Will DC resume commuter traffic patterns in the fall?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So why do Americans think that is ok, but somehow residents in other countries embrace the biking and mass transit options available to them? Why do we let cars rule our land use and lives?

Cars make people's lives better. Most people prefer to drive. Sorry.

There are about 42,000 people in the US whose lives were not made better by cars last year. Their loved ones' lives last year were probably also not made better by cars.

Sometimes planes crash. Maybe we should ban air travel too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So why do Americans think that is ok, but somehow residents in other countries embrace the biking and mass transit options available to them? Why do we let cars rule our land use and lives?

Cars make people's lives better. Most people prefer to drive. Sorry.

We know three couples in our DC neighborhood who chose to go carless in the past several years. They all bought new vehicles during the pandemic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think we will reach a new normal. Many office workers will have the choice to telework 2-3 days per week or more.

Connecticut Avenue is not going to revert back. The reversible lanes are permanently gone. The only question at this point is if there will be bike lanes or not.

And Beach Drive will remain as it currently is. there is no reason for a national park to be opened to polluting cars for single occupancy access during rush hour. All of the parking areas there are open as they always are, so if anyone wants to visit, they can via the south. They just cannot drive through it.

So if Connecticut Avenue will be effectively narrowed, and Beach Drive will be closed. what is DC's plan to move traffic to and from downtown? Reno Road?

DC's plans should be about moving people, not about moving traffic (cars).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So why do Americans think that is ok, but somehow residents in other countries embrace the biking and mass transit options available to them? Why do we let cars rule our land use and lives?

Cars make people's lives better. Most people prefer to drive. Sorry.

We know three couples in our DC neighborhood who chose to go carless in the past several years. They all bought new vehicles during the pandemic.

And now the pandemic is over (we hope).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So why do Americans think that is ok, but somehow residents in other countries embrace the biking and mass transit options available to them? Why do we let cars rule our land use and lives?

Cars make people's lives better. Most people prefer to drive. Sorry.

Only because we are conditioned to it by commercials and land use choices by past leadership locally and nationally.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think we will reach a new normal. Many office workers will have the choice to telework 2-3 days per week or more.

Connecticut Avenue is not going to revert back. The reversible lanes are permanently gone. The only question at this point is if there will be bike lanes or not.

And Beach Drive will remain as it currently is. there is no reason for a national park to be opened to polluting cars for single occupancy access during rush hour. All of the parking areas there are open as they always are, so if anyone wants to visit, they can via the south. They just cannot drive through it.

So if Connecticut Avenue will be effectively narrowed, and Beach Drive will be closed. what is DC's plan to move traffic to and from downtown? Reno Road?

DC's plans should be about moving people, not about moving traffic (cars).

The vast majority of people in DC travel by car.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think we will reach a new normal. Many office workers will have the choice to telework 2-3 days per week or more.

Connecticut Avenue is not going to revert back. The reversible lanes are permanently gone. The only question at this point is if there will be bike lanes or not.

And Beach Drive will remain as it currently is. there is no reason for a national park to be opened to polluting cars for single occupancy access during rush hour. All of the parking areas there are open as they always are, so if anyone wants to visit, they can via the south. They just cannot drive through it.

So if Connecticut Avenue will be effectively narrowed, and Beach Drive will be closed. what is DC's plan to move traffic to and from downtown? Reno Road?

There is traffic with or without Beach Drive or bike lanes. How much do we want to surrender our quality of life to commuters and cars? It will work out. It always does. It has in other places and it will here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:CT lanes study will be out next week and we will know more. I think it is hard to close Beach and not reopen reversible lanes on CT.

Disagree, they are two separate decisions made by two separate entities.

In the case of Beach Drive, it is the national park service, whose mission it is to administer national parks. Having a park used as a daily commuter route with impacts on the plants and animals, and the air in the park is simply a bad idea.

For CT Ave, the residents up and down the Avenue would prefer a vibrant and walkable public space rather than a commuter highway.

There is overwhelming support for both proposals.

"Vibrant, walkable..." sounds like a Greater Greater Washington talking point.

I love bike lanes and national parks. But one can' just assume away traffic. Fortunately, Washington DC wasn't sliced up by expressways the way that most U.S. cities were, but major streets like Connecticut Avenue serve as the arterial routes, carrying traffic from far upper Northwest and parts of Montgomery County to downtown Washington, DC. Constrain Connecticut Ave and keep Beach Drive closed, and where exactly will the traffic go? Cutting through a Waze maze on 0ur residential size streets?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So why do Americans think that is ok, but somehow residents in other countries embrace the biking and mass transit options available to them? Why do we let cars rule our land use and lives?

Cars make people's lives better. Most people prefer to drive. Sorry.

There are about 42,000 people in the US whose lives were not made better by cars last year. Their loved ones' lives last year were probably also not made better by cars.

Sometimes planes crash. Maybe we should ban air travel too.

In 2018, the total number of people killed in larger commercial air travel, in the whole world, was 538.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/02/deaths-from-commercial-airplane-crashes-fell-more-than-50percent-in-2019.html

Aircraft crash deaths are preventable. Road crash deaths are preventable too. But only if we stop shrugging our shoulders at 40,000 people per year killed on US roads, year after year after year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think we will reach a new normal. Many office workers will have the choice to telework 2-3 days per week or more.

