Posts about Bike Hate

This week, we had responses from Anita Bonds, Michael Brown, Matt Frumin, Perry Redd, John Settles, and Elissa Silverman. Patrick Mara and Paul Zukerberg did not participate.

You can vote on the candidates' responses to this question until midnight Monday, February 18. Meanwhile, stay tuned for the results of last week's question, on how to spend the surplus, later this week.

Columbia Heights resident Jack Santucci was biking on a Logan Circle street last year when a woman in a parked car opened her door, giving him no time to do anything but smash right into it.

Though D.C. rules require drivers to look before opening doors, the woman blamed Santucci. He should not be biking on the street, she told him, incorrectly.

"There's a lack of awareness of the rules," Santucci said. "That's just the adjustment for the change in the city. People need to get used to the presence of bikes on the road, and people on bikes need to get used to the idea that there are cars in the road, too."

Essley then quotes a driver complaining about cyclists and someone else complaining about people on Capital Bikeshare, but closes with a quote from Shane Farthing of WABA about how drivers could benefit from some education as well.

A pull-out box lists some rules of the road, including responsibilities for both cyclists and drivers, and Essley also has a companion piece about how many drivers are making illegal U-turns on the Pennsylvania Avenue bike lanes (though I think the story and some of the people quoted are confusing Pennsylvania Avenue NW, which has the center bike lanes, and Pennsylvania Avenue SE, which does not).

DC media, I implore you—beef up your Metro reporting so that the Examiner isn't the main source of actual information, and hire Essley, Kytja Weir, and other hardworking reporters so that they can tell us the news somewhere other than the hate-mongering Examiner.

While the story is fair to both sides, these stories about how one group is angry at another can so easily become divisive. Alex Baca wrote sarcastically on Twitter, "OF COURSE all cyclists think all drivers are the problem, and OF COURSE all drivers think cyclists are the problem. Yep. That's it." And then, more seriously, "I find assholes—ped, driver, cyclist—(I have at some point been an asshole on all of the above and you likely have, too)—to be the problem."

Geoff Hatchard observed, "People of DC—I've figured everything out! We should all hate each other and anyone who is not just like us, and it sells papers." Sadly, it probably does, especially when the papers are free.

But this is no laughing matter. Topher Matthews noted, "You know what's funny, seeing the Examiner print a hilariously awful anti-bike headline the day after two drivers almost killed me." Actual road safety is rarely a part of these stories on bike crashes, traffic cameras and more.

In fact, the numbers in the story point out that safety increased. Michael Perkins pointed out that the numbers show "a 39% increase in bicycle crashes compared to an 86% increase in bicycle commuting." In other words, all of this stuff is helping people get around with less risk of being hurt. Isn't that important, too?

Does being car-shaped and having batteries make it more appealing than a bicycle? In downtown DC, being car-shaped would just make this bicycle hard to park, but in a place like Loudoun, it could bridge the gap between cyclists and drivers. It's great that a number of people in Loudoun and other very spread-out suburbs bicycle everywhere. But it's not easy for the average person there to start riding regularly.

For urban dwellers in dense communities, driving already has substantial hassles, especially parking, and there's a lot to reach from just a short bike ride. As I noted in my Washington Post op-ed, Capital Bikeshare got me biking a lot more. That was easy because I can reach a great many destinations with a one-mile bike ride.

If I lived in Olney or Chantilly, there'd be some, but far fewer. Running everyday errands requires traversing longer distances. Roads are engineered to be even less friendly to biking, and almost every store requires navigating a parking lot where people aren't expecting a cyclist.

Maybe a vehicle that's in between the car and the bike would give someone who drives everywhere an alternative that's not as intimidating. Hills aren't quite so difficult, but the driver gets used to pedaling and improves physical fitness. It's larger and therefore more visible to other drivers.

Being larger, though, it's also harder to pass. If these vehicles became more than the very occasional curiosity, will they change drivers' view of the roadway, or will they just become yet another source of angry conflict?

Newspapers are already replete with angry letters to the editor about cyclists riding on roads like Macarthur Boulevard that force drivers to wait instead of achieving any desired speed. Then there's the occasional column by someone who admits to wanting to actually assault cyclists because they get in the way.

It's easy to imagine the same conflict between drivers of motor vehicles and users of these pedal-powered cars. Drivers get irate if 2 cyclists are riding abreast; this car is always at least as wide as 2 cyclists. It can go faster than a bike, but still far slower than a motor vehicle.

