So now that Biden is calling back federal workers, can NPS reopen Beach drive to commuters, please?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Or you could take a bus or Metro.

Metro sucks.

As a petite female, I really don’t feel safe on Metro. Maybe work on making it safer if you want to force people to ride Metro.

You are safer on the metro than in your car. Feelings are feelings, facts are facts. It's fine if you don't want to take it, but it's your choice.

I was assaulted and robbed on Metro during rush hour in front of many other commuters. The “kids” got away and there was no arrest. I will never ride metro again. I am and was not “safer on the metro” than in my car. This is a fact.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Agree OP. I live on a DC street that has experienced an exponential growth in cut through traffic due to the weekday closure of Beach Dr plus the reduction in drive lanes on Connecticut Ave. A lot of this is rideshare drovers and Amazon/fed ex drivers who will never be eligible to take metro

This is a narrow east-west residential street and it’s utter bullshit that we suffer arterial-road levels of new traffic, all because of 45 hardcore MAMILs who who want to get their miles in on Beach Drive on a Tuesday at 2:30 pm l

+ 1000. Enough of being held hostage to a tiny number of bicyclists. Take back our city!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree OP. I live on a DC street that has experienced an exponential growth in cut through traffic due to the weekday closure of Beach Dr plus the reduction in drive lanes on Connecticut Ave. A lot of this is rideshare drovers and Amazon/fed ex drivers who will never be eligible to take metro

This is a narrow east-west residential street and it’s utter bullshit that we suffer arterial-road levels of new traffic, all because of 45 hardcore MAMILs who who want to get their miles in on Beach Drive on a Tuesday at 2:30 pm l

All closing streets to traffic does is force traffic onto other smaller streets that weren't designed for so many cars.

That's empirically false.

Ok, so first there are traffic jams when driving options reduced, and later, there aren't. That your point? In dream land the reason traffic jams created by lane removal eventually go away is because the car drivers start riding bikes, e scooters, metro, buses, ride sharing. But this isn't what happens. People adjust their lives to stop needing to make that commute and.... city centers die.

Actually, car commuting is what kills city centers.

I am all for less car commuting - especially via Metro. But, what makes a city work is a mix of transportation and having a grid system for driving. The closing of Beach does drive more traffic onto neighboring streets. Just watch all the morning traffic stream down Oregon and down Grant and up Davenport. Or did you ever check out Chestnut when both Beach and Oregon was closed? Fifteen minute traffic jams.

I would like Beach open again. And I would like more ways to access and safely cross it as a pedestrian, biker, scooter rider. The high bridges down at Adams Morgan and Dupont are wonderful - but it is hard to cross safely between the Zoo and Military.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You could get most of the throughput back if you switched Connecticut over to using smart lights and give people a green wave at 25mph. Then we don't need to use a park as a commuter route.

You mean like synchronized traffic lights on the major routes, like other cities do? Don't hold your breath. DC has never figured that out. It sometimes seems like traffic on a major route has to stop at every. single. traffic. light. Vehicles stop for a red light, the signal finally goes to green and then the visible green light a block ahead then turns to red. Think of the wasted time, gas consumed and idling exhaust involved. Of course, keeping Beach Drive closed while narrowing Connecticut Ave seems foolish. Then the twice-diverted traffic just adds to Wisconsin and Reno Rd's mess.

Actually DC had figured it out. Then the transplants moved in and decided to treat the streets like highways. Sotheby’s lights are no longer synchronized on most streets to cut down on speeding. It’s funny how people who drive carefully in their own neighborhoods drive quite differently outside of them.

Not sure it works like that. In NW DC, one sees plenty of stopped traffic on the major roads peel off and look for a short cut through narrower neighborhood streets, driving fast and recklessly. This is a case where better flowing traffic on Connecticut, etc., with a safe speed enforced, would make the side streets actually safer too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Or you could take a bus or Metro.

Metro sucks.

As a petite female, I really don’t feel safe on Metro. Maybe work on making it safer if you want to force people to ride Metro.

You are safer on the metro than in your car. Feelings are feelings, facts are facts. It's fine if you don't want to take it, but it's your choice.

I was assaulted and robbed on Metro during rush hour in front of many other commuters. The “kids” got away and there was no arrest. I will never ride metro again. I am and was not “safer on the metro” than in my car. This is a fact.

It's only a fact until you get in a bad car crash. And statistically it is still not true. But, blame the DC City Council and the Federal government totally hamstringing our ability to charge and prosecute crimes. I'm with you on that. It is horrible that it happened. I have also been assaulted by kids who got away with it so I'm not mocking it. Metro has gotten a lot better this summer - there used to be a feeling of lawlessness late in the evening but now there are generally transit police out keeping an eye on things. And yes, being proactive about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NYC closed Central Park and Prospect Park to cars. This is just one of the things that’s happening.

Most of New York City also has a street grid system. Would you like to see more commuter traffic from major arterial roadways and other busy routes flushed through DC's narrow residential side streets? Between closing Beach Drive and bike lanes on Connecticut Avenue, that seems to be what the bike lobby and DDOT have in mind.

False. Traffic is diverted to other arterials just like in NYC.

And how does it get to those other arterials? Cathedral, Ordway, Albemarle are not arterial roads!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Or you could take a bus or Metro.

Metro sucks.

As a petite female, I really don’t feel safe on Metro. Maybe work on making it safer if you want to force people to ride Metro.

