FABB Blog

Each Wednesday, about 20 middle school students meet in the school's Bike Shop to repair, repaint, and spruce up donated bicycles for needy children within the local community.

Hersh said the Bike Shop partners with A-1 Cycling, in Herndon, who help students obtain things like cables and tires in order to replace the bikes. A-1 Cycling also donates bike stands and other tools that are needed throughout the year, he said.

We strongly support the goal to "Increase the share of walk, bike, and transit trips." As noted in the report, "Walking & biking account for 9% of all trips in the region." In places like Fairfax County that number is much lower and there needs to be a concerted effort to increase that mode share by providing better, safer bicycle and pedestrian facilities. This should include providing funding commensurate with the desired more share.

We also support the goal of concentrated development in Regional Activity Centers. Dense development around transit will allow residents to access services, work, and recreation locations more easily by using bicycles and walking.

The goal to "Increase the rate of construction of bike and pedestrian facilities from the Transportation Planning Board's plan" is worthy but not nearly enough. That plan is much too general; many more facilities are needed. The region needs a more up-to-date and comprehensive plan for development of bicycle facilities. These should include on-road bicycle routes that are safer and provide more direct access than trails. While both are needed, on-road access can be provided sooner and more cost-effectively than building trails.

Bicycle support infrastructure is needed to support an increase in bicycling. End-of-trip facilities such as covered, secure long- and short-term parking and changing and shower facilities are needed in the Regional Centers.

There needs to be better transit/bicycle connectivity. Bicycles should be allowed on all transit systems. There should be adequate bicycle parking at all major transit stations. We strongly support the notion that bike sharing stations will facilitate taking short neighborhood trips by bicycle.

The Compact is the first agreement on a comprehensive vision for the National Capital Region and will serve as a guide to help regional leaders make decisions and create a framework for future policy.

Apply any funding for new projects to those that promote core transportation function:

• Pedestrian and Bicycle Facilities
• Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety and Education
• Landscaping and Scenic Beautification along Transportation Corridors (including streetscape improvements)
• Preservation of Abandoned Railway Corridors and Conversion to Trails (traditional rails-to-trails and rails-with-trails projects)

"The schools do nothing to teach the benefits of walking and biking to school," McKay said. "Somehow we got away from that, because when I went through the schools, they had presentations by police and others talking about the importance of walking and biking to school."

McKay's suggestion that more kids walk also reflects the growing financial tensions between the School Board, which sets school policies and answers mostly to parents, and the Board of Supervisors, which controls school funding and answers mostly to taxpayers. McKay said that one of the biggest complaints he hears from constituents is about the number of half-full school buses they see.

Car companies would rightly be castigated if they advertised the joys of drinking and driving. But as a survey of North American car commercials by a group of Canadian researchers showed, it is quite acceptable to show cars being driven, soberly, in ways that a panel of viewers labeled "hazardours." Nearly half of the more than two hundred ads screened (always carrying careful, if duplicitous, disclaimers) were considered by the majority of the panel to contain an "unsafe driving sequence," usually marked by high speeds. pp. 66, 67

"Baker's law," named after crash reconstructionist J. Stannard Baker, notes that drivers "tend to explain their traffic accidents by reporting circumstances of lowest culpability with credibility" —that is, the most believable story they can get away with. p. 72

"If you're limited in how many things you can pay attention to, and attention is a gateway to consciousness, then you can only be aware of a limited subset of what's out there." Inattention blindness, it has been suggested, is behind an entire category of crashes in traffic, those known as "looked but did not see accidents." p. 83

This attention disorder could also help explain the "safety in numbers" phenomenon of traffic, as described by Peter Lyndon Jacobsen, a public-health consultant in California. You might think that as there are more pedestrians or cyclists on a street, the more chances there are for them to be hit. You are right. More pedestrians are killed by cars in New York, City than anywhere else in the United States. But as Jacobsen found, these relationships are not linear. In other words, as the number of pedestrians or cyclists increases, the fatality rates per capita begin to drop.

