Reply to Connecticut Ave bike lanes are back!

Forum Index » Metropolitan DC Local Politics

Reply to "Connecticut Ave bike lanes are back!"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Why will it be a good thing for drivers that bikes will now just take the while travel lane to ride this making everyone behind them slow to a crawl? How is that better than a dedicated bike lane? [/quote]

[b]Its not exactly clear to me, but drivers probably think bike riders will either cease to exist or get in a car instead if there are no bike lanes. [/b]Why drivers want more cars on the road with them continues to confound me, so I'm guessing they think they just poof out of existence.

[/quote]

It's not exactly clear to me, but bike riders seem to think that drivers will either cease to exist or get on a bike instead if we just keep adding to the more than 150 miles of bike lanes DC already has. [/quote]

People use infrastructure after it is built. The more bike lanes (actual good ones that is) get built, the more people ride bikes. This isn't a mystery, as its well documented around the world. The pandemic put a dent in DC ridership, but its growing again. Keep building bike lanes, and people will convert car trips to bike trips (its often faster already!). Once they do that, they start advocating for more infrastructure and so forth.

That's what drivers actually fear, not that the bike lanes will be empty. The possibility of cars losing their primacy, and all the identity issues tied to that are the real issues. [/quote]

The only people with identity issues tied to transportation are bicyclists.  Everyone else just wants to get places as efficiently and hassle free as possible.[/quote]

Most people who ride bikes to work also don't have any identity wrapped up in it, and they also just want to get around without a hassle. For me, it's just as fast to bike to work as it is to Metro (and only about 5 minutes slower getting home), but it's better exercise than riding the subway is. It's not more efficient -- that's what makes it better exercise -- but "as hassle free as possible" is pretty much the exact definition of what people on bikes are hoping for from protected bike lanes.[/quote]

I get that and appreciate what you are saying.  The problem is that the advocates for this particular project are demanding that driving, on an extremely congested road during rush hour, become even more hassled.  Connecticut is just a very bad road for this type of project and the amount of people that benefit is so few.

Honestly, the real breakdown is between people that use the road during peak hours and those that use it in the middle of the day.  Something like making the third lanes car only during rush hour and bike/bus only during the day would have been agreeable to most but there is a subset of people that demanded punishment above all else.[/quote]

And I hear what you're saying, too, and appreciate your reasonable point and approach. It seems like the city wants to make driving more of a hassle on Connecticut regardless -- they're looking for traffic-calming measures along with pedestrian safety improvements. If that's the framework they're operating in, it does sort of make sense to also include bike lanes.

Literally anything like what you're suggesting above would be an improvement over current biking conditions -- and probably over current driving conditions -- my household has two cars, I'm not anti-car, but part of the reason I take Metro or bike to work is that driving just seems like the worst possible option. I am often able to bike in the far right lane at least as fast as traffic is moving during rush hour, especially right near the Cleveland Park Metro stop. The desire to punish opponents on both sides of the debate here seems likely to leave us all worse off, regardless of mode.[/quote]

The road diet was always going to happen.  Some people were in denial about that.  But it was always going to happen.  The question is what to do with the remaining space.  There are options there.  Parking isn't the best one.  Hardstop.[/quote]

Then the pedestrian/parking option it is.  It benefits more and screws over the same (large) amount of people as the bike plan.[/quote]
Exactly. It’s a no brainer. If both plans deliver bad traffic then the plan that provides the most benefit to the most people is the obvious best choice. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics