Can we never do Open Streets again?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Open Streets caused massive traffic jams throughout Petworth, inconveniencing hundreds of thousands of people. But, hey, 50 bicyclists got to ride their bikes down the middle of the street!

I doubt that!

NP. Okay so maybe not hundreds of thousands but it certainly made trying to go north on 13th, 14th or 16th a nightmare today. Can't speak for the other streets. Maybe no parking on 16th streets when they do this? Or come up with other traffic patterns to help?

Easily hundreds of thousands. There's probably 50,000 people who live in Petworth. There's probably 35,000 in Brightwood. Those are just the neighborhoods immediately affected. Now think of everyone, on a Saturday, trying to get anywhere between Silver Spring and downtown DC. And all the people trying to go EOTP to WOTP. Georgia avenue is a major artery and closing it shunts an enormous amount of traffic onto side streets that were never designed to accommodate so many cars.

Not close to accurate...look at the census tracts if you want to avoid hyperbole. Face it, this was a successful event by any metric.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dear Popville,

I wanted to drive my car right next to a major event and had to sit in traffic! Ugh, why don't people get out of my way? I'm going to be late for my Soulcycle Zumba class. Don't these people understand that I have places to drive?

Dear Popville,

I want to ride my scooter, even though I am definitely not five years old! And I want to do it in the middle of the street! Ugh, can't we shut down the equivalent of a mid-sized city to accommodate ME?

Dear Popville,

OK, I'm totally liberal, BUT
I couldn't drive my SUV to the organic market for my weekly discussion on environmentalism. All I'm asking is 6 feet by 16 feet wherever I want to be. Is that so selfish? Oh, yeah, and like no traffic so I can get there. And stop ticketing me for breaking the law. It's such a money grab like highway robbery. What do you want me to do? Drive at or below the speed limit?

Also, for my boyfriend, he's getting really intimidated by these girly men who ride bicycles. Don't they know they need to prove how manly they are by having someone build them a box with an engine instead of using their own muscles? I think he should get a bigger truck to prove himself. Who are these weenies who only move themselves around and not like a bunch of wasted space and metal?

[Anonymous]

My favorite part was watching a cyclist barrel into a pedestrian and then try to blame the pedestrian for walking on an open street. Typical DC cyclist asshole.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dear Popville,

I wanted to drive my car right next to a major event and had to sit in traffic! Ugh, why don't people get out of my way? I'm going to be late for my Soulcycle Zumba class. Don't these people understand that I have places to drive?

Dear Popville,

I want to ride my scooter, even though I am definitely not five years old! And I want to do it in the middle of the street! Ugh, can't we shut down the equivalent of a mid-sized city to accommodate ME?

It's interesting that you think that "allowing people who aren't in cars to use the whole street" = "shutting down" the area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My favorite part was watching a cyclist barrel into a pedestrian and then try to blame the pedestrian for walking on an open street. Typical DC cyclist asshole.

I hate cyclists. Easily the worst people on the road.

[Anonymous]

When I heard about it from WABA this summer, I was incredibly excited. As a cyclist, I really liked the idea of it as a concept - getting cars off the road and letting everyone see the great possibilities of car-less roads as a vision of the future. But it totally failed in execution because people were walking all over the damn road. WTF? So you couldn’t ride down the street at any useful speed because some dumbass would just step right out in front of you like you weren’t there. Uh HELLO! It’s still a road people! Just because there aren’t cars doesn’t mean you can just walk where the hell you want. “Open streets” =/= “pedestrians don’t have to stay on the sidewalk”. So it was sort of a failure from the perspective of using the street for car-less travel, because it just resulted in mobs of people getting in the way. Next time they need to make it clear that walkers need to stay on the sidewalk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When I heard about it from WABA this summer, I was incredibly excited. As a cyclist, I really liked the idea of it as a concept - getting cars off the road and letting everyone see the great possibilities of car-less roads as a vision of the future. But it totally failed in execution because people were walking all over the damn road. WTF? So you couldn’t ride down the street at any useful speed because some dumbass would just step right out in front of you like you weren’t there. Uh HELLO! It’s still a road people! Just because there aren’t cars doesn’t mean you can just walk where the hell you want. “Open streets” =/= “pedestrians don’t have to stay on the sidewalk”. So it was sort of a failure from the perspective of using the street for car-less travel, because it just resulted in mobs of people getting in the way. Next time they need to make it clear that walkers need to stay on the sidewalk.

