Connecticut Ave bike lanes are back!

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:All traffic deaths are horrible and streets must be made safer for all users. That's why I find it so offensive that the bike lobby, led by Charles Allen, is seeking to include language in the budget that would deny any expenditure for safer streets that did not include bike lanes. It shows that for the bike lobby, it is about biking, not safe streets. Bike lanes are not going to happen for years because there is a cash crunch and issues to be worked out, so why not make Connecticut Avenue safer in the interim?

How would the street be made safer without consideration for cyclists? Sure, they can put in some bulbouts, but if cyclists are left competing with motorists in driving lanes, then it is unsafe for cyclists. If cyclists are left competing with pedestrians on sidewalks, then it is unsafe for pedestrians.

One solution is to shift a new north-south bike lane to Reno Rd. Maybe it won't be as convenient for some bikers to reach the Connecticut Ave bars, but a Reno bike lane would provide easy access to locations up and down Connecticut and much of Wisconsin Ave. Reno has a center turn lane that is underultized or unnecessary at all but the most busy intersections so space could be re-allocated to bike lanes on the side. Connecticut Ave. is a designated arterial and evaluation route and where the thru and commuter traffic should be encouraged to go, instead of diverting more of it to Reno.

Reno Road isn't wide enough to accommodate turn lanes, through lanes and bike lanes. DDOT already dismissed that option years ago.

In fact, it is. Eliminate the turn lane at all but the most major cross streets and the space on an entire lane could be repurposed as a dedicated bike lane, probably moved to one side or another. The bikes are likely to have to stop for the signals at the major cross streets, so having the lane become striped at those locations is quite standard and doable.

Maybe Reno doesn't have the same Urbanist cachet of re-visioning Connecticut Ave as a very dense high-rise, mixed-use corridor with bike lanes, but that's not the primary purpose of having the bike lane, is it?

I don't think the people who ride their bikes downtown from upper NW have any problem with putting bike lanes on Reno and changing the traffic patterns there, instead of on Connecticut. I know I don't. But DDOT doesn't seem to be into the idea.

The focus should be building a bike path thru RC Park. Faster and safer.

Many of us aren't riding downtown at all and don't "need" a path in RCP. What we want is to be able to run errands in our neighborhood, of which Connecticut Avenue is our main street.

It is also a main street for a vastly larger number of drivers who don’t need all of the drawbacks that come with adding a bike lane there.

The drawbacks of a safer street with fewer crashes that cause injuries. Horrible!

If that’s the only thing you can comprehend about why the vast majority of commuters don’t like bike lanes, you will never succeed in getting the bike lines you want. If you can’t even understand the other side’s argument, you will fail.

Please stop using commuter as a synonym for driver. Lots of commuters aren't driving. Lots of drivers aren't commuting.

I didn’t say drivers. But the vast majority of commuters in this area drive. And the people taking the bus aren’t always thrilled about the bike lanes either.

This area being the 11 county metro area. In DC, which is where the entirety of the study area is located, driving commutes are in the minority (42%). Walkers and bikers also report being happier with their commutes than drivers. This is per your favorite study from 2022.

Okay, but the commuters come from all over, not just DC. And the argument isn’t about who is happiest in their commute, but you’ve clearly lost the plot.

Of course it's about who's happiest! That's the whole basis of the Everyone Is Trying To Force People Out Of Their Cars By Making Driving Miserable conspiracy fiction. But then it turns out that if the drivers forced themselves out of their cars and switched to non-driving, they'd actually be happier.

So you’re agreeing that people choose to drive if left to their own devices (your “false” assumption 1), since they could apparently easily be happier but are choosing not to be. Great.

Interesting too that there are complaints about not calling drivers “commuters,” since there are other groups, but you ignore that the metro and bus riders are not really any more satisfied than the drivers (my original point). I guess The Only Alternative Mode of transportation is biking.

Metro and bus riders are less stressed than drivers.

I don't agree that people choose to drive, actually. I think that people are forced to drive.

I prefer to drive, and will continue to drive. There is all this discussion about traffic. DC, in fact, still has fewer residents than in the 1960s and 70s, when DC's population was 750-800K. Today, it is about 680K.

Ok? Nobody is forcing you out of your car. To drive or not to drive, that's your choice. But DC does not have to configure DC streets for maximum convenience for your choice to drive.

I see we’ve hit that weird point where people are arguing that a street is not for a car.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:All traffic deaths are horrible and streets must be made safer for all users. That's why I find it so offensive that the bike lobby, led by Charles Allen, is seeking to include language in the budget that would deny any expenditure for safer streets that did not include bike lanes. It shows that for the bike lobby, it is about biking, not safe streets. Bike lanes are not going to happen for years because there is a cash crunch and issues to be worked out, so why not make Connecticut Avenue safer in the interim?

How would the street be made safer without consideration for cyclists? Sure, they can put in some bulbouts, but if cyclists are left competing with motorists in driving lanes, then it is unsafe for cyclists. If cyclists are left competing with pedestrians on sidewalks, then it is unsafe for pedestrians.

One solution is to shift a new north-south bike lane to Reno Rd. Maybe it won't be as convenient for some bikers to reach the Connecticut Ave bars, but a Reno bike lane would provide easy access to locations up and down Connecticut and much of Wisconsin Ave. Reno has a center turn lane that is underultized or unnecessary at all but the most busy intersections so space could be re-allocated to bike lanes on the side. Connecticut Ave. is a designated arterial and evaluation route and where the thru and commuter traffic should be encouraged to go, instead of diverting more of it to Reno.

Reno Road isn't wide enough to accommodate turn lanes, through lanes and bike lanes. DDOT already dismissed that option years ago.

In fact, it is. Eliminate the turn lane at all but the most major cross streets and the space on an entire lane could be repurposed as a dedicated bike lane, probably moved to one side or another. The bikes are likely to have to stop for the signals at the major cross streets, so having the lane become striped at those locations is quite standard and doable.

Maybe Reno doesn't have the same Urbanist cachet of re-visioning Connecticut Ave as a very dense high-rise, mixed-use corridor with bike lanes, but that's not the primary purpose of having the bike lane, is it?

I don't think the people who ride their bikes downtown from upper NW have any problem with putting bike lanes on Reno and changing the traffic patterns there, instead of on Connecticut. I know I don't. But DDOT doesn't seem to be into the idea.

The focus should be building a bike path thru RC Park. Faster and safer.

Many of us aren't riding downtown at all and don't "need" a path in RCP. What we want is to be able to run errands in our neighborhood, of which Connecticut Avenue is our main street.

It is also a main street for a vastly larger number of drivers who don’t need all of the drawbacks that come with adding a bike lane there.

The drawbacks of a safer street with fewer crashes that cause injuries. Horrible!

If that’s the only thing you can comprehend about why the vast majority of commuters don’t like bike lanes, you will never succeed in getting the bike lines you want. If you can’t even understand the other side’s argument, you will fail.

Please stop using commuter as a synonym for driver. Lots of commuters aren't driving. Lots of drivers aren't commuting.

I didn’t say drivers. But the vast majority of commuters in this area drive. And the people taking the bus aren’t always thrilled about the bike lanes either.

This area being the 11 county metro area. In DC, which is where the entirety of the study area is located, driving commutes are in the minority (42%). Walkers and bikers also report being happier with their commutes than drivers. This is per your favorite study from 2022.

Where’s your data from?

The same survey that's referenced every third post across multiple threads: https://www.mwcog.org/file.aspx?D=HcOqbzivuFayTfyAlhvUJhe72nkkosOrz2TZl%2bOlFXE%3d&A=3b5jlNJv7k8i9DmLKmqJ5c9bgLZ451b3R0E2zs1pReQ%3d
Satisfaction with commute by mode is page 19, DC specific splits on page 37.

I’m confused. Many pro-cycling posts have said that this survey is unreliable.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I think everyone is losing sight of what are the two options:

1. Some bike lanes or
2. Parking 24/7 on CT Avenue with no restrictions vs. rush hour restrictions right now.

In both options, you will have the same traffic problems with delivery trucks now idling in one of the 4 lanes of traffic.

Yes, in option #2 you may have traffic issues only 80% of the time vs. Option #1...but they both stink.

BTW...both of these options are designed to make your car commute miserable so that perhaps you won't make it at all or take metro or something. That is the goal.

The assumptions here are that

1. driving to work by car is what everybody would choose if they had their druthers
2. all of the other transportation modes for getting to work are worse for everyone than driving to work by car
3. the only way to get people to use the other, non-car transportation modes for getting to work is to make driving miserable

All three assumptions are false.

They may not be 100% true. But they are mostly true, especially 1 and 3.

No. They may be true FOR YOU. But as general assumptions? No.

Yeah, you’re right. That’s why a large majority drive, driving is up, and metro and bus rides are down. And also why you so rarely hear anyone talk about how happy they are to take the metro and bus or how great of an experience it is.

Yep, you got me. Everyone is just itching to hop on those other modes daily if given the opportunity.

I never hear anyone talk about how happy they are to drive and how great an experience it is. Also when I'm driving during commuting hours and look around at my fellow drivers, nobody looks particularly happy. There's also a lot of aggressive driving and road rage. Study after study shows that driving commuters are the most stressed commuters.

Yet it’s up, not down. And this was my point. They only way to force people out of their cars is to make it more miserable (your “false” assumption #3) and that left to their own devices, people would choose to drive (your “false” assumption #1).

So driving is miserable, but the only way to get people to start taking transportation modes where they would be less miserable (compared to driving) is to make driving even more miserable?

Wow.

There is a podcast that features someone from UCLA who studies urban congestion and traffic flows. Supposedly, they are known as being leaders in the field.

In fact, their conclusion as to the best way to get people to take public transit is you have to make car travel either extremely expensive (i.e., impose expensive congestion pricing like they do in London and are trying to do in NYC) or extremely inconvenient (i.e., install bike lanes or 24-hour parking or whatever to make your commute so onerous you stop).

When they ask car commuters how they feel about free public transit...they are majority in favor. When asked if they will use the free public transit, the answer is "of course not", however, they hope all the other commuters use it so that their car commute will now be much easier. Free public transit is only effective in low-income communities where nobody can afford to own a car, but free public transit now opens job opportunities in better areas they can reach by free transit.

So, yes...that is why no matter what is suggested for CT Avenue, they have the same goal...make driving miserable.

I mean, if you think driving is the center of the universe, then yes, you will think that the point of everything that benefits not-driving is to make driving miserable. But sometimes it really isn't about you.

It’s not that people think that driving is the center of the universe. It’s that they recognize reality, which is that it is how the majority of people commute in this country, in the DMV, and even a plurality of DC itself. And that’s often because it is the most convenient and direct way to get between A and B, not because they have some car fetish. Yet local officials seem to only want to make the experience worse, not better.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:All traffic deaths are horrible and streets must be made safer for all users. That's why I find it so offensive that the bike lobby, led by Charles Allen, is seeking to include language in the budget that would deny any expenditure for safer streets that did not include bike lanes. It shows that for the bike lobby, it is about biking, not safe streets. Bike lanes are not going to happen for years because there is a cash crunch and issues to be worked out, so why not make Connecticut Avenue safer in the interim?

How would the street be made safer without consideration for cyclists? Sure, they can put in some bulbouts, but if cyclists are left competing with motorists in driving lanes, then it is unsafe for cyclists. If cyclists are left competing with pedestrians on sidewalks, then it is unsafe for pedestrians.

One solution is to shift a new north-south bike lane to Reno Rd. Maybe it won't be as convenient for some bikers to reach the Connecticut Ave bars, but a Reno bike lane would provide easy access to locations up and down Connecticut and much of Wisconsin Ave. Reno has a center turn lane that is underultized or unnecessary at all but the most busy intersections so space could be re-allocated to bike lanes on the side. Connecticut Ave. is a designated arterial and evaluation route and where the thru and commuter traffic should be encouraged to go, instead of diverting more of it to Reno.

Reno Road isn't wide enough to accommodate turn lanes, through lanes and bike lanes. DDOT already dismissed that option years ago.

In fact, it is. Eliminate the turn lane at all but the most major cross streets and the space on an entire lane could be repurposed as a dedicated bike lane, probably moved to one side or another. The bikes are likely to have to stop for the signals at the major cross streets, so having the lane become striped at those locations is quite standard and doable.

Maybe Reno doesn't have the same Urbanist cachet of re-visioning Connecticut Ave as a very dense high-rise, mixed-use corridor with bike lanes, but that's not the primary purpose of having the bike lane, is it?

I don't think the people who ride their bikes downtown from upper NW have any problem with putting bike lanes on Reno and changing the traffic patterns there, instead of on Connecticut. I know I don't. But DDOT doesn't seem to be into the idea.

The focus should be building a bike path thru RC Park. Faster and safer.

Many of us aren't riding downtown at all and don't "need" a path in RCP. What we want is to be able to run errands in our neighborhood, of which Connecticut Avenue is our main street.

It is also a main street for a vastly larger number of drivers who don’t need all of the drawbacks that come with adding a bike lane there.

The drawbacks of a safer street with fewer crashes that cause injuries. Horrible!

If that’s the only thing you can comprehend about why the vast majority of commuters don’t like bike lanes, you will never succeed in getting the bike lines you want. If you can’t even understand the other side’s argument, you will fail.

Please stop using commuter as a synonym for driver. Lots of commuters aren't driving. Lots of drivers aren't commuting.

I didn’t say drivers. But the vast majority of commuters in this area drive. And the people taking the bus aren’t always thrilled about the bike lanes either.

This area being the 11 county metro area. In DC, which is where the entirety of the study area is located, driving commutes are in the minority (42%). Walkers and bikers also report being happier with their commutes than drivers. This is per your favorite study from 2022.

Where’s your data from?

The same survey that's referenced every third post across multiple threads: https://www.mwcog.org/file.aspx?D=HcOqbzivuFayTfyAlhvUJhe72nkkosOrz2TZl%2bOlFXE%3d&A=3b5jlNJv7k8i9DmLKmqJ5c9bgLZ451b3R0E2zs1pReQ%3d
Satisfaction with commute by mode is page 19, DC specific splits on page 37.

I’m confused. Many pro-cycling posts have said that this survey is unreliable.

Because it doesn’t tell them what they want to hear.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:All traffic deaths are horrible and streets must be made safer for all users. That's why I find it so offensive that the bike lobby, led by Charles Allen, is seeking to include language in the budget that would deny any expenditure for safer streets that did not include bike lanes. It shows that for the bike lobby, it is about biking, not safe streets. Bike lanes are not going to happen for years because there is a cash crunch and issues to be worked out, so why not make Connecticut Avenue safer in the interim?

How would the street be made safer without consideration for cyclists? Sure, they can put in some bulbouts, but if cyclists are left competing with motorists in driving lanes, then it is unsafe for cyclists. If cyclists are left competing with pedestrians on sidewalks, then it is unsafe for pedestrians.

One solution is to shift a new north-south bike lane to Reno Rd. Maybe it won't be as convenient for some bikers to reach the Connecticut Ave bars, but a Reno bike lane would provide easy access to locations up and down Connecticut and much of Wisconsin Ave. Reno has a center turn lane that is underultized or unnecessary at all but the most busy intersections so space could be re-allocated to bike lanes on the side. Connecticut Ave. is a designated arterial and evaluation route and where the thru and commuter traffic should be encouraged to go, instead of diverting more of it to Reno.

