Bike lockers at Metro stations available

If you've always wanted to rent a bike locker at Fairfax Metro station, now is a good time to rent one. What's the catch? WMATA raised the fees from $70 to $200 last July and now there are more empty lockers than before the increase. According to a good post on GGW about the lockers, at the Vienna and Dunn Loring stations 50% of the lockers sit empty. Forty-five percent of the West Falls Church lockers are empty. Lockers at the Huntington station are 100% filled, which is only true at two stations in the system. Twenty percent of the lockers are available at Franconia-Springfield.

MD driver's manual to have more bike info

From BikeMaryland:

Maryland Driver’s Manual Changes – July 2011

Thanks to the efforts of a diverse coalition of regional groups that worked closely with the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration and State Highway Administration, a revision to the Maryland State Driver’s Manual that addresses sharing the road with bicycles is being issued this Fall (2011). This Manual will serve as the basis for improved driver’s education and new driver’s licensing examination questions. It is hoped that this can serve as a model for other jurisdictions as a means of introducing bicycle safety education into the automobile drivers’ mindset early in their training.

See the full text of the Sharing the Road section.

Richmond gets first ever bicycle coordinator

Jakob Helmboldt (center in red helmet)
Richmond's new bike coordinator

It was just announced that Jakob Helmbolt, the former VDOT Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordinator, was selected as the first Bicycle, Pedestrian, and Trails Coordinator for the city of Richmond. Jake left VDOT to work for VHB in February 2010 and he now returns to the public sector. He has great experience and should be a tremendous asset for Richmond as they continue to work towards becoming a more bicycle friendly community. According to VBF "We’re fortunate to have talent like Jake on board."

FABB conducts first volunteer Fairfax bike count

W&OD Trail at Maple Ave - Saturday

We don't have very good numbers to answer the question of how many people ride bikes in Fairfax County. We decided this year to experiment with conducting a bicycle count based in part on techniques used by the National Bicycle and Pedestrian Documentation Project.

On July 7 and 9 we counted bicyclists at the intersection of the W&OD Trail and Maple Ave/Route 123 in downtown Vienna for 3 two-hour time periods. The weekday two hour data were extrapolated to a 24 hour count estimate of 1,855. VDOT's 12 hour weekday bicyclist count at the same location in 2008 was 337, which is not much more than the 5-7 pm time period count (273). Assuming that the VDOT 12 hour count was close to the 24 hour count, the 2011 count represents an increase of 550%!

We have good official estimates of how many people commute by car. According to the American Community Survey data for Fairfax Co, 454,099 drove a car, truck, or van out of a total of 542,126 trips. According to ACS, only 1,166 commute by bike. The problem with that number is that it only includes those who ride a bike every day for their entire trip. Many more people ride some days or combine a car or transit trip with a bike trip. People also use bikes for many other purposed than going to work.

Fairfax doesn't have a bike counting program. Arlington County has been counting bicyclists for several years. They installed their first automated, 24 hour counters in 2009 on the Custis Trail and the Four Mile Run Trail.

They use a combination of in-ground loop detectors and infrared beam to collect data on trail usage, both pedestrians and cyclists (ok, the occasional deer might get counted as a pedestrian also). There is a huge amount of data being collected by these counters, and it will become most useful once several years worth can be compared.

See the link above for a good discussion of the data that has been collected.

Arlington also uses volunteer counts to supplement the automated counter data as part of Arlington's contribution to the National Bicycle and Pedestrian Documentation Project (NBPD). Last September volunteers counted weekday bike/ped traffic for a two two-hour time periods, 7-9 am and 4-6 pm. Pedestrians and other trails users are also counted. That effort is lead by David Patton, Arlington County's Bicycle and Pedestrian Planner.

This year the Alexandria Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee began participating in the Documentation project by conducting several volunteer counts in the city. Andrea Hamre is leading that effort which included two volunteer training sessions. They will also conduct counts in September.

Ideally Fairfax County will implement a bike counting program in the future. VDOT currently conducts a few counts and we hope those will expand. We may expand to several volunteer count locations in the future, possibly by September.

Partch article on where cyclists should ride

We occasionally write a blog on the Reston Patch about cycling issues. The latest is entitled Where should cyclists ride? Cyclists can either ride on the road or on a trail or sidewalk in most places in Virginia. However, given the lack of bicycle infrastructure in Fairfax, we almost always will be riding on the road at some point in our trip.

The article discusses why cyclists ride where the do when on the road. It's mostly an attempt to educate motorists to expect cyclists in the road and to give us respect. I for one am tired of being harassed on a regular basis by motorists who think I belong on the sidewalk.

The other day I spoke with a woman who had made the very sensible decision to use her bike for her main form of transportation. When she weighed all the factors of how much it cost to purchase and maintain a car vs. using a bike, the bike won hands down. However, once she began riding regularly she was upset that on several occasions motorists yelled at her to get on the sidewalk, and she wondered if that's where she should be riding. The article tries to address that issue.

