The Bike Lobby is too powerful in DC...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Generally, if you can just proceed through the intersection as soon as you verify that it is clear, that is better for bikes, instead of stopping fully. Bikes and cars are totally different vehicles.

Ok then why do we share a road? Why do I have to creep behind the Little Engine that Could if we are different vehicles with different capabilities.

And I see how its better to slow down than make a full stop....but tell that to all the bikers that I almost hit when I have the right of way, use my turn signal and safely proceed and they run through a stop sign. Share the road, share the rules.

The same reason a Prius and a turbocharged F-350 share a road?

Nice try, but a Prius and F-350 can both keep traffic moving at 25mph.

You don't have a right to go 25mph. You want to and don't care about other people. You probably also sit in traffic complaining about too many cars on the road.

So say its a one lane road with a 30mph limit, you think its ok to bike at.....15mph?....and slow down everyone behind you...and then roll through that stop sign. Talk about entitlement.....

You typed it yourself. It is a limit, not a floor. I can drive a car in a 30MPH zone at 15 MPH and I would not be breaking any laws. If you need more time to get to your destination because you might be behind a slow driver or a cyclist, then you should be allotting more time for your trip, not driving your car on someone's rear bumper or rear wheel.

So then you are cool with riding behind me and not passing me when I roll down the street doing 5, 6mph?

You can do what you want, I will do what I want. If you want to drive your car at 5-6MPH, that is your business.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Generally, if you can just proceed through the intersection as soon as you verify that it is clear, that is better for bikes, instead of stopping fully. Bikes and cars are totally different vehicles.

Ok then why do we share a road? Why do I have to creep behind the Little Engine that Could if we are different vehicles with different capabilities.

And I see how its better to slow down than make a full stop....but tell that to all the bikers that I almost hit when I have the right of way, use my turn signal and safely proceed and they run through a stop sign. Share the road, share the rules.

The same reason a Prius and a turbocharged F-350 share a road?

Nice try, but a Prius and F-350 can both keep traffic moving at 25mph.

You don't have a right to go 25mph. You want to and don't care about other people. You probably also sit in traffic complaining about too many cars on the road.

So say its a one lane road with a 30mph limit, you think its ok to bike at.....15mph?....and slow down everyone behind you...and then roll through that stop sign. Talk about entitlement.....

Do you know what a speed limit is? Because the 30 MPH you are referring to is a limit, not a floor. Are you aware of any minimum speeds on any roads that aren't interstate highways? Please do let me know when you find one.

[Anonymous]

The bike lobby is awful in Alexandria: rude, aggressive, bullying, and they lie (they bring in people who live and work somewhere else to meetings, sign petitions etc to get things changed in Alexandria). The head of BPAC had his blind cyclist friends contact the city to request the crosswalk on Seminary that goes in front of the BPAC member’s house, claiming they needed the crosswalk to cross safely.

Talk about the ultimate special interest.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Generally, if you can just proceed through the intersection as soon as you verify that it is clear, that is better for bikes, instead of stopping fully. Bikes and cars are totally different vehicles.

Ok then why do we share a road? Why do I have to creep behind the Little Engine that Could if we are different vehicles with different capabilities.

And I see how its better to slow down than make a full stop....but tell that to all the bikers that I almost hit when I have the right of way, use my turn signal and safely proceed and they run through a stop sign. Share the road, share the rules.

The same reason a Prius and a turbocharged F-350 share a road?

Nice try, but a Prius and F-350 can both keep traffic moving at 25mph.

You don't have a right to go 25mph. You want to and don't care about other people. You probably also sit in traffic complaining about too many cars on the road.

So say its a one lane road with a 30mph limit, you think its ok to bike at.....15mph?....and slow down everyone behind you...and then roll through that stop sign. Talk about entitlement.....

You typed it yourself. It is a limit, not a floor. I can drive a car in a 30MPH zone at 15 MPH and I would not be breaking any laws. If you need more time to get to your destination because you might be behind a slow driver or a cyclist, then you should be allotting more time for your trip, not driving your car on someone's rear bumper or rear wheel.

So then you are cool with riding behind me and not passing me when I roll down the street doing 5, 6mph?

I would pass if/when it was safe. Just like I would expect you to do if you were behind me and wanted to go faster.

If you don't get this concept then you really shouldn't be driving.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Generally, if you can just proceed through the intersection as soon as you verify that it is clear, that is better for bikes, instead of stopping fully. Bikes and cars are totally different vehicles.

Ok then why do we share a road? Why do I have to creep behind the Little Engine that Could if we are different vehicles with different capabilities.

And I see how its better to slow down than make a full stop....but tell that to all the bikers that I almost hit when I have the right of way, use my turn signal and safely proceed and they run through a stop sign. Share the road, share the rules.

The same reason a Prius and a turbocharged F-350 share a road?

Nice try, but a Prius and F-350 can both keep traffic moving at 25mph.

You don't have a right to go 25mph. You want to and don't care about other people. You probably also sit in traffic complaining about too many cars on the road.

So say its a one lane road with a 30mph limit, you think its ok to bike at.....15mph?....and slow down everyone behind you...and then roll through that stop sign. Talk about entitlement.....

You typed it yourself. It is a limit, not a floor. I can drive a car in a 30MPH zone at 15 MPH and I would not be breaking any laws. If you need more time to get to your destination because you might be behind a slow driver or a cyclist, then you should be allotting more time for your trip, not driving your car on someone's rear bumper or rear wheel.

So then you are cool with riding behind me and not passing me when I roll down the street doing 5, 6mph?

I would pass if/when it was safe. Just like I would expect you to do if you were behind me and wanted to go faster.

If you don't get this concept then you really shouldn't be driving.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I actually agree with OP even though I think DC needs to reduce it's car infrastructure and would be in favor of drastic measures like shutting down parts of the city to cars or taxing cars using city streets during rush hour. I just think DC's current transportation trajectory, which seems to rely on continually increasing the number of cars moving in and out of the city, is totally unsustainable. I've lived in LA. At some point you have to invest in public transportation and car alternatives or you just wind up living in this sprawling traffic jam that decreases the quality of life for everyone on a daily basis. It's miserable. It's hard for people to transition to other forms of transportation but especially for commuters, it's really the only longterm option that makes economic and environmental sense. We can't just keep increasing road capacity. There is an upper limit.

But I find the bike lobby in DC tedious because it does often feel like all they want to do is add bike lanes and promote more biking. I bike places and even I think this is dumb. We do need to change streetscapes to make them safer, and bike lanes should be part of that. But the main goal should actually be pedestrian safety and reducing car speeds within the city. Instead we just stick a bike lane on an existing road where cars already go too fast. Great? This doesn't actually solve anything even if the bike lane is amazing for cyclists.

I wish the bike lobby would stop taking about bikes and instead focus exclusively on pedestrian safety and better infrastructure. If you do that, the city will naturally get safe for cyclists. But the truth is you are not going to convert a bunch of people into bike commuters. You might be able to convince them to take regional trains, light rail, metro, and buses, if you invest money in these options and make them affordable and convenient. Some people might also choose to bike. But why would this be your main focus? It's dumb.

You need to actually spend more time in public meetings and talking to people, and less time on twitter and DCUM and wherever you are getting your impressions. There is no "bike lobby." There is a broad coalition in favor of making DC streets safer and reducing emissions. Bike lanes just get vastly more attention because of the few paranoiacs who fixate on them. But DDOT is also working on all sorts of other things, like speed humps, bus priority projects, etc. Furthermore, adding bike lanes is a traffic calming technique for *all users.* You seem to think it's done for the "bike lobby," but it is actually often a integral part of slowing traffic for everyone.

Improving Metro and bus service is, unfortunately, not entirely within the control of DC, apart from changes to DC streets to improve the flow. I don't know a lot about that, but would be great if people actually investigated what's going on instead of frothing about the "bike lobby."

Thanks, I actually go to public meetings and work on these issues in my neighborhood all the time. There is a broad coalition working on street safety that includes lots of people like me who are focused on pedestrian safety and especially child safety. There are also a small number of [mostly male, entirely white, entirely UMC] people who view everything through the lens of biking in DC and often direct broader conversations about safety to the impact on cyclists because that is their experience. I am in agreement with them on many things BUT I think their voices are too prominent and that much of the backlash against safe streets initiatives is in part due to how much oxygen these folks take up.

One feature of this group is that they have an outsized expectation of how many people are going to adopt biking as a primary means of transportation, and this tends to focus them much more on bike infrastructure and insufficiently on public transportation and pedestrian safety. It's not that they don't care about these things -- if I said "we need more bus infrastructure in DC and we need to find more ways to incentivize bus ridership especially in areas not well-served by metro" they will agree with me! But then when it comes time to talk about policy initiatives, this is like #13 on their list of wants. And they are also happy to talk for hours about getting harassed as a cyclist but seem entirely ignorant of the experience of many bus riders who deal with safety threats on a daily basis, for example.

