The Bike Lobby is too powerful in DC...

[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.

The main reason people are not coming back to work downtown in large numbers is that the federal government hasn't required it yet, and many other large employers haven't, either. Not because driving got harder.

[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.

The main reason people are not coming back to work downtown in large numbers is that the federal government hasn't required it yet, and many other large employers haven't, either. Not because driving got harder.

If urbanism is so great, why are people not going back downtown on their own to enjoy the vibrancy? Why would they need to be forced? In the meantime, the city has made it less convenient for people who would otherwise choose to venture downtown voluntarily as a matter of policy. This is the expected result.

[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.

The main reason people are not coming back to work downtown in large numbers is that the federal government hasn't required it yet, and many other large employers haven't, either. Not because driving got harder.

If urbanism is so great, why are people not going back downtown on their own to enjoy the vibrancy? Why would they need to be forced? In the meantime, the city has made it less convenient for people who would otherwise choose to venture downtown voluntarily as a matter of policy. This is the expected result.

Sorry, the fact that people who don't live downtown and aren't required to be in their office in person are not voluntarily going in is not proof that the city's transportation policies has made people want to stay away. They're not going downtown to "enjoy the vibrancy" because they're... working. They have maybe 30 or 60 minutes out of an eight-hour workday to "enjoy the vibrancy." Why make ANY effort to commute downtown just so you can enjoy getting takeout lunch and sit in a mostly empty office doing Zoom meetings?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

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.

The main reason people are not coming back to work downtown in large numbers is that the federal government hasn't required it yet, and many other large employers haven't, either. Not because driving got harder.

If urbanism is so great, why are people not going back downtown on their own to enjoy the vibrancy? Why would they need to be forced? In the meantime, the city has made it less convenient for people who would otherwise choose to venture downtown voluntarily as a matter of policy. This is the expected result.

Are you living under a rock?? The entire world changed and people don't want to commute anywhere anymore! DH works at a company in Old Town (great and vibrant location) WITH parking but entire company went hybrid permanently because they surveyed employees and nobody wants to commute every day anymore. Entire companies are permanently converting to hybrid or remote not just in DC but everywhere. It has nothing to do with bike lanes. I work in healthcare but in an office, no patient care. Before the pandemic you went in every day. Now they are talking about permanently building in hybrid moving forward because that is the new way of the world.

[Anonymous]

Wasn't the point of putting bike lanes everywhere downtown to make driving and parking so miserable that no one would drive down there? Mission accomplished.

The only problem is that instead of switching to bikes, as the bike lobby predicted, all those people are just going elsewhere and now downtown is quickly dying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wasn't the point of putting bike lanes everywhere downtown to make driving and parking so miserable that no one would drive down there? Mission accomplished.

The only problem is that instead of switching to bikes, as the bike lobby predicted, all those people are just going elsewhere and now downtown is quickly dying.

No, entire companies went remote or hybrid permanently.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I ride a bike and drive a car. I have no problem with holding bikers and motorists to the same obligations to obey all traffic signs regardless if on a bike or a car. That makes both safer. How can anyone argue that it is safer for bikers to be able to run stop signs? Again, love cycling but this is just common sense to me.

+1. And I agree with you OP. It has really gotten out of control, making the streets less safe in fact.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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

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.

This entire thread boiled down to three sentences.

[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.

The main reason people are not coming back to work downtown in large numbers is that the federal government hasn't required it yet, and many other large employers haven't, either. Not because driving got harder.

If urbanism is so great, why are people not going back downtown on their own to enjoy the vibrancy? Why would they need to be forced? In the meantime, the city has made it less convenient for people who would otherwise choose to venture downtown voluntarily as a matter of policy. This is the expected result.

There are other urban parts of DC that are not downtown.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I ride a bike and drive a car. I have no problem with holding bikers and motorists to the same obligations to obey all traffic signs regardless if on a bike or a car. That makes both safer. How can anyone argue that it is safer for bikers to be able to run stop signs? Again, love cycling but this is just common sense to me.

+1. And I agree with you OP. It has really gotten out of control, making the streets less safe in fact.

This has been explained both in this thread, the mary cheh idaho stop thread, and the ct ave thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

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.

This entire thread boiled down to three sentences.

the "total nonsense" part is true, given that people have explained multiple times about traffic diversion and traffic calming.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

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.

This entire thread boiled down to three sentences.

the "total nonsense" part is true, given that people have explained multiple times about traffic diversion and traffic calming.

Oh, right. The entire city suddenly discovers that they don't hate biking.

[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.

The main reason people are not coming back to work downtown in large numbers is that the federal government hasn't required it yet, and many other large employers haven't, either. Not because driving got harder.

If urbanism is so great, why are people not going back downtown on their own to enjoy the vibrancy? Why would they need to be forced? In the meantime, the city has made it less convenient for people who would otherwise choose to venture downtown voluntarily as a matter of policy. This is the expected result.

There are other urban parts of DC that are not downtown.

But downtown is definitionally the most urban part of DC and yet it’s the most avoided. Why does the city not want to make it easier for people to go there voluntarily? Why are you hoping to save it through compulsion? And it’s not just suburban commuters. They highest WFH % in the country is Ward 1 DC. Turns out not even the urbanists want to go experience the vibrant urban core of the city. No wonder you spend your time advocating bike lanes so that you can bypass what you clearly detest. Who could blame you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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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.

The main reason people are not coming back to work downtown in large numbers is that the federal government hasn't required it yet, and many other large employers haven't, either. Not because driving got harder.

If urbanism is so great, why are people not going back downtown on their own to enjoy the vibrancy? Why would they need to be forced? In the meantime, the city has made it less convenient for people who would otherwise choose to venture downtown voluntarily as a matter of policy. This is the expected result.

There are other urban parts of DC that are not downtown.

But downtown is definitionally the most urban part of DC and yet it’s the most avoided. Why does the city not want to make it easier for people to go there voluntarily? Why are you hoping to save it through compulsion? And it’s not just suburban commuters. They highest WFH % in the country is Ward 1 DC. Turns out not even the urbanists want to go experience the vibrant urban core of the city. No wonder you spend your time advocating bike lanes so that you can bypass what you clearly detest. Who could blame you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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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.

The main reason people are not coming back to work downtown in large numbers is that the federal government hasn't required it yet, and many other large employers haven't, either. Not because driving got harder.

If urbanism is so great, why are people not going back downtown on their own to enjoy the vibrancy? Why would they need to be forced? In the meantime, the city has made it less convenient for people who would otherwise choose to venture downtown voluntarily as a matter of policy. This is the expected result.

There are other urban parts of DC that are not downtown.

But downtown is definitionally the most urban part of DC and yet it’s the most avoided. Why does the city not want to make it easier for people to go there voluntarily? Why are you hoping to save it through compulsion? And it’s not just suburban commuters. They highest WFH % in the country is Ward 1 DC. Turns out not even the urbanists want to go experience the vibrant urban core of the city. No wonder you spend your time advocating bike lanes so that you can bypass what you clearly detest. Who could blame you.

It’s funny how people that live in the urban core of a vibrant city also prefer to drive. A higher percentage commute by driving alone than transit or walking. Cycling barely registers. Pretty clear who the small niche group is here.