Options for opposing Connecticut Avenue changes?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the WABA contracts include paying someone $150,000 per year, rising to $180,000 to be a “bicycle ambassador” which includes hanging out and riding around trails and bike lanes for 20 hours per week. How is this not corruption?

https://contracts.ocp.dc.gov/contracts/attachments/Q1c3NTQ3MsKmQmFzZSBQZXJpb2TCpnszRTM4NkU4Qy1BRDQ3LTQ1MUMtQTlBNC05Qzk0OEI3MEY3ODF9

We're paying them $1,102.50 per bicycle on top of everything else. What the hell, these are bikes for 8 year olds and we don't get to keep them.

At these prices it would be inordinately cheaper to just give every 8 year old a bike.

You will doubtlessly a long and illustrious career exposing waste in government contracting. Just wait until you start going through the defense budget. You will look back on those days when got worked up about a $1,000 bicycle in astonishment that you ever could have been so impressionable.

You're defending this with a whataboutism about Pentagon procurement?

FYI an industrial grade adult bike is less than $500 through GSA Global Supply

I’m saying that if you are really concerned about the efficiency of public spending, this is about the last thing you should be concerned about. Although I doubt this has anyone to do with that. You are just trying to find something that occupies your time, fulfills your insatiable need to find conspiracies in every policy outcome you disagree with, and indulges your irrational hatred towards all thing bicycle.

Of course. Just like everything else you write. Nothing but defensiveness, projection, insults, victimhood and lies. It's a bad plan and the numbers don't add up. It will be disastrous. The fact that you're ok with the city creating it's own astroturf organization and using DDOT and the schools as a slush fund is strange but not suprising. You've wrapped your identity in this whole project as part of a search for redemption and feel the slightest criticism as a personal attack. You have become the exact thing you claim to oppose. Form witbout meaning

Uh, what? I'm the PP and I guess I hit a nerve. I really couldn't care less about WABA. They strike me as generally ineffective and I can't think that I would ever donate to them. That you think they are at the helm of some kind of conspiracy to drive this plan forward is kind of laughable, all things considered. The merits of the city's agreement with WABA to provide bicycle education has next to nothing to do with it nor, in the grand scheme of things, with the efficiency of government contracting. It's just a sad commentary on the fact that those opposed to the lanes have nothing better to hang their hat on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the WABA contracts include paying someone $150,000 per year, rising to $180,000 to be a “bicycle ambassador” which includes hanging out and riding around trails and bike lanes for 20 hours per week. How is this not corruption?

https://contracts.ocp.dc.gov/contracts/attachments/Q1c3NTQ3MsKmQmFzZSBQZXJpb2TCpnszRTM4NkU4Qy1BRDQ3LTQ1MUMtQTlBNC05Qzk0OEI3MEY3ODF9

We're paying them $1,102.50 per bicycle on top of everything else. What the hell, these are bikes for 8 year olds and we don't get to keep them.

At these prices it would be inordinately cheaper to just give every 8 year old a bike.

You will doubtlessly a long and illustrious career exposing waste in government contracting. Just wait until you start going through the defense budget. You will look back on those days when got worked up about a $1,000 bicycle in astonishment that you ever could have been so impressionable.

You're defending this with a whataboutism about Pentagon procurement?

FYI an industrial grade adult bike is less than $500 through GSA Global Supply

I’m saying that if you are really concerned about the efficiency of public spending, this is about the last thing you should be concerned about. Although I doubt this has anyone to do with that. You are just trying to find something that occupies your time, fulfills your insatiable need to find conspiracies in every policy outcome you disagree with, and indulges your irrational hatred towards all thing bicycle.

Of course. Just like everything else you write. Nothing but defensiveness, projection, insults, victimhood and lies. It's a bad plan and the numbers don't add up. It will be disastrous. The fact that you're ok with the city creating it's own astroturf organization and using DDOT and the schools as a slush fund is strange but not suprising. You've wrapped your identity in this whole project as part of a search for redemption and feel the slightest criticism as a personal attack. You have become the exact thing you claim to oppose. Form witbout meaning

Uh, what? I'm the PP and I guess I hit a nerve. I really couldn't care less about WABA. They strike me as generally ineffective and I can't think that I would ever donate to them. That you think they are at the helm of some kind of conspiracy to drive this plan forward is kind of laughable, all things considered. The merits of the city's agreement with WABA to provide bicycle education has next to nothing to do with it nor, in the grand scheme of things, with the efficiency of government contracting. It's just a sad commentary on the fact that those opposed to the lanes have nothing better to hang their hat on.

It's surprising how few people give to WABA. You'd think if people actually wanted bike lanes, they'd be supporting the main lobbying group pushing them. I guess people don't want them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hey Jeff, can we get stats on how many unique commenters are on this massive thread and how many repeat commenters there are? It feels like the same ten people but who knows!

Yes that would be great! Based on my CP listserv experience, it should be about 5 people.

Sounds about right. A lot of cyclists seem to have an inordinate amount of free time to not only go from A to B, but also evangelize about cycling.

I believe that the poster to which you were responding was referring to the opponents of the PBL, but you do raise an interesting point . . .

By avoiding the rush hour traffic jams that plague the city streets, cyclists indeed save themselves a bunch of time which they can use to do other things. Being the benevolent souls that they are, some of them use that time to attempt to show their less fortunate compatriots trapped in car addiction that there is a way to and from work that will improve their physical and mental health, save them and their government a whole bunch of money, and - if enough people do it - reduce the carbon emissions that drive climate change. You may call that evangelizing. To many, though, it's just being nice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the WABA contracts include paying someone $150,000 per year, rising to $180,000 to be a “bicycle ambassador” which includes hanging out and riding around trails and bike lanes for 20 hours per week. How is this not corruption?

https://contracts.ocp.dc.gov/contracts/attachments/Q1c3NTQ3MsKmQmFzZSBQZXJpb2TCpnszRTM4NkU4Qy1BRDQ3LTQ1MUMtQTlBNC05Qzk0OEI3MEY3ODF9

We're paying them $1,102.50 per bicycle on top of everything else. What the hell, these are bikes for 8 year olds and we don't get to keep them.

At these prices it would be inordinately cheaper to just give every 8 year old a bike.

You will doubtlessly a long and illustrious career exposing waste in government contracting. Just wait until you start going through the defense budget. You will look back on those days when got worked up about a $1,000 bicycle in astonishment that you ever could have been so impressionable.

You're defending this with a whataboutism about Pentagon procurement?

FYI an industrial grade adult bike is less than $500 through GSA Global Supply

I’m saying that if you are really concerned about the efficiency of public spending, this is about the last thing you should be concerned about. Although I doubt this has anyone to do with that. You are just trying to find something that occupies your time, fulfills your insatiable need to find conspiracies in every policy outcome you disagree with, and indulges your irrational hatred towards all thing bicycle.

Of course. Just like everything else you write. Nothing but defensiveness, projection, insults, victimhood and lies. It's a bad plan and the numbers don't add up. It will be disastrous. The fact that you're ok with the city creating it's own astroturf organization and using DDOT and the schools as a slush fund is strange but not suprising. You've wrapped your identity in this whole project as part of a search for redemption and feel the slightest criticism as a personal attack. You have become the exact thing you claim to oppose. Form witbout meaning

Uh, what? I'm the PP and I guess I hit a nerve. I really couldn't care less about WABA. They strike me as generally ineffective and I can't think that I would ever donate to them. That you think they are at the helm of some kind of conspiracy to drive this plan forward is kind of laughable, all things considered. The merits of the city's agreement with WABA to provide bicycle education has next to nothing to do with it nor, in the grand scheme of things, with the efficiency of government contracting. It's just a sad commentary on the fact that those opposed to the lanes have nothing better to hang their hat on.

It's surprising how few people give to WABA. You'd think if people actually wanted bike lanes, they'd be supporting the main lobbying group pushing them. I guess people don't want them.

Maybe that is because, contrary to the central thesis of many bike-lane opponents, those who know anything about WABA and decision-making processes in DC understand that they are not doing any effective lobbying and that the bike lane proposals and the implementation thereof has next to nothing to do with them?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To recap:

1. The lion's share of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association's $2 million budget comes from the D.C. government. Very few people actually donate to them. Membership dues amount to about $100,000.

2. WABA appears to be illegally using this taxpayer money to lobby the DC government on bike lanes.

3. WABA says it's not just lobbying, that it has an educational mission too. But that educational mission appears to boil down to renting $100 bikes for children in PE classes at school to the city at more than $1,000 a pop.

Everything about bike lanes reeks of special interest politics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To recap:

1. The lion's share of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association's $2 million budget comes from the D.C. government. Very few people actually donate to them. Membership dues amount to about $100,000.

2. WABA appears to be illegally using this taxpayer money to lobby the DC government on bike lanes.

3. WABA says it's not just lobbying, that it has an educational mission too. But that educational mission appears to boil down to renting $100 bikes for children in PE classes at school to the city at more than $1,000 a pop.

Everything about bike lanes reeks of special interest politics.

Driving commuters are a minority of the population, at least in DC. It is also true that driving commuters impose a whole load of negative externalities for the rest of the population, an incomplete list of which includes air pollution, road congestion, physical injuries and death, cultural decay, and political polarization. Given all of this, your point that providing a viable means by which people can commute in ways that do not impose these negative externalities on the rest of the population is a very curious one, to the say the least.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To recap:

1. The lion's share of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association's $2 million budget comes from the D.C. government. Very few people actually donate to them. Membership dues amount to about $100,000.

2. WABA appears to be illegally using this taxpayer money to lobby the DC government on bike lanes.

3. WABA says it's not just lobbying, that it has an educational mission too. But that educational mission appears to boil down to renting $100 bikes for children in PE classes at school to the city at more than $1,000 a pop.

Everything about bike lanes reeks of special interest politics.

Driving commuters are a minority of the population, at least in DC. It is also true that driving commuters impose a whole load of negative externalities for the rest of the population, an incomplete list of which includes air pollution, road congestion, physical injuries and death, cultural decay, and political polarization. Given all of this, your point that providing a viable means by which people can commute in ways that do not impose these negative externalities on the rest of the population is a very curious one, to the say the least.

Apologies. The last sentence should have read, "Given all of this, your point that providing a viable means by which people can commute in ways that do not impose these negative externalities on the rest of the population constitutes `special interest politics' is a very curious one, to the say the least."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To recap:

1. The lion's share of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association's $2 million budget comes from the D.C. government. Very few people actually donate to them. Membership dues amount to about $100,000.

2. WABA appears to be illegally using this taxpayer money to lobby the DC government on bike lanes.

3. WABA says it's not just lobbying, that it has an educational mission too. But that educational mission appears to boil down to renting $100 bikes for children in PE classes at school to the city at more than $1,000 a pop.

Everything about bike lanes reeks of special interest politics.

Driving commuters are a minority of the population, at least in DC. It is also true that driving commuters impose a whole load of negative externalities for the rest of the population, an incomplete list of which includes air pollution, road congestion, physical injuries and death, cultural decay, and political polarization. Given all of this, your point that providing a viable means by which people can commute in ways that do not impose these negative externalities on the rest of the population is a very curious one, to the say the least.

There's 300,000 cars currently registered with the city. There's probably another 100,000 that aren't registered (it's criminally expensive to register your car). This is out of 670,000 people.

There are so few cyclists in this city they are almost a rounding error. Often they're thrown in an "other" category because there's so few of them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To recap:

1. The lion's share of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association's $2 million budget comes from the D.C. government. Very few people actually donate to them. Membership dues amount to about $100,000.

2. WABA appears to be illegally using this taxpayer money to lobby the DC government on bike lanes.

3. WABA says it's not just lobbying, that it has an educational mission too. But that educational mission appears to boil down to renting $100 bikes for children in PE classes at school to the city at more than $1,000 a pop.

Everything about bike lanes reeks of special interest politics.

Driving commuters are a minority of the population, at least in DC. It is also true that driving commuters impose a whole load of negative externalities for the rest of the population, an incomplete list of which includes air pollution, road congestion, physical injuries and death, cultural decay, and political polarization. Given all of this, your point that providing a viable means by which people can commute in ways that do not impose these negative externalities on the rest of the population is a very curious one, to the say the least.

There's 300,000 cars currently registered with the city. There's probably another 100,000 that aren't registered (it's criminally expensive to register your car). This is out of 670,000 people.

There are so few cyclists in this city they are almost a rounding error. Often they're thrown in an "other" category because there's so few of them.

Only about 40% of the households own cars, so do the math.

Also, out of those "670,000" people, many are too young or too old to drive. And many more are too poor to own a car.

And what does "criminally expensive" mean? We need the money to help maintain the roads and clean up the polluted air. If drivers actually paid the costs to our society, driving would be a heck of a lot more expensive.

[Anonymous]

I am not a "WABA Member" but I do ride a bike on occasion though not on Connecticut Avenue - too dangerous. I would ride if there were a bike lane there and as such, have written to my ANC and Councilmember as well as weighed in with DDOT.

I don't need WABA for that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the WABA contracts include paying someone $150,000 per year, rising to $180,000 to be a “bicycle ambassador” which includes hanging out and riding around trails and bike lanes for 20 hours per week. How is this not corruption?

https://contracts.ocp.dc.gov/contracts/attachments/Q1c3NTQ3MsKmQmFzZSBQZXJpb2TCpnszRTM4NkU4Qy1BRDQ3LTQ1MUMtQTlBNC05Qzk0OEI3MEY3ODF9

We're paying them $1,102.50 per bicycle on top of everything else. What the hell, these are bikes for 8 year olds and we don't get to keep them.

At these prices it would be inordinately cheaper to just give every 8 year old a bike.

You will doubtlessly a long and illustrious career exposing waste in government contracting. Just wait until you start going through the defense budget. You will look back on those days when got worked up about a $1,000 bicycle in astonishment that you ever could have been so impressionable.

You're defending this with a whataboutism about Pentagon procurement?

FYI an industrial grade adult bike is less than $500 through GSA Global Supply

I’m saying that if you are really concerned about the efficiency of public spending, this is about the last thing you should be concerned about. Although I doubt this has anyone to do with that. You are just trying to find something that occupies your time, fulfills your insatiable need to find conspiracies in every policy outcome you disagree with, and indulges your irrational hatred towards all thing bicycle.

Of course. Just like everything else you write. Nothing but defensiveness, projection, insults, victimhood and lies. It's a bad plan and the numbers don't add up. It will be disastrous. The fact that you're ok with the city creating it's own astroturf organization and using DDOT and the schools as a slush fund is strange but not suprising. You've wrapped your identity in this whole project as part of a search for redemption and feel the slightest criticism as a personal attack. You have become the exact thing you claim to oppose. Form witbout meaning

Uh, what? I'm the PP and I guess I hit a nerve. I really couldn't care less about WABA. They strike me as generally ineffective and I can't think that I would ever donate to them. That you think they are at the helm of some kind of conspiracy to drive this plan forward is kind of laughable, all things considered. The merits of the city's agreement with WABA to provide bicycle education has next to nothing to do with it nor, in the grand scheme of things, with the efficiency of government contracting. It's just a sad commentary on the fact that those opposed to the lanes have nothing better to hang their hat on.

It's surprising how few people give to WABA. You'd think if people actually wanted bike lanes, they'd be supporting the main lobbying group pushing them. I guess people don't want them.

The DC Office of Planning and DDOT want them, which is why they provide a substantial share of WABA’s funding. So we DC taxpayers are funding WABA, whether we like it or not. Thanks, Bowser.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To recap:

1. The lion's share of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association's $2 million budget comes from the D.C. government. Very few people actually donate to them. Membership dues amount to about $100,000.

2. WABA appears to be illegally using this taxpayer money to lobby the DC government on bike lanes.

3. WABA says it's not just lobbying, that it has an educational mission too. But that educational mission appears to boil down to renting $100 bikes for children in PE classes at school to the city at more than $1,000 a pop.

Everything about bike lanes reeks of special interest politics.

Driving commuters are a minority of the population, at least in DC. It is also true that driving commuters impose a whole load of negative externalities for the rest of the population, an incomplete list of which includes air pollution, road congestion, physical injuries and death, cultural decay, and political polarization. Given all of this, your point that providing a viable means by which people can commute in ways that do not impose these negative externalities on the rest of the population is a very curious one, to the say the least.

There's 300,000 cars currently registered with the city. There's probably another 100,000 that aren't registered (it's criminally expensive to register your car). This is out of 670,000 people.

There are so few cyclists in this city they are almost a rounding error. Often they're thrown in an "other" category because there's so few of them.

"Criminally expensive to register your car"? Where do you live exactly?

I've registered a car in DC. It's criminally cheap to do so.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To recap:

1. The lion's share of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association's $2 million budget comes from the D.C. government. Very few people actually donate to them. Membership dues amount to about $100,000.

2. WABA appears to be illegally using this taxpayer money to lobby the DC government on bike lanes.

3. WABA says it's not just lobbying, that it has an educational mission too. But that educational mission appears to boil down to renting $100 bikes for children in PE classes at school to the city at more than $1,000 a pop.

Everything about bike lanes reeks of special interest politics.

Driving commuters are a minority of the population, at least in DC. It is also true that driving commuters impose a whole load of negative externalities for the rest of the population, an incomplete list of which includes air pollution, road congestion, physical injuries and death, cultural decay, and political polarization. Given all of this, your point that providing a viable means by which people can commute in ways that do not impose these negative externalities on the rest of the population is a very curious one, to the say the least.

There's 300,000 cars currently registered with the city. There's probably another 100,000 that aren't registered (it's criminally expensive to register your car). This is out of 670,000 people.

There are so few cyclists in this city they are almost a rounding error. Often they're thrown in an "other" category because there's so few of them.

Only about 40% of the households own cars, so do the math.

Also, out of those "670,000" people, many are too young or too old to drive. And many more are too poor to own a car.

And what does "criminally expensive" mean? We need the money to help maintain the roads and clean up the polluted air. If drivers actually paid the costs to our society, driving would be a heck of a lot more expensive.

Maybe cyclists could stop being such freeloaders?

Drivers pay for everything. They pay gas taxes and licensing fees and registration fees and traffic citations and income taxes.

Cyclists don't pay the gas tax, they dont pay licensing fees or registration fees, they dont pay any traffic citations (despite routinely flouting traffic laws) and there's so few cyclists that their income taxes all put together wouldn't be enough to build a single protected bike lane.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To recap:

1. The lion's share of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association's $2 million budget comes from the D.C. government. Very few people actually donate to them. Membership dues amount to about $100,000.

2. WABA appears to be illegally using this taxpayer money to lobby the DC government on bike lanes.

3. WABA says it's not just lobbying, that it has an educational mission too. But that educational mission appears to boil down to renting $100 bikes for children in PE classes at school to the city at more than $1,000 a pop.

Everything about bike lanes reeks of special interest politics.

