UPDATE: My Letter to DDOT

UPDATE: My email has been forwarded to the traffic services and traffic engineering team to review and respond.

I once griped about an unsafe intersection near my workplace and I got an email from a reader saying that I should actually do something about it (that is, aside from blogging to audience of four- hi mom!). So today, I finally did. We'll see if anything comes of it, but I want to thank M. for encouraging me to take this small step towards civic betterment. I've included the text of my letter, along with a movie and picture below:

Dear Interim Director Bellamy,

My name is Brian McEntee and I am an employee of American University. I am writing to you to call to your attention the confusing and dangerous traffic configuration at the intersection of Nebraska Avenue, NW and New Mexico Avenue, NW. As currently configured, the light sequencing, signage and road markings create a hazardous situation for motorists, bicyclists and pedestrians and I hope that DDOT can redress it expeditiously. I am not a traffic engineer, nor do I proclaim any particular expertise, but these are my observations based on daily use of the intersection and I hope that calling them to your attention might prompt further, more thorough, analysis and eventual correction of the issue.

Prior to the opening of the new School of International Service (SIS) building on the AU campus, the intersection of New Mexico Avenue and Nebraska Avenue was a T-intersection. With the opening of the SIS garage, the new intersection resembles a four-way intersection. However, the traffic signal pattern, both for motorists and pedestrians, does not adequately accommodate this change.

With regard to the car traffic, there is now a traffic light for motorists exiting the SIS garage. However, there is also a stop sign (which was installed prior to the traffic light) in front of the garage exit. There is additionally a sign indicating that motorists cannot make left turns onto Nebraska Avenue or go straight down New Mexico Avenue. I believe that the stop sign is unnecessary given the presence of the traffic light and should be removed. Moreover, motorists consistently disregard the sign indicating the illegality of anything but a right turn from the garage exit onto Nebraska Avenue. This is likely because they have their own dedicated green light during which no other traffic (car or pedestrian) is supposed to be moving.

The crosswalk light sequence for pedestrians attempting to cross Nebraska Avenue (on either side of New Mexico Avenue) has not been adjusted to take into account the new traffic light regulating the SIS garage. While the traffic light is green for motorists exiting the garage (which should only be for right turns onto Nebraska), the pedestrians are not given a walk indication. Nonetheless, pedestrians use this time to cross Nebraska Avenue against the light. It is only when the green light is given to motorists driving up New Mexico Avenue that pedestrians crossing Nebraska Avenue are given the walk indication. Because motorists on New Mexico Avenue see pedestrians crossing during the SIS garage green light, they incorrectly assume that there is no pedestrian cross sequence during their green light. This creates a potential conflict for pedestrians crossing Nebraska Avenue and motorists turning right from New Mexico Avenue onto Nebraska Avenue.

I’ve attached a video (.MOV) of the problems described above. It was recorded on the afternoon of March 28, 2011 from the sidewalk on parallel to Nebraska Avenue, opposite New Mexico Avenue. The green light on the left side of the frame is for cars exiting the SIS garage. The pedestrians are crossing Nebraska Avenue against the light. The motorist that comes into frame from the right made an illegal left turn onto Nebraska Avenue from the SIS garage. I’ve also included a picture of the superfluous stop sign. 

I understand that there are neighborhood sensitivities about the volume of cars and the flow of traffic related to American University. However, the situation as it currently exists is not tenable and is extraordinarily hazardous to pedestrians. This is in spite of the fact that the American University architect lists the traffic reconfiguration as a completed project (http://observer.american.edu/finance/oua/Projects.cfm). The light sequence, while regular, is not intuitive. In my opinion, the crosswalk light sequence should either be adjusted so pedestrians cross at the same time the SIS garage light is green or the sequence should be expanded so that pedestrians are given a walk indication during both the SIS garage green light and the New Mexico Avenue green light. This intersection is very heavily used by pedestrians and I believe that it is simply not safe. I heartily encourage DDOT to further investigate this intersection and make adjustments in the spirit of the District’s “Complete Streets” policy- one that encourages the safety and convenience of all users.

Please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions or concerns. I am readily available via phone and email listed below. I thank you for your time and consideration.

Ride In 3/28

I heard a rumor that it was spring and that spring weather typically means warmer temperatures. You shouldn't believe rumors. Today I was stuck trying to negotiate the dual imperatives of keeping my neck warm and not having a metal zipper wedged into my larynx. I guess I could have warn a scarf, but that seems unseasonal. Like the weather.
I'm not convinced that there was a proportional relationship between my rate of pedaling and my velocity this morning. Has only one ride to work in the last week rendered me weak and feeble? I mean, weaker and feebler. We'll see what the ride home is like.
Speaking of being weak and feeble, for the first time ever I felt like I was going to throw up on my ride up Tunlaw. I think that three cups of coffee (one iced, one hot, one luke) and an unfrostred strawberry pop tart is not the breakfast of bike commuting champions. I took it nice and slