The Bike Lobby is too powerful in DC...

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Anonymous wrote:Still don't understand why bicyclists aren't required to wear helmets, or why they're allowed to put small children on bikes without helmets. If those kids were in cars, they'd be required to wear seat belts or be in car seats...


I mean, I'll care about this when the city actually does something about reciprocity with crappy drivers from M/VA, actually starts traffic enforcement for people who run stop signs and red lights without any enforcement (literally in front of police cars and nothing happens).

Or, actually puts in a crosswalk at one intersection in my neighborhood that we've been advocating for for a decade and it never happens.

You seriously MUST live in rich real estate if this is what is most top of mind to you to complain about. Just admit it. Take a drive to other parts of the city and tell me if bike helmets are really the bigger concern in terms of road safety.


Wow. It going to take an awful lot for you to start caring about the safety of small children.


I do. I have two of them myself. It's why I like safe road design, especially when I live in parts of the city that have crappy road design and it takes a decade of advocating for a simple crosswalk whereas those in the rich areas get one fairly quickly. Especially when safe road design also prevents criminals from barreling through neighborhoods shooting guns at a million miles per hour as we've actually dealt with.

You still didn't admit you live in rich NW where you aren't even dealing with much crime and your roads are designed better anyways, and having $$ has meant you got 311 requests more quickly and efficiently. It's ok. Just be honest.


You make a lot of weird assumptions. Also, don't you have anything better to do? It sounds like you spend your entire day on this stupid web site just waiting to jump down the throat of anyone who isn't into bicycles.


Well that confirms my assumption because you won't deny it. I assume you have to live in NW if bicyclists annoy you more than cars. You don't actually experience the day to day nuisance of bad road design. You don't experience things like criminals flying down your one way street the wrong way while you're trying to get your kids into the car (hey, no one died! I shouldn't care, right? I should care about the bicyclists, right!). You don't experience drivers running the red light at the end of your street At. Least. Once. Every. Single. Week. when you have the green and are turning left with your kids in the car. You don't even experience much of the crime you are pretending to be so concerned about while here in a forum about the bike lobby advocating for safer streets.

Also, apparently you don't have anything better to do either, you're here too?


I think the bolded seems to be what people are either obtusely or deliberately missing here. Safe street design isn't just to prevent people from dying or getting hit. There are so many close calls that never get reported and aren't in any statistics that still make it dangerous or unpleasant to walk or bike places in the city. If someone blows a stop sign and almost hits my kids that isn't going to be in a police report but it still has an effect on my day. It means I might be less likely to let my ten year old walk home so then I have to drive him.

There are people on this site who see to say that if people don't die then we shouldn't need to make changes to the street. That is fine if that is your position but know that other advocate for safe streets so that we can have higher quality of life, which for us includes walking or biking places. If that means that a person in a car gets someone five minutes later, I truly do not care. (and if it means that when I drive somewhere I get to my destination five minutes slower then I am all for it if it means that kids can cross streets safely). Transit isn't solely about getting people to their destinations as fast as possible while they re sitting in climate controlled, cushy metal boxes. There are other people who have different preferences than you and we are absolutely going to continue to advocate for them.


Or maybe you should just be more careful? You live in a big city, one of the most densely populated in North America. There's lots of people moving around and sh*t is going to happen. You'd probably be better off exercising a little common sense than putting all your hopes in a doomed-to-fail campaign to have the government try to engineer away accidents.


So you think it is ok to ask me and my children to be extremely careful (which we are, by the way) and not to ask drivers to be extremely careful? Drivers don't have to be aware of the fact that they are driving through densely populated areas but pedestrians do? Why the double standard?

Is yours just a "might makes right" argument that because someone chooses to drive a deadly vehicle then everyone has to get out of his way? This is WHY the streets need to be re-engineered. If there is a bollard in your way as you make a turn that slows you down or a speed bump or other traffic calming then you can't bully pedestrians as you run a stop sign.

Watch any intersection where there is a crosswalk and no stop sign or signal. Pedestrians legally have the right of way but they wait until cars full stop or there is no traffic (IOW they are being careful) because drivers are unable or unwilling to drive carefully and yield to the party that has the legal right of way.


Drivers are careful. People in this city probably take close to a billion car trips a year, and yet the number of people involved in accidents is tiny. That doesn't just happen unless people are trying to avoid running into each other. For those who aren't careful, we already have lots and lots of penalties (including sending them to prison).

There are over 3 billion VMT on DC roads each year. Annual car trips by DC residents (excluding MD and VA drivers) are estimated around 2.5 million. Accidents on DC roads are very rare and DC is one of the safest cities in the US for vehicle accidents.


Sure. And mass shootings are rare and devastating. But I'd also like more done to prevent them. Same concept. "These things are rare. Thoughts and prayers."




The issue is diminishing returns. Most people don't think it's worth spending billions of dollars and ruining traffic for hundreds of thousands of people so that we can reduce the number of traffic deaths from 24 to 22. The city has more important things to do.



It isn't just traffic deaths. It is injury, repairs to auto, maintenance on roads, pollution and corresponding health externalities as well as cost savings when more people are walking and biking.


More people aren't going to walk or bike. They'll just drive elsewhere. They'll avoid neighborhoods that are too hard to get to or they'll take side streets instead of main arteries designed for lots of traffic or they'll just sit in traffic longer.


You can see this happening downtown. The city conveniently used the pandemic to put bike lanes everywhere and now it's just really hard to get around. Not surprisingly, a lot fewer people are going downtown. It's not the only reason downtown is dying. But it's a big one.

The goal was to make it harder to drive so less people drive. The assumption was that if they don’t drive they would still come downtown but on bikes or transit. The reality is that they are just going somewhere else instead. In the meantime, retail vacancy in downtown is 20% and rising. One out of every five storefronts are vacant.


You are just making up bike lanes as a reason for decreased occupancy downtown. Sorry, that's not the reason.

I said nothing about bike lanes. There is nothing that I said that was inaccurate. This is “traffic calming”. Funny that you want to run away from and not defend your own agenda when its negative impacts are clear. If you reduce road capacity, the traffic does not magically disappear. It just goes somewhere else.

The reason that there are so many vacant storefronts downtown is that people are not coming back to work in large numbers. One reason why many people are choosing not to come back downtown is that DC had intentionally made it difficult to navigate with a car. That should be considered a policy victory. Right? I guess you don’t like the consequences.

Well at least you can now ride your bikes faster past those blighted downtown areas to reach your vibrant urban destination.


This is what businesses complain about. Bike lanes mean a lot fewer people are around.


What? Provides proof. You're just making stuff up.


Not really sure what people are disputing here. If you replace driving lanes with bike lanes, you're obviously reducing the carrying capacity of those roads. A street that previously might have moved 30,000 people per day is suddenly moving a fraction of that. That's like giving a city arteriosclerosis. You're making it harder for people to circulate in a city. The bike people say drivers will all just suddenly switch to bikes but that's obviously ridiculous. We've seen this happen in other cities:

San Francisco’s Cyclists Cheer a Road Less Traveled. Museums Mourn It.

Though pedestrians and cyclists are rejoicing at a Golden Gate Park ban on cars, rebounding museums fear the detour will keep visitors away.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/08/arts/design/san-francisco-bikes-cars-museum.html


that was a year ago. meanwhile attendance has rebounded at the other Golden Gate Park museums, and the closure was made permanent. De Young museum claims attendance is still down but refuses to show their data.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:They practically run the council or damn near close to it! We don't need more bike lanes, we need more ENFORCEMENT of existing laws and infrastructure.


i dont think a single driver has ever stopped at the STOP sign in front of my car. are you sure you aren't talking about the powerful CAR LOBBY?
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Anonymous wrote:Still don't understand why bicyclists aren't required to wear helmets, or why they're allowed to put small children on bikes without helmets. If those kids were in cars, they'd be required to wear seat belts or be in car seats...


I mean, I'll care about this when the city actually does something about reciprocity with crappy drivers from M/VA, actually starts traffic enforcement for people who run stop signs and red lights without any enforcement (literally in front of police cars and nothing happens).

Or, actually puts in a crosswalk at one intersection in my neighborhood that we've been advocating for for a decade and it never happens.

You seriously MUST live in rich real estate if this is what is most top of mind to you to complain about. Just admit it. Take a drive to other parts of the city and tell me if bike helmets are really the bigger concern in terms of road safety.


Wow. It going to take an awful lot for you to start caring about the safety of small children.


I do. I have two of them myself. It's why I like safe road design, especially when I live in parts of the city that have crappy road design and it takes a decade of advocating for a simple crosswalk whereas those in the rich areas get one fairly quickly. Especially when safe road design also prevents criminals from barreling through neighborhoods shooting guns at a million miles per hour as we've actually dealt with.

You still didn't admit you live in rich NW where you aren't even dealing with much crime and your roads are designed better anyways, and having $$ has meant you got 311 requests more quickly and efficiently. It's ok. Just be honest.


You make a lot of weird assumptions. Also, don't you have anything better to do? It sounds like you spend your entire day on this stupid web site just waiting to jump down the throat of anyone who isn't into bicycles.


Well that confirms my assumption because you won't deny it. I assume you have to live in NW if bicyclists annoy you more than cars. You don't actually experience the day to day nuisance of bad road design. You don't experience things like criminals flying down your one way street the wrong way while you're trying to get your kids into the car (hey, no one died! I shouldn't care, right? I should care about the bicyclists, right!). You don't experience drivers running the red light at the end of your street At. Least. Once. Every. Single. Week. when you have the green and are turning left with your kids in the car. You don't even experience much of the crime you are pretending to be so concerned about while here in a forum about the bike lobby advocating for safer streets.

Also, apparently you don't have anything better to do either, you're here too?


I think the bolded seems to be what people are either obtusely or deliberately missing here. Safe street design isn't just to prevent people from dying or getting hit. There are so many close calls that never get reported and aren't in any statistics that still make it dangerous or unpleasant to walk or bike places in the city. If someone blows a stop sign and almost hits my kids that isn't going to be in a police report but it still has an effect on my day. It means I might be less likely to let my ten year old walk home so then I have to drive him.

There are people on this site who see to say that if people don't die then we shouldn't need to make changes to the street. That is fine if that is your position but know that other advocate for safe streets so that we can have higher quality of life, which for us includes walking or biking places. If that means that a person in a car gets someone five minutes later, I truly do not care. (and if it means that when I drive somewhere I get to my destination five minutes slower then I am all for it if it means that kids can cross streets safely). Transit isn't solely about getting people to their destinations as fast as possible while they re sitting in climate controlled, cushy metal boxes. There are other people who have different preferences than you and we are absolutely going to continue to advocate for them.


Or maybe you should just be more careful? You live in a big city, one of the most densely populated in North America. There's lots of people moving around and sh*t is going to happen. You'd probably be better off exercising a little common sense than putting all your hopes in a doomed-to-fail campaign to have the government try to engineer away accidents.


So you think it is ok to ask me and my children to be extremely careful (which we are, by the way) and not to ask drivers to be extremely careful? Drivers don't have to be aware of the fact that they are driving through densely populated areas but pedestrians do? Why the double standard?

Is yours just a "might makes right" argument that because someone chooses to drive a deadly vehicle then everyone has to get out of his way? This is WHY the streets need to be re-engineered. If there is a bollard in your way as you make a turn that slows you down or a speed bump or other traffic calming then you can't bully pedestrians as you run a stop sign.

Watch any intersection where there is a crosswalk and no stop sign or signal. Pedestrians legally have the right of way but they wait until cars full stop or there is no traffic (IOW they are being careful) because drivers are unable or unwilling to drive carefully and yield to the party that has the legal right of way.


Drivers are careful. People in this city probably take close to a billion car trips a year, and yet the number of people involved in accidents is tiny. That doesn't just happen unless people are trying to avoid running into each other. For those who aren't careful, we already have lots and lots of penalties (including sending them to prison).

There are over 3 billion VMT on DC roads each year. Annual car trips by DC residents (excluding MD and VA drivers) are estimated around 2.5 million. Accidents on DC roads are very rare and DC is one of the safest cities in the US for vehicle accidents.


Sure. And mass shootings are rare and devastating. But I'd also like more done to prevent them. Same concept. "These things are rare. Thoughts and prayers."




The issue is diminishing returns. Most people don't think it's worth spending billions of dollars and ruining traffic for hundreds of thousands of people so that we can reduce the number of traffic deaths from 24 to 22. The city has more important things to do.



It isn't just traffic deaths. It is injury, repairs to auto, maintenance on roads, pollution and corresponding health externalities as well as cost savings when more people are walking and biking.


More people aren't going to walk or bike. They'll just drive elsewhere. They'll avoid neighborhoods that are too hard to get to or they'll take side streets instead of main arteries designed for lots of traffic or they'll just sit in traffic longer.


You can see this happening downtown. The city conveniently used the pandemic to put bike lanes everywhere and now it's just really hard to get around. Not surprisingly, a lot fewer people are going downtown. It's not the only reason downtown is dying. But it's a big one.

The goal was to make it harder to drive so less people drive. The assumption was that if they don’t drive they would still come downtown but on bikes or transit. The reality is that they are just going somewhere else instead. In the meantime, retail vacancy in downtown is 20% and rising. One out of every five storefronts are vacant.


You are just making up bike lanes as a reason for decreased occupancy downtown. Sorry, that's not the reason.

I said nothing about bike lanes. There is nothing that I said that was inaccurate. This is “traffic calming”. Funny that you want to run away from and not defend your own agenda when its negative impacts are clear. If you reduce road capacity, the traffic does not magically disappear. It just goes somewhere else.

The reason that there are so many vacant storefronts downtown is that people are not coming back to work in large numbers. One reason why many people are choosing not to come back downtown is that DC had intentionally made it difficult to navigate with a car. That should be considered a policy victory. Right? I guess you don’t like the consequences.

Well at least you can now ride your bikes faster past those blighted downtown areas to reach your vibrant urban destination.


This is what businesses complain about. Bike lanes mean a lot fewer people are around.


What? Provides proof. You're just making stuff up.


Not really sure what people are disputing here. If you replace driving lanes with bike lanes, you're obviously reducing the carrying capacity of those roads. A street that previously might have moved 30,000 people per day is suddenly moving a fraction of that. That's like giving a city arteriosclerosis. You're making it harder for people to circulate in a city. The bike people say drivers will all just suddenly switch to bikes but that's obviously ridiculous. We've seen this happen in other cities:

San Francisco’s Cyclists Cheer a Road Less Traveled. Museums Mourn It.

Though pedestrians and cyclists are rejoicing at a Golden Gate Park ban on cars, rebounding museums fear the detour will keep visitors away.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/08/arts/design/san-francisco-bikes-cars-museum.html


+1


The same thing is happening in our downtown.
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Anonymous wrote:Still don't understand why bicyclists aren't required to wear helmets, or why they're allowed to put small children on bikes without helmets. If those kids were in cars, they'd be required to wear seat belts or be in car seats...


I mean, I'll care about this when the city actually does something about reciprocity with crappy drivers from M/VA, actually starts traffic enforcement for people who run stop signs and red lights without any enforcement (literally in front of police cars and nothing happens).

Or, actually puts in a crosswalk at one intersection in my neighborhood that we've been advocating for for a decade and it never happens.

You seriously MUST live in rich real estate if this is what is most top of mind to you to complain about. Just admit it. Take a drive to other parts of the city and tell me if bike helmets are really the bigger concern in terms of road safety.


Wow. It going to take an awful lot for you to start caring about the safety of small children.


I do. I have two of them myself. It's why I like safe road design, especially when I live in parts of the city that have crappy road design and it takes a decade of advocating for a simple crosswalk whereas those in the rich areas get one fairly quickly. Especially when safe road design also prevents criminals from barreling through neighborhoods shooting guns at a million miles per hour as we've actually dealt with.

You still didn't admit you live in rich NW where you aren't even dealing with much crime and your roads are designed better anyways, and having $$ has meant you got 311 requests more quickly and efficiently. It's ok. Just be honest.


You make a lot of weird assumptions. Also, don't you have anything better to do? It sounds like you spend your entire day on this stupid web site just waiting to jump down the throat of anyone who isn't into bicycles.


Well that confirms my assumption because you won't deny it. I assume you have to live in NW if bicyclists annoy you more than cars. You don't actually experience the day to day nuisance of bad road design. You don't experience things like criminals flying down your one way street the wrong way while you're trying to get your kids into the car (hey, no one died! I shouldn't care, right? I should care about the bicyclists, right!). You don't experience drivers running the red light at the end of your street At. Least. Once. Every. Single. Week. when you have the green and are turning left with your kids in the car. You don't even experience much of the crime you are pretending to be so concerned about while here in a forum about the bike lobby advocating for safer streets.

Also, apparently you don't have anything better to do either, you're here too?


I think the bolded seems to be what people are either obtusely or deliberately missing here. Safe street design isn't just to prevent people from dying or getting hit. There are so many close calls that never get reported and aren't in any statistics that still make it dangerous or unpleasant to walk or bike places in the city. If someone blows a stop sign and almost hits my kids that isn't going to be in a police report but it still has an effect on my day. It means I might be less likely to let my ten year old walk home so then I have to drive him.

There are people on this site who see to say that if people don't die then we shouldn't need to make changes to the street. That is fine if that is your position but know that other advocate for safe streets so that we can have higher quality of life, which for us includes walking or biking places. If that means that a person in a car gets someone five minutes later, I truly do not care. (and if it means that when I drive somewhere I get to my destination five minutes slower then I am all for it if it means that kids can cross streets safely). Transit isn't solely about getting people to their destinations as fast as possible while they re sitting in climate controlled, cushy metal boxes. There are other people who have different preferences than you and we are absolutely going to continue to advocate for them.


Or maybe you should just be more careful? You live in a big city, one of the most densely populated in North America. There's lots of people moving around and sh*t is going to happen. You'd probably be better off exercising a little common sense than putting all your hopes in a doomed-to-fail campaign to have the government try to engineer away accidents.


So you think it is ok to ask me and my children to be extremely careful (which we are, by the way) and not to ask drivers to be extremely careful? Drivers don't have to be aware of the fact that they are driving through densely populated areas but pedestrians do? Why the double standard?

Is yours just a "might makes right" argument that because someone chooses to drive a deadly vehicle then everyone has to get out of his way? This is WHY the streets need to be re-engineered. If there is a bollard in your way as you make a turn that slows you down or a speed bump or other traffic calming then you can't bully pedestrians as you run a stop sign.

Watch any intersection where there is a crosswalk and no stop sign or signal. Pedestrians legally have the right of way but they wait until cars full stop or there is no traffic (IOW they are being careful) because drivers are unable or unwilling to drive carefully and yield to the party that has the legal right of way.