Half the time these arguments wind up just being a mansplaining, conservative middle aged man arguing with a mansplaining, liberal middle aged man about bike lanes. If you find yourself on EITHER side of that dynamic, consider being quiet for a while and instead elevating the voices of people who don't ride bikes but still want safe streets. There are a lot more of them.

I have literally never seen this coalition of "bike safety only" people in three years working on these issues in DC. Please let me know in more detail who this group is, when they've weighed in in a way that seems to ignore the interests of pedestrians, as well as their influence on DDOT. Because from where I sit, I've seen DDOT to a lot of stuff that never gets discussed on DCUM that has nothign to do with bikes, but people just fixate on the bikes.

I never said they were "bike safety only" people, and your response is disingenuous.

If you have been working on transportation and road safety issues in DC for any length of time and have genuinely never encountered a middle age white guy who sucks up all the air in the room to expound upon the value of cycling while people who want to talk about child pedestrian safety, sidewalk infrastructure, and public transportation options are expected to sit quietly and be impressed by his time biking around Copenhagen, then you are either (1) lucky, or (2) that guy.

I like bikes, ride bikes, and care about bike safety. But I've been to public meetings on road safety where you'd think cycling was the primary means of transportation for 90% of the population, based on the focus on bike lanes and bike infrastructure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I actually agree with OP even though I think DC needs to reduce it's car infrastructure and would be in favor of drastic measures like shutting down parts of the city to cars or taxing cars using city streets during rush hour. I just think DC's current transportation trajectory, which seems to rely on continually increasing the number of cars moving in and out of the city, is totally unsustainable. I've lived in LA. At some point you have to invest in public transportation and car alternatives or you just wind up living in this sprawling traffic jam that decreases the quality of life for everyone on a daily basis. It's miserable. It's hard for people to transition to other forms of transportation but especially for commuters, it's really the only longterm option that makes economic and environmental sense. We can't just keep increasing road capacity. There is an upper limit.

But I find the bike lobby in DC tedious because it does often feel like all they want to do is add bike lanes and promote more biking. I bike places and even I think this is dumb. We do need to change streetscapes to make them safer, and bike lanes should be part of that. But the main goal should actually be pedestrian safety and reducing car speeds within the city. Instead we just stick a bike lane on an existing road where cars already go too fast. Great? This doesn't actually solve anything even if the bike lane is amazing for cyclists.

I wish the bike lobby would stop taking about bikes and instead focus exclusively on pedestrian safety and better infrastructure. If you do that, the city will naturally get safe for cyclists. But the truth is you are not going to convert a bunch of people into bike commuters. You might be able to convince them to take regional trains, light rail, metro, and buses, if you invest money in these options and make them affordable and convenient. Some people might also choose to bike. But why would this be your main focus? It's dumb.

You need to actually spend more time in public meetings and talking to people, and less time on twitter and DCUM and wherever you are getting your impressions. There is no "bike lobby." There is a broad coalition in favor of making DC streets safer and reducing emissions. Bike lanes just get vastly more attention because of the few paranoiacs who fixate on them. But DDOT is also working on all sorts of other things, like speed humps, bus priority projects, etc. Furthermore, adding bike lanes is a traffic calming technique for *all users.* You seem to think it's done for the "bike lobby," but it is actually often a integral part of slowing traffic for everyone.

Improving Metro and bus service is, unfortunately, not entirely within the control of DC, apart from changes to DC streets to improve the flow. I don't know a lot about that, but would be great if people actually investigated what's going on instead of frothing about the "bike lobby."

Thanks, I actually go to public meetings and work on these issues in my neighborhood all the time. There is a broad coalition working on street safety that includes lots of people like me who are focused on pedestrian safety and especially child safety. There are also a small number of [mostly male, entirely white, entirely UMC] people who view everything through the lens of biking in DC and often direct broader conversations about safety to the impact on cyclists because that is their experience. I am in agreement with them on many things BUT I think their voices are too prominent and that much of the backlash against safe streets initiatives is in part due to how much oxygen these folks take up.