Reno Road isn't wide enough to accommodate turn lanes, through lanes and bike lanes. DDOT already dismissed that option years ago.

In fact, it is. Eliminate the turn lane at all but the most major cross streets and the space on an entire lane could be repurposed as a dedicated bike lane, probably moved to one side or another. The bikes are likely to have to stop for the signals at the major cross streets, so having the lane become striped at those locations is quite standard and doable.

Maybe Reno doesn't have the same Urbanist cachet of re-visioning Connecticut Ave as a very dense high-rise, mixed-use corridor with bike lanes, but that's not the primary purpose of having the bike lane, is it?

I don't think the people who ride their bikes downtown from upper NW have any problem with putting bike lanes on Reno and changing the traffic patterns there, instead of on Connecticut. I know I don't. But DDOT doesn't seem to be into the idea.

The focus should be building a bike path thru RC Park. Faster and safer.

Many of us aren't riding downtown at all and don't "need" a path in RCP. What we want is to be able to run errands in our neighborhood, of which Connecticut Avenue is our main street.

It is also a main street for a vastly larger number of drivers who don’t need all of the drawbacks that come with adding a bike lane there.

The drawbacks of a safer street with fewer crashes that cause injuries. Horrible!

If that’s the only thing you can comprehend about why the vast majority of commuters don’t like bike lanes, you will never succeed in getting the bike lines you want. If you can’t even understand the other side’s argument, you will fail.

Please stop using commuter as a synonym for driver. Lots of commuters aren't driving. Lots of drivers aren't commuting.

I didn’t say drivers. But the vast majority of commuters in this area drive. And the people taking the bus aren’t always thrilled about the bike lanes either.

This area being the 11 county metro area. In DC, which is where the entirety of the study area is located, driving commutes are in the minority (42%). Walkers and bikers also report being happier with their commutes than drivers. This is per your favorite study from 2022.

Okay, but the commuters come from all over, not just DC. And the argument isn’t about who is happiest in their commute, but you’ve clearly lost the plot.

Of course it's about who's happiest! That's the whole basis of the Everyone Is Trying To Force People Out Of Their Cars By Making Driving Miserable conspiracy fiction. But then it turns out that if the drivers forced themselves out of their cars and switched to non-driving, they'd actually be happier.

How is it "conspiracy fiction" when it's said repeatedly, clearly, and openly.

Could you please provide two examples of this (i.e., the point of bike lanes etc. is to force people out of their cars by making driving miserable), including who said it, and when and where they said it? Real life examples, by people who actually affect policy decisions. Random anonymous posters on DCUM do not count.

"induced demand"

Induced demand? Yeah, no. That's not Everyone Is Trying To Force People Out Of Their Cars By Making Driving Miserable. That's the idea that if you make driving less miserable, there will be more driving, and as a result driving will quickly return to its previous state of miserableness.

Induced demand isn't even about misery, it's just about availability -- if you add more lanes or available driving space, with the goal of relieving congestion, the congestion quickly expands to fill the available space. It isn't a theory of how to make driving more or less pleasant, it's an observation about why adding road space doesn't actually achieve the intended goals.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:All traffic deaths are horrible and streets must be made safer for all users. That's why I find it so offensive that the bike lobby, led by Charles Allen, is seeking to include language in the budget that would deny any expenditure for safer streets that did not include bike lanes. It shows that for the bike lobby, it is about biking, not safe streets. Bike lanes are not going to happen for years because there is a cash crunch and issues to be worked out, so why not make Connecticut Avenue safer in the interim?

How would the street be made safer without consideration for cyclists? Sure, they can put in some bulbouts, but if cyclists are left competing with motorists in driving lanes, then it is unsafe for cyclists. If cyclists are left competing with pedestrians on sidewalks, then it is unsafe for pedestrians.

One solution is to shift a new north-south bike lane to Reno Rd. Maybe it won't be as convenient for some bikers to reach the Connecticut Ave bars, but a Reno bike lane would provide easy access to locations up and down Connecticut and much of Wisconsin Ave. Reno has a center turn lane that is underultized or unnecessary at all but the most busy intersections so space could be re-allocated to bike lanes on the side. Connecticut Ave. is a designated arterial and evaluation route and where the thru and commuter traffic should be encouraged to go, instead of diverting more of it to Reno.

Reno Road isn't wide enough to accommodate turn lanes, through lanes and bike lanes. DDOT already dismissed that option years ago.

In fact, it is. Eliminate the turn lane at all but the most major cross streets and the space on an entire lane could be repurposed as a dedicated bike lane, probably moved to one side or another. The bikes are likely to have to stop for the signals at the major cross streets, so having the lane become striped at those locations is quite standard and doable.

Maybe Reno doesn't have the same Urbanist cachet of re-visioning Connecticut Ave as a very dense high-rise, mixed-use corridor with bike lanes, but that's not the primary purpose of having the bike lane, is it?

I don't think the people who ride their bikes downtown from upper NW have any problem with putting bike lanes on Reno and changing the traffic patterns there, instead of on Connecticut. I know I don't. But DDOT doesn't seem to be into the idea.

The focus should be building a bike path thru RC Park. Faster and safer.

Many of us aren't riding downtown at all and don't "need" a path in RCP. What we want is to be able to run errands in our neighborhood, of which Connecticut Avenue is our main street.

It is also a main street for a vastly larger number of drivers who don’t need all of the drawbacks that come with adding a bike lane there.

The drawbacks of a safer street with fewer crashes that cause injuries. Horrible!

If that’s the only thing you can comprehend about why the vast majority of commuters don’t like bike lanes, you will never succeed in getting the bike lines you want. If you can’t even understand the other side’s argument, you will fail.

Please stop using commuter as a synonym for driver. Lots of commuters aren't driving. Lots of drivers aren't commuting.

I didn’t say drivers. But the vast majority of commuters in this area drive. And the people taking the bus aren’t always thrilled about the bike lanes either.

This area being the 11 county metro area. In DC, which is where the entirety of the study area is located, driving commutes are in the minority (42%). Walkers and bikers also report being happier with their commutes than drivers. This is per your favorite study from 2022.

Okay, but the commuters come from all over, not just DC. And the argument isn’t about who is happiest in their commute, but you’ve clearly lost the plot.

Of course it's about who's happiest! That's the whole basis of the Everyone Is Trying To Force People Out Of Their Cars By Making Driving Miserable conspiracy fiction. But then it turns out that if the drivers forced themselves out of their cars and switched to non-driving, they'd actually be happier.

How is it "conspiracy fiction" when it's said repeatedly, clearly, and openly.

Could you please provide two examples of this (i.e., the point of bike lanes etc. is to force people out of their cars by making driving miserable), including who said it, and when and where they said it? Real life examples, by people who actually affect policy decisions. Random anonymous posters on DCUM do not count.

"induced demand"

Induced demand? Yeah, no. That's not Everyone Is Trying To Force People Out Of Their Cars By Making Driving Miserable. That's the idea that if you make driving less miserable, there will be more driving, and as a result driving will quickly return to its previous state of miserableness.

Induced demand isn't even about misery, it's just about availability -- if you add more lanes or available driving space, with the goal of relieving congestion, the congestion quickly expands to fill the available space. It isn't a theory of how to make driving more or less pleasant, it's an observation about why adding road space doesn't actually achieve the intended goals.

That just means you need yet more road space to meet the demand, not that additional road space doesn’t improve congestion.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:All traffic deaths are horrible and streets must be made safer for all users. That's why I find it so offensive that the bike lobby, led by Charles Allen, is seeking to include language in the budget that would deny any expenditure for safer streets that did not include bike lanes. It shows that for the bike lobby, it is about biking, not safe streets. Bike lanes are not going to happen for years because there is a cash crunch and issues to be worked out, so why not make Connecticut Avenue safer in the interim?

How would the street be made safer without consideration for cyclists? Sure, they can put in some bulbouts, but if cyclists are left competing with motorists in driving lanes, then it is unsafe for cyclists. If cyclists are left competing with pedestrians on sidewalks, then it is unsafe for pedestrians.

One solution is to shift a new north-south bike lane to Reno Rd. Maybe it won't be as convenient for some bikers to reach the Connecticut Ave bars, but a Reno bike lane would provide easy access to locations up and down Connecticut and much of Wisconsin Ave. Reno has a center turn lane that is underultized or unnecessary at all but the most busy intersections so space could be re-allocated to bike lanes on the side. Connecticut Ave. is a designated arterial and evaluation route and where the thru and commuter traffic should be encouraged to go, instead of diverting more of it to Reno.

Reno Road isn't wide enough to accommodate turn lanes, through lanes and bike lanes. DDOT already dismissed that option years ago.

In fact, it is. Eliminate the turn lane at all but the most major cross streets and the space on an entire lane could be repurposed as a dedicated bike lane, probably moved to one side or another. The bikes are likely to have to stop for the signals at the major cross streets, so having the lane become striped at those locations is quite standard and doable.

Maybe Reno doesn't have the same Urbanist cachet of re-visioning Connecticut Ave as a very dense high-rise, mixed-use corridor with bike lanes, but that's not the primary purpose of having the bike lane, is it?

I don't think the people who ride their bikes downtown from upper NW have any problem with putting bike lanes on Reno and changing the traffic patterns there, instead of on Connecticut. I know I don't. But DDOT doesn't seem to be into the idea.

The focus should be building a bike path thru RC Park. Faster and safer.

Many of us aren't riding downtown at all and don't "need" a path in RCP. What we want is to be able to run errands in our neighborhood, of which Connecticut Avenue is our main street.

It is also a main street for a vastly larger number of drivers who don’t need all of the drawbacks that come with adding a bike lane there.

The drawbacks of a safer street with fewer crashes that cause injuries. Horrible!

If that’s the only thing you can comprehend about why the vast majority of commuters don’t like bike lanes, you will never succeed in getting the bike lines you want. If you can’t even understand the other side’s argument, you will fail.

Please stop using commuter as a synonym for driver. Lots of commuters aren't driving. Lots of drivers aren't commuting.

I didn’t say drivers. But the vast majority of commuters in this area drive. And the people taking the bus aren’t always thrilled about the bike lanes either.

This area being the 11 county metro area. In DC, which is where the entirety of the study area is located, driving commutes are in the minority (42%). Walkers and bikers also report being happier with their commutes than drivers. This is per your favorite study from 2022.

Okay, but the commuters come from all over, not just DC. And the argument isn’t about who is happiest in their commute, but you’ve clearly lost the plot.

Of course it's about who's happiest! That's the whole basis of the Everyone Is Trying To Force People Out Of Their Cars By Making Driving Miserable conspiracy fiction. But then it turns out that if the drivers forced themselves out of their cars and switched to non-driving, they'd actually be happier.

How is it "conspiracy fiction" when it's said repeatedly, clearly, and openly.

Could you please provide two examples of this (i.e., the point of bike lanes etc. is to force people out of their cars by making driving miserable), including who said it, and when and where they said it? Real life examples, by people who actually affect policy decisions. Random anonymous posters on DCUM do not count.

"induced demand"

Induced demand? Yeah, no. That's not Everyone Is Trying To Force People Out Of Their Cars By Making Driving Miserable. That's the idea that if you make driving less miserable, there will be more driving, and as a result driving will quickly return to its previous state of miserableness.

Induced demand isn't even about misery, it's just about availability -- if you add more lanes or available driving space, with the goal of relieving congestion, the congestion quickly expands to fill the available space. It isn't a theory of how to make driving more or less pleasant, it's an observation about why adding road space doesn't actually achieve the intended goals.

That just means you need yet more road space to meet the demand, not that additional road space doesn’t improve congestion.

This also confirms the “miserable” point. Make driving too good and more people will drive. Make it suck and fewer people will do it.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:All traffic deaths are horrible and streets must be made safer for all users. That's why I find it so offensive that the bike lobby, led by Charles Allen, is seeking to include language in the budget that would deny any expenditure for safer streets that did not include bike lanes. It shows that for the bike lobby, it is about biking, not safe streets. Bike lanes are not going to happen for years because there is a cash crunch and issues to be worked out, so why not make Connecticut Avenue safer in the interim?

How would the street be made safer without consideration for cyclists? Sure, they can put in some bulbouts, but if cyclists are left competing with motorists in driving lanes, then it is unsafe for cyclists. If cyclists are left competing with pedestrians on sidewalks, then it is unsafe for pedestrians.

One solution is to shift a new north-south bike lane to Reno Rd. Maybe it won't be as convenient for some bikers to reach the Connecticut Ave bars, but a Reno bike lane would provide easy access to locations up and down Connecticut and much of Wisconsin Ave. Reno has a center turn lane that is underultized or unnecessary at all but the most busy intersections so space could be re-allocated to bike lanes on the side. Connecticut Ave. is a designated arterial and evaluation route and where the thru and commuter traffic should be encouraged to go, instead of diverting more of it to Reno.

Reno Road isn't wide enough to accommodate turn lanes, through lanes and bike lanes. DDOT already dismissed that option years ago.

In fact, it is. Eliminate the turn lane at all but the most major cross streets and the space on an entire lane could be repurposed as a dedicated bike lane, probably moved to one side or another. The bikes are likely to have to stop for the signals at the major cross streets, so having the lane become striped at those locations is quite standard and doable.

Maybe Reno doesn't have the same Urbanist cachet of re-visioning Connecticut Ave as a very dense high-rise, mixed-use corridor with bike lanes, but that's not the primary purpose of having the bike lane, is it?

I don't think the people who ride their bikes downtown from upper NW have any problem with putting bike lanes on Reno and changing the traffic patterns there, instead of on Connecticut. I know I don't. But DDOT doesn't seem to be into the idea.

The focus should be building a bike path thru RC Park. Faster and safer.

Many of us aren't riding downtown at all and don't "need" a path in RCP. What we want is to be able to run errands in our neighborhood, of which Connecticut Avenue is our main street.

It is also a main street for a vastly larger number of drivers who don’t need all of the drawbacks that come with adding a bike lane there.

The drawbacks of a safer street with fewer crashes that cause injuries. Horrible!

If that’s the only thing you can comprehend about why the vast majority of commuters don’t like bike lanes, you will never succeed in getting the bike lines you want. If you can’t even understand the other side’s argument, you will fail.

Please stop using commuter as a synonym for driver. Lots of commuters aren't driving. Lots of drivers aren't commuting.

I didn’t say drivers. But the vast majority of commuters in this area drive. And the people taking the bus aren’t always thrilled about the bike lanes either.

This area being the 11 county metro area. In DC, which is where the entirety of the study area is located, driving commutes are in the minority (42%). Walkers and bikers also report being happier with their commutes than drivers. This is per your favorite study from 2022.

Okay, but the commuters come from all over, not just DC. And the argument isn’t about who is happiest in their commute, but you’ve clearly lost the plot.

Of course it's about who's happiest! That's the whole basis of the Everyone Is Trying To Force People Out Of Their Cars By Making Driving Miserable conspiracy fiction. But then it turns out that if the drivers forced themselves out of their cars and switched to non-driving, they'd actually be happier.

How is it "conspiracy fiction" when it's said repeatedly, clearly, and openly.

Could you please provide two examples of this (i.e., the point of bike lanes etc. is to force people out of their cars by making driving miserable), including who said it, and when and where they said it? Real life examples, by people who actually affect policy decisions. Random anonymous posters on DCUM do not count.