Drivers are careful. People in this city probably take close to a billion car trips a year, and yet the number of people involved in accidents is tiny. That doesn't just happen unless people are trying to avoid running into each other. For those who aren't careful, we already have lots and lots of penalties (including sending them to prison).

There are over 3 billion VMT on DC roads each year. Annual car trips by DC residents (excluding MD and VA drivers) are estimated around 2.5 million. Accidents on DC roads are very rare and DC is one of the safest cities in the US for vehicle accidents.


Sure. And mass shootings are rare and devastating. But I'd also like more done to prevent them. Same concept. "These things are rare. Thoughts and prayers."




The issue is diminishing returns. Most people don't think it's worth spending billions of dollars and ruining traffic for hundreds of thousands of people so that we can reduce the number of traffic deaths from 24 to 22. The city has more important things to do.



It isn't just traffic deaths. It is injury, repairs to auto, maintenance on roads, pollution and corresponding health externalities as well as cost savings when more people are walking and biking.


More people aren't going to walk or bike. They'll just drive elsewhere. They'll avoid neighborhoods that are too hard to get to or they'll take side streets instead of main arteries designed for lots of traffic or they'll just sit in traffic longer.


You can see this happening downtown. The city conveniently used the pandemic to put bike lanes everywhere and now it's just really hard to get around. Not surprisingly, a lot fewer people are going downtown. It's not the only reason downtown is dying. But it's a big one.


Figurative dinosaurs powered by literal dinosaurs.

People have figured out that there are better things to do with public resources than subsidize your wasteful lifestyle and the damage it does to the world and everyone who does or will inhabit it..

Please adapt or move on.
Anonymous
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Anonymous wrote:Still don't understand why bicyclists aren't required to wear helmets, or why they're allowed to put small children on bikes without helmets. If those kids were in cars, they'd be required to wear seat belts or be in car seats...


I mean, I'll care about this when the city actually does something about reciprocity with crappy drivers from M/VA, actually starts traffic enforcement for people who run stop signs and red lights without any enforcement (literally in front of police cars and nothing happens).

Or, actually puts in a crosswalk at one intersection in my neighborhood that we've been advocating for for a decade and it never happens.

You seriously MUST live in rich real estate if this is what is most top of mind to you to complain about. Just admit it. Take a drive to other parts of the city and tell me if bike helmets are really the bigger concern in terms of road safety.


Wow. It going to take an awful lot for you to start caring about the safety of small children.


I do. I have two of them myself. It's why I like safe road design, especially when I live in parts of the city that have crappy road design and it takes a decade of advocating for a simple crosswalk whereas those in the rich areas get one fairly quickly. Especially when safe road design also prevents criminals from barreling through neighborhoods shooting guns at a million miles per hour as we've actually dealt with.

You still didn't admit you live in rich NW where you aren't even dealing with much crime and your roads are designed better anyways, and having $$ has meant you got 311 requests more quickly and efficiently. It's ok. Just be honest.


You make a lot of weird assumptions. Also, don't you have anything better to do? It sounds like you spend your entire day on this stupid web site just waiting to jump down the throat of anyone who isn't into bicycles.


Well that confirms my assumption because you won't deny it. I assume you have to live in NW if bicyclists annoy you more than cars. You don't actually experience the day to day nuisance of bad road design. You don't experience things like criminals flying down your one way street the wrong way while you're trying to get your kids into the car (hey, no one died! I shouldn't care, right? I should care about the bicyclists, right!). You don't experience drivers running the red light at the end of your street At. Least. Once. Every. Single. Week. when you have the green and are turning left with your kids in the car. You don't even experience much of the crime you are pretending to be so concerned about while here in a forum about the bike lobby advocating for safer streets.

Also, apparently you don't have anything better to do either, you're here too?


I think the bolded seems to be what people are either obtusely or deliberately missing here. Safe street design isn't just to prevent people from dying or getting hit. There are so many close calls that never get reported and aren't in any statistics that still make it dangerous or unpleasant to walk or bike places in the city. If someone blows a stop sign and almost hits my kids that isn't going to be in a police report but it still has an effect on my day. It means I might be less likely to let my ten year old walk home so then I have to drive him.

There are people on this site who see to say that if people don't die then we shouldn't need to make changes to the street. That is fine if that is your position but know that other advocate for safe streets so that we can have higher quality of life, which for us includes walking or biking places. If that means that a person in a car gets someone five minutes later, I truly do not care. (and if it means that when I drive somewhere I get to my destination five minutes slower then I am all for it if it means that kids can cross streets safely). Transit isn't solely about getting people to their destinations as fast as possible while they re sitting in climate controlled, cushy metal boxes. There are other people who have different preferences than you and we are absolutely going to continue to advocate for them.


Or maybe you should just be more careful? You live in a big city, one of the most densely populated in North America. There's lots of people moving around and sh*t is going to happen. You'd probably be better off exercising a little common sense than putting all your hopes in a doomed-to-fail campaign to have the government try to engineer away accidents.


So you think it is ok to ask me and my children to be extremely careful (which we are, by the way) and not to ask drivers to be extremely careful? Drivers don't have to be aware of the fact that they are driving through densely populated areas but pedestrians do? Why the double standard?

Is yours just a "might makes right" argument that because someone chooses to drive a deadly vehicle then everyone has to get out of his way? This is WHY the streets need to be re-engineered. If there is a bollard in your way as you make a turn that slows you down or a speed bump or other traffic calming then you can't bully pedestrians as you run a stop sign.

Watch any intersection where there is a crosswalk and no stop sign or signal. Pedestrians legally have the right of way but they wait until cars full stop or there is no traffic (IOW they are being careful) because drivers are unable or unwilling to drive carefully and yield to the party that has the legal right of way.


Drivers are careful. People in this city probably take close to a billion car trips a year, and yet the number of people involved in accidents is tiny. That doesn't just happen unless people are trying to avoid running into each other. For those who aren't careful, we already have lots and lots of penalties (including sending them to prison).

There are over 3 billion VMT on DC roads each year. Annual car trips by DC residents (excluding MD and VA drivers) are estimated around 2.5 million. Accidents on DC roads are very rare and DC is one of the safest cities in the US for vehicle accidents.


Sure. And mass shootings are rare and devastating. But I'd also like more done to prevent them. Same concept. "These things are rare. Thoughts and prayers."




The issue is diminishing returns. Most people don't think it's worth spending billions of dollars and ruining traffic for hundreds of thousands of people so that we can reduce the number of traffic deaths from 24 to 22. The city has more important things to do.


As has been repeatedly debunked every time you post this DC has not spent billions on bike lanes. DC has not even spent hundreds of millions on bike lanes. Bike and ped infra spending is about 5% of the Capital budget every year.

Bikes don't ruin traffic for hundreds of thousands of people either and in any case most of the cars on DC's roads are being driven by suburbanites who get no say.

Making our roads safer for DC residents is most certainly an important function of DC Government and it is certainly something that both opinion polls and my anecdotal observations at public meetings show is popular among DC residents.


+1 it's like a vocal few upper NW curmudgeons are trying to speak for what "most" DC residents experience and desire and it's just laughable at this point.


This is a strange echo chamber for young bikers who've convinced themselves that they are everywhere and everyone loves them and their bikes.

Meanwhile, no one is using all these bike lanes and even bikers' moms hate them.


+1000 they must be having a slow day on the DC reddit so they all went here
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Anonymous wrote:Still don't understand why bicyclists aren't required to wear helmets, or why they're allowed to put small children on bikes without helmets. If those kids were in cars, they'd be required to wear seat belts or be in car seats...


I mean, I'll care about this when the city actually does something about reciprocity with crappy drivers from M/VA, actually starts traffic enforcement for people who run stop signs and red lights without any enforcement (literally in front of police cars and nothing happens).

Or, actually puts in a crosswalk at one intersection in my neighborhood that we've been advocating for for a decade and it never happens.

You seriously MUST live in rich real estate if this is what is most top of mind to you to complain about. Just admit it. Take a drive to other parts of the city and tell me if bike helmets are really the bigger concern in terms of road safety.


Wow. It going to take an awful lot for you to start caring about the safety of small children.


I do. I have two of them myself. It's why I like safe road design, especially when I live in parts of the city that have crappy road design and it takes a decade of advocating for a simple crosswalk whereas those in the rich areas get one fairly quickly. Especially when safe road design also prevents criminals from barreling through neighborhoods shooting guns at a million miles per hour as we've actually dealt with.

You still didn't admit you live in rich NW where you aren't even dealing with much crime and your roads are designed better anyways, and having $$ has meant you got 311 requests more quickly and efficiently. It's ok. Just be honest.


You make a lot of weird assumptions. Also, don't you have anything better to do? It sounds like you spend your entire day on this stupid web site just waiting to jump down the throat of anyone who isn't into bicycles.


Well that confirms my assumption because you won't deny it. I assume you have to live in NW if bicyclists annoy you more than cars. You don't actually experience the day to day nuisance of bad road design. You don't experience things like criminals flying down your one way street the wrong way while you're trying to get your kids into the car (hey, no one died! I shouldn't care, right? I should care about the bicyclists, right!). You don't experience drivers running the red light at the end of your street At. Least. Once. Every. Single. Week. when you have the green and are turning left with your kids in the car. You don't even experience much of the crime you are pretending to be so concerned about while here in a forum about the bike lobby advocating for safer streets.

Also, apparently you don't have anything better to do either, you're here too?


I think the bolded seems to be what people are either obtusely or deliberately missing here. Safe street design isn't just to prevent people from dying or getting hit. There are so many close calls that never get reported and aren't in any statistics that still make it dangerous or unpleasant to walk or bike places in the city. If someone blows a stop sign and almost hits my kids that isn't going to be in a police report but it still has an effect on my day. It means I might be less likely to let my ten year old walk home so then I have to drive him.

There are people on this site who see to say that if people don't die then we shouldn't need to make changes to the street. That is fine if that is your position but know that other advocate for safe streets so that we can have higher quality of life, which for us includes walking or biking places. If that means that a person in a car gets someone five minutes later, I truly do not care. (and if it means that when I drive somewhere I get to my destination five minutes slower then I am all for it if it means that kids can cross streets safely). Transit isn't solely about getting people to their destinations as fast as possible while they re sitting in climate controlled, cushy metal boxes. There are other people who have different preferences than you and we are absolutely going to continue to advocate for them.


Or maybe you should just be more careful? You live in a big city, one of the most densely populated in North America. There's lots of people moving around and sh*t is going to happen. You'd probably be better off exercising a little common sense than putting all your hopes in a doomed-to-fail campaign to have the government try to engineer away accidents.


So you think it is ok to ask me and my children to be extremely careful (which we are, by the way) and not to ask drivers to be extremely careful? Drivers don't have to be aware of the fact that they are driving through densely populated areas but pedestrians do? Why the double standard?

Is yours just a "might makes right" argument that because someone chooses to drive a deadly vehicle then everyone has to get out of his way? This is WHY the streets need to be re-engineered. If there is a bollard in your way as you make a turn that slows you down or a speed bump or other traffic calming then you can't bully pedestrians as you run a stop sign.

Watch any intersection where there is a crosswalk and no stop sign or signal. Pedestrians legally have the right of way but they wait until cars full stop or there is no traffic (IOW they are being careful) because drivers are unable or unwilling to drive carefully and yield to the party that has the legal right of way.


Drivers are careful. People in this city probably take close to a billion car trips a year, and yet the number of people involved in accidents is tiny. That doesn't just happen unless people are trying to avoid running into each other. For those who aren't careful, we already have lots and lots of penalties (including sending them to prison).

There are over 3 billion VMT on DC roads each year. Annual car trips by DC residents (excluding MD and VA drivers) are estimated around 2.5 million. Accidents on DC roads are very rare and DC is one of the safest cities in the US for vehicle accidents.


Sure. And mass shootings are rare and devastating. But I'd also like more done to prevent them. Same concept. "These things are rare. Thoughts and prayers."




The issue is diminishing returns. Most people don't think it's worth spending billions of dollars and ruining traffic for hundreds of thousands of people so that we can reduce the number of traffic deaths from 24 to 22. The city has more important things to do.


As has been repeatedly debunked every time you post this DC has not spent billions on bike lanes. DC has not even spent hundreds of millions on bike lanes. Bike and ped infra spending is about 5% of the Capital budget every year.

Bikes don't ruin traffic for hundreds of thousands of people either and in any case most of the cars on DC's roads are being driven by suburbanites who get no say.

Making our roads safer for DC residents is most certainly an important function of DC Government and it is certainly something that both opinion polls and my anecdotal observations at public meetings show is popular among DC residents.


+1 it's like a vocal few upper NW curmudgeons are trying to speak for what "most" DC residents experience and desire and it's just laughable at this point.


This is a strange echo chamber for young bikers who've convinced themselves that they are everywhere and everyone loves them and their bikes.

Meanwhile, no one is using all these bike lanes and even bikers' moms hate them.


+1000 they must be having a slow day on the DC reddit so they all went here

GGW closed their comments section.
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Anonymous wrote:Still don't understand why bicyclists aren't required to wear helmets, or why they're allowed to put small children on bikes without helmets. If those kids were in cars, they'd be required to wear seat belts or be in car seats...


I mean, I'll care about this when the city actually does something about reciprocity with crappy drivers from M/VA, actually starts traffic enforcement for people who run stop signs and red lights without any enforcement (literally in front of police cars and nothing happens).

Or, actually puts in a crosswalk at one intersection in my neighborhood that we've been advocating for for a decade and it never happens.

You seriously MUST live in rich real estate if this is what is most top of mind to you to complain about. Just admit it. Take a drive to other parts of the city and tell me if bike helmets are really the bigger concern in terms of road safety.


Wow. It going to take an awful lot for you to start caring about the safety of small children.


I do. I have two of them myself. It's why I like safe road design, especially when I live in parts of the city that have crappy road design and it takes a decade of advocating for a simple crosswalk whereas those in the rich areas get one fairly quickly. Especially when safe road design also prevents criminals from barreling through neighborhoods shooting guns at a million miles per hour as we've actually dealt with.

You still didn't admit you live in rich NW where you aren't even dealing with much crime and your roads are designed better anyways, and having $$ has meant you got 311 requests more quickly and efficiently. It's ok. Just be honest.


You make a lot of weird assumptions. Also, don't you have anything better to do? It sounds like you spend your entire day on this stupid web site just waiting to jump down the throat of anyone who isn't into bicycles.


Well that confirms my assumption because you won't deny it. I assume you have to live in NW if bicyclists annoy you more than cars. You don't actually experience the day to day nuisance of bad road design. You don't experience things like criminals flying down your one way street the wrong way while you're trying to get your kids into the car (hey, no one died! I shouldn't care, right? I should care about the bicyclists, right!). You don't experience drivers running the red light at the end of your street At. Least. Once. Every. Single. Week. when you have the green and are turning left with your kids in the car. You don't even experience much of the crime you are pretending to be so concerned about while here in a forum about the bike lobby advocating for safer streets.

Also, apparently you don't have anything better to do either, you're here too?


I think the bolded seems to be what people are either obtusely or deliberately missing here. Safe street design isn't just to prevent people from dying or getting hit. There are so many close calls that never get reported and aren't in any statistics that still make it dangerous or unpleasant to walk or bike places in the city. If someone blows a stop sign and almost hits my kids that isn't going to be in a police report but it still has an effect on my day. It means I might be less likely to let my ten year old walk home so then I have to drive him.

There are people on this site who see to say that if people don't die then we shouldn't need to make changes to the street. That is fine if that is your position but know that other advocate for safe streets so that we can have higher quality of life, which for us includes walking or biking places. If that means that a person in a car gets someone five minutes later, I truly do not care. (and if it means that when I drive somewhere I get to my destination five minutes slower then I am all for it if it means that kids can cross streets safely). Transit isn't solely about getting people to their destinations as fast as possible while they re sitting in climate controlled, cushy metal boxes. There are other people who have different preferences than you and we are absolutely going to continue to advocate for them.


Or maybe you should just be more careful? You live in a big city, one of the most densely populated in North America. There's lots of people moving around and sh*t is going to happen. You'd probably be better off exercising a little common sense than putting all your hopes in a doomed-to-fail campaign to have the government try to engineer away accidents.


So you think it is ok to ask me and my children to be extremely careful (which we are, by the way) and not to ask drivers to be extremely careful? Drivers don't have to be aware of the fact that they are driving through densely populated areas but pedestrians do? Why the double standard?

Is yours just a "might makes right" argument that because someone chooses to drive a deadly vehicle then everyone has to get out of his way? This is WHY the streets need to be re-engineered. If there is a bollard in your way as you make a turn that slows you down or a speed bump or other traffic calming then you can't bully pedestrians as you run a stop sign.

Watch any intersection where there is a crosswalk and no stop sign or signal. Pedestrians legally have the right of way but they wait until cars full stop or there is no traffic (IOW they are being careful) because drivers are unable or unwilling to drive carefully and yield to the party that has the legal right of way.


Drivers are careful. People in this city probably take close to a billion car trips a year, and yet the number of people involved in accidents is tiny. That doesn't just happen unless people are trying to avoid running into each other. For those who aren't careful, we already have lots and lots of penalties (including sending them to prison).

There are over 3 billion VMT on DC roads each year. Annual car trips by DC residents (excluding MD and VA drivers) are estimated around 2.5 million. Accidents on DC roads are very rare and DC is one of the safest cities in the US for vehicle accidents.


Sure. And mass shootings are rare and devastating. But I'd also like more done to prevent them. Same concept. "These things are rare. Thoughts and prayers."




The issue is diminishing returns. Most people don't think it's worth spending billions of dollars and ruining traffic for hundreds of thousands of people so that we can reduce the number of traffic deaths from 24 to 22. The city has more important things to do.



It isn't just traffic deaths. It is injury, repairs to auto, maintenance on roads, pollution and corresponding health externalities as well as cost savings when more people are walking and biking.


More people aren't going to walk or bike. They'll just drive elsewhere. They'll avoid neighborhoods that are too hard to get to or they'll take side streets instead of main arteries designed for lots of traffic or they'll just sit in traffic longer.


You can see this happening downtown. The city conveniently used the pandemic to put bike lanes everywhere and now it's just really hard to get around. Not surprisingly, a lot fewer people are going downtown. It's not the only reason downtown is dying. But it's a big one.


Figurative dinosaurs powered by literal dinosaurs.

People have figured out that there are better things to do with public resources than subsidize your wasteful lifestyle and the damage it does to the world and everyone who does or will inhabit it..

Please adapt or move on.


Your faux superiority is noted, mocked and rejected. Many, many more people will continue to drive than bike.

Please adapt or move on.
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Anonymous wrote:Still don't understand why bicyclists aren't required to wear helmets, or why they're allowed to put small children on bikes without helmets. If those kids were in cars, they'd be required to wear seat belts or be in car seats...