If enough people drive both an SUV and a bike-car, maybe everyone on the road will just develop an appreciation for each other's point of view. First, though, bike-cars would have to go through a period of being a niche product for early adopters. Then we'll see if Loudoun residents continue to find them entertaining and fascinating, or if they turn into a nuisance, a point of conflict, and a punching bag for politicians who can't envision any kind of freedom other than driving a really large, high-horsepower car.

There are many parallels to Adrian Fenty, Michelle Rhee and Gabe Klein in the way people talk about Sadik-Khan (and Mayor Bloomberg) in the article. There are also many clear ways DC is different, besides the fact that cronyism was never a factor with Bloomberg.

For example, one of the aspiring mayoral candidates, Congressman Anthony Weiner from Queens, seems to have decided to ride a wave of anti-bike lane sentiment even though he once supported increasing cycling, including with bike lanes. Yet he changed his tune by the time he attended a dinner with Mayor Bloomberg last year:

"When I become mayor, you know what I'm going to spend my first year doing?" Mr. Weiner said to Mr. Bloomberg, as tablemates listened. "I'm going to have a bunch of ribbon-cuttings tearing out your [expletive] bike lanes."

Here in DC, even amid a very contentious mayoral race, both candidates insisted they supported retaining the existing bike lanes and building more. Despite criticizing the 15th Street bike lane recently, Jack Evans also maintains he supports keeping it.

People can argue whether those sentiments come from heartfelt beliefs or from realizing what's politically unpopular to oppose. Even if it's partly or largely the latter, that means that livable streets has a political currency that leaders ignore at their peril. The 2013 mayoral race may well reveal whether that's also true in New York.

For DC (and Arlington), having small jurisdictions is a blessing; if New York were just Manhattan and Brooklyn, for instance, there'd be little political gain in Weiner's stance. He would instead be running for Nassau County executive, which would probably be a better job for him.

In any jurisdiction, though, there is indeed value in listening to communities and building consensus and support for a project. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer built broad support for an Upper West Side bike lane by fostering a dialogue over specific complaints and how to fix them. Sadik-Khan's first revolutionary change, pedestrianizing Times Square, had strong support from area businesses.

DDOT has been doing more listening of late, scheduling meetings on the Circulator, the Anacostia Streetcar, and more. Its livability studies in various neighborhoods have garnered broad praise from most neighborhoods.

Some people will oppose projects regardless. Others will complain they never were consulted no matter how hard an agency works to reach out. Despite well over 150 public meetings on the zoning rewrite, the same people showed up at the DC Council oversight hearing on the Office of Planning for the third year in a row to complain that OP wasn't communicating enough.

But with good community relations, these voices will be few, supporters more numerous, and aspiring elected officials will know that winning cheap applause by feeding on a fear of change won't ultimately pay off. Mayor Bloomberg, for his part, remains strongly supportive of Sadik-Khan and her initiatives.

The worst is a "Weblink" from Fox 5, which only paraphrases a few AAA talking points and then provides a direct link for its presumably-irate readers to comment to COG.

Newschannel 8 starts out by quoting an angry driver, but at least finds a few pro-lane residents as well.

WashCycle calls the Post's article the "best of the batch," at least including a detailed response from DDOT and noting that bicycling doubled in eight years. However, WashCycle writes,

I wish they'd have interviewed someone who could make the point that bike lanes increase cycling and cycling reduces congestion, so—as long as it's reasonable—bike lanes can reduce congestion; that Penn is massively overbuilt so it has room for bike lanes; and that even if there is a little added congestion it will be somewhat compensated by less pollution and CO2, improved safety and improved public health. But they didn't.

Tommy Wells jokingly Tweeted, AAA "likely lamented the big sidewalks too. [Pennsylvania Avenue] could have been 12 lanes wide."

AAA Mid-Atlantic is, as usual, taking the reflexively anti-bicycle position without really backing it up. But they don't need to to get in the paper; they've realized that if they just say pithy things, they get quoted. No need to actually argue whether the lanes will slow down drivers' commutes, which DDOT says even the traffic models say won't happen as Pennsylvania in this area is wider than it needs to be.

WashCycle also notes, have none of these reporters heard of WABA?

Also to kick off National Bike Month, in the grand tradition of columnists writing about thinks they have no knowledge of, the Examiner's conservative "Beltway Confidential" David Freddoso blasted the upper 7th Street bike lane which didn't even take away space from cars.

Freddoso's bio says he used to work for Robert Novak; apparently he's trying to follow in his mentor's footsteps in more ways than one.