Driving commuters are a minority of the population, at least in DC. It is also true that driving commuters impose a whole load of negative externalities for the rest of the population, an incomplete list of which includes air pollution, road congestion, physical injuries and death, cultural decay, and political polarization. Given all of this, your point that providing a viable means by which people can commute in ways that do not impose these negative externalities on the rest of the population is a very curious one, to the say the least.

There's 300,000 cars currently registered with the city. There's probably another 100,000 that aren't registered (it's criminally expensive to register your car). This is out of 670,000 people.

There are so few cyclists in this city they are almost a rounding error. Often they're thrown in an "other" category because there's so few of them.

Only about 40% of the households own cars, so do the math.

Also, out of those "670,000" people, many are too young or too old to drive. And many more are too poor to own a car.

And what does "criminally expensive" mean? We need the money to help maintain the roads and clean up the polluted air. If drivers actually paid the costs to our society, driving would be a heck of a lot more expensive.

Only two percent of commuters *claim* to ride bikes. That's not two percent of the population or two percent of adults or two percent of all the people in the District (which includes hundreds of thousands of Marylanders and Virginians). And it's only people claiming to ride bikes. Who knows how many of them actually do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the WABA contracts include paying someone $150,000 per year, rising to $180,000 to be a “bicycle ambassador” which includes hanging out and riding around trails and bike lanes for 20 hours per week. How is this not corruption?

https://contracts.ocp.dc.gov/contracts/attachments/Q1c3NTQ3MsKmQmFzZSBQZXJpb2TCpnszRTM4NkU4Qy1BRDQ3LTQ1MUMtQTlBNC05Qzk0OEI3MEY3ODF9

We're paying them $1,102.50 per bicycle on top of everything else. What the hell, these are bikes for 8 year olds and we don't get to keep them.

At these prices it would be inordinately cheaper to just give every 8 year old a bike.

You will doubtlessly a long and illustrious career exposing waste in government contracting. Just wait until you start going through the defense budget. You will look back on those days when got worked up about a $1,000 bicycle in astonishment that you ever could have been so impressionable.

You're defending this with a whataboutism about Pentagon procurement?

FYI an industrial grade adult bike is less than $500 through GSA Global Supply

I’m saying that if you are really concerned about the efficiency of public spending, this is about the last thing you should be concerned about. Although I doubt this has anyone to do with that. You are just trying to find something that occupies your time, fulfills your insatiable need to find conspiracies in every policy outcome you disagree with, and indulges your irrational hatred towards all thing bicycle.

Of course. Just like everything else you write. Nothing but defensiveness, projection, insults, victimhood and lies. It's a bad plan and the numbers don't add up. It will be disastrous. The fact that you're ok with the city creating it's own astroturf organization and using DDOT and the schools as a slush fund is strange but not suprising. You've wrapped your identity in this whole project as part of a search for redemption and feel the slightest criticism as a personal attack. You have become the exact thing you claim to oppose. Form witbout meaning

Uh, what? I'm the PP and I guess I hit a nerve. I really couldn't care less about WABA. They strike me as generally ineffective and I can't think that I would ever donate to them. That you think they are at the helm of some kind of conspiracy to drive this plan forward is kind of laughable, all things considered. The merits of the city's agreement with WABA to provide bicycle education has next to nothing to do with it nor, in the grand scheme of things, with the efficiency of government contracting. It's just a sad commentary on the fact that those opposed to the lanes have nothing better to hang their hat on.

It's surprising how few people give to WABA. You'd think if people actually wanted bike lanes, they'd be supporting the main lobbying group pushing them. I guess people don't want them.

O.M.G. I have totally had that two-step pattern of insults lobbed at me.
"You're evil! You plotted XYZ evil deed!";
"Uhm, nope. I didn't do that." [I offer proof];
"Yeah, you didn't do that because you SUCK and you're too useless to ever do any evil plotting anyway! Loser!"