It is the behavior of drivers that changes. They are suddenly seeing pedestrians everywhere. The more they see, typically, the slower they drive; and, in a neatly perpetuating cycle, the more slowly they drive, the more pedestrians they effectually see because those pedestrians stay within sight for a longer period. p. 85

Dutch cyclists are safer simply because there are more of them, and thus Dutch drivers are more used to seeing them. ...Gainesville, a college town with the highest cycling rate in the state, is in fact the safest place to be a cyclist. p. 86

Studies have shown that drivers seated at higher eye heights but not shown a speedometer will drive faster than those at lower heights. p. 94

We "overdrive" our headlights, moving at speeds that would not allow us to stop in time for something we saw in the range of our lights. p. 98

Studies have shown that pedestrians think drivers can see them up to twice as far away as drivers actually do. According to one expert, if we were to drive at night in a way that ensured we could see every potential hazard in time to stop-what is legally called the "assured clear distance"-we would have to drive 20 miles per hour. p. 99

The "slower is faster" idea shows up often in traffic. The classic example concerns roundabouts. Many people are under the mistaken impression that roundabouts cause congestion. But a properly designed roundabout can reduce delays by up to 65 percent over an intersection with traffic signals or stop signs. p. 124

One of the curious laws of traffic is that most people, the world over, spend roughly the same amount of time each day getting to where they need to go. Whether the setting is an African village or an American city, the daily round-trip commute clocks in at about 1.1 hours. p. 131

With respect to bicycle facilities in particular, Secretary LaHood has committed the Department to "work toward an America where bikes are recognized to coexist with other modes and to safely share our roads and bridges." If we are to create livable communities, "the range of transportation choices available to all Americans-including transit, walking, bicycling, and improved connectivity for various modes-must be expanded.

The success of public transportation can be limited by the problem of the "first and last mile." One of "the best present options for solving the first and last mile dilemma are bicycles. Bicycles are the no-brainer of American mobility, one of our great underutilized resources. There are more bicycles in the United States than there are households but most of those bikes sit in garages except for an occasional recreational outing. And yet they are the perfect transportation choice for a short one- to three-mile trip to and from a transit station."

In the last 15 years, more than 76,000 Americans have been killed while crossing or walking along a street in their community. More than 43,000 Americans – including 3,906 children under 16 – have been killed this decade alone. This is the equivalent of a jumbo jet going down roughly every month, yet it receives nothing like the kind of attention that would surely follow such a disaster.

The 52 largest metro areas averaged annual spending of federal funds on bicycle and pedestrian projects of just $1.39 per person. The average metro area spends 2.2 percent of their federal transportation funds on projects to improve conditions for walking and bicycling. The average in Washington was $1.19.

Cheryl Cort, policy director for the Coalition for Smarter Growth, authored a study of the region's traffic fatalities last year.

"With pedestrians comprising over 21 percent of traffic fatalities in the region, we should be spending far more making our streets safer for pedestrians," she said.

Memorial Will Honor Richard Black: The Town of Vienna will dedicate a bike rack and tree at the Vienna Community Center in honor of Richard Black, former Director of Parks and Recreation, at 2 p.m. Saturday, November 7. The public is invited to attend the ceremony.

In addition, contributions are being accepted to help pay for the bike rack, which will have five loops with the custom Town of Vienna design on each end. It will be freestanding so it can be moved around as needed, much like the current rack on site. If you would like to donate, please make your check payable to the Town of Vienna and send to Cathy Salgado, c/o Town Hall, 127 Center St., S., Vienna, VA 22180.

The Sam Braxton Bicycle Shop Award goes to Bikes@Vienna in Vienna, Virginia, recognizing their passion for sharing the local area with cyclists and the amazing services that they offer cyclists of all abilities traveling in the Washington D.C. area. As fierce proponents of full access, they offer cycling gear for all levels of rider and persons with physical disabilities. They are involved in the local community in a variety of ways, sponsoring several rides throughout the year. The owner, John Brunow, works hard to promote bicycle travel, and cycling in general, and to create positive change in his community by being an engaged, local leader.

Sunday, November 8, 2009
Annandale United Methodist Church (map)
6935 Columbia Pike, Annandale, near Gallows Road
Time: 1:00-4:00pm

Rep. Earl Blumenauer dropped by Transportation Alternatives' offices to take a quick excursion around mid-town with Executive Director, Paul Steely White, and Senior Policy Director, Noah Budnick. They checked out a few standard (painted) bike lanes and some of the newer (physically separated) facilities, of which the latter Mr. Blumenauer thought were superior. Along the way he offered much commentary about the state of biking and livable streets in the nation.

In fact, cyclists, serious cyclists, bike commuters like me, are the motorist's best friends. Think of it this way—you may get frustrated if you have to veer around me in your rush to the next stoplight (where I will probably catch up to you waiting for the green). But ask yourself—would you rather veer around my bike or be stuck behind my Grand Cherokee? When you are looking for a parking space, isn't it nice to know that there is at least one more out there—the one that I would have used if I had driven? And when you go to the gas pump, think of the 7.5 million gallons of gas that we bike commuters didn't buy last week. That has to help keep prices down for drivers.