Go home and stay there.

-a cyclist who had a great time biking with kids

[Anonymous]

If they kill this open street thing please also kill all marathons and triathlon sa

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When I heard about it from WABA this summer, I was incredibly excited. As a cyclist, I really liked the idea of it as a concept - getting cars off the road and letting everyone see the great possibilities of car-less roads as a vision of the future. But it totally failed in execution because people were walking all over the damn road. WTF? So you couldn’t ride down the street at any useful speed because some dumbass would just step right out in front of you like you weren’t there. Uh HELLO! It’s still a road people! Just because there aren’t cars doesn’t mean you can just walk where the hell you want. “Open streets” =/= “pedestrians don’t have to stay on the sidewalk”. So it was sort of a failure from the perspective of using the street for car-less travel, because it just resulted in mobs of people getting in the way. Next time they need to make it clear that walkers need to stay on the sidewalk.

Yes, that was the whole point.

-a person who rides a bike a lot

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Dear Popville,

I wanted to drive my car right next to a major event and had to sit in traffic! Ugh, why don't people get out of my way? I'm going to be late for my Soulcycle Zumba class. Don't these people understand that I have places to drive?

This is what everyone complaining sounds like. Can we never have cherry blossoms again? How about we stop all fun runs too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My favorite part was watching a cyclist barrel into a pedestrian and then try to blame the pedestrian for walking on an open street. Typical DC cyclist asshole.

I hate cyclists. Easily the worst people on the road.

As someone who has to daily push a stroller into the road because cars are blocking crosswalks downtown, this is so false. Cars are so dangerous, and drivers have no awareness of how close they come to hitting pedestrians.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When I heard about it from WABA this summer, I was incredibly excited. As a cyclist, I really liked the idea of it as a concept - getting cars off the road and letting everyone see the great possibilities of car-less roads as a vision of the future. But it totally failed in execution because people were walking all over the damn road. WTF? So you couldn’t ride down the street at any useful speed because some dumbass would just step right out in front of you like you weren’t there. Uh HELLO! It’s still a road people! Just because there aren’t cars doesn’t mean you can just walk where the hell you want. “Open streets” =/= “pedestrians don’t have to stay on the sidewalk”. So it was sort of a failure from the perspective of using the street for car-less travel, because it just resulted in mobs of people getting in the way. Next time they need to make it clear that walkers need to stay on the sidewalk.

Yes, that was the whole point.

-a person who rides a bike a lot

+1. It was a absolute mess with people walking around everywhere. Next time they do this they need to do a much better (and by "much better" I mean "at all") job explaining that open streets doesn't mean that crowds of people can just stroll down the middle of the road like it's a block party. The street is still reserved for vehicles, except in this case that means bicycles, not cars. People should still be walking on the sidewalk, not in the middle of the road. The point of this was to demonstrate that we could use our existing streets to allow use by bicycles-only, getting everyone out of their cars and on nonpolluting modes of transit. People won't realistically embrace a cycling commute if there's still the same hassles from crowds of pedestrians all over road as there were from cars.

Look at any urban area that has a significant road-use-by-cyclist factor, with fewer cars overall (Amsterdam for example). If you examine their "traffic" patterns, you see that the roads in urban cores are more than 90% occupied by bicycle users in some areas. But pedestrians DON'T walk in the street simply because of an absence of motor vehicles. They stay on the sidewalks which were designed for them, while the streets belong to bike users as intended.

The same idea needs to be reinforced here next time they do open streets. Open streets doesn't mean "walk in the street"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When I heard about it from WABA this summer, I was incredibly excited. As a cyclist, I really liked the idea of it as a concept - getting cars off the road and letting everyone see the great possibilities of car-less roads as a vision of the future. But it totally failed in execution because people were walking all over the damn road. WTF? So you couldn’t ride down the street at any useful speed because some dumbass would just step right out in front of you like you weren’t there. Uh HELLO! It’s still a road people! Just because there aren’t cars doesn’t mean you can just walk where the hell you want. “Open streets” =/= “pedestrians don’t have to stay on the sidewalk”. So it was sort of a failure from the perspective of using the street for car-less travel, because it just resulted in mobs of people getting in the way. Next time they need to make it clear that walkers need to stay on the sidewalk.

