Some Pictures of the Not-Yet-Finished M Street Cycletrack

The M Street Cycle Track, the ongoing-est #bikeDC project this side of the Metropolitan Branch Trail, is slowly marching towards completion. It's not done yet, but it's closer to done than it was last week and should be even closer to done by the end of this week. I will not make any predictions as to when it might achieve actual doneness, but maybe that will be relatively soon. Workers are working on it, or at least were as of this morning. I think before Bike to Work Day (this upcoming Friday) might be too ambitious of a goal, but maybe they'll surprise us.  I had the chance to ride it this morning and I took some pictures of some parts that are done and some parts that remain to be done.

This is from 16th Street. This part looks mostly done. The posts are much closer together than they are on L Street. There will also be a parking lane which will provide additional separation. 

This is from directly in front of Caruso Florists, hence the flowers, maybe. I am unclear as to whether this section will also be protected by parking or whether it will just be protected by flowers and plastic sticks.

This part isn't done. They're fixing up the sidewalks, so presumably when that's done, they'll do the cycletrack too. 

This is pretty much how the done part is supposed to work. One-way cycletrack, plastic sticks, and a lane for car parking. 

This part doesn't have plastic sticks yet because it's not done. That probably explains why the driver is parked next to the curb and not in the parking lane. Because it's not done yet. 

All in all, for a work in progress, I'm pretty pleased. It's not done yet, so these are just preliminary judgments, but I would say that the design is an improvement on L Street. There are, unfortunately, still mixing zones and like on both L and on 15th, there are a fair number of parking garages along the way, so there will be drivers crossing the cycletrack to enter and exit those. Nevertheless,  I think that the combination of the much closer together plastic sticks and the parking lane buffer, will make M Street one of the better pieces of bike infrastructure in DC when it's all done, which it is not yet.