"induced demand"

Induced demand? Yeah, no. That's not Everyone Is Trying To Force People Out Of Their Cars By Making Driving Miserable. That's the idea that if you make driving less miserable, there will be more driving, and as a result driving will quickly return to its previous state of miserableness.

Induced demand isn't even about misery, it's just about availability -- if you add more lanes or available driving space, with the goal of relieving congestion, the congestion quickly expands to fill the available space. It isn't a theory of how to make driving more or less pleasant, it's an observation about why adding road space doesn't actually achieve the intended goals.

That just means you need yet more road space to meet the demand, not that additional road space doesn’t improve congestion.

It typically means that no matter how much road space you add, you won't ever wind up improving congestion (I guess there are probably theoretical limits to that logic, but so far no one appears to have added, say, 20 lanes to a highway to find out).

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:All traffic deaths are horrible and streets must be made safer for all users. That's why I find it so offensive that the bike lobby, led by Charles Allen, is seeking to include language in the budget that would deny any expenditure for safer streets that did not include bike lanes. It shows that for the bike lobby, it is about biking, not safe streets. Bike lanes are not going to happen for years because there is a cash crunch and issues to be worked out, so why not make Connecticut Avenue safer in the interim?

How would the street be made safer without consideration for cyclists? Sure, they can put in some bulbouts, but if cyclists are left competing with motorists in driving lanes, then it is unsafe for cyclists. If cyclists are left competing with pedestrians on sidewalks, then it is unsafe for pedestrians.

One solution is to shift a new north-south bike lane to Reno Rd. Maybe it won't be as convenient for some bikers to reach the Connecticut Ave bars, but a Reno bike lane would provide easy access to locations up and down Connecticut and much of Wisconsin Ave. Reno has a center turn lane that is underultized or unnecessary at all but the most busy intersections so space could be re-allocated to bike lanes on the side. Connecticut Ave. is a designated arterial and evaluation route and where the thru and commuter traffic should be encouraged to go, instead of diverting more of it to Reno.

Reno Road isn't wide enough to accommodate turn lanes, through lanes and bike lanes. DDOT already dismissed that option years ago.

In fact, it is. Eliminate the turn lane at all but the most major cross streets and the space on an entire lane could be repurposed as a dedicated bike lane, probably moved to one side or another. The bikes are likely to have to stop for the signals at the major cross streets, so having the lane become striped at those locations is quite standard and doable.

Maybe Reno doesn't have the same Urbanist cachet of re-visioning Connecticut Ave as a very dense high-rise, mixed-use corridor with bike lanes, but that's not the primary purpose of having the bike lane, is it?

I don't think the people who ride their bikes downtown from upper NW have any problem with putting bike lanes on Reno and changing the traffic patterns there, instead of on Connecticut. I know I don't. But DDOT doesn't seem to be into the idea.

The focus should be building a bike path thru RC Park. Faster and safer.

Many of us aren't riding downtown at all and don't "need" a path in RCP. What we want is to be able to run errands in our neighborhood, of which Connecticut Avenue is our main street.

It is also a main street for a vastly larger number of drivers who don’t need all of the drawbacks that come with adding a bike lane there.

The drawbacks of a safer street with fewer crashes that cause injuries. Horrible!

If that’s the only thing you can comprehend about why the vast majority of commuters don’t like bike lanes, you will never succeed in getting the bike lines you want. If you can’t even understand the other side’s argument, you will fail.

Please stop using commuter as a synonym for driver. Lots of commuters aren't driving. Lots of drivers aren't commuting.

I didn’t say drivers. But the vast majority of commuters in this area drive. And the people taking the bus aren’t always thrilled about the bike lanes either.

This area being the 11 county metro area. In DC, which is where the entirety of the study area is located, driving commutes are in the minority (42%). Walkers and bikers also report being happier with their commutes than drivers. This is per your favorite study from 2022.

Okay, but the commuters come from all over, not just DC. And the argument isn’t about who is happiest in their commute, but you’ve clearly lost the plot.

Of course it's about who's happiest! That's the whole basis of the Everyone Is Trying To Force People Out Of Their Cars By Making Driving Miserable conspiracy fiction. But then it turns out that if the drivers forced themselves out of their cars and switched to non-driving, they'd actually be happier.

How is it "conspiracy fiction" when it's said repeatedly, clearly, and openly.

Could you please provide two examples of this (i.e., the point of bike lanes etc. is to force people out of their cars by making driving miserable), including who said it, and when and where they said it? Real life examples, by people who actually affect policy decisions. Random anonymous posters on DCUM do not count.

"induced demand"

Induced demand? Yeah, no. That's not Everyone Is Trying To Force People Out Of Their Cars By Making Driving Miserable. That's the idea that if you make driving less miserable, there will be more driving, and as a result driving will quickly return to its previous state of miserableness.

Induced demand isn't even about misery, it's just about availability -- if you add more lanes or available driving space, with the goal of relieving congestion, the congestion quickly expands to fill the available space. It isn't a theory of how to make driving more or less pleasant, it's an observation about why adding road space doesn't actually achieve the intended goals.

That just means you need yet more road space to meet the demand, not that additional road space doesn’t improve congestion.

This also confirms the “miserable” point. Make driving too good and more people will drive. Make it suck and fewer people will do it.

Maybe, but the PP made it sound like "induced demand" was a theory of anti-car planning used to justify making driving suck, as opposed to a description of why driving continues to suck even after adding new road space.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:All traffic deaths are horrible and streets must be made safer for all users. That's why I find it so offensive that the bike lobby, led by Charles Allen, is seeking to include language in the budget that would deny any expenditure for safer streets that did not include bike lanes. It shows that for the bike lobby, it is about biking, not safe streets. Bike lanes are not going to happen for years because there is a cash crunch and issues to be worked out, so why not make Connecticut Avenue safer in the interim?

How would the street be made safer without consideration for cyclists? Sure, they can put in some bulbouts, but if cyclists are left competing with motorists in driving lanes, then it is unsafe for cyclists. If cyclists are left competing with pedestrians on sidewalks, then it is unsafe for pedestrians.

One solution is to shift a new north-south bike lane to Reno Rd. Maybe it won't be as convenient for some bikers to reach the Connecticut Ave bars, but a Reno bike lane would provide easy access to locations up and down Connecticut and much of Wisconsin Ave. Reno has a center turn lane that is underultized or unnecessary at all but the most busy intersections so space could be re-allocated to bike lanes on the side. Connecticut Ave. is a designated arterial and evaluation route and where the thru and commuter traffic should be encouraged to go, instead of diverting more of it to Reno.

Reno Road isn't wide enough to accommodate turn lanes, through lanes and bike lanes. DDOT already dismissed that option years ago.

In fact, it is. Eliminate the turn lane at all but the most major cross streets and the space on an entire lane could be repurposed as a dedicated bike lane, probably moved to one side or another. The bikes are likely to have to stop for the signals at the major cross streets, so having the lane become striped at those locations is quite standard and doable.

Maybe Reno doesn't have the same Urbanist cachet of re-visioning Connecticut Ave as a very dense high-rise, mixed-use corridor with bike lanes, but that's not the primary purpose of having the bike lane, is it?

I don't think the people who ride their bikes downtown from upper NW have any problem with putting bike lanes on Reno and changing the traffic patterns there, instead of on Connecticut. I know I don't. But DDOT doesn't seem to be into the idea.

The focus should be building a bike path thru RC Park. Faster and safer.

Many of us aren't riding downtown at all and don't "need" a path in RCP. What we want is to be able to run errands in our neighborhood, of which Connecticut Avenue is our main street.

It is also a main street for a vastly larger number of drivers who don’t need all of the drawbacks that come with adding a bike lane there.