You are safer on the metro than in your car. Feelings are feelings, facts are facts. It's fine if you don't want to take it, but it's your choice.

I was assaulted and robbed on Metro during rush hour in front of many other commuters. The “kids” got away and there was no arrest. I will never ride metro again. I am and was not “safer on the metro” than in my car. This is a fact.

I'm sorry this happened to you, and I probably would not ride the metro again either after that, but this isn't how statistics work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NYC closed Central Park and Prospect Park to cars. This is just one of the things that’s happening.

Most of New York City also has a street grid system. Would you like to see more commuter traffic from major arterial roadways and other busy routes flushed through DC's narrow residential side streets? Between closing Beach Drive and bike lanes on Connecticut Avenue, that seems to be what the bike lobby and DDOT have in mind.

False. Traffic is diverted to other arterials just like in NYC.

And how does it get to those other arterials? Cathedral, Ordway, Albemarle are not arterial roads!

No different from how they were getting onto Beach? Beach Dr wasn’t a magical road that cars were transported to on a magic carpet

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s not only bikers.
A lot of people use the road, other than the bikers you like to ridicule — for running, walking, taking young kids on strollers and scooters, or people with restricted mobility and need a smooth surface.
Access to Beach Drive made safe, relatively quieter pathways and fresh air accessible to many of us who couldn’t find that space in the city without driving to suburban parks.

The needs of Maryland commuters is not the only thing that matters.
Maybe, now, if there’s an agreement that DC tickets could be enforced on MD drivers, I could have more sympathy.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The arrogance of the bike mafia is just mind-blowing.

Labeling people in what you believe to be a degrading manner is very Trumpian. What you call "bike mafia" are in fact your neighbors, work colleagues etc.

Haha - the irony of this post. Calling someone a name for calling someone a name.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think NPS is blaming covid for a lot of things that they wanted to do all along. Like tickets at the National Zoo. There were fights and gangs nonstop that they couldn't control. The tickets have stopped all that.

NPS has wanted to close Beach Drive for a while. Beach Drive really hurts the park. It’s just like the 4 wheel drive cars on the beach at Cape Hatteras National Seashore. It goes against the mission of the park. NPS has no mission or directive to easy commute times in DC. I can see all of Beach Drive in the park getting permanently closed and surprised did not happen during the pandemic. NPR service is doing this at other parks.

If the Parks Service really "wanted to close Beach Drive for a while" why did they undertake a multi-year, multi-million dollar rehabilitaiton of the road that was completed one year before the pandemic?

Maintenance is scheduled. NPS does not see Beach Drive as a commuter highway as a part of the mission of the park. They want it is closed. Should have done closed it during the pandemic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Agree OP. I live on a DC street that has experienced an exponential growth in cut through traffic due to the weekday closure of Beach Dr plus the reduction in drive lanes on Connecticut Ave. A lot of this is rideshare drovers and Amazon/fed ex drivers who will never be eligible to take metro

This is a narrow east-west residential street and it’s utter bullshit that we suffer arterial-road levels of new traffic, all because of 45 hardcore MAMILs who who want to get their miles in on Beach Drive on a Tuesday at 2:30 pm l

Traffic doesn't just magically vanish when you close streets to cars. It just gets shifted elsewhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Or you could take a bus or Metro.

Metro sucks.

As a petite female, I really don’t feel safe on Metro. Maybe work on making it safer if you want to force people to ride Metro.

You are safer on the metro than in your car. Feelings are feelings, facts are facts. It's fine if you don't want to take it, but it's your choice.

I was assaulted and robbed on Metro during rush hour in front of many other commuters. The “kids” got away and there was no arrest. I will never ride metro again. I am and was not “safer on the metro” than in my car. This is a fact.

Some of you really can't distinguish between personal, rare experiences and statistics. Yes, statistically you are safer riding the metro than you are driving your car. I'm sorry you were robbed but it doesn't negate at all what PP said.

[Anonymous]

The arrogance of the bike mafia is just mind-blowing.

Labeling people in what you believe to be a degrading manner is very Trumpian. What you call "bike mafia" are in fact your neighbors, work colleagues etc.

Haha - the irony of this post. Calling someone a name for calling someone a name.

Ironic, indeed. Isn't Trump's campaign pollster a DC lobbyist/operative behind the pro-bike lane "Safer Connecticut Avenue" virtual group?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

The arrogance of the bike mafia is just mind-blowing.

Labeling people in what you believe to be a degrading manner is very Trumpian. What you call "bike mafia" are in fact your neighbors, work colleagues etc.

Haha - the irony of this post. Calling someone a name for calling someone a name.

Ironic, indeed. Isn't Trump's campaign pollster a DC lobbyist/operative behind the pro-bike lane "Safer Connecticut Avenue" virtual group?

You mean the guy doing all the winning down in Cleveland Park? Winning at getting the abomination that was the service lane closed to cars so people could actually walk on the sidewalk? Winning by helping a bunch of new ANC people get elected to break the status-quo-is-grand, historical preservation block up so such crazy things like pergolas at Medium Rare can take place? Winning by removing free, day long street parking that was being used by shop owners driving in from Maryland and getting it replaced with short term parking so that their customers who drive have a place to park? Winning by getting ADU's permitted to be established in the area allowing for densification to exist while still maintaining the single family 1-unit feel?

That guy? Seems like he's doing a lot of winning to me, Mark.