How can we make DC streets bicycle and pedestrian-only?

[Anonymous]

For one, our metro system is inadequate, there aren't enough stations.

I live and work in DC, but with an elementary kid in school, it would take me (checks google maps)... 25 min to get my kid to school that's a 10-15 min drive away, then another (checks google maps) 45-55 min to get myself to work that's a 25-30 min drive normally.

This is living in NE, with kids in school in NE, with my work also in NE.

No thanks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For one, our metro system is inadequate, there aren't enough stations.

I live and work in DC, but with an elementary kid in school, it would take me (checks google maps)... 25 min to get my kid to school that's a 10-15 min drive away, then another (checks google maps) 45-55 min to get myself to work that's a 25-30 min drive normally.

This is living in NE, with kids in school in NE, with my work also in NE.

No thanks.

There are buses though.

Also, if this is all in NE DC, then you have a lot of long-duration, short-distance car trips. Very inefficient. I"m so sorry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For one, our metro system is inadequate, there aren't enough stations.

I live and work in DC, but with an elementary kid in school, it would take me (checks google maps)... 25 min to get my kid to school that's a 10-15 min drive away, then another (checks google maps) 45-55 min to get myself to work that's a 25-30 min drive normally.

This is living in NE, with kids in school in NE, with my work also in NE.

No thanks.

You do realize you're literally driving at bike speed? Probably slower depending on where in NE.

The reason it takes you so long is because of traffic and lights (aka too many cars).

Now imagine your trips if DC had half as many cars.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC is such a beautifully designed city, with amazing outdoor dining and cafe potential.

But trucks, busses, cars and motorcycles ruin it for us residents.

DC is geographically tiny, so why not make our streets pedestrian and bicycles- only?

Is it really necessary to point out that most of the bars, restaurants and stores in this city would go out of business if we banned cars?

+1 I have been a daily bike commuter in this town for 20 years, but even I think a total ban on cars is foolish. What I would like to see, though, is a network of bike trails and/or streets closed to cars that is comparable to the metro coverage. So, a couple N-S streets, a couple E-W streets, and a couple diagonal streets. All the bike lanes that have been put in place are great--and do get used, contrary to what some folks say on this board. But, if I could get around town on my bike without having to worry about getting doored/hooked/run over, that would be a game changer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From the New York Times:

As Bikers Throng the Streets, ‘It’s Like Paris Is in Anarchy’

PARIS — On a recent afternoon, the Rue de Rivoli looked like this: Cyclists blowing through red lights in two directions. Delivery bike riders fixating on their cellphones. Electric scooters careening across lanes. Jaywalkers and nervous pedestrians scrambling as if in a video game.

Sarah Famery, a 20-year resident of the Marais neighborhood, braced for the tumult. She looked left, then right, then left and right again before venturing into a crosswalk, only to break into a rant-laden sprint as two cyclists came within inches of grazing her.

“It’s chaos!” exclaimed Ms. Famery, shaking a fist at the swarm of bikes that have displaced cars on the Rue de Rivoli ever since it was remade into a multilane highway for cyclists last year. “Politicians want to make Paris a cycling city, but no one is following any rules,” she said. “It’s becoming risky just to cross the street!”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/02/world/europe/paris-bicyles-france.html

yikes!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For one, our metro system is inadequate, there aren't enough stations.

I live and work in DC, but with an elementary kid in school, it would take me (checks google maps)... 25 min to get my kid to school that's a 10-15 min drive away, then another (checks google maps) 45-55 min to get myself to work that's a 25-30 min drive normally.

This is living in NE, with kids in school in NE, with my work also in NE.

No thanks.

There are buses though.

Also, if this is all in NE DC, then you have a lot of long-duration, short-distance car trips. Very inefficient. I"m so sorry.

You're not getting it. The public transportation times I gave involved busses as there's not a particularly metro friendly way to get to my kid's school nor my workplace. I'm a 15-20 min walk from the closest metro. Sure, I have busses, but they would add 30 min to my commute one way, an hour daily. With kids, that's a no go. Doesn't even factor getting my kid across the hill to their random after school sports practice or whatever.