I mean, I'll care about this when the city actually does something about reciprocity with crappy drivers from M/VA, actually starts traffic enforcement for people who run stop signs and red lights without any enforcement (literally in front of police cars and nothing happens).

Or, actually puts in a crosswalk at one intersection in my neighborhood that we've been advocating for for a decade and it never happens.

You seriously MUST live in rich real estate if this is what is most top of mind to you to complain about. Just admit it. Take a drive to other parts of the city and tell me if bike helmets are really the bigger concern in terms of road safety.


Wow. It going to take an awful lot for you to start caring about the safety of small children.


I do. I have two of them myself. It's why I like safe road design, especially when I live in parts of the city that have crappy road design and it takes a decade of advocating for a simple crosswalk whereas those in the rich areas get one fairly quickly. Especially when safe road design also prevents criminals from barreling through neighborhoods shooting guns at a million miles per hour as we've actually dealt with.

You still didn't admit you live in rich NW where you aren't even dealing with much crime and your roads are designed better anyways, and having $$ has meant you got 311 requests more quickly and efficiently. It's ok. Just be honest.


You make a lot of weird assumptions. Also, don't you have anything better to do? It sounds like you spend your entire day on this stupid web site just waiting to jump down the throat of anyone who isn't into bicycles.


Well that confirms my assumption because you won't deny it. I assume you have to live in NW if bicyclists annoy you more than cars. You don't actually experience the day to day nuisance of bad road design. You don't experience things like criminals flying down your one way street the wrong way while you're trying to get your kids into the car (hey, no one died! I shouldn't care, right? I should care about the bicyclists, right!). You don't experience drivers running the red light at the end of your street At. Least. Once. Every. Single. Week. when you have the green and are turning left with your kids in the car. You don't even experience much of the crime you are pretending to be so concerned about while here in a forum about the bike lobby advocating for safer streets.

Also, apparently you don't have anything better to do either, you're here too?


I think the bolded seems to be what people are either obtusely or deliberately missing here. Safe street design isn't just to prevent people from dying or getting hit. There are so many close calls that never get reported and aren't in any statistics that still make it dangerous or unpleasant to walk or bike places in the city. If someone blows a stop sign and almost hits my kids that isn't going to be in a police report but it still has an effect on my day. It means I might be less likely to let my ten year old walk home so then I have to drive him.

There are people on this site who see to say that if people don't die then we shouldn't need to make changes to the street. That is fine if that is your position but know that other advocate for safe streets so that we can have higher quality of life, which for us includes walking or biking places. If that means that a person in a car gets someone five minutes later, I truly do not care. (and if it means that when I drive somewhere I get to my destination five minutes slower then I am all for it if it means that kids can cross streets safely). Transit isn't solely about getting people to their destinations as fast as possible while they re sitting in climate controlled, cushy metal boxes. There are other people who have different preferences than you and we are absolutely going to continue to advocate for them.


Or maybe you should just be more careful? You live in a big city, one of the most densely populated in North America. There's lots of people moving around and sh*t is going to happen. You'd probably be better off exercising a little common sense than putting all your hopes in a doomed-to-fail campaign to have the government try to engineer away accidents.


So you think it is ok to ask me and my children to be extremely careful (which we are, by the way) and not to ask drivers to be extremely careful? Drivers don't have to be aware of the fact that they are driving through densely populated areas but pedestrians do? Why the double standard?

Is yours just a "might makes right" argument that because someone chooses to drive a deadly vehicle then everyone has to get out of his way? This is WHY the streets need to be re-engineered. If there is a bollard in your way as you make a turn that slows you down or a speed bump or other traffic calming then you can't bully pedestrians as you run a stop sign.

Watch any intersection where there is a crosswalk and no stop sign or signal. Pedestrians legally have the right of way but they wait until cars full stop or there is no traffic (IOW they are being careful) because drivers are unable or unwilling to drive carefully and yield to the party that has the legal right of way.


Drivers are careful. People in this city probably take close to a billion car trips a year, and yet the number of people involved in accidents is tiny. That doesn't just happen unless people are trying to avoid running into each other. For those who aren't careful, we already have lots and lots of penalties (including sending them to prison).

There are over 3 billion VMT on DC roads each year. Annual car trips by DC residents (excluding MD and VA drivers) are estimated around 2.5 million. Accidents on DC roads are very rare and DC is one of the safest cities in the US for vehicle accidents.


Sure. And mass shootings are rare and devastating. But I'd also like more done to prevent them. Same concept. "These things are rare. Thoughts and prayers."




The issue is diminishing returns. Most people don't think it's worth spending billions of dollars and ruining traffic for hundreds of thousands of people so that we can reduce the number of traffic deaths from 24 to 22. The city has more important things to do.



It isn't just traffic deaths. It is injury, repairs to auto, maintenance on roads, pollution and corresponding health externalities as well as cost savings when more people are walking and biking.


More people aren't going to walk or bike. They'll just drive elsewhere. They'll avoid neighborhoods that are too hard to get to or they'll take side streets instead of main arteries designed for lots of traffic or they'll just sit in traffic longer.


You can see this happening downtown. The city conveniently used the pandemic to put bike lanes everywhere and now it's just really hard to get around. Not surprisingly, a lot fewer people are going downtown. It's not the only reason downtown is dying. But it's a big one.

The goal was to make it harder to drive so less people drive. The assumption was that if they don’t drive they would still come downtown but on bikes or transit. The reality is that they are just going somewhere else instead. In the meantime, retail vacancy in downtown is 20% and rising. One out of every five storefronts are vacant.


You are just making up bike lanes as a reason for decreased occupancy downtown. Sorry, that's not the reason.

I said nothing about bike lanes. There is nothing that I said that was inaccurate. This is “traffic calming”. Funny that you want to run away from and not defend your own agenda when its negative impacts are clear. If you reduce road capacity, the traffic does not magically disappear. It just goes somewhere else.

The reason that there are so many vacant storefronts downtown is that people are not coming back to work in large numbers. One reason why many people are choosing not to come back downtown is that DC had intentionally made it difficult to navigate with a car. That should be considered a policy victory. Right? I guess you don’t like the consequences.

Well at least you can now ride your bikes faster past those blighted downtown areas to reach your vibrant urban destination.


This is what businesses complain about. Bike lanes mean a lot fewer people are around.


The businesses complain because they "feel" that if there isn't easy parking in front of their establshment, that their business will suffer, when the reality is that they have no idea how many of their customers do, or don't actually drive and park to support their establishment.

Just coincidentally, business at both Pike & Rose and the Mosiac District is booming while it’s suffering downtown DC. Two of those destinations have abundant parking and cater to cars. One is hostile to cars. But of course that’s not the reason for the difference in business. Not at all.
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Anonymous wrote:Still don't understand why bicyclists aren't required to wear helmets, or why they're allowed to put small children on bikes without helmets. If those kids were in cars, they'd be required to wear seat belts or be in car seats...


I mean, I'll care about this when the city actually does something about reciprocity with crappy drivers from M/VA, actually starts traffic enforcement for people who run stop signs and red lights without any enforcement (literally in front of police cars and nothing happens).

Or, actually puts in a crosswalk at one intersection in my neighborhood that we've been advocating for for a decade and it never happens.

You seriously MUST live in rich real estate if this is what is most top of mind to you to complain about. Just admit it. Take a drive to other parts of the city and tell me if bike helmets are really the bigger concern in terms of road safety.


Wow. It going to take an awful lot for you to start caring about the safety of small children.


I do. I have two of them myself. It's why I like safe road design, especially when I live in parts of the city that have crappy road design and it takes a decade of advocating for a simple crosswalk whereas those in the rich areas get one fairly quickly. Especially when safe road design also prevents criminals from barreling through neighborhoods shooting guns at a million miles per hour as we've actually dealt with.

You still didn't admit you live in rich NW where you aren't even dealing with much crime and your roads are designed better anyways, and having $$ has meant you got 311 requests more quickly and efficiently. It's ok. Just be honest.


You make a lot of weird assumptions. Also, don't you have anything better to do? It sounds like you spend your entire day on this stupid web site just waiting to jump down the throat of anyone who isn't into bicycles.


Well that confirms my assumption because you won't deny it. I assume you have to live in NW if bicyclists annoy you more than cars. You don't actually experience the day to day nuisance of bad road design. You don't experience things like criminals flying down your one way street the wrong way while you're trying to get your kids into the car (hey, no one died! I shouldn't care, right? I should care about the bicyclists, right!). You don't experience drivers running the red light at the end of your street At. Least. Once. Every. Single. Week. when you have the green and are turning left with your kids in the car. You don't even experience much of the crime you are pretending to be so concerned about while here in a forum about the bike lobby advocating for safer streets.

Also, apparently you don't have anything better to do either, you're here too?


I think the bolded seems to be what people are either obtusely or deliberately missing here. Safe street design isn't just to prevent people from dying or getting hit. There are so many close calls that never get reported and aren't in any statistics that still make it dangerous or unpleasant to walk or bike places in the city. If someone blows a stop sign and almost hits my kids that isn't going to be in a police report but it still has an effect on my day. It means I might be less likely to let my ten year old walk home so then I have to drive him.

