization year over year for recreation purposes, with the highest utilization on weekends.

So the obvious answer for DC is to forget adding more bike lanes and to look for opportunities to add more trails for recreation. East Potomac Park would be a great example.

[Anonymous]

DC will always remain a car-centric city in a car-centric metropolitan area in a car-centric country. Usage of mass transit and other alternative forms of transportation may remain above average, but will never become the dominant way people get around.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think we should do the opposite. Discourage car use. I am serious.

100% agree
-- bike commuter

As if everyone can ride a bike, lol.

Most people can

Sure, most people can ride a bike, but that doesn't mean a bike is the preferred means of transportation for most people, especially those with families who often have to make multi-stop errands.

Most of the bicycle people don’t have young kids, know people with disabilities, etc. They don’t envisage that there are people that have very different transportation needs than they do.

People in the Netherlands bike with young kids all the time.

flat cities are much easier

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most recent available Census ACS data (2019) shows the following stats on commuting by DC residents
127k drive alone
21k carpool or vanpool
133k take mass transit
51k walk
25k ride bikes, motorcycles, or take taxi
28k worked from home

Fewer should be driving alone, more should be taking mass transit and other methods.

As indicated by this data, it would not even be justifiable if these were combined bicycle, motorcycle and taxi lanes. But they are solely bike lanes,

What is the cost, as you see it, of the bike lanes? In most cases, they don't take up a full lane of traffic; they maybe take out some parking, but not always. Most of the bike lanes I ride in when I commute to my office aren't set off with any physical barrier at all, so if cars really need to be in them, they can be (and often are). Significant portions of the city still have "sharrows"-style bike lanes, which are just regular street lanes indicating that you should try not to hit the cyclists in them.

But the whole point of installing more bike infrastructure is to make more people feel safe biking. So arguing against it because not enough people are using it yet is sort of circular. Also, it's far worse to have bikes riding on the sidewalk than it is to have them riding in the street -- much more dangerous to more people if they're mixing with pedestrians. Unless you want to argue that we should ban bikes in order to make it as easy as possible for cars to get around the city, bike lanes are the better option for any riders who aren't comfortable in the street.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most recent available Census ACS data (2019) shows the following stats on commuting by DC residents
127k drive alone
21k carpool or vanpool
133k take mass transit
51k walk
25k ride bikes, motorcycles, or take taxi
28k worked from home

Fewer should be driving alone, more should be taking mass transit and other methods.

As indicated by this data, it would not even be justifiable if these were combined bicycle, motorcycle and taxi lanes. But they are solely bike lanes,

Wait, you don't think devoting any space at all to something used by 25,000 people would be justified? How's that? By your standard, should we also rip out the sidewalks, since only 51,000 people walk to work, which is clearly not as many as drive, carpool, or mass transit?

[Anonymous]

The ridership is not coming back if the workers WFH. The federal government always had a large % of employees taking Metro, especially since they subsidize it. Those people are working from home now. Plus, since so many are not commuting, there is more parking and space on the roads, so others are now driving because it is more convenient. Once/if commuter traffic comes back, ridership will increase.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most recent available Census ACS data (2019) shows the following stats on commuting by DC residents
127k drive alone
21k carpool or vanpool
133k take mass transit
51k walk
25k ride bikes, motorcycles, or take taxi
28k worked from home

Fewer should be driving alone, more should be taking mass transit and other methods.

Talk about lying with statistics.

1. You can't focus on just D.C. residents because most drivers in the District live in Maryland and Virginia. Focusing solely on District residents is a really transparent way of undercounting the number of people who are driving.

2. Metro ridership is down 80 percent since the pandemic began. You should probably allocate most of those people to drivers.

3. What the hell is "drive alone"? So when I'm driving my kids somewhere or am with my spouse, I just don't count anywhere in the statistics?

4. Why the focus on commuting? I drive and most of them, it's not because I'm going to my job.

5. Why do these stats only add up to roughly half of D.C.'s population?

6. Allow me to break down that second to last category: 24,970 people in taxis, 200 people on bikes, 30 on motorcycles

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most recent available Census ACS data (2019) shows the following stats on commuting by DC residents
127k drive alone
21k carpool or vanpool
133k take mass transit
51k walk
25k ride bikes, motorcycles, or take taxi
28k worked from home

Fewer should be driving alone, more should be taking mass transit and other methods.

Talk about lying with statistics.

1. You can't focus on just D.C. residents because most drivers in the District live in Maryland and Virginia. Focusing solely on District residents is a really transparent way of undercounting the number of people who are driving.

2. Metro ridership is down 80 percent since the pandemic began. You should probably allocate most of those people to drivers.

3. What the hell is "drive alone"? So when I'm driving my kids somewhere or am with my spouse, I just don't count anywhere in the statistics?

4. Why the focus on commuting? I drive and most of them, it's not because I'm going to my job.

5. Why do these stats only add up to roughly half of D.C.'s population?

6. Allow me to break down that second to last category: 24,970 people in taxis, 200 people on bikes, 30 on motorcycles

Most days at my office, pre-pandemic, there were about 30 bikes parked in the cage in the garage, so either we represented a huge share of the total bike commuters, or your estimate is off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most recent available Census ACS data (2019) shows the following stats on commuting by DC residents
127k drive alone
21k carpool or vanpool
133k take mass transit
51k walk
25k ride bikes, motorcycles, or take taxi
28k worked from home

Fewer should be driving alone, more should be taking mass transit and other methods.