Designing our streets for everyone (updated 8/5/11)

Protect, don’t prosecute, pedestrians is the title of an opinion piece in the Post today by David Goldberg of Transportation for America. He writes about how the woman in Atlanta "who did not even own a car could be convicted of vehicular homicide in the death of her 4-year-old son, who was killed by a hit-and-run driver." They were trying to cross the street to reach their home after getting off a bus.

Nelson was found guilty of killing her son by crossing the road in the “wrong” place. But what about the highway designers, traffic engineers, transit planners and land-use regulators who placed a bus stop across from apartments but made no provision whatsoever for a safe crossing? Those who ignored the fact that pedestrians always take the shortest possible route but somehow expected them to walk six-tenths of a mile out of their way to cross the street? Those who designed this road — which they allowed to be flanked by apartments and houses — for speeds of 50 mph and more? And those who designed the entire landscape to be hostile to people trying to get to work or carrying groceries despite having no access to a car? Are they not culpable?

This phenomenon is not unique to metro Atlanta. Transportation for America researched 10 years’ worth of pedestrian fatalities nationwide and found this pattern again and again. The bodies line up like soldiers along certain corridors — the first clue that the roadway is not designed for the safety of the pedestrians who are obviously using the road.

This is a major issue in inner-ring suburbs across the country, places originally built as auto-only suburbia that now are home to many lower-income families who don’t have access to cars. Neither the public transportation system nor the highway designs work for those who live, work and walk in these areas. People are being punished and killed simply for being pedestrians. Our research shows that thousands of lives could be saved — and millions more lives improved — by retrofitting these dangerous roads, as many communities are trying to do.

Some in Congress, such as Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), are attempting to kill the small slice of funding dedicated to projects that make it safer to walk or bicycle. As the vast majority of these dangerous roads were built under federal programs, fixing them to be safer should be a national project. A fund for safety retrofits should be part of the transportation bill under consideration.

Update: We just learned that last week the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) adopted a Complete Streets policy. These engineers understand that not everyone drives and that we need to change the way we design our streets:

Millions of Americans are walking, bicycling and catching the bus along roads that are not properly designed to accommodate them. Twenty-five percent of walking trips are on roads with no sidewalk or shoulder; bike lanes are available for only 5% of bike trips. This makes our streets more dangerous and encourages more people to drive to meet their needs.

Our transportation system should provide for the one-third of Americans who do not drive, including the elderly, the poor, and the young. Without walking, biking, or transit they have no opportunities for mobility.

Roads designed only for cars hamper development of compact, walkable communities. These streets deter people who might choose to drive less and avoid the high cost of gas if safe options were available.

Mini-Fairfax tour with VDOT bike coordinator John Bolecek

Fionnuala Quinn and Kerie Hitt of FABB,
Zack Field of Congressman Connolly's office,
and John Bolecek, VDOT Bike Coordinator

In our July-August newsletter we mentioned that VDOT has a new bike coordinator, John Bolecek, and that we planned to invite him for a tour of Fairfax. John was in town this week sitting in on a UVA-sponsored training course, Designing for Bicycles, and he was able to spend the morning with us on a mini-tour of Fairfax. Zack Fields of Congressman Connolly's office was also able to join the ride along with Fionnuala Quinn and Kerie Hitt of FABB.

From Vienna we rode north to Tysons Corner to see an important bike route into Tysons where shared lane markings are needed on Old Courthouse Road at Freedom Hill Park. We then headed east along Old Courthouse Rd where bike lanes could easily be striped between Route 123 and Gallows Rd. We headed south on Gallows where bike lanes should be constructed this year. We stopped by Kilmer Middle School where Congressman Connolly attended a ribbon-cutting for their new bike racks and saw the new bridge connecting Wolf Trap Rd.

We then headed south on Gallows to Oak St to see the bike lanes on the new bridge over the Beltway that was recently opened. We checked out a narrow section of Idylwood Rd that is used by many bike commuters traveling from the W&OD Trail to Pimmit Hills, Tysons, and McLean

We then headed to the W&OD Trail to see that new bridge over the Beltway and discussed some issues there including the need for permanent fencing on both sides of the bridge. From there we rode to Gallows Rd and headed south on the bike lanes toward Dunn Loring Metro, discussing the need for shared lane markings where the bike lanes end just north of the I-66 bridge.

At Dunn Loring Zack headed back to work on Metro. Even on a raining morning the bike racks at the station were nearly full. We then discussed the planned future growth in the Merrifield area and the need for good bike access to the Dunn Loring station and in the surrounding community.

We headed back to Vienna via the narrow bridge on Cedar Lane over I-66 to a left on Cottage St.

It was great meeting John and having a chance to spend time with him and Zack discussing some of the issues we face here in Fairfax. We look forward to working with him to help make Virginia more bicycle friendly.