The drawbacks of a safer street with fewer crashes that cause injuries. Horrible!

If that’s the only thing you can comprehend about why the vast majority of commuters don’t like bike lanes, you will never succeed in getting the bike lines you want. If you can’t even understand the other side’s argument, you will fail.

Please stop using commuter as a synonym for driver. Lots of commuters aren't driving. Lots of drivers aren't commuting.

I didn’t say drivers. But the vast majority of commuters in this area drive. And the people taking the bus aren’t always thrilled about the bike lanes either.

This area being the 11 county metro area. In DC, which is where the entirety of the study area is located, driving commutes are in the minority (42%). Walkers and bikers also report being happier with their commutes than drivers. This is per your favorite study from 2022.

Okay, but the commuters come from all over, not just DC. And the argument isn’t about who is happiest in their commute, but you’ve clearly lost the plot.

Of course it's about who's happiest! That's the whole basis of the Everyone Is Trying To Force People Out Of Their Cars By Making Driving Miserable conspiracy fiction. But then it turns out that if the drivers forced themselves out of their cars and switched to non-driving, they'd actually be happier.

How is it "conspiracy fiction" when it's said repeatedly, clearly, and openly.

Could you please provide two examples of this (i.e., the point of bike lanes etc. is to force people out of their cars by making driving miserable), including who said it, and when and where they said it? Real life examples, by people who actually affect policy decisions. Random anonymous posters on DCUM do not count.

"induced demand"

Induced demand? Yeah, no. That's not Everyone Is Trying To Force People Out Of Their Cars By Making Driving Miserable. That's the idea that if you make driving less miserable, there will be more driving, and as a result driving will quickly return to its previous state of miserableness.

Induced demand isn't even about misery, it's just about availability -- if you add more lanes or available driving space, with the goal of relieving congestion, the congestion quickly expands to fill the available space. It isn't a theory of how to make driving more or less pleasant, it's an observation about why adding road space doesn't actually achieve the intended goals.

That just means you need yet more road space to meet the demand, not that additional road space doesn’t improve congestion.

It typically means that no matter how much road space you add, you won't ever wind up improving congestion (I guess there are probably theoretical limits to that logic, but so far no one appears to have added, say, 20 lanes to a highway to find out).

This does not make sense and is not supported by reality. Jurisdictions everywhere make congestion better or worse all the time through infrastructure changes, there is not some set level of congestion that is unchangeable.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:All traffic deaths are horrible and streets must be made safer for all users. That's why I find it so offensive that the bike lobby, led by Charles Allen, is seeking to include language in the budget that would deny any expenditure for safer streets that did not include bike lanes. It shows that for the bike lobby, it is about biking, not safe streets. Bike lanes are not going to happen for years because there is a cash crunch and issues to be worked out, so why not make Connecticut Avenue safer in the interim?

How would the street be made safer without consideration for cyclists? Sure, they can put in some bulbouts, but if cyclists are left competing with motorists in driving lanes, then it is unsafe for cyclists. If cyclists are left competing with pedestrians on sidewalks, then it is unsafe for pedestrians.

One solution is to shift a new north-south bike lane to Reno Rd. Maybe it won't be as convenient for some bikers to reach the Connecticut Ave bars, but a Reno bike lane would provide easy access to locations up and down Connecticut and much of Wisconsin Ave. Reno has a center turn lane that is underultized or unnecessary at all but the most busy intersections so space could be re-allocated to bike lanes on the side. Connecticut Ave. is a designated arterial and evaluation route and where the thru and commuter traffic should be encouraged to go, instead of diverting more of it to Reno.

Reno Road isn't wide enough to accommodate turn lanes, through lanes and bike lanes. DDOT already dismissed that option years ago.

In fact, it is. Eliminate the turn lane at all but the most major cross streets and the space on an entire lane could be repurposed as a dedicated bike lane, probably moved to one side or another. The bikes are likely to have to stop for the signals at the major cross streets, so having the lane become striped at those locations is quite standard and doable.

Maybe Reno doesn't have the same Urbanist cachet of re-visioning Connecticut Ave as a very dense high-rise, mixed-use corridor with bike lanes, but that's not the primary purpose of having the bike lane, is it?

I don't think the people who ride their bikes downtown from upper NW have any problem with putting bike lanes on Reno and changing the traffic patterns there, instead of on Connecticut. I know I don't. But DDOT doesn't seem to be into the idea.

The focus should be building a bike path thru RC Park. Faster and safer.

Many of us aren't riding downtown at all and don't "need" a path in RCP. What we want is to be able to run errands in our neighborhood, of which Connecticut Avenue is our main street.

It is also a main street for a vastly larger number of drivers who don’t need all of the drawbacks that come with adding a bike lane there.

The drawbacks of a safer street with fewer crashes that cause injuries. Horrible!

If that’s the only thing you can comprehend about why the vast majority of commuters don’t like bike lanes, you will never succeed in getting the bike lines you want. If you can’t even understand the other side’s argument, you will fail.

Please stop using commuter as a synonym for driver. Lots of commuters aren't driving. Lots of drivers aren't commuting.

I didn’t say drivers. But the vast majority of commuters in this area drive. And the people taking the bus aren’t always thrilled about the bike lanes either.

This area being the 11 county metro area. In DC, which is where the entirety of the study area is located, driving commutes are in the minority (42%). Walkers and bikers also report being happier with their commutes than drivers. This is per your favorite study from 2022.

Okay, but the commuters come from all over, not just DC. And the argument isn’t about who is happiest in their commute, but you’ve clearly lost the plot.

Of course it's about who's happiest! That's the whole basis of the Everyone Is Trying To Force People Out Of Their Cars By Making Driving Miserable conspiracy fiction. But then it turns out that if the drivers forced themselves out of their cars and switched to non-driving, they'd actually be happier.

How is it "conspiracy fiction" when it's said repeatedly, clearly, and openly.

Could you please provide two examples of this (i.e., the point of bike lanes etc. is to force people out of their cars by making driving miserable), including who said it, and when and where they said it? Real life examples, by people who actually affect policy decisions. Random anonymous posters on DCUM do not count.

"induced demand"

Induced demand? Yeah, no. That's not Everyone Is Trying To Force People Out Of Their Cars By Making Driving Miserable. That's the idea that if you make driving less miserable, there will be more driving, and as a result driving will quickly return to its previous state of miserableness.

Induced demand isn't even about misery, it's just about availability -- if you add more lanes or available driving space, with the goal of relieving congestion, the congestion quickly expands to fill the available space. It isn't a theory of how to make driving more or less pleasant, it's an observation about why adding road space doesn't actually achieve the intended goals.

That just means you need yet more road space to meet the demand, not that additional road space doesn’t improve congestion.

This also confirms the “miserable” point. Make driving too good and more people will drive. Make it suck and fewer people will do it.

Maybe, but the PP made it sound like "induced demand" was a theory of anti-car planning used to justify making driving suck, as opposed to a description of why driving continues to suck even after adding new road space.

Let's be quite frank. It is 100% a theory used by anti-car agitators to make driving suck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All traffic deaths are horrible and streets must be made safer for all users. That's why I find it so offensive that the bike lobby, led by Charles Allen, is seeking to include language in the budget that would deny any expenditure for safer streets that did not include bike lanes. It shows that for the bike lobby, it is about biking, not safe streets. Bike lanes are not going to happen for years because there is a cash crunch and issues to be worked out, so why not make Connecticut Avenue safer in the interim?

How would the street be made safer without consideration for cyclists? Sure, they can put in some bulbouts, but if cyclists are left competing with motorists in driving lanes, then it is unsafe for cyclists. If cyclists are left competing with pedestrians on sidewalks, then it is unsafe for pedestrians.

