Posts by Chris Ziemann

DDOT already puts in angled parking in DC, but without a formal process. Requests usually come from Business Improvement Districts (BIDs), churches, ANCs, council­members, the Mayor's office, or citizens. The requests go to DDOT's Ward Planner, the Parking Specialist, or the Curbside Specialist. Several divisions discuss the idea based on the need, construction or other plans already in place, and, of course, traffic counts.

For businesses without a BID, this bills to establish a formal process could be helpful. For areas where double parking for churches often happens anyway, this might be a way to make some peace between neighbors and churches. If these requests are common, DDOT should have a formal policy.

When DDOT turns down requests, people usually aren't satisfied. They go higher, to the Council or the Mayor, and the order comes down to put it in. Given that, why would DDOT ever say no to diagonal parking? Is DDOT anti-business? Is DDOT anti-church? Here are a couple of reasons.

1. The street's not wide enough. Parallel parking requires 7-9 feet, travel lanes are 10-12, and bike lanes are 5. Angled parking, depending on whether the angle is 45, 60, or 90, consumes 16-20 feet. Unless there's an travel lane that isn't needed, angled parking isn't possible.

2. The space is already being used. What's occupying the space today? If vehicle counts are high enough, then the answer is traffic. If not, there might be a bike lane or a sidewalk widening planned. To install permanent diagonal parking, the city needs to decide if enough space can be taken out of the transportation network permanently during the week. This is not an easy decision. Once angled parking is installed, an act of Congress seems to be the only way to undo it.

On Sundays, traffic is likely not an issue. While at DDOT, planners recognized that permanent diagonal parking often kills the possibility for bike lanes on certain blocks (11th ST NW between Vermont and Q Streets, for example). Does it matter if the bike lanes are blocked on Sundays, since there's so little traffic anyway? Can people on bikes simply use the travel lane? This might not be problematic on Sundays, but could be slippery slope to losing the integrity of bike lanes.

Now the broader question: Do we want more parking? It has generally been treated as good. But what else comes with more parking?

More traffic. It's a fact (proven over and over and over) that more parking creates more traffic. But in a retail area that seems barren, isn't more traffic a good thing? Maybe, but so is a good streetscape to make people want to shop there in the first place.

Diagonal parking has a traffic calming effect, but so to other techniques. After the protected bike lanes on 15th Street NW were installed, the number of vehicles driving over 20 mph over the speed limit decreased from 147 a day to 3 (a 98% reduction). Calmer traffic means people are driving slower, looking around more at businesses, and watching for cars exiting spaces. But it's just one tool in the traffic calming toolbox.

Diagonal parking is just one way to address parking shortages. There are many ways to manage parking, from building a garage to alternating pricing and time limits at meters. A bill that calls out a single solution to an often complicated problem ties the hands of experts whose job it is to keep up with innovations and to understand limits of each one.

More parking means businesses tend to market to people driving in, not neighbors. When residents can walk, bike, take the bus or a taxi to businesses nearby, businesses will cater to them. But when people can drive to your neighborhood restaurant, the restaurant will start giving them what they want, not what you want.

That means more emphasis on parking and valets, and less on sidewalks, trees, benches, bike racks, and bike lanes. While more parking for businesses and churches seems like a good way to deal with struggling businesses and too many people driving in on Sundays, it enforces the idea that these aren't really for neighbors.

More parking hurts the taxicab industry. Taxis are demand-responsive, on-demand transit. But the taxi system works best without congestion and when people aren't driving themselves. Taxis are also a great way to get home from bars at 2am, when Metro is infrequent and people do not want to be driving.

Are Councilmember Thomas' bills necessary? Do we need more permanent parking? If the honest intent of these bills is to issue procedures, and not simply to force DDOT to approve more diagonal parking, then they could have some benefit, but may not be necessary. But let us not forget that more parking often comes at the price of other aspects of city life we enjoy.

DCMR Title 18 Section 1201 states, "Every person who propels a vehicles by human power or who rides a bicycle on a highway shall have the same duties as any other vehicle operator under this title, except as otherwise expressly provided in this chapter."

There it is. It's the law.

However, bikes aren't vehicles—not really. They're not cars; they're not motorcycles. There's a lot that separates bikes from cars, and that's why many cyclists act differently than drivers.

Bikes don't have heaters on them, which may have led to my haste last Saturday, and perhaps the lack of sympathy from our toasty friend with the badge. They don't offer the same amount of protection as a car does, so cyclists behave differently.

Bikes are smaller. They're thinner, they're lightweight. Bikes need less room, which is why bike lanes are five feet as opposed to the 10-12 feet required for auto lanes. And even when there's no bike lane, that's why people on bikes can squeeze through traffic at red lights.

Another distinction is that if you get hit by a bike, it might hurt, but you probably won't die. And I say this with all seriousness, because DDOT installed the right turn signals and the "No Turn on Red" restriction because a pedestrian was killed by someone driving an SUV and making that same turn I did.

Bikes don't go as fast as vehicles. The top speed most cyclists can get up to in the District on streets is maybe 10-15, perhaps a little faster on a hill. Because people go slower when they ride bikes, they can see more and react more quickly. This also makes bikes safer to other people.

Riding a bike uses a lot of momentum. It takes effort to get up to 10 mph. So when there's a stop sign with no cars at the intersection, only those determined to obey the laws actually will. Like when pedestrians cross when the light clearly says "Don't Walk. Which brings me to my next point.

People have better visibility when they ride a bike. They can see how close a car or pedestrian is. They understand exactly where their bike is, and how much space it's taking up. And because cyclists are closer to the intersection, not set back behind a hood, they can see the cross traffic a lot better.

When I worked at DDOT, a colleague was telling me how bikers shouldn't cross when it's red. I replied that if it's safe, I did so. She asked, "Well, how do you know if it's safe?" I was confused and just said, "You look." It took a couple of days to dawn on me that when someone drives almost exclusively, they forget that it's pretty easy to see if a car's coming. If parents feel safe telling their kids to look both ways, I'm confident I can pull it off, too.

As a policy decision, there's a lot of reasons to make it safer and easier to ride a bike. There are health benefits, fewer accidents, reduced congestion, and so on.

With more people biking, we have a responsibility to make it safe, just like we did when more people started driving.

However, there are barely 2 pages in the DCMR reserved for bicycle operations, and 20 pages reserved for vehicle moving violations. DC needs to update the DCMR to stop treating bicycles like vehicles, similar to what Arizona, California, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, and Vermont have done.

There are a lot of examples of good bicycle-specific policies. One example is the Idaho Stop, which allows people who are riding a bike to treat stop signs as yield signs and red lights as stop signs.

People break the rules when they ride a bike not because they're bad people or because they like live outside the law. They understand that almost all of the traffic control in the city is directed at people driving machines that weigh at least 3,000 lbs. and can get up to 100 mph. They don't really make sense if you're on a bike.

The best way to get people to obey the rules when they ride bikes is to write the rules for people who ride bikes.

These updated rules should provide better clarity about situations that didn't really exist 10 years ago. For example, vehicles turning right when there's a bike lane. Is the person driving supposed to wait for the bike? Or is the person on the bike supposed to overtake the car as the driver waits in the bike lane to turn right? What if someone double-parked their car in a bike lane, what is the correct action for the cyclist?

The new rules should then be presented comprehensively to the Metropolitan Police Department, in drivers education classes, and show up on drivers license exams. It would also be helpful to have them distributed to new bike owners.

More cyclists will follow the rules when they ride bikes because the rules would finally make sense.