Thursday, May 29, 2014
Post article on WABA bike safety classes and local efforts to improve cycling conditions
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| Photo: Washington Post |
WABA's bicycle education program is featured in the first part of the article. Our parent organization is doing a great job teaching safe cycling skills in DC, Arlington Co, and Montgomery Co., with affordable or free classes that fill up on a regular basis.
[Dan] Hoagland [WABA's education coordinator] and his 40 part-time instructors teach people to ride “with the most knowledge and forethought, and to bring their entire perspective and attention to it.”
The instruction is not about the bicyclist alone, he noted. “Everything from where you position yourself in the lane to the body language you use communicates to drivers. You can actually prevent crashes and influence driver behavior.”
“It’s when bicyclists do things that are unexpected and act unpredictably, I feel, that the conflict arises.”
Enrollment is steadily increasing, Hoagland said. “A lot of folks have had a bad experience out there. A lot of them don’t know if it was caused by their actions or not. They just had a close call, and they want to know what they do to prevent that from happening.”
The second part of the article highlights the investments that Arlington and DC are making to make cycling more accessible to everyone:
The instruction is not about the bicyclist alone, he noted. “Everything from where you position yourself in the lane to the body language you use communicates to drivers. You can actually prevent crashes and influence driver behavior.”
“It’s when bicyclists do things that are unexpected and act unpredictably, I feel, that the conflict arises.”
Enrollment is steadily increasing, Hoagland said. “A lot of folks have had a bad experience out there. A lot of them don’t know if it was caused by their actions or not. They just had a close call, and they want to know what they do to prevent that from happening.”
In addition to helping teach people to bike, Arlington has added routes to make biking safer. The county has “about 50 miles of off-street trails, 36 miles of bike lanes and 78 miles of recommended street routes,” Leach said. “We’re also going to be doing our first protected bike lane in Pentagon City and Crystal City.”
In the District, the first local jurisdiction to create protected lanes, a new one recently opened on M Street, boosting the well-used “cycle tracks,” as they are sometimes called, on 15th and L streets and Pennsylvania Avenue, all in Northwest.
One more sign of how popular bicycling is becoming in our area.In the District, the first local jurisdiction to create protected lanes, a new one recently opened on M Street, boosting the well-used “cycle tracks,” as they are sometimes called, on 15th and L streets and Pennsylvania Avenue, all in Northwest.
Labels: daniel hoagland, waba, washington post
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Bike commuting class at Spokes, Etc.
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| Bike Ambassador Daniel Hoagland teaches bike commuting class at Spokes, Etc. |
As we noted in an earlier blog post, WABA is offering the class to local bike shops in the area. WABA normally charges $225 for the seminars but is offering these classes for free.
We have taught a similar class at places like AOL and GMU. We are working with WABA to possibly offer these classes at other Spokes locations, so we attended this class to assist Daniel and check out his presentation. He did a great job and there were lots of questions during and after the presentation. If you're interested in using your bike for local trips and commuting to work, you should consider taking the class. See the WABA course calendar or the FABB events page for a schedule of future classes.
We rode to the class from Reston. There was very little rain on the trip down which took about an hour and 20 minutes, about the same time it would take using transit. We weren't so lucky on the return as it rained hard for the second half of the trip. It was a mild night so a little rain wasn't a problem. During the trip we heard the first spring peepers along the stretch of the W&OD Trail between Vienna and Reston, and we had to dodge lots of frogs sitting on the trail, sure signs of Spring.
Labels: bike ambassador, bike commuting, daniel hoagland, spokes etc.