Connecticut Avenue is not going to revert back. The reversible lanes are permanently gone. The only question at this point is if there will be bike lanes or not.

And Beach Drive will remain as it currently is. there is no reason for a national park to be opened to polluting cars for single occupancy access during rush hour. All of the parking areas there are open as they always are, so if anyone wants to visit, they can via the south. They just cannot drive through it.

So if Connecticut Avenue will be effectively narrowed, and Beach Drive will be closed. what is DC's plan to move traffic to and from downtown? Reno Road?

There is traffic with or without Beach Drive or bike lanes. How much do we want to surrender our quality of life to commuters and cars? It will work out. It always does. It has in other places and it will here.

This view calls to mind one of columnists Courtand Milloy's most famous lines: (speaking of DC's one-issue bike lane activists, BTW): "Myopic little twits."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So why do Americans think that is ok, but somehow residents in other countries embrace the biking and mass transit options available to them? Why do we let cars rule our land use and lives?

I hesitate to reply to this because I am already anticipating the response. But 99% of the rest of the world loves cars too. It’s really and truly not just a US thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Not PP, but how privileged it is of you to place the burden for figuring out how to get back and forth to work without a car on employees when it is the employers who dictate whether WFH is an option. Many folks don't have the option to telecommute 2-3 days/week. Many folks cannot just "get a job closer to where they live." Many folks cannot "move closer to where they live." Many folks don't live near viable public commuting options. This may come as a surprise to you. Perhaps you are young, white and earn more than $75K/year and are in a position to make these choices. Many of the rest of us simply aren't.

Many folks cannot physically ride a bike many miles to work. Many of us have to pick up kids, groceries, and other heavy things on the way home. It is unrealistic and naive of you to think that all of this can be done on a bike -- particularly in the rain, on ice, or in the snow. That you yourself manage to do it does not mean that everyone else should be expected to do so.

So, please take your messaging and advocacy for a car-less society to the appropriate audience: employers who dictate that folks must commute in; city planners who failed to put in adequate, wide-spread, and affordable public transportation (a $12/day round-trip bus-Metro commute that eats up 2 hours/day is not going to meet this criteria, BTW, for somene who's paid $75K/year before taxes which is approx. $56K net); and employers who keep getting away with discriminatory hiring practices (e.g., ageism, racism, sexism) that prevent true job mobility (ever tried to get hired as a 55-year-old black man?).

In the meantime, please leave all of us who are struggling to make ends meet, who are digging quarters out of the dryer to add to a Metro card just to get back and forth to work, who have kids to pick up at camp, at school, from the babysitter, from a friend's house, who need to shop for more than a couple days' worth of groceries, who need to lug home several pounds of books, sports equipment, laptops, and whatnot home in backpacks and briefcases, or who need to take groceries to elderly parents after work or take them or kids to the doctor's, dentist's, or Target to get supplies for a school project, etc. on a weeknight already filled with errands -- ALONE!

Presumably, if you must drive, and you can't drive on Beach Drive, then you will figure out a different driving route.

In the big picture, though: obody is stopping you from driving. What you want is not to be left alone. What you want is for the government to continue to prioritize convenient car-commuting over every other consideration. That's what the government has done in the past. But it's increasingly unlikely that local governments will continue to do that in the future.

Bicyclists in DC are a lot like the NRA. They are a small group of people with extreme views who've managed to put our pathetic government's willingness to do the bidding of special interest groups to work for them. But the vast majority of people in DC do not agree with them -- there are, after all, 400,000 cars registered in DC. When the public wakes up to the fact that the DC government is actively trying to make traffic worse by installing new bike lanes, well, those bikes lanes will become a memory.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:CT lanes study will be out next week and we will know more. I think it is hard to close Beach and not reopen reversible lanes on CT.

Disagree, they are two separate decisions made by two separate entities.

In the case of Beach Drive, it is the national park service, whose mission it is to administer national parks. Having a park used as a daily commuter route with impacts on the plants and animals, and the air in the park is simply a bad idea.

For CT Ave, the residents up and down the Avenue would prefer a vibrant and walkable public space rather than a commuter highway.

There is overwhelming support for both proposals.

"Vibrant, walkable..." sounds like a Greater Greater Washington talking point.

I love bike lanes and national parks. But one can' just assume away traffic. Fortunately, Washington DC wasn't sliced up by expressways the way that most U.S. cities were, but major streets like Connecticut Avenue serve as the arterial routes, carrying traffic from far upper Northwest and parts of Montgomery County to downtown Washington, DC. Constrain Connecticut Ave and keep Beach Drive closed, and where exactly will the traffic go? Cutting through a Waze maze on 0ur residential size streets?

Which is exactly why the bike lanes on Connecticut Avenue will be really helpful.

You're assuming that the volume of traffic will be constant, but that's a false assumption. People make different transportation decisions all the time, based on different conditions. For example, if the driving route via Connecticut Ave becomes more than you can stand, then you might choose to drive at a different time, or choose to drive a different route, or choose to use a different mode of transportation.

[Anonymous]

Bike lanes wouldnt be so annoying if people actually used them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bike lanes wouldnt be so annoying if people actually used them.

Oh, the poster who is unable to see bicycle-riding people has found this thread.