One feature of this group is that they have an outsized expectation of how many people are going to adopt biking as a primary means of transportation, and this tends to focus them much more on bike infrastructure and insufficiently on public transportation and pedestrian safety. It's not that they don't care about these things -- if I said "we need more bus infrastructure in DC and we need to find more ways to incentivize bus ridership especially in areas not well-served by metro" they will agree with me! But then when it comes time to talk about policy initiatives, this is like #13 on their list of wants. And they are also happy to talk for hours about getting harassed as a cyclist but seem entirely ignorant of the experience of many bus riders who deal with safety threats on a daily basis, for example.

Half the time these arguments wind up just being a mansplaining, conservative middle aged man arguing with a mansplaining, liberal middle aged man about bike lanes. If you find yourself on EITHER side of that dynamic, consider being quiet for a while and instead elevating the voices of people who don't ride bikes but still want safe streets. There are a lot more of them.

I have literally never seen this coalition of "bike safety only" people in three years working on these issues in DC. Please let me know in more detail who this group is, when they've weighed in in a way that seems to ignore the interests of pedestrians, as well as their influence on DDOT. Because from where I sit, I've seen DDOT to a lot of stuff that never gets discussed on DCUM that has nothign to do with bikes, but people just fixate on the bikes.

I never said they were "bike safety only" people, and your response is disingenuous.

If you have been working on transportation and road safety issues in DC for any length of time and have genuinely never encountered a middle age white guy who sucks up all the air in the room to expound upon the value of cycling while people who want to talk about child pedestrian safety, sidewalk infrastructure, and public transportation options are expected to sit quietly and be impressed by his time biking around Copenhagen, then you are either (1) lucky, or (2) that guy.

I like bikes, ride bikes, and care about bike safety. But I've been to public meetings on road safety where you'd think cycling was the primary means of transportation for 90% of the population, based on the focus on bike lanes and bike infrastructure.

Ok, but that's a middle aged white guy thing. Also, middle aged white guy drivers, middle aged white guy electric vehicle enthusiasts, middle aged white guy...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Generally, if you can just proceed through the intersection as soon as you verify that it is clear, that is better for bikes, instead of stopping fully. Bikes and cars are totally different vehicles.

Ok then why do we share a road? Why do I have to creep behind the Little Engine that Could if we are different vehicles with different capabilities.

And I see how its better to slow down than make a full stop....but tell that to all the bikers that I almost hit when I have the right of way, use my turn signal and safely proceed and they run through a stop sign. Share the road, share the rules.

The same reason a Prius and a turbocharged F-350 share a road?

Nice try, but a Prius and F-350 can both keep traffic moving at 25mph.

You don't have a right to go 25mph. You want to and don't care about other people. You probably also sit in traffic complaining about too many cars on the road.

So say its a one lane road with a 30mph limit, you think its ok to bike at.....15mph?....and slow down everyone behind you...and then roll through that stop sign. Talk about entitlement.....

Do you know what a speed limit is? Because the 30 MPH you are referring to is a limit, not a floor. Are you aware of any minimum speeds on any roads that aren't interstate highways? Please do let me know when you find one.

You guys can high five each other all you want in pointing out the obvious difference between a limit and a floor or the lack of minimum speed limits....the point is that bikes slow down traffic on streets that were built for cars.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I actually agree with OP even though I think DC needs to reduce it's car infrastructure and would be in favor of drastic measures like shutting down parts of the city to cars or taxing cars using city streets during rush hour. I just think DC's current transportation trajectory, which seems to rely on continually increasing the number of cars moving in and out of the city, is totally unsustainable. I've lived in LA. At some point you have to invest in public transportation and car alternatives or you just wind up living in this sprawling traffic jam that decreases the quality of life for everyone on a daily basis. It's miserable. It's hard for people to transition to other forms of transportation but especially for commuters, it's really the only longterm option that makes economic and environmental sense. We can't just keep increasing road capacity. There is an upper limit.

But I find the bike lobby in DC tedious because it does often feel like all they want to do is add bike lanes and promote more biking. I bike places and even I think this is dumb. We do need to change streetscapes to make them safer, and bike lanes should be part of that. But the main goal should actually be pedestrian safety and reducing car speeds within the city. Instead we just stick a bike lane on an existing road where cars already go too fast. Great? This doesn't actually solve anything even if the bike lane is amazing for cyclists.