So what I'm saying is that there's no way for me to get anywhere I need to where public transport is faster than my car - including school, work, and the grocery store. I live in Langston, kid's school on the Hill, work near Catholic. It is not better for me to use public transportation. Even just to drive down Benning to H St NE to go to the grocery store, it's faster for me to drive than to walk to the bus or streetcar, wait for the next one, and wait for it to make multiple slow stops to the location...

If it is one day, I'll use it, but it's not currently.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC is such a beautifully designed city, with amazing outdoor dining and cafe potential.

But trucks, busses, cars and motorcycles ruin it for us residents.

DC is geographically tiny, so why not make our streets pedestrian and bicycles- only?

Is it really necessary to point out that most of the bars, restaurants and stores in this city would go out of business if we banned cars?

+1 I have been a daily bike commuter in this town for 20 years, but even I think a total ban on cars is foolish. What I would like to see, though, is a network of bike trails and/or streets closed to cars that is comparable to the metro coverage. So, a couple N-S streets, a couple E-W streets, and a couple diagonal streets. All the bike lanes that have been put in place are great--and do get used, contrary to what some folks say on this board. But, if I could get around town on my bike without having to worry about getting doored/hooked/run over, that would be a game changer.

And that's what bikers are doing. They choose to ride on the sidewalk which they are not allowed to do making it exponentially less safe for everyone walking. I'd be ok with closing certain streets to cars if it means fewer bikes everywhere else. But it won't. Just look at where people leave their schooters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC is such a beautifully designed city, with amazing outdoor dining and cafe potential.

But trucks, busses, cars and motorcycles ruin it for us residents.

DC is geographically tiny, so why not make our streets pedestrian and bicycles- only?

Is it really necessary to point out that most of the bars, restaurants and stores in this city would go out of business if we banned cars?

+1 I have been a daily bike commuter in this town for 20 years, but even I think a total ban on cars is foolish. What I would like to see, though, is a network of bike trails and/or streets closed to cars that is comparable to the metro coverage. So, a couple N-S streets, a couple E-W streets, and a couple diagonal streets. All the bike lanes that have been put in place are great--and do get used, contrary to what some folks say on this board. But, if I could get around town on my bike without having to worry about getting doored/hooked/run over, that would be a game changer.

And that's what bikers are doing. They choose to ride on the sidewalk which they are not allowed to do making it exponentially less safe for everyone walking. I'd be ok with closing certain streets to cars if it means fewer bikes everywhere else. But it won't. Just look at where people leave their schooters.

Cyclists won't even use the bike lanes we have if it means going a block or two out of their way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The most famous European cities do indeed have lovely center-city areas that are mostly the domain of pedestrians and cyclists. These are the parts of those cities you see on postcards, and the parts that American tourists visit.

But in nearly all of these same cities (especially Amsterdam, the GGW mouth-breather wet-dream of a city), that postcard-perfect center city is completely hemmed in by ugly auto-centric sprawl, and often it's worse sprawl than anything you see in the U.S. But you never see these areas on postcards, and American tourists never visit, so they don't exist in the minds of U.S. visitors because it's outside the quaint 2-square-mile area that they visit.

So can we stop holding up Europe as this paragon of urbanism? It's just not true.

This is factually incorrect. Yes, not all of the Netherlands is the old city of Amsterdam. Who ever said it was? But the idea that the rest of the Netherlands is just as car-centric as the US, or even more so, is just plain wrong. And it shows in the number of transportation deaths. The number of traffic deaths per 100,000 inhabitants in the Netherlands in 2019 was 3.8 (and decreasing). In the US, it was 11.0 (and increasing).

Comparing traffic deaths per distance traveled is probably a more useful comparison.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC is such a beautifully designed city, with amazing outdoor dining and cafe potential.

But trucks, busses, cars and motorcycles ruin it for us residents.

DC is geographically tiny, so why not make our streets pedestrian and bicycles- only?

Just for sh!ts and giggles, answer me this question:

You’re moving from somewhere you previously lived to this new car-free utopia called DC. How do you get all your stuff - your furniture, your clothes, your housewares, your library/office, all the “stuff” that people have in a home - how do you get all that stuff to your new digs on the 1300 block of P st NW?

Because moving vans won’t be exempt.

So how are you going to move here - or away - with your stuff?

You better have one hell of a big cargo bike.

People do move house with cargo bikes. That is a thing people do. Depending on how much stuff you have, it takes multiple trips and/or multiple people. For basically every example of "you can't move X on a bike!" you can think of, there is a photo on the internet of someone moving X on a bike.

