01/08 D.C. BAC Notes

The January D.C. Bicycle Advisory Committee Meeting was held on the 9th. The items discussed included

1.  Met Branch Trail update - Much of this was covered in a previous post, but here are some facts I left out. The hotel being built along Florida Avenue will open in April. The building on the triangle across the street from the hotel will open around 2010. DDOT is hoping to have the NY Ave to Franklin Street section built by July 2009 and the Rhode Island Metro Station connector bridge, Bates Road to DC/MD border sections out for design by October of this year. Further north, between Fort Totten and Takoma Park, the trail will first run on street on North Dakota Avenue between Kansas Ave and 3rd St NW (it will be a while before a trail can be built along Blair Road). This on street portion will feature sharrows. It will then go on street on 3rd (which has bike lanes) and turn east on Van Buren under the RR tracks. From there it will go north on a sidepath along Silver Spring Road. Silver Spring Road is scheduled for work soon, so the sidepath is being rolled into that work.

2. BAC Vacancies - There are several as mention in this post. Interested parties should contact the council member in question and send a letter of interest and/or resume to Lyn Stoesen, Chair of the BAC at lynstoesen(at)hotmail(dot)com.

3. Bike Plan Goals - In many aspects the District is behind on its goals.

2007 Goal                                     2007 Status (as of 10/01/07 unless noted otherwise)

40 miles of bike lane                     30 miles (as of end of 2007)

100 miles of signed bike route        57 miles

Met Branch Trail complete              20% complete

Anacostia Riverwalk 66% complete 12% complete

Access improved at 2 bridges         South Capital and Benning Road complete

700 bicycle racks installed             800 installed

Bike Station open                          Bike Station bid under review

The bike racks seems good, until you conseider that over 400 parking meters were removed - cutting the overall gain in half.

4. 15th Street NW Reconfiguration - DDOT is looking to reconfigure 15th Street NW between Massachusetts Avenue and New Hampshire Avenue. It's presently a four lane, one-way northbound street with street parking on both sides. DDOT presented four options:

1. A three lane one-way street with a bike lane on the right and street parking on both sides

2. A three lane one-way street with a two-way cycletrack (see picture of one in Montreal at top) on the right and street parking on the left and between the through traffic and the cycletrack

3. A three lane two-way street (2 north, 1 south) with a bike lane and street parking on both sides

4. A three lane two-way street (1 north, 1 south, 1 turning) with a bike lane and street parking on both sides. 

Here's the DDOT draft report.

In every option but option 1, cyclists get 9 or 10 feet. In option 1 it's 5 feet. I'd modify 1 so that there was a 5 foot bike lane and a four foot "door zone" (marked with a cross hash pavement marking and maybe a bumpy surface to keep cars out) between the bikes and the parking lane - making each of the other lanes one foot narrower. That might make it my favorite.

Others think moving the lanes in 3 and 4 to the outside (like this or this) is the answer.

5. 2008 Calendar -There are several items coming up this year and I've added them to the WABA google calendar on the side (which is open to the public).

6. New ART section to open in Spring - There's no reason you can't ride it now, but that's when the "ribbon cutting" will be.

7. Bike Station - The bid came back high. DDOT decided to pay the higher cost rather than scale it back. Because of the higher cost it has to be reviewed by the FHWA again. DDOT hopes to break ground this year, but it won't open in this Spring.

8. Smart Bike - As stated before; 1) During phase I (before more kisosks are added) It will be free for the first 3 hours, not 30 minutes as previously reported. So you'll pay an annual $40? fee and, unless you're the world's slowest cyclist, pay nothing else. This should help to make up for the limited number of kiosks. In later phases, costs may go up. 2) They're still hoping to start in Spring. PEPCO is holding up the start because they insist on metering each kiosk (they'll draw a smidgen of power) despite the fact that streetlights, bus stops etc...are not metered. 3) They're also working their way through the public space permitting process. 4) They're hoping to give discounts to WABA members and Zipcar/Flexcar users among others

Comments

[bawler]

Where is the picture in this post from? I haven't seen any separated lanes like that in DC.

[washcycle]

that's Montreal

[Purple Eagle]

The lack of progress on the Met Branch is frustrating, and the contrast between the bike plan goal (to finish the trail in 2007) and actual situation illustrates this quite well. Even the goal of completing the next section by July '09 is a pushback from the last date I had heard, which was fall '08.

Any word on whether they are keeping up with the revised construction schedule for the ART that is posted on the DDOT website? (http://ddot.washingtondc.gov/ddot/lib/ddot/information/bicycle/trails/anacostiarivertrail_factsheet_2007.pdf)
This schedule indicates work should have already started on the section through Anacostia Park, or perhaps will start this spring (the map seems to disagree with the chart).

[washcycle]

As far as I know, work has not begun on the Anacostia Park section. I'll ask at the next meeting.

[Contrarian]

It's discouraging to see that all of the DDOT proposals put the bike lanes in the "door zone." DDOT is recommending an eight-foot parking lane, a five-foot bike lane, and a ten-foot travel lane. This sounds like a lot, but it's not. The diagram with the blog posting shows 18' from the curb as a good position, but that's probably a bit much. But 13' is definitely not enough. It is not uncommon for large vehicles to extend 10' from the curb with the door open (see http://www.bikexprt.com/bikepol/facil/lanes/doorwidth.htm), so a 5' bike lane would need a distance from the curb of 15' to be out of the door zone. (If you look at the picture on page 5 of the DDOT proposal, the pickup truck is unable to park completely within an 8' parking lane.) The discouraging part is that the proposal shows that DDOT just doesn't "get" bike lanes.

See this article: http://www.bikexprt.com/massfacil/cambridge/doorzone/laird1.htm for an example of the danger of door-zone bike lanes.

A much better alignment would be to divide the 56' feet of the road into two 10' travel lanes and one 8' parking lane in each direction. Paint the outside lanes with sharrows and put up signs saying "Cyclists allowed full use of travel lanes." This would be safer, and would give better quality of service to both motorists and cyclists.

[mike]

damn contrarian is smart...what does he do for a living?...

he's right on (although to keep his head from swelling: the issues regarding urban and regional planning arent exactly that difficult).

[Contrarian]

I give unsolicited advice.