I wish the bike lobby would stop taking about bikes and instead focus exclusively on pedestrian safety and better infrastructure. If you do that, the city will naturally get safe for cyclists. But the truth is you are not going to convert a bunch of people into bike commuters. You might be able to convince them to take regional trains, light rail, metro, and buses, if you invest money in these options and make them affordable and convenient. Some people might also choose to bike. But why would this be your main focus? It's dumb.

You need to actually spend more time in public meetings and talking to people, and less time on twitter and DCUM and wherever you are getting your impressions. There is no "bike lobby." There is a broad coalition in favor of making DC streets safer and reducing emissions. Bike lanes just get vastly more attention because of the few paranoiacs who fixate on them. But DDOT is also working on all sorts of other things, like speed humps, bus priority projects, etc. Furthermore, adding bike lanes is a traffic calming technique for *all users.* You seem to think it's done for the "bike lobby," but it is actually often a integral part of slowing traffic for everyone.

Improving Metro and bus service is, unfortunately, not entirely within the control of DC, apart from changes to DC streets to improve the flow. I don't know a lot about that, but would be great if people actually investigated what's going on instead of frothing about the "bike lobby."

Thanks, I actually go to public meetings and work on these issues in my neighborhood all the time. There is a broad coalition working on street safety that includes lots of people like me who are focused on pedestrian safety and especially child safety. There are also a small number of [mostly male, entirely white, entirely UMC] people who view everything through the lens of biking in DC and often direct broader conversations about safety to the impact on cyclists because that is their experience. I am in agreement with them on many things BUT I think their voices are too prominent and that much of the backlash against safe streets initiatives is in part due to how much oxygen these folks take up.

One feature of this group is that they have an outsized expectation of how many people are going to adopt biking as a primary means of transportation, and this tends to focus them much more on bike infrastructure and insufficiently on public transportation and pedestrian safety. It's not that they don't care about these things -- if I said "we need more bus infrastructure in DC and we need to find more ways to incentivize bus ridership especially in areas not well-served by metro" they will agree with me! But then when it comes time to talk about policy initiatives, this is like #13 on their list of wants. And they are also happy to talk for hours about getting harassed as a cyclist but seem entirely ignorant of the experience of many bus riders who deal with safety threats on a daily basis, for example.

Half the time these arguments wind up just being a mansplaining, conservative middle aged man arguing with a mansplaining, liberal middle aged man about bike lanes. If you find yourself on EITHER side of that dynamic, consider being quiet for a while and instead elevating the voices of people who don't ride bikes but still want safe streets. There are a lot more of them.

I have literally never seen this coalition of "bike safety only" people in three years working on these issues in DC. Please let me know in more detail who this group is, when they've weighed in in a way that seems to ignore the interests of pedestrians, as well as their influence on DDOT. Because from where I sit, I've seen DDOT to a lot of stuff that never gets discussed on DCUM that has nothign to do with bikes, but people just fixate on the bikes.

I never said they were "bike safety only" people, and your response is disingenuous.

If you have been working on transportation and road safety issues in DC for any length of time and have genuinely never encountered a middle age white guy who sucks up all the air in the room to expound upon the value of cycling while people who want to talk about child pedestrian safety, sidewalk infrastructure, and public transportation options are expected to sit quietly and be impressed by his time biking around Copenhagen, then you are either (1) lucky, or (2) that guy.

I like bikes, ride bikes, and care about bike safety. But I've been to public meetings on road safety where you'd think cycling was the primary means of transportation for 90% of the population, based on the focus on bike lanes and bike infrastructure.

Ok, but that's a middle aged white guy thing. Also, middle aged white guy drivers, middle aged white guy electric vehicle enthusiasts, middle aged white guy...

Correct, and in DC, the cycling advocates are overwhelmingly middle aged white guys. Which is why people get the impression that there is a "Bike Lobby" -- people who are already in a privileged position are in the habit of dominating conversations about transportation policy to support their narrow viewpoint, and do not do enough to discuss the many, many other stakeholders or involved them in the conversation.

These guys think they are doing advocacy but a lot of them would serve the cause of road safety far better if they learned to be quiet and cede the floor to people talking about the issue from other angles. The reason a lot of people think that traffic safety in DC is ALL about bikes and bike lanes is that the bike advocates tend to be the loudest and most persistent voices.

What you should do is find a diverse group of people that includes a lot of longtime black residents, people with mobility issues, and parents advocating for child safety, and make that the face of road safety in DC. Because that's who is really supposed to be benefitting here. And the upshot is that if you improve road safety for pedestrians, increase accessibility, and promote low cost commuting options for people in historically black neighborhoods, you will also help serve the interests of cyclists, who make up a very small percentage of non-drivers who need road safety.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The bike lobby is awful in Alexandria: rude, aggressive, bullying, and they lie (they bring in people who live and work somewhere else to meetings, sign petitions etc to get things changed in Alexandria). The head of BPAC had his blind cyclist friends contact the city to request the crosswalk on Seminary that goes in front of the BPAC member’s house, claiming they needed the crosswalk to cross safely.

Talk about the ultimate special interest.

Oh, how terrible, a crosswalk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I actually agree with OP even though I think DC needs to reduce it's car infrastructure and would be in favor of drastic measures like shutting down parts of the city to cars or taxing cars using city streets during rush hour. I just think DC's current transportation trajectory, which seems to rely on continually increasing the number of cars moving in and out of the city, is totally unsustainable. I've lived in LA. At some point you have to invest in public transportation and car alternatives or you just wind up living in this sprawling traffic jam that decreases the quality of life for everyone on a daily basis. It's miserable. It's hard for people to transition to other forms of transportation but especially for commuters, it's really the only longterm option that makes economic and environmental sense. We can't just keep increasing road capacity. There is an upper limit.

But I find the bike lobby in DC tedious because it does often feel like all they want to do is add bike lanes and promote more biking. I bike places and even I think this is dumb. We do need to change streetscapes to make them safer, and bike lanes should be part of that. But the main goal should actually be pedestrian safety and reducing car speeds within the city. Instead we just stick a bike lane on an existing road where cars already go too fast. Great? This doesn't actually solve anything even if the bike lane is amazing for cyclists.

I wish the bike lobby would stop taking about bikes and instead focus exclusively on pedestrian safety and better infrastructure. If you do that, the city will naturally get safe for cyclists. But the truth is you are not going to convert a bunch of people into bike commuters. You might be able to convince them to take regional trains, light rail, metro, and buses, if you invest money in these options and make them affordable and convenient. Some people might also choose to bike. But why would this be your main focus? It's dumb.

You need to actually spend more time in public meetings and talking to people, and less time on twitter and DCUM and wherever you are getting your impressions. There is no "bike lobby." There is a broad coalition in favor of making DC streets safer and reducing emissions. Bike lanes just get vastly more attention because of the few paranoiacs who fixate on them. But DDOT is also working on all sorts of other things, like speed humps, bus priority projects, etc. Furthermore, adding bike lanes is a traffic calming technique for *all users.* You seem to think it's done for the "bike lobby," but it is actually often a integral part of slowing traffic for everyone.

Improving Metro and bus service is, unfortunately, not entirely within the control of DC, apart from changes to DC streets to improve the flow. I don't know a lot about that, but would be great if people actually investigated what's going on instead of frothing about the "bike lobby."

Thanks, I actually go to public meetings and work on these issues in my neighborhood all the time. There is a broad coalition working on street safety that includes lots of people like me who are focused on pedestrian safety and especially child safety. There are also a small number of [mostly male, entirely white, entirely UMC] people who view everything through the lens of biking in DC and often direct broader conversations about safety to the impact on cyclists because that is their experience. I am in agreement with them on many things BUT I think their voices are too prominent and that much of the backlash against safe streets initiatives is in part due to how much oxygen these folks take up.

One feature of this group is that they have an outsized expectation of how many people are going to adopt biking as a primary means of transportation, and this tends to focus them much more on bike infrastructure and insufficiently on public transportation and pedestrian safety. It's not that they don't care about these things -- if I said "we need more bus infrastructure in DC and we need to find more ways to incentivize bus ridership especially in areas not well-served by metro" they will agree with me! But then when it comes time to talk about policy initiatives, this is like #13 on their list of wants. And they are also happy to talk for hours about getting harassed as a cyclist but seem entirely ignorant of the experience of many bus riders who deal with safety threats on a daily basis, for example.

Half the time these arguments wind up just being a mansplaining, conservative middle aged man arguing with a mansplaining, liberal middle aged man about bike lanes. If you find yourself on EITHER side of that dynamic, consider being quiet for a while and instead elevating the voices of people who don't ride bikes but still want safe streets. There are a lot more of them.

I have literally never seen this coalition of "bike safety only" people in three years working on these issues in DC. Please let me know in more detail who this group is, when they've weighed in in a way that seems to ignore the interests of pedestrians, as well as their influence on DDOT. Because from where I sit, I've seen DDOT to a lot of stuff that never gets discussed on DCUM that has nothign to do with bikes, but people just fixate on the bikes.

I never said they were "bike safety only" people, and your response is disingenuous.

If you have been working on transportation and road safety issues in DC for any length of time and have genuinely never encountered a middle age white guy who sucks up all the air in the room to expound upon the value of cycling while people who want to talk about child pedestrian safety, sidewalk infrastructure, and public transportation options are expected to sit quietly and be impressed by his time biking around Copenhagen, then you are either (1) lucky, or (2) that guy.

I like bikes, ride bikes, and care about bike safety. But I've been to public meetings on road safety where you'd think cycling was the primary means of transportation for 90% of the population, based on the focus on bike lanes and bike infrastructure.

Ok, but that's a middle aged white guy thing. Also, middle aged white guy drivers, middle aged white guy electric vehicle enthusiasts, middle aged white guy...

Correct, and in DC, the cycling advocates are overwhelmingly middle aged white guys. Which is why people get the impression that there is a "Bike Lobby" -- people who are already in a privileged position are in the habit of dominating conversations about transportation policy to support their narrow viewpoint, and do not do enough to discuss the many, many other stakeholders or involved them in the conversation.

These guys think they are doing advocacy but a lot of them would serve the cause of road safety far better if they learned to be quiet and cede the floor to people talking about the issue from other angles. The reason a lot of people think that traffic safety in DC is ALL about bikes and bike lanes is that the bike advocates tend to be the loudest and most persistent voices.

What you should do is find a diverse group of people that includes a lot of longtime black residents, people with mobility issues, and parents advocating for child safety, and make that the face of road safety in DC. Because that's who is really supposed to be benefitting here. And the upshot is that if you improve road safety for pedestrians, increase accessibility, and promote low cost commuting options for people in historically black neighborhoods, you will also help serve the interests of cyclists, who make up a very small percentage of non-drivers who need road safety.

There is a diverse group and you're ignoring them.

[Anonymous]

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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.

Generally, if you can just proceed through the intersection as soon as you verify that it is clear, that is better for bikes, instead of stopping fully. Bikes and cars are totally different vehicles.

Ok then why do we share a road? Why do I have to creep behind the Little Engine that Could if we are different vehicles with different capabilities.

And I see how its better to slow down than make a full stop....but tell that to all the bikers that I almost hit when I have the right of way, use my turn signal and safely proceed and they run through a stop sign. Share the road, share the rules.

The same reason a Prius and a turbocharged F-350 share a road?

Nice try, but a Prius and F-350 can both keep traffic moving at 25mph.

You don't have a right to go 25mph. You want to and don't care about other people. You probably also sit in traffic complaining about too many cars on the road.

So say its a one lane road with a 30mph limit, you think its ok to bike at.....15mph?....and slow down everyone behind you...and then roll through that stop sign. Talk about entitlement.....

Do you know what a speed limit is? Because the 30 MPH you are referring to is a limit, not a floor. Are you aware of any minimum speeds on any roads that aren't interstate highways? Please do let me know when you find one.

You guys can high five each other all you want in pointing out the obvious difference between a limit and a floor or the lack of minimum speed limits....the point is that bikes slow down traffic on streets that were built for cars.

Thank you for demonstrating your actual position here.

[Anonymous]

There's a whole group for Black women who bike. Do you care?

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Anonymous wrote:I actually agree with OP even though I think DC needs to reduce it's car infrastructure and would be in favor of drastic measures like shutting down parts of the city to cars or taxing cars using city streets during rush hour. I just think DC's current transportation trajectory, which seems to rely on continually increasing the number of cars moving in and out of the city, is totally unsustainable. I've lived in LA. At some point you have to invest in public transportation and car alternatives or you just wind up living in this sprawling traffic jam that decreases the quality of life for everyone on a daily basis. It's miserable. It's hard for people to transition to other forms of transportation but especially for commuters, it's really the only longterm option that makes economic and environmental sense. We can't just keep increasing road capacity. There is an upper limit.