People plow fields with oxen, but that doesn't mean it makes sense at a large scale.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC is such a beautifully designed city, with amazing outdoor dining and cafe potential.

But trucks, busses, cars and motorcycles ruin it for us residents.

DC is geographically tiny, so why not make our streets pedestrian and bicycles- only?

Just for sh!ts and giggles, answer me this question:

You’re moving from somewhere you previously lived to this new car-free utopia called DC. How do you get all your stuff - your furniture, your clothes, your housewares, your library/office, all the “stuff” that people have in a home - how do you get all that stuff to your new digs on the 1300 block of P st NW?

Because moving vans won’t be exempt.

So how are you going to move here - or away - with your stuff?

You better have one hell of a big cargo bike.

Amazon, Door Dash, and other low carbon lifestyle-enabling service providers would have a special exception.

It's good to hear the help will still be allowed to drive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For one, our metro system is inadequate, there aren't enough stations.

I live and work in DC, but with an elementary kid in school, it would take me (checks google maps)... 25 min to get my kid to school that's a 10-15 min drive away, then another (checks google maps) 45-55 min to get myself to work that's a 25-30 min drive normally.

This is living in NE, with kids in school in NE, with my work also in NE.

No thanks.

You do realize you're literally driving at bike speed? Probably slower depending on where in NE.

The reason it takes you so long is because of traffic and lights (aka too many cars).

Now imagine your trips if DC had half as many cars.

DP. This is the real answer. It’s not banning all cars, it’s banning any non-DC plates. Or making them pay huge tolls to drive in the city. Anything that reduces MD and VA plates would be fine by me!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The most famous European cities do indeed have lovely center-city areas that are mostly the domain of pedestrians and cyclists. These are the parts of those cities you see on postcards, and the parts that American tourists visit.

But in nearly all of these same cities (especially Amsterdam, the GGW mouth-breather wet-dream of a city), that postcard-perfect center city is completely hemmed in by ugly auto-centric sprawl, and often it's worse sprawl than anything you see in the U.S. But you never see these areas on postcards, and American tourists never visit, so they don't exist in the minds of U.S. visitors because it's outside the quaint 2-square-mile area that they visit.

So can we stop holding up Europe as this paragon of urbanism? It's just not true.

This is factually incorrect. Yes, not all of the Netherlands is the old city of Amsterdam. Who ever said it was? But the idea that the rest of the Netherlands is just as car-centric as the US, or even more so, is just plain wrong. And it shows in the number of transportation deaths. The number of traffic deaths per 100,000 inhabitants in the Netherlands in 2019 was 3.8 (and decreasing). In the US, it was 11.0 (and increasing).

Comparing traffic deaths per distance traveled is probably a more useful comparison.

No, it isn't. Not when the whole point is that people in the Netherlands have so many more transportation options than the US does. If we in the US traveled less by car and more by other modes, our number of traffic deaths per capita would go down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DC is such a beautifully designed city, with amazing outdoor dining and cafe potential.

But trucks, busses, cars and motorcycles ruin it for us residents.

DC is geographically tiny, so why not make our streets pedestrian and bicycles- only?

Please don't speak for "us." This city is insufferable enough without the bike mafia whining for more bike lanes that they'll ignore in favor of the sidewalk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For one, our metro system is inadequate, there aren't enough stations.

I live and work in DC, but with an elementary kid in school, it would take me (checks google maps)... 25 min to get my kid to school that's a 10-15 min drive away, then another (checks google maps) 45-55 min to get myself to work that's a 25-30 min drive normally.

This is living in NE, with kids in school in NE, with my work also in NE.

No thanks.

You do realize you're literally driving at bike speed? Probably slower depending on where in NE.

The reason it takes you so long is because of traffic and lights (aka too many cars).

Now imagine your trips if DC had half as many cars.

DP. This is the real answer. It’s not banning all cars, it’s banning any non-DC plates. Or making them pay huge tolls to drive in the city. Anything that reduces MD and VA plates would be fine by me!

Cyclists are almost entirely white. Drivers are disproportionately black and brown (because they're less likely to be able to afford to live close to where they work)

All these cockamamie schemes to help cyclists and punish drivers boil down to privileging white people and hurting black and brown people.