There are people on this site who see to say that if people don't die then we shouldn't need to make changes to the street. That is fine if that is your position but know that other advocate for safe streets so that we can have higher quality of life, which for us includes walking or biking places. If that means that a person in a car gets someone five minutes later, I truly do not care. (and if it means that when I drive somewhere I get to my destination five minutes slower then I am all for it if it means that kids can cross streets safely). Transit isn't solely about getting people to their destinations as fast as possible while they re sitting in climate controlled, cushy metal boxes. There are other people who have different preferences than you and we are absolutely going to continue to advocate for them.


Or maybe you should just be more careful? You live in a big city, one of the most densely populated in North America. There's lots of people moving around and sh*t is going to happen. You'd probably be better off exercising a little common sense than putting all your hopes in a doomed-to-fail campaign to have the government try to engineer away accidents.


So you think it is ok to ask me and my children to be extremely careful (which we are, by the way) and not to ask drivers to be extremely careful? Drivers don't have to be aware of the fact that they are driving through densely populated areas but pedestrians do? Why the double standard?

Is yours just a "might makes right" argument that because someone chooses to drive a deadly vehicle then everyone has to get out of his way? This is WHY the streets need to be re-engineered. If there is a bollard in your way as you make a turn that slows you down or a speed bump or other traffic calming then you can't bully pedestrians as you run a stop sign.

Watch any intersection where there is a crosswalk and no stop sign or signal. Pedestrians legally have the right of way but they wait until cars full stop or there is no traffic (IOW they are being careful) because drivers are unable or unwilling to drive carefully and yield to the party that has the legal right of way.


Drivers are careful. People in this city probably take close to a billion car trips a year, and yet the number of people involved in accidents is tiny. That doesn't just happen unless people are trying to avoid running into each other. For those who aren't careful, we already have lots and lots of penalties (including sending them to prison).

There are over 3 billion VMT on DC roads each year. Annual car trips by DC residents (excluding MD and VA drivers) are estimated around 2.5 million. Accidents on DC roads are very rare and DC is one of the safest cities in the US for vehicle accidents.


Sure. And mass shootings are rare and devastating. But I'd also like more done to prevent them. Same concept. "These things are rare. Thoughts and prayers."




The issue is diminishing returns. Most people don't think it's worth spending billions of dollars and ruining traffic for hundreds of thousands of people so that we can reduce the number of traffic deaths from 24 to 22. The city has more important things to do.



It isn't just traffic deaths. It is injury, repairs to auto, maintenance on roads, pollution and corresponding health externalities as well as cost savings when more people are walking and biking.


More people aren't going to walk or bike. They'll just drive elsewhere. They'll avoid neighborhoods that are too hard to get to or they'll take side streets instead of main arteries designed for lots of traffic or they'll just sit in traffic longer.


You can see this happening downtown. The city conveniently used the pandemic to put bike lanes everywhere and now it's just really hard to get around. Not surprisingly, a lot fewer people are going downtown. It's not the only reason downtown is dying. But it's a big one.

The goal was to make it harder to drive so less people drive. The assumption was that if they don’t drive they would still come downtown but on bikes or transit. The reality is that they are just going somewhere else instead. In the meantime, retail vacancy in downtown is 20% and rising. One out of every five storefronts are vacant.


You know, I remember reading somewhere that what I'm having to pay for coleslaw doubled in price overnight because of those damn 17th street bike lanes! Totally makes sense, that.

So you mock “reduced demand” as a legitimate concept. Good to know.
Anonymous
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Anonymous wrote:Still don't understand why bicyclists aren't required to wear helmets, or why they're allowed to put small children on bikes without helmets. If those kids were in cars, they'd be required to wear seat belts or be in car seats...


I mean, I'll care about this when the city actually does something about reciprocity with crappy drivers from M/VA, actually starts traffic enforcement for people who run stop signs and red lights without any enforcement (literally in front of police cars and nothing happens).

Or, actually puts in a crosswalk at one intersection in my neighborhood that we've been advocating for for a decade and it never happens.

You seriously MUST live in rich real estate if this is what is most top of mind to you to complain about. Just admit it. Take a drive to other parts of the city and tell me if bike helmets are really the bigger concern in terms of road safety.


Wow. It going to take an awful lot for you to start caring about the safety of small children.


I do. I have two of them myself. It's why I like safe road design, especially when I live in parts of the city that have crappy road design and it takes a decade of advocating for a simple crosswalk whereas those in the rich areas get one fairly quickly. Especially when safe road design also prevents criminals from barreling through neighborhoods shooting guns at a million miles per hour as we've actually dealt with.

You still didn't admit you live in rich NW where you aren't even dealing with much crime and your roads are designed better anyways, and having $$ has meant you got 311 requests more quickly and efficiently. It's ok. Just be honest.


You make a lot of weird assumptions. Also, don't you have anything better to do? It sounds like you spend your entire day on this stupid web site just waiting to jump down the throat of anyone who isn't into bicycles.


Well that confirms my assumption because you won't deny it. I assume you have to live in NW if bicyclists annoy you more than cars. You don't actually experience the day to day nuisance of bad road design. You don't experience things like criminals flying down your one way street the wrong way while you're trying to get your kids into the car (hey, no one died! I shouldn't care, right? I should care about the bicyclists, right!). You don't experience drivers running the red light at the end of your street At. Least. Once. Every. Single. Week. when you have the green and are turning left with your kids in the car. You don't even experience much of the crime you are pretending to be so concerned about while here in a forum about the bike lobby advocating for safer streets.

Also, apparently you don't have anything better to do either, you're here too?


I think the bolded seems to be what people are either obtusely or deliberately missing here. Safe street design isn't just to prevent people from dying or getting hit. There are so many close calls that never get reported and aren't in any statistics that still make it dangerous or unpleasant to walk or bike places in the city. If someone blows a stop sign and almost hits my kids that isn't going to be in a police report but it still has an effect on my day. It means I might be less likely to let my ten year old walk home so then I have to drive him.

There are people on this site who see to say that if people don't die then we shouldn't need to make changes to the street. That is fine if that is your position but know that other advocate for safe streets so that we can have higher quality of life, which for us includes walking or biking places. If that means that a person in a car gets someone five minutes later, I truly do not care. (and if it means that when I drive somewhere I get to my destination five minutes slower then I am all for it if it means that kids can cross streets safely). Transit isn't solely about getting people to their destinations as fast as possible while they re sitting in climate controlled, cushy metal boxes. There are other people who have different preferences than you and we are absolutely going to continue to advocate for them.


Or maybe you should just be more careful? You live in a big city, one of the most densely populated in North America. There's lots of people moving around and sh*t is going to happen. You'd probably be better off exercising a little common sense than putting all your hopes in a doomed-to-fail campaign to have the government try to engineer away accidents.


So you think it is ok to ask me and my children to be extremely careful (which we are, by the way) and not to ask drivers to be extremely careful? Drivers don't have to be aware of the fact that they are driving through densely populated areas but pedestrians do? Why the double standard?

Is yours just a "might makes right" argument that because someone chooses to drive a deadly vehicle then everyone has to get out of his way? This is WHY the streets need to be re-engineered. If there is a bollard in your way as you make a turn that slows you down or a speed bump or other traffic calming then you can't bully pedestrians as you run a stop sign.

Watch any intersection where there is a crosswalk and no stop sign or signal. Pedestrians legally have the right of way but they wait until cars full stop or there is no traffic (IOW they are being careful) because drivers are unable or unwilling to drive carefully and yield to the party that has the legal right of way.


Drivers are careful. People in this city probably take close to a billion car trips a year, and yet the number of people involved in accidents is tiny. That doesn't just happen unless people are trying to avoid running into each other. For those who aren't careful, we already have lots and lots of penalties (including sending them to prison).

There are over 3 billion VMT on DC roads each year. Annual car trips by DC residents (excluding MD and VA drivers) are estimated around 2.5 million. Accidents on DC roads are very rare and DC is one of the safest cities in the US for vehicle accidents.


Sure. And mass shootings are rare and devastating. But I'd also like more done to prevent them. Same concept. "These things are rare. Thoughts and prayers."




The issue is diminishing returns. Most people don't think it's worth spending billions of dollars and ruining traffic for hundreds of thousands of people so that we can reduce the number of traffic deaths from 24 to 22. The city has more important things to do.



It isn't just traffic deaths. It is injury, repairs to auto, maintenance on roads, pollution and corresponding health externalities as well as cost savings when more people are walking and biking.


More people aren't going to walk or bike. They'll just drive elsewhere. They'll avoid neighborhoods that are too hard to get to or they'll take side streets instead of main arteries designed for lots of traffic or they'll just sit in traffic longer.


You can see this happening downtown. The city conveniently used the pandemic to put bike lanes everywhere and now it's just really hard to get around. Not surprisingly, a lot fewer people are going downtown. It's not the only reason downtown is dying. But it's a big one.

The goal was to make it harder to drive so less people drive. The assumption was that if they don’t drive they would still come downtown but on bikes or transit. The reality is that they are just going somewhere else instead. In the meantime, retail vacancy in downtown is 20% and rising. One out of every five storefronts are vacant.


You are just making up bike lanes as a reason for decreased occupancy downtown. Sorry, that's not the reason.

I said nothing about bike lanes. There is nothing that I said that was inaccurate. This is “traffic calming”. Funny that you want to run away from and not defend your own agenda when its negative impacts are clear. If you reduce road capacity, the traffic does not magically disappear. It just goes somewhere else.

The reason that there are so many vacant storefronts downtown is that people are not coming back to work in large numbers. One reason why many people are choosing not to come back downtown is that DC had intentionally made it difficult to navigate with a car. That should be considered a policy victory. Right? I guess you don’t like the consequences.