But I find the bike lobby in DC tedious because it does often feel like all they want to do is add bike lanes and promote more biking. I bike places and even I think this is dumb. We do need to change streetscapes to make them safer, and bike lanes should be part of that. But the main goal should actually be pedestrian safety and reducing car speeds within the city. Instead we just stick a bike lane on an existing road where cars already go too fast. Great? This doesn't actually solve anything even if the bike lane is amazing for cyclists.

I wish the bike lobby would stop taking about bikes and instead focus exclusively on pedestrian safety and better infrastructure. If you do that, the city will naturally get safe for cyclists. But the truth is you are not going to convert a bunch of people into bike commuters. You might be able to convince them to take regional trains, light rail, metro, and buses, if you invest money in these options and make them affordable and convenient. Some people might also choose to bike. But why would this be your main focus? It's dumb.

You need to actually spend more time in public meetings and talking to people, and less time on twitter and DCUM and wherever you are getting your impressions. There is no "bike lobby." There is a broad coalition in favor of making DC streets safer and reducing emissions. Bike lanes just get vastly more attention because of the few paranoiacs who fixate on them. But DDOT is also working on all sorts of other things, like speed humps, bus priority projects, etc. Furthermore, adding bike lanes is a traffic calming technique for *all users.* You seem to think it's done for the "bike lobby," but it is actually often a integral part of slowing traffic for everyone.

Improving Metro and bus service is, unfortunately, not entirely within the control of DC, apart from changes to DC streets to improve the flow. I don't know a lot about that, but would be great if people actually investigated what's going on instead of frothing about the "bike lobby."

Thanks, I actually go to public meetings and work on these issues in my neighborhood all the time. There is a broad coalition working on street safety that includes lots of people like me who are focused on pedestrian safety and especially child safety. There are also a small number of [mostly male, entirely white, entirely UMC] people who view everything through the lens of biking in DC and often direct broader conversations about safety to the impact on cyclists because that is their experience. I am in agreement with them on many things BUT I think their voices are too prominent and that much of the backlash against safe streets initiatives is in part due to how much oxygen these folks take up.

One feature of this group is that they have an outsized expectation of how many people are going to adopt biking as a primary means of transportation, and this tends to focus them much more on bike infrastructure and insufficiently on public transportation and pedestrian safety. It's not that they don't care about these things -- if I said "we need more bus infrastructure in DC and we need to find more ways to incentivize bus ridership especially in areas not well-served by metro" they will agree with me! But then when it comes time to talk about policy initiatives, this is like #13 on their list of wants. And they are also happy to talk for hours about getting harassed as a cyclist but seem entirely ignorant of the experience of many bus riders who deal with safety threats on a daily basis, for example.

Half the time these arguments wind up just being a mansplaining, conservative middle aged man arguing with a mansplaining, liberal middle aged man about bike lanes. If you find yourself on EITHER side of that dynamic, consider being quiet for a while and instead elevating the voices of people who don't ride bikes but still want safe streets. There are a lot more of them.

I have literally never seen this coalition of "bike safety only" people in three years working on these issues in DC. Please let me know in more detail who this group is, when they've weighed in in a way that seems to ignore the interests of pedestrians, as well as their influence on DDOT. Because from where I sit, I've seen DDOT to a lot of stuff that never gets discussed on DCUM that has nothign to do with bikes, but people just fixate on the bikes.

I never said they were "bike safety only" people, and your response is disingenuous.

If you have been working on transportation and road safety issues in DC for any length of time and have genuinely never encountered a middle age white guy who sucks up all the air in the room to expound upon the value of cycling while people who want to talk about child pedestrian safety, sidewalk infrastructure, and public transportation options are expected to sit quietly and be impressed by his time biking around Copenhagen, then you are either (1) lucky, or (2) that guy.

I like bikes, ride bikes, and care about bike safety. But I've been to public meetings on road safety where you'd think cycling was the primary means of transportation for 90% of the population, based on the focus on bike lanes and bike infrastructure.

It's a public meeting. If there's one guy talking about Copenhagen and biking, not sure why that's a problem. Sounds like a moderation issue if you think they are getting more than their fair share of time. Every public meeting I've been to limits comments to a few minutes each. Are you expecting that certain people get shut out of public meetings?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There's a whole group for Black women who bike. Do you care?

ha ha, no they don't care. they also have never actually spent time in Hains Point or the Anacostia trail to see that road biking is VERY popular for Black men. This isn't about reality, it's about people who feel put out by having to share the road with cyclists and don't think anything should ever change, ever.