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For all the praise given to Arlington for being pedestrian and biker friendly, I'm still convinced I'll meet my end trying to cross a street here.

i often spend time harping about how Arlington, and those of us who talk about 'the smartest smart corridor in america', need to do a little bit better in acknowledging that Arlington is not biker-friendly, or at least, not nearly as biker-friendly as one might be led to believe when one continually reads about how 'smart' Arlington is. we just gotta keep banging away on 'smart growthers' and people who like to talk about 'pedestrian-friendly' places that they need to change their thinking to include bikes, and when they think/say/write 'pedestrian-friendly', they also need to think/say/write 'bike-friendly'. until we change their thinking, biking will remain a bolt-on/afterthought in (re)development.

i skimmed both the 'Bicycle' and 'Streets' plans and there seemed to be a slight progression/evolving of thinking about bikes from the older Bicycle plan to the newer Streets plan -- i.e. there's no real hint of taking bikes seriously, but they do seem to be acknowledged just a tad bit more in the more recent/Streets plan -- so that's good.

on the earlier/Bicycle plan, this jumped out at me:

Policy 2 (2): Provide high-quality bicycling facilities as part of all street improvement projects. Use marked bicycle lanes or shared –use lane symbols (“sharrows”) on arterial streets that provide access to commercial centers, schools and government facilities.

i _really_ like the 'high-quality' descriptor. this, to me, should be standard ideology for developing all public spaces, and walk, bicycle, and transit infrastructure. usually we're just like, "oh - let's put down some bike lanes in the door zone, throw these other poor people on some buses, and run these streetcars without signal priority." Building high-quality facilities, tho, can help provide that positive feedback loop/snowball effect of more/better facilities/services with increased public and political support.

of course, saying you're going to provide 'high-quality sharrows' on an arterial road is a bit like saying you're going to give Titanic passengers each a life jacket instead of a spot in a boat -- good luck out there, y'all!

The more recent/Streets plan says:

On arterial streets, treatments such as bicycle lanes that provide a dedicated area for bicycling are preferred over shared travel lanes.

That's a definite evolution in thinking. There's no mention of 'physically-separated/protected bicycle facilities' or 'cycletracks' or any of that, but the language is vague enough -- 'dedicated area' -- that they allowed themselves room for growth.

A few posts ago, the talk of revamping North Capitol NE brought a commenter to suggest that the street would likely not be changed/fixed/filled-in/whatever because it was one of the few high-speed routes into downtown DC from Maryland. that may be correct or not -- i've no idea -- but it seems clear that our conception of '(car) arterials' is changing, as it should. it is likely that there will be bike-dominated 'arterials' within the next ten years. Maybe DC will get there first, maybe Arlington, but we know Amsterdam and Copenhagen are either already there or will be soon. and cities/towns will have to decide if they want to continue to prioritize non-resident high-speed auto traffic at the expense of a livable city and safe/comfortable/convenient/high-speed(?) walk/bike travel.

by Peter Smith on Dec 3, 2010 6:35 pm • link • report