Comments

You must log in or register to comment.

sparkycat99 t1_ix7ukwg wrote

The positioning of the “Fred Hill” campaign poster is sadly ironic.

I was walking with a non cyclist out of town friend and we passed a ghost bike. I stopped for a minute.

He waited patiently - when we started walking again - he asked “what was that?” I explained. He said “I’ve never seen one of those before.”

Later it occured to me that 1) most non cyclists don’t know what a ghost bike is 2) people in cars probably notice moving bikes as much as they do ghost bikes

69

SuperBethesda t1_ix6imtj wrote

Which intersection?

36

ironic_fist t1_ix71873 wrote

99% sure that's Nannie Helen Burroughs and Minnesota NE.

36

TrueBirch t1_ix8sd5k wrote

Yes, terrible intersection for walking and biking

2

cptjeff t1_ix8tj7m wrote

And driving. Probably sucks for the trains above it somehow too.

4

ironic_fist t1_ix8zgb9 wrote

It used to be worse. Once upon a time there were train tracks on Deane Ave (now NHB Ave). That's why there's so much room under 295 there, there used to be a 90-degree railroad curve that turned south along Kenilworth.

2

cptjeff t1_ix84c9b wrote

That intersection will always be a clusterfuck as long as you have to wait at a light to get onto the 295 ramp. Hard to fix with that CSX bed there, but I'm sure a traffic engineer more creative than I can find a solution. Putting in 295 access from Benning and East Capitol WB would really take a lot of pressure off that intersection as well. When you take traffic from major streets and force them to go onto local roads to get to a major highway, this is kinda what you get. The fact that you cannot directly get onto 295 from the two largest roads in NE is one of the absolutely dumbest infrastructure decisions in a city fully of very dumb decisions.

Of course, the fact that both Benning and E Cap have very easy access to 295 from the EB side makes it pretty obvious that this was an intentional environmental racism thing from when they built 295. Should probably think about fixing that.

25

willsington t1_ix8bujs wrote

Wow I live right down the street from this intersection and I've never really thought about how the 295 access points are easier from the eastbound direction.

8

cptjeff t1_ix8c7k8 wrote

I live right off of East Capitol, so I think about it every time I have to go up Division to go over on Eastern or NHB to get to the BW Parkway or have to do the goddamned loopty loop around RFK (with bonus speed camera to rob people who live EotR and are forced to take that loop constantly!) to get on 295 South.

8

TrueBirch t1_ix8sape wrote

Good points. I'm glad they at least added the right turn lane there not too long ago.

2

Gumburcules t1_ixal7la wrote

>That intersection will always be a clusterfuck as long as you have to wait at a light to get onto the 295 ramp.

Honestly it wouldn't be so bad if assholes didn't block the box on every. single. light cycle.

The traffic design isn't amazing but the bigger problem is selfishness. Both at the intersection in the picture (where people jam themselves into the intersection against the light from an astounding three sides at once) and at the southbound turn where people getting off 295 south make it so only one or two people can make the turn onto the service road/on ramp each light cycle.

1

cptjeff t1_ixb13j5 wrote

People block the box because getting into the box and beating the light cycle saves them about two minutes. There's simply way too much traffic volume shoved into not one, but two lights. The one thing I could think of doing is to make the ramp two lanes (which means fucking over that body shop, but they deserve it) and allow that right turn lane to bypass the light entirely. The left lane could be allowed to turn right into the outer lane with the light, but the inner lane would be continuous flow. You'd have to merge on the ramp, but that would eliminate any gaps in the flow of traffic on the ramp that the second light cycle causes.

Always expect people to behave in their own self interest. Any system that doesn't account for that will never succeed.

1

turnageb1138 t1_ixa19a5 wrote

And these tragedies will continue to happen until someone in the DC government begins taking them as seriously as they deserve, and begins a complete overhaul of our transportation system that seeks to protect all road users and discourage car use throughout the system. There are so many neighborhoods where even when I'm walking on the sidewalk and crossing in a crosswalk with the cross sign, I am guarded and always a little worried of a driver doing something stupid and injuring or killing me.

5

cptjeff t1_ixb2d10 wrote

> protect all road users and discourage car use throughout the system.

Quite frankly, discouraging car use will make the system less safe, because it encourages drivers to be more aggressive to simply keep their trip times the same. And to be very, very blunt, a system designed to protect the most people is one that bans bikes from roads entirely. Bikes make up a single digit percentage of total trips made in DC, and DC has extremely high bike use compared to the rest of the US. Bikes are not a practical transportation mode for the vast majority of trips people make, and many, many people cannot use them the way healthy twenty and thirty-somethings can. If there is a tradeoff to be made between bike and car prioritization on the roads, from a strictly utilitarian perspective bikes will lose that battle every single time.

To solve the problem, you need to make the system more streamlined and efficient for everybody. Car users included. I love biking for recreation, but when you're arguing to punish drivers in favor of your small group of mostly upper middle class white yuppies, you're fighting a major uphill battle.

Edit: No, seriously, bikes have a 2.5% mode share in the region. 7.8% in the core. Here's a GGW link, which you cannot accuse of being anti bike. Bikes are a niche mode of transportation. If you think otherwise, you are stupendously out of touch with reality.

−8

turnageb1138 t1_ixb4p2m wrote

Everything you just said is wrong.

6

cptjeff t1_ixb6jyn wrote

Everything you ever say or think is wrong.

Just as logical and persuasive an argument!

−6

turnageb1138 t1_ixb8av0 wrote

Get mad but you just threw out a bunch of assumptions, lies, and auto industry propaganda. I don't need a logical or persuasive argument when your hot air can simply be dismissed as irrelevant.

4

cptjeff t1_ixb92t9 wrote

I threw out facts that you are entirely unwilling to accept because of your ideological biases. Bike trips have only a 2.5% share of all trips made in the DC area. That is a researched fact from an authoritative source. In the core of the region, it rises to a whopping not quite 8%. And again, these are close to the highest numbers you'll find anywhere in the nation. And that counts the tourists on bikeshare hopping from museum to memorial.

You and your other yuppie friends in NoMA aside, biking is extremely niche as a practical mode of transportation. Because for the vast, vast majority of people and trips, it is not remotely practical and never can be.

If you want to reduce car dependence, bikes are not the answer, nor is punishing drivers. More and better transit is.

−4

turnageb1138 t1_ixbc05t wrote

I'm not a yuppie and I don't live in NoMA. Cycling is not a niche or impractical mode of transportation. More and better transit IS a great part of the solution, you finally told something truthful, good job! The rest of your "facts" are simply unsupported assertions with nothing to back them up.

I'm not interested in administering medicine to the dead, though, so include me out of your little diatribes from here on.

5

lmurp t1_ixehsek wrote

Go on ahead and tell that to my messenger friends. I'm sure they'll have a nice response for you.

0

sprinkles202 t1_ix8vh9z wrote

I often walk by a different ghost bike that’s quite a bit older and is in really rough shape…in the case of this other bike I don’t think you can definitively chalk it up to the bike having been hit (though it may have been), it has been around long enough to have been knocked around in multiple violent thunderstorms, etc. I’m guessing that there’s not a formal process to maintain the condition of ghost bikes once they’re installed? As these monuments age, that could become more of an issue.

2

gregarian t1_ix73o49 wrote

#ghostbike please attach story

−17