As indicated by this data, it would not even be justifiable if these were combined bicycle, motorcycle and taxi lanes. But they are solely bike lanes,

What is the cost, as you see it, of the bike lanes? In most cases, they don't take up a full lane of traffic; they maybe take out some parking, but not always. Most of the bike lanes I ride in when I commute to my office aren't set off with any physical barrier at all, so if cars really need to be in them, they can be (and often are). Significant portions of the city still have "sharrows"-style bike lanes, which are just regular street lanes indicating that you should try not to hit the cyclists in them.

But the whole point of installing more bike infrastructure is to make more people feel safe biking. So arguing against it because not enough people are using it yet is sort of circular. Also, it's far worse to have bikes riding on the sidewalk than it is to have them riding in the street -- much more dangerous to more people if they're mixing with pedestrians. Unless you want to argue that we should ban bikes in order to make it as easy as possible for cars to get around the city, bike lanes are the better option for any riders who aren't comfortable in the street.

How much should it cost to make people feel psychologically better about their transportation choices?

The way DDOTDC is rolling out protected bike lanes right now, they on average consume about a third of right of way in the streets where they are installed. DDOTDC estimates that bicycles represent about 4.5% of DC resident commuter modal share, which would be 1 in 20 of DC commuters and clearly very generous. This is less than half of the modal share of people who walk to work. Allocating a third of right of way to such a small modal share is inefficient and makes little sense considering low capacity throughput rates for even the successful bike lanes. For example, the 15TH ST Cycletrack, which cyclists used to complain was too crowded to be safe, had peak utilization of about 2/3 of the single vehicle traffic lane it replaced. Even if every single vehicle was single passenger, it’s just less efficient at moving people around but some leeway should be acceptable and can be granted because at least it’s maximizing utilization for the modal form of transportation that it’s designed for. What’s should not acceptable is to allocate right of way that served 2000 transportation users needs per day in vehicles for a 38 bicycles.

Where bike lanes get high utilization they should stay. If they don’t, they should be removed and the resources allocated to alternative transportation options that are more efficient, and hopefully transit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most recent available Census ACS data (2019) shows the following stats on commuting by DC residents
127k drive alone
21k carpool or vanpool
133k take mass transit
51k walk
25k ride bikes, motorcycles, or take taxi
28k worked from home

Fewer should be driving alone, more should be taking mass transit and other methods.

Talk about lying with statistics.

1. You can't focus on just D.C. residents because most drivers in the District live in Maryland and Virginia. Focusing solely on District residents is a really transparent way of undercounting the number of people who are driving.

2. Metro ridership is down 80 percent since the pandemic began. You should probably allocate most of those people to drivers.

3. What the hell is "drive alone"? So when I'm driving my kids somewhere or am with my spouse, I just don't count anywhere in the statistics?

4. Why the focus on commuting? I drive and most of them, it's not because I'm going to my job.

5. Why do these stats only add up to roughly half of D.C.'s population?

6. Allow me to break down that second to last category: 24,970 people in taxis, 200 people on bikes, 30 on motorcycles

Most days at my office, pre-pandemic, there were about 30 bikes parked in the cage in the garage, so either we represented a huge share of the total bike commuters, or your estimate is off.

In 2018, DDOTDC estimated that bicycles were 4.5% of modal share for DC residents who commuted. I find that number even too high.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most recent available Census ACS data (2019) shows the following stats on commuting by DC residents
127k drive alone
21k carpool or vanpool
133k take mass transit
51k walk
25k ride bikes, motorcycles, or take taxi
28k worked from home

Fewer should be driving alone, more should be taking mass transit and other methods.

As indicated by this data, it would not even be justifiable if these were combined bicycle, motorcycle and taxi lanes. But they are solely bike lanes,

Wait, you don't think devoting any space at all to something used by 25,000 people would be justified? How's that? By your standard, should we also rip out the sidewalks, since only 51,000 people walk to work, which is clearly not as many as drive, carpool, or mass transit?

Okay so DC should also have dedicated and protected carpool lanes on major roads that only carpools can use and no other road users can access. Seems fair right? There are way more carpoolers than bicycle commuters after all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most recent available Census ACS data (2019) shows the following stats on commuting by DC residents
127k drive alone
21k carpool or vanpool
133k take mass transit
51k walk
25k ride bikes, motorcycles, or take taxi
28k worked from home

Fewer should be driving alone, more should be taking mass transit and other methods.

As indicated by this data, it would not even be justifiable if these were combined bicycle, motorcycle and taxi lanes. But they are solely bike lanes,

Wait, you don't think devoting any space at all to something used by 25,000 people would be justified? How's that? By your standard, should we also rip out the sidewalks, since only 51,000 people walk to work, which is clearly not as many as drive, carpool, or mass transit?

Okay so DC should also have dedicated and protected carpool lanes on major roads that only carpools can use and no other road users can access. Seems fair right? There are way more carpoolers than bicycle commuters after all.

Carpool lanes would be cool. Maybe combined with a bus lane on 16th st. But you all would cheat anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most recent available Census ACS data (2019) shows the following stats on commuting by DC residents
127k drive alone
21k carpool or vanpool
133k take mass transit
51k walk
25k ride bikes, motorcycles, or take taxi
28k worked from home

Fewer should be driving alone, more should be taking mass transit and other methods.

As indicated by this data, it would not even be justifiable if these were combined bicycle, motorcycle and taxi lanes. But they are solely bike lanes,

Wait, you don't think devoting any space at all to something used by 25,000 people would be justified? How's that? By your standard, should we also rip out the sidewalks, since only 51,000 people walk to work, which is clearly not as many as drive, carpool, or mass transit?

Okay so DC should also have dedicated and protected carpool lanes on major roads that only carpools can use and no other road users can access. Seems fair right? There are way more carpoolers than bicycle commuters after all.

Yes, that would be great.

[Anonymous]

I'm kind of liking the image of slug lines with 16th Street as HOV only during rush hour. Zip zip.