Well at least you can now ride your bikes faster past those blighted downtown areas to reach your vibrant urban destination.


This is what businesses complain about. Bike lanes mean a lot fewer people are around.


What? Provides proof. You're just making stuff up.


Not really sure what people are disputing here. If you replace driving lanes with bike lanes, you're obviously reducing the carrying capacity of those roads. A street that previously might have moved 30,000 people per day is suddenly moving a fraction of that. That's like giving a city arteriosclerosis. You're making it harder for people to circulate in a city. The bike people say drivers will all just suddenly switch to bikes but that's obviously ridiculous. We've seen this happen in other cities:

San Francisco’s Cyclists Cheer a Road Less Traveled. Museums Mourn It.

Though pedestrians and cyclists are rejoicing at a Golden Gate Park ban on cars, rebounding museums fear the detour will keep visitors away.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/08/arts/design/san-francisco-bikes-cars-museum.html


that was a year ago. meanwhile attendance has rebounded at the other Golden Gate Park museums, and the closure was made permanent. De Young museum claims attendance is still down but refuses to show their data.


I’m going to need a citation.
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Anonymous wrote:Still don't understand why bicyclists aren't required to wear helmets, or why they're allowed to put small children on bikes without helmets. If those kids were in cars, they'd be required to wear seat belts or be in car seats...


I mean, I'll care about this when the city actually does something about reciprocity with crappy drivers from M/VA, actually starts traffic enforcement for people who run stop signs and red lights without any enforcement (literally in front of police cars and nothing happens).

Or, actually puts in a crosswalk at one intersection in my neighborhood that we've been advocating for for a decade and it never happens.

You seriously MUST live in rich real estate if this is what is most top of mind to you to complain about. Just admit it. Take a drive to other parts of the city and tell me if bike helmets are really the bigger concern in terms of road safety.


Wow. It going to take an awful lot for you to start caring about the safety of small children.


I do. I have two of them myself. It's why I like safe road design, especially when I live in parts of the city that have crappy road design and it takes a decade of advocating for a simple crosswalk whereas those in the rich areas get one fairly quickly. Especially when safe road design also prevents criminals from barreling through neighborhoods shooting guns at a million miles per hour as we've actually dealt with.

You still didn't admit you live in rich NW where you aren't even dealing with much crime and your roads are designed better anyways, and having $$ has meant you got 311 requests more quickly and efficiently. It's ok. Just be honest.


You make a lot of weird assumptions. Also, don't you have anything better to do? It sounds like you spend your entire day on this stupid web site just waiting to jump down the throat of anyone who isn't into bicycles.


Well that confirms my assumption because you won't deny it. I assume you have to live in NW if bicyclists annoy you more than cars. You don't actually experience the day to day nuisance of bad road design. You don't experience things like criminals flying down your one way street the wrong way while you're trying to get your kids into the car (hey, no one died! I shouldn't care, right? I should care about the bicyclists, right!). You don't experience drivers running the red light at the end of your street At. Least. Once. Every. Single. Week. when you have the green and are turning left with your kids in the car. You don't even experience much of the crime you are pretending to be so concerned about while here in a forum about the bike lobby advocating for safer streets.

Also, apparently you don't have anything better to do either, you're here too?


I think the bolded seems to be what people are either obtusely or deliberately missing here. Safe street design isn't just to prevent people from dying or getting hit. There are so many close calls that never get reported and aren't in any statistics that still make it dangerous or unpleasant to walk or bike places in the city. If someone blows a stop sign and almost hits my kids that isn't going to be in a police report but it still has an effect on my day. It means I might be less likely to let my ten year old walk home so then I have to drive him.

There are people on this site who see to say that if people don't die then we shouldn't need to make changes to the street. That is fine if that is your position but know that other advocate for safe streets so that we can have higher quality of life, which for us includes walking or biking places. If that means that a person in a car gets someone five minutes later, I truly do not care. (and if it means that when I drive somewhere I get to my destination five minutes slower then I am all for it if it means that kids can cross streets safely). Transit isn't solely about getting people to their destinations as fast as possible while they re sitting in climate controlled, cushy metal boxes. There are other people who have different preferences than you and we are absolutely going to continue to advocate for them.


Or maybe you should just be more careful? You live in a big city, one of the most densely populated in North America. There's lots of people moving around and sh*t is going to happen. You'd probably be better off exercising a little common sense than putting all your hopes in a doomed-to-fail campaign to have the government try to engineer away accidents.


So you think it is ok to ask me and my children to be extremely careful (which we are, by the way) and not to ask drivers to be extremely careful? Drivers don't have to be aware of the fact that they are driving through densely populated areas but pedestrians do? Why the double standard?

Is yours just a "might makes right" argument that because someone chooses to drive a deadly vehicle then everyone has to get out of his way? This is WHY the streets need to be re-engineered. If there is a bollard in your way as you make a turn that slows you down or a speed bump or other traffic calming then you can't bully pedestrians as you run a stop sign.

Watch any intersection where there is a crosswalk and no stop sign or signal. Pedestrians legally have the right of way but they wait until cars full stop or there is no traffic (IOW they are being careful) because drivers are unable or unwilling to drive carefully and yield to the party that has the legal right of way.


Drivers are careful. People in this city probably take close to a billion car trips a year, and yet the number of people involved in accidents is tiny. That doesn't just happen unless people are trying to avoid running into each other. For those who aren't careful, we already have lots and lots of penalties (including sending them to prison).

There are over 3 billion VMT on DC roads each year. Annual car trips by DC residents (excluding MD and VA drivers) are estimated around 2.5 million. Accidents on DC roads are very rare and DC is one of the safest cities in the US for vehicle accidents.


Sure. And mass shootings are rare and devastating. But I'd also like more done to prevent them. Same concept. "These things are rare. Thoughts and prayers."




The issue is diminishing returns. Most people don't think it's worth spending billions of dollars and ruining traffic for hundreds of thousands of people so that we can reduce the number of traffic deaths from 24 to 22. The city has more important things to do.



It isn't just traffic deaths. It is injury, repairs to auto, maintenance on roads, pollution and corresponding health externalities as well as cost savings when more people are walking and biking.


More people aren't going to walk or bike. They'll just drive elsewhere. They'll avoid neighborhoods that are too hard to get to or they'll take side streets instead of main arteries designed for lots of traffic or they'll just sit in traffic longer.


You can see this happening downtown. The city conveniently used the pandemic to put bike lanes everywhere and now it's just really hard to get around. Not surprisingly, a lot fewer people are going downtown. It's not the only reason downtown is dying. But it's a big one.

The goal was to make it harder to drive so less people drive. The assumption was that if they don’t drive they would still come downtown but on bikes or transit. The reality is that they are just going somewhere else instead. In the meantime, retail vacancy in downtown is 20% and rising. One out of every five storefronts are vacant.


You are just making up bike lanes as a reason for decreased occupancy downtown. Sorry, that's not the reason.

I said nothing about bike lanes. There is nothing that I said that was inaccurate. This is “traffic calming”. Funny that you want to run away from and not defend your own agenda when its negative impacts are clear. If you reduce road capacity, the traffic does not magically disappear. It just goes somewhere else.

The reason that there are so many vacant storefronts downtown is that people are not coming back to work in large numbers. One reason why many people are choosing not to come back downtown is that DC had intentionally made it difficult to navigate with a car. That should be considered a policy victory. Right? I guess you don’t like the consequences.

Well at least you can now ride your bikes faster past those blighted downtown areas to reach your vibrant urban destination.


People aren't coming downtown because employers are not requiring it. Which is also a reason the hystrionics around the bike lanes on Connecticut Avenue are totally misplaced.


+1 except for the totally unfair addition of a y into histrionics. The anti-bike rager(s) on here is(are) clearly male.

It’s a good question though that if it is such vibrant urbanism why shouldn’t people want to go downtown anyway to enjoy themselves? Instead, given alternatives, people avoid all the urbanism of downtown DC like the plague.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:The city should spend more time on the pedestrian perspective. Pedestrians by far outnumber bikes and yet all of the safe street changes benefit bikes at the expense of pedestrians. everytime pedestrians speak up they get shouted down as drivers in disguise. I am in favor of slowing down car traffic to safe levels AND getting bikes/scooters etc.. under control so that walking around isn't like frogger. Particularly with the "hidden" bike lanes that cause pedestrians to have to lurk around the bike lane peeking around the cars parked on the other side to see if it is safe to enter the cross walk while trying not to get hit by bikes speeding by. This is particularly difficult with small children and dogs. It's impossible to see if it is safe to cross from the sidewalk

It’s incredible, isn’t it? My favorite bike lane is the one that bisects bus loading zones. It’s only a matter of time before someone old or infirm gets hit and the cyclists will blame the pedestrian no doubt.
Anonymous
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Anonymous wrote:The city should spend more time on the pedestrian perspective. Pedestrians by far outnumber bikes and yet all of the safe street changes benefit bikes at the expense of pedestrians. everytime pedestrians speak up they get shouted down as drivers in disguise. I am in favor of slowing down car traffic to safe levels AND getting bikes/scooters etc.. under control so that walking around isn't like frogger. Particularly with the "hidden" bike lanes that cause pedestrians to have to lurk around the bike lane peeking around the cars parked on the other side to see if it is safe to enter the cross walk while trying not to get hit by bikes speeding by. This is particularly difficult with small children and dogs. It's impossible to see if it is safe to cross from the sidewalk


I’m do tired of rebutting this. Bike lanes are part of overall traffic calming projects that benefit pedestrians. They narrow the road and slow it down.