Yes, that was the whole point.

-a person who rides a bike a lot

+1. It was a absolute mess with people walking around everywhere. Next time they do this they need to do a much better (and by "much better" I mean "at all") job explaining that open streets doesn't mean that crowds of people can just stroll down the middle of the road like it's a block party. The street is still reserved for vehicles, except in this case that means bicycles, not cars. People should still be walking on the sidewalk, not in the middle of the road. The point of this was to demonstrate that we could use our existing streets to allow use by bicycles-only, getting everyone out of their cars and on nonpolluting modes of transit. People won't realistically embrace a cycling commute if there's still the same hassles from crowds of pedestrians all over road as there were from cars.

Look at any urban area that has a significant road-use-by-cyclist factor, with fewer cars overall (Amsterdam for example). If you examine their "traffic" patterns, you see that the roads in urban cores are more than 90% occupied by bicycle users in some areas. But pedestrians DON'T walk in the street simply because of an absence of motor vehicles. They stay on the sidewalks which were designed for them, while the streets belong to bike users as intended.

The same idea needs to be reinforced here next time they do open streets. Open streets doesn't mean "walk in the street"

It was actually to do anything but drive. So everyone had a right to be in the street.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My favorite part was watching a cyclist barrel into a pedestrian and then try to blame the pedestrian for walking on an open street. Typical DC cyclist asshole.

I hate cyclists. Easily the worst people on the road.

Dp I am a cyclist, a walker and a driver. I do my very best to obey all laws when I am a driver and a cyclist but, as when I am a walker I have it the worst. Scooters and bikers whiz by me inches when I am on the sidewalk and cars try to kill me when I am in the crosswalk trying to cross huge streets with very little time.

Guess who I feel the least sympathy? The car drivers because as a driver you ( and me) can do the most damage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When I heard about it from WABA this summer, I was incredibly excited. As a cyclist, I really liked the idea of it as a concept - getting cars off the road and letting everyone see the great possibilities of car-less roads as a vision of the future. But it totally failed in execution because people were walking all over the damn road. WTF? So you couldn’t ride down the street at any useful speed because some dumbass would just step right out in front of you like you weren’t there. Uh HELLO! It’s still a road people! Just because there aren’t cars doesn’t mean you can just walk where the hell you want. “Open streets” =/= “pedestrians don’t have to stay on the sidewalk”. So it was sort of a failure from the perspective of using the street for car-less travel, because it just resulted in mobs of people getting in the way. Next time they need to make it clear that walkers need to stay on the sidewalk.

Yes, that was the whole point.

-a person who rides a bike a lot

+1. It was a absolute mess with people walking around everywhere. Next time they do this they need to do a much better (and by "much better" I mean "at all") job explaining that open streets doesn't mean that crowds of people can just stroll down the middle of the road like it's a block party. The street is still reserved for vehicles, except in this case that means bicycles, not cars. People should still be walking on the sidewalk, not in the middle of the road. The point of this was to demonstrate that we could use our existing streets to allow use by bicycles-only, getting everyone out of their cars and on nonpolluting modes of transit. People won't realistically embrace a cycling commute if there's still the same hassles from crowds of pedestrians all over road as there were from cars.

Look at any urban area that has a significant road-use-by-cyclist factor, with fewer cars overall (Amsterdam for example). If you examine their "traffic" patterns, you see that the roads in urban cores are more than 90% occupied by bicycle users in some areas. But pedestrians DON'T walk in the street simply because of an absence of motor vehicles. They stay on the sidewalks which were designed for them, while the streets belong to bike users as intended.

The same idea needs to be reinforced here next time they do open streets. Open streets doesn't mean "walk in the street"

It was actually to do anything but drive. So everyone had a right to be in the street.

Dp before cars, streets used to be for people walking. I think we should have a people first moto rather than a car first.