One solution is to shift a new north-south bike lane to Reno Rd. Maybe it won't be as convenient for some bikers to reach the Connecticut Ave bars, but a Reno bike lane would provide easy access to locations up and down Connecticut and much of Wisconsin Ave. Reno has a center turn lane that is underultized or unnecessary at all but the most busy intersections so space could be re-allocated to bike lanes on the side. Connecticut Ave. is a designated arterial and evaluation route and where the thru and commuter traffic should be encouraged to go, instead of diverting more of it to Reno.

Reno Road isn't wide enough to accommodate turn lanes, through lanes and bike lanes. DDOT already dismissed that option years ago.

In fact, it is. Eliminate the turn lane at all but the most major cross streets and the space on an entire lane could be repurposed as a dedicated bike lane, probably moved to one side or another. The bikes are likely to have to stop for the signals at the major cross streets, so having the lane become striped at those locations is quite standard and doable.

Maybe Reno doesn't have the same Urbanist cachet of re-visioning Connecticut Ave as a very dense high-rise, mixed-use corridor with bike lanes, but that's not the primary purpose of having the bike lane, is it?

I don't think the people who ride their bikes downtown from upper NW have any problem with putting bike lanes on Reno and changing the traffic patterns there, instead of on Connecticut. I know I don't. But DDOT doesn't seem to be into the idea.

The focus should be building a bike path thru RC Park. Faster and safer.

Many of us aren't riding downtown at all and don't "need" a path in RCP. What we want is to be able to run errands in our neighborhood, of which Connecticut Avenue is our main street.

It is also a main street for a vastly larger number of drivers who don’t need all of the drawbacks that come with adding a bike lane there.

The drawbacks of a safer street with fewer crashes that cause injuries. Horrible!

If that’s the only thing you can comprehend about why the vast majority of commuters don’t like bike lanes, you will never succeed in getting the bike lines you want. If you can’t even understand the other side’s argument, you will fail.

Please stop using commuter as a synonym for driver. Lots of commuters aren't driving. Lots of drivers aren't commuting.

I didn’t say drivers. But the vast majority of commuters in this area drive. And the people taking the bus aren’t always thrilled about the bike lanes either.

This area being the 11 county metro area. In DC, which is where the entirety of the study area is located, driving commutes are in the minority (42%). Walkers and bikers also report being happier with their commutes than drivers. This is per your favorite study from 2022.

Okay, but the commuters come from all over, not just DC. And the argument isn’t about who is happiest in their commute, but you’ve clearly lost the plot.

Of course it's about who's happiest! That's the whole basis of the Everyone Is Trying To Force People Out Of Their Cars By Making Driving Miserable conspiracy fiction. But then it turns out that if the drivers forced themselves out of their cars and switched to non-driving, they'd actually be happier.

How is it "conspiracy fiction" when it's said repeatedly, clearly, and openly.

Could you please provide two examples of this (i.e., the point of bike lanes etc. is to force people out of their cars by making driving miserable), including who said it, and when and where they said it? Real life examples, by people who actually affect policy decisions. Random anonymous posters on DCUM do not count.

"induced demand"

Induced demand? Yeah, no. That's not Everyone Is Trying To Force People Out Of Their Cars By Making Driving Miserable. That's the idea that if you make driving less miserable, there will be more driving, and as a result driving will quickly return to its previous state of miserableness.

Induced demand isn't even about misery, it's just about availability -- if you add more lanes or available driving space, with the goal of relieving congestion, the congestion quickly expands to fill the available space. It isn't a theory of how to make driving more or less pleasant, it's an observation about why adding road space doesn't actually achieve the intended goals.

That just means you need yet more road space to meet the demand, not that additional road space doesn’t improve congestion.

This also confirms the “miserable” point. Make driving too good and more people will drive. Make it suck and fewer people will do it.

Maybe, but the PP made it sound like "induced demand" was a theory of anti-car planning used to justify making driving suck, as opposed to a description of why driving continues to suck even after adding new road space.

Let's be quite frank. It is 100% a theory used by anti-car agitators to make driving suck.

It's not a theory, but rather an empirical observation. Your argument is akin to the common claim that climate change is a conspiracy to destroy jobs mining fossil fuels and to foist electric vehicles upon us all.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I think everyone is losing sight of what are the two options:

1. Some bike lanes or
2. Parking 24/7 on CT Avenue with no restrictions vs. rush hour restrictions right now.

In both options, you will have the same traffic problems with delivery trucks now idling in one of the 4 lanes of traffic.

Yes, in option #2 you may have traffic issues only 80% of the time vs. Option #1...but they both stink.

BTW...both of these options are designed to make your car commute miserable so that perhaps you won't make it at all or take metro or something. That is the goal.

The assumptions here are that

1. driving to work by car is what everybody would choose if they had their druthers
2. all of the other transportation modes for getting to work are worse for everyone than driving to work by car
3. the only way to get people to use the other, non-car transportation modes for getting to work is to make driving miserable

All three assumptions are false.

They may not be 100% true. But they are mostly true, especially 1 and 3.

No. They may be true FOR YOU. But as general assumptions? No.

Yeah, you’re right. That’s why a large majority drive, driving is up, and metro and bus rides are down. And also why you so rarely hear anyone talk about how happy they are to take the metro and bus or how great of an experience it is.

Yep, you got me. Everyone is just itching to hop on those other modes daily if given the opportunity.

I never hear anyone talk about how happy they are to drive and how great an experience it is. Also when I'm driving during commuting hours and look around at my fellow drivers, nobody looks particularly happy. There's also a lot of aggressive driving and road rage. Study after study shows that driving commuters are the most stressed commuters.

Yet it’s up, not down. And this was my point. They only way to force people out of their cars is to make it more miserable (your “false” assumption #3) and that left to their own devices, people would choose to drive (your “false” assumption #1).

So driving is miserable, but the only way to get people to start taking transportation modes where they would be less miserable (compared to driving) is to make driving even more miserable?

Wow.

There is a podcast that features someone from UCLA who studies urban congestion and traffic flows. Supposedly, they are known as being leaders in the field.

In fact, their conclusion as to the best way to get people to take public transit is you have to make car travel either extremely expensive (i.e., impose expensive congestion pricing like they do in London and are trying to do in NYC) or extremely inconvenient (i.e., install bike lanes or 24-hour parking or whatever to make your commute so onerous you stop).

When they ask car commuters how they feel about free public transit...they are majority in favor. When asked if they will use the free public transit, the answer is "of course not", however, they hope all the other commuters use it so that their car commute will now be much easier. Free public transit is only effective in low-income communities where nobody can afford to own a car, but free public transit now opens job opportunities in better areas they can reach by free transit.

So, yes...that is why no matter what is suggested for CT Avenue, they have the same goal...make driving miserable.

I mean, if you think driving is the center of the universe, then yes, you will think that the point of everything that benefits not-driving is to make driving miserable. But sometimes it really isn't about you.

It’s not that people think that driving is the center of the universe. It’s that they recognize reality, which is that it is how the majority of people commute in this country, in the DMV, and even a plurality of DC itself. And that’s often because it is the most convenient and direct way to get between A and B, not because they have some car fetish. Yet local officials seem to only want to make the experience worse, not better.

Local officials focused entirely on making the driving experience better gets you the metropolis of Houston. If that's the kind of city you want to live in, you are welcome to it.

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Anonymous wrote:All traffic deaths are horrible and streets must be made safer for all users. That's why I find it so offensive that the bike lobby, led by Charles Allen, is seeking to include language in the budget that would deny any expenditure for safer streets that did not include bike lanes. It shows that for the bike lobby, it is about biking, not safe streets. Bike lanes are not going to happen for years because there is a cash crunch and issues to be worked out, so why not make Connecticut Avenue safer in the interim?