Bike lanes can make pedestrians less safe. “Traffic calming” is also a nice euphemism for promoting congestion as a matter of policy through reducing roadway capacity.

Where do the cars go when this happens? Everyone has been asking this question and the responses have been total nonsense.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The city should spend more time on the pedestrian perspective. Pedestrians by far outnumber bikes and yet all of the safe street changes benefit bikes at the expense of pedestrians. everytime pedestrians speak up they get shouted down as drivers in disguise. I am in favor of slowing down car traffic to safe levels AND getting bikes/scooters etc.. under control so that walking around isn't like frogger. Particularly with the "hidden" bike lanes that cause pedestrians to have to lurk around the bike lane peeking around the cars parked on the other side to see if it is safe to enter the cross walk while trying not to get hit by bikes speeding by. This is particularly difficult with small children and dogs. It's impossible to see if it is safe to cross from the sidewalk


Is that why all the pro-bike people were for banning right on red? That's one that will benefit pedestrians. Same thing for anything that slows down drivers. It makes pedestrians safer, notwithstanding the dumbasses who say that making them slow down or wait at a red light will FORCE them to tear around unsafely.


Yet another thing to slow down traffic. Allowing right on red helps move cars through intersections when there is a break in traffic and while pedestrians aren’t crossing. Now more cars will be queued up waiting not for the light, but for the pedestrians who have a walk signal to cross. Will we start enforcing the rule that pedestrians should only leave the curb when they have the white walk signal and stay put when it becomes the orange flashing walk sign unless they are already in the crosswalk? If not, at some intersections you will have very few cars get through during each signal.
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Anonymous wrote:Still don't understand why bicyclists aren't required to wear helmets, or why they're allowed to put small children on bikes without helmets. If those kids were in cars, they'd be required to wear seat belts or be in car seats...


I mean, I'll care about this when the city actually does something about reciprocity with crappy drivers from M/VA, actually starts traffic enforcement for people who run stop signs and red lights without any enforcement (literally in front of police cars and nothing happens).

Or, actually puts in a crosswalk at one intersection in my neighborhood that we've been advocating for for a decade and it never happens.

You seriously MUST live in rich real estate if this is what is most top of mind to you to complain about. Just admit it. Take a drive to other parts of the city and tell me if bike helmets are really the bigger concern in terms of road safety.


Wow. It going to take an awful lot for you to start caring about the safety of small children.


I do. I have two of them myself. It's why I like safe road design, especially when I live in parts of the city that have crappy road design and it takes a decade of advocating for a simple crosswalk whereas those in the rich areas get one fairly quickly. Especially when safe road design also prevents criminals from barreling through neighborhoods shooting guns at a million miles per hour as we've actually dealt with.

You still didn't admit you live in rich NW where you aren't even dealing with much crime and your roads are designed better anyways, and having $$ has meant you got 311 requests more quickly and efficiently. It's ok. Just be honest.


You make a lot of weird assumptions. Also, don't you have anything better to do? It sounds like you spend your entire day on this stupid web site just waiting to jump down the throat of anyone who isn't into bicycles.


Well that confirms my assumption because you won't deny it. I assume you have to live in NW if bicyclists annoy you more than cars. You don't actually experience the day to day nuisance of bad road design. You don't experience things like criminals flying down your one way street the wrong way while you're trying to get your kids into the car (hey, no one died! I shouldn't care, right? I should care about the bicyclists, right!). You don't experience drivers running the red light at the end of your street At. Least. Once. Every. Single. Week. when you have the green and are turning left with your kids in the car. You don't even experience much of the crime you are pretending to be so concerned about while here in a forum about the bike lobby advocating for safer streets.

Also, apparently you don't have anything better to do either, you're here too?


I think the bolded seems to be what people are either obtusely or deliberately missing here. Safe street design isn't just to prevent people from dying or getting hit. There are so many close calls that never get reported and aren't in any statistics that still make it dangerous or unpleasant to walk or bike places in the city. If someone blows a stop sign and almost hits my kids that isn't going to be in a police report but it still has an effect on my day. It means I might be less likely to let my ten year old walk home so then I have to drive him.

There are people on this site who see to say that if people don't die then we shouldn't need to make changes to the street. That is fine if that is your position but know that other advocate for safe streets so that we can have higher quality of life, which for us includes walking or biking places. If that means that a person in a car gets someone five minutes later, I truly do not care. (and if it means that when I drive somewhere I get to my destination five minutes slower then I am all for it if it means that kids can cross streets safely). Transit isn't solely about getting people to their destinations as fast as possible while they re sitting in climate controlled, cushy metal boxes. There are other people who have different preferences than you and we are absolutely going to continue to advocate for them.


Or maybe you should just be more careful? You live in a big city, one of the most densely populated in North America. There's lots of people moving around and sh*t is going to happen. You'd probably be better off exercising a little common sense than putting all your hopes in a doomed-to-fail campaign to have the government try to engineer away accidents.


So you think it is ok to ask me and my children to be extremely careful (which we are, by the way) and not to ask drivers to be extremely careful? Drivers don't have to be aware of the fact that they are driving through densely populated areas but pedestrians do? Why the double standard?

Is yours just a "might makes right" argument that because someone chooses to drive a deadly vehicle then everyone has to get out of his way? This is WHY the streets need to be re-engineered. If there is a bollard in your way as you make a turn that slows you down or a speed bump or other traffic calming then you can't bully pedestrians as you run a stop sign.

Watch any intersection where there is a crosswalk and no stop sign or signal. Pedestrians legally have the right of way but they wait until cars full stop or there is no traffic (IOW they are being careful) because drivers are unable or unwilling to drive carefully and yield to the party that has the legal right of way.


Drivers are careful. People in this city probably take close to a billion car trips a year, and yet the number of people involved in accidents is tiny. That doesn't just happen unless people are trying to avoid running into each other. For those who aren't careful, we already have lots and lots of penalties (including sending them to prison).

There are over 3 billion VMT on DC roads each year. Annual car trips by DC residents (excluding MD and VA drivers) are estimated around 2.5 million. Accidents on DC roads are very rare and DC is one of the safest cities in the US for vehicle accidents.


Sure. And mass shootings are rare and devastating. But I'd also like more done to prevent them. Same concept. "These things are rare. Thoughts and prayers."




The issue is diminishing returns. Most people don't think it's worth spending billions of dollars and ruining traffic for hundreds of thousands of people so that we can reduce the number of traffic deaths from 24 to 22. The city has more important things to do.



It isn't just traffic deaths. It is injury, repairs to auto, maintenance on roads, pollution and corresponding health externalities as well as cost savings when more people are walking and biking.


More people aren't going to walk or bike. They'll just drive elsewhere. They'll avoid neighborhoods that are too hard to get to or they'll take side streets instead of main arteries designed for lots of traffic or they'll just sit in traffic longer.


You can see this happening downtown. The city conveniently used the pandemic to put bike lanes everywhere and now it's just really hard to get around. Not surprisingly, a lot fewer people are going downtown. It's not the only reason downtown is dying. But it's a big one.

The goal was to make it harder to drive so less people drive. The assumption was that if they don’t drive they would still come downtown but on bikes or transit. The reality is that they are just going somewhere else instead. In the meantime, retail vacancy in downtown is 20% and rising. One out of every five storefronts are vacant.


You are just making up bike lanes as a reason for decreased occupancy downtown. Sorry, that's not the reason.

I said nothing about bike lanes. There is nothing that I said that was inaccurate. This is “traffic calming”. Funny that you want to run away from and not defend your own agenda when its negative impacts are clear. If you reduce road capacity, the traffic does not magically disappear. It just goes somewhere else.

The reason that there are so many vacant storefronts downtown is that people are not coming back to work in large numbers. One reason why many people are choosing not to come back downtown is that DC had intentionally made it difficult to navigate with a car. That should be considered a policy victory. Right? I guess you don’t like the consequences.

Well at least you can now ride your bikes faster past those blighted downtown areas to reach your vibrant urban destination.


This is what businesses complain about. Bike lanes mean a lot fewer people are around.


What? Provides proof. You're just making stuff up.


Not really sure what people are disputing here. If you replace driving lanes with bike lanes, you're obviously reducing the carrying capacity of those roads. A street that previously might have moved 30,000 people per day is suddenly moving a fraction of that. That's like giving a city arteriosclerosis. You're making it harder for people to circulate in a city. The bike people say drivers will all just suddenly switch to bikes but that's obviously ridiculous. We've seen this happen in other cities:

San Francisco’s Cyclists Cheer a Road Less Traveled. Museums Mourn It.

Though pedestrians and cyclists are rejoicing at a Golden Gate Park ban on cars, rebounding museums fear the detour will keep visitors away.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/08/arts/design/san-francisco-bikes-cars-museum.html


that was a year ago. meanwhile attendance has rebounded at the other Golden Gate Park museums, and the closure was made permanent. De Young museum claims attendance is still down but refuses to show their data.


I’m going to need a citation.

Oh if we're asking for citations, Imma gonna need a bunch. We can start with that 'billion' dollars figure thrown about spent on bike lanes. And a citation proving that lobbyist steak dinner monies are now being tragically spent outside of DC because of bike lanes (old thread, perhaps). Oh, prove to me that Falcicchio is against PBLs! That's good one! I need citations for the reams of insane Fox Newsish anti-bike nonsense you've been spouting thread after thread. Thanks.
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