How would the street be made safer without consideration for cyclists? Sure, they can put in some bulbouts, but if cyclists are left competing with motorists in driving lanes, then it is unsafe for cyclists. If cyclists are left competing with pedestrians on sidewalks, then it is unsafe for pedestrians.

One solution is to shift a new north-south bike lane to Reno Rd. Maybe it won't be as convenient for some bikers to reach the Connecticut Ave bars, but a Reno bike lane would provide easy access to locations up and down Connecticut and much of Wisconsin Ave. Reno has a center turn lane that is underultized or unnecessary at all but the most busy intersections so space could be re-allocated to bike lanes on the side. Connecticut Ave. is a designated arterial and evaluation route and where the thru and commuter traffic should be encouraged to go, instead of diverting more of it to Reno.

Reno Road isn't wide enough to accommodate turn lanes, through lanes and bike lanes. DDOT already dismissed that option years ago.

In fact, it is. Eliminate the turn lane at all but the most major cross streets and the space on an entire lane could be repurposed as a dedicated bike lane, probably moved to one side or another. The bikes are likely to have to stop for the signals at the major cross streets, so having the lane become striped at those locations is quite standard and doable.

Maybe Reno doesn't have the same Urbanist cachet of re-visioning Connecticut Ave as a very dense high-rise, mixed-use corridor with bike lanes, but that's not the primary purpose of having the bike lane, is it?

I don't think the people who ride their bikes downtown from upper NW have any problem with putting bike lanes on Reno and changing the traffic patterns there, instead of on Connecticut. I know I don't. But DDOT doesn't seem to be into the idea.

The focus should be building a bike path thru RC Park. Faster and safer.

Many of us aren't riding downtown at all and don't "need" a path in RCP. What we want is to be able to run errands in our neighborhood, of which Connecticut Avenue is our main street.

It is also a main street for a vastly larger number of drivers who don’t need all of the drawbacks that come with adding a bike lane there.

The drawbacks of a safer street with fewer crashes that cause injuries. Horrible!

If that’s the only thing you can comprehend about why the vast majority of commuters don’t like bike lanes, you will never succeed in getting the bike lines you want. If you can’t even understand the other side’s argument, you will fail.

Please stop using commuter as a synonym for driver. Lots of commuters aren't driving. Lots of drivers aren't commuting.

I didn’t say drivers. But the vast majority of commuters in this area drive. And the people taking the bus aren’t always thrilled about the bike lanes either.

This area being the 11 county metro area. In DC, which is where the entirety of the study area is located, driving commutes are in the minority (42%). Walkers and bikers also report being happier with their commutes than drivers. This is per your favorite study from 2022.

Okay, but the commuters come from all over, not just DC. And the argument isn’t about who is happiest in their commute, but you’ve clearly lost the plot.

Of course it's about who's happiest! That's the whole basis of the Everyone Is Trying To Force People Out Of Their Cars By Making Driving Miserable conspiracy fiction. But then it turns out that if the drivers forced themselves out of their cars and switched to non-driving, they'd actually be happier.

How is it "conspiracy fiction" when it's said repeatedly, clearly, and openly.

Could you please provide two examples of this (i.e., the point of bike lanes etc. is to force people out of their cars by making driving miserable), including who said it, and when and where they said it? Real life examples, by people who actually affect policy decisions. Random anonymous posters on DCUM do not count.

"induced demand"

Induced demand? Yeah, no. That's not Everyone Is Trying To Force People Out Of Their Cars By Making Driving Miserable. That's the idea that if you make driving less miserable, there will be more driving, and as a result driving will quickly return to its previous state of miserableness.

Induced demand isn't even about misery, it's just about availability -- if you add more lanes or available driving space, with the goal of relieving congestion, the congestion quickly expands to fill the available space. It isn't a theory of how to make driving more or less pleasant, it's an observation about why adding road space doesn't actually achieve the intended goals.

That just means you need yet more road space to meet the demand, not that additional road space doesn’t improve congestion.

This also confirms the “miserable” point. Make driving too good and more people will drive. Make it suck and fewer people will do it.

Maybe, but the PP made it sound like "induced demand" was a theory of anti-car planning used to justify making driving suck, as opposed to a description of why driving continues to suck even after adding new road space.

Let's be quite frank. It is 100% a theory used by anti-car agitators to make driving suck.

It's not a theory, but rather an empirical observation. Your argument is akin to the common claim that climate change is a conspiracy to destroy jobs mining fossil fuels and to foist electric vehicles upon us all.

No it isn't. The gaslighting has gotten very old.

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Anonymous wrote:I think everyone is losing sight of what are the two options:

1. Some bike lanes or
2. Parking 24/7 on CT Avenue with no restrictions vs. rush hour restrictions right now.

In both options, you will have the same traffic problems with delivery trucks now idling in one of the 4 lanes of traffic.

Yes, in option #2 you may have traffic issues only 80% of the time vs. Option #1...but they both stink.

BTW...both of these options are designed to make your car commute miserable so that perhaps you won't make it at all or take metro or something. That is the goal.

The assumptions here are that

1. driving to work by car is what everybody would choose if they had their druthers
2. all of the other transportation modes for getting to work are worse for everyone than driving to work by car
3. the only way to get people to use the other, non-car transportation modes for getting to work is to make driving miserable

All three assumptions are false.

They may not be 100% true. But they are mostly true, especially 1 and 3.

No. They may be true FOR YOU. But as general assumptions? No.

Yeah, you’re right. That’s why a large majority drive, driving is up, and metro and bus rides are down. And also why you so rarely hear anyone talk about how happy they are to take the metro and bus or how great of an experience it is.

Yep, you got me. Everyone is just itching to hop on those other modes daily if given the opportunity.

I never hear anyone talk about how happy they are to drive and how great an experience it is. Also when I'm driving during commuting hours and look around at my fellow drivers, nobody looks particularly happy. There's also a lot of aggressive driving and road rage. Study after study shows that driving commuters are the most stressed commuters.

Yet it’s up, not down. And this was my point. They only way to force people out of their cars is to make it more miserable (your “false” assumption #3) and that left to their own devices, people would choose to drive (your “false” assumption #1).

So driving is miserable, but the only way to get people to start taking transportation modes where they would be less miserable (compared to driving) is to make driving even more miserable?

Wow.

There is a podcast that features someone from UCLA who studies urban congestion and traffic flows. Supposedly, they are known as being leaders in the field.

In fact, their conclusion as to the best way to get people to take public transit is you have to make car travel either extremely expensive (i.e., impose expensive congestion pricing like they do in London and are trying to do in NYC) or extremely inconvenient (i.e., install bike lanes or 24-hour parking or whatever to make your commute so onerous you stop).

When they ask car commuters how they feel about free public transit...they are majority in favor. When asked if they will use the free public transit, the answer is "of course not", however, they hope all the other commuters use it so that their car commute will now be much easier. Free public transit is only effective in low-income communities where nobody can afford to own a car, but free public transit now opens job opportunities in better areas they can reach by free transit.

So, yes...that is why no matter what is suggested for CT Avenue, they have the same goal...make driving miserable.

I mean, if you think driving is the center of the universe, then yes, you will think that the point of everything that benefits not-driving is to make driving miserable. But sometimes it really isn't about you.

It’s not that people think that driving is the center of the universe. It’s that they recognize reality, which is that it is how the majority of people commute in this country, in the DMV, and even a plurality of DC itself. And that’s often because it is the most convenient and direct way to get between A and B, not because they have some car fetish. Yet local officials seem to only want to make the experience worse, not better.

Local officials focused entirely on making the driving experience better gets you the metropolis of Houston. If that's the kind of city you want to live in, you are welcome to it.

You clearly haven’t been to Houston. It has a growing economy, the cheapest housing in America for any major city and offers a lot of choice for style of community you want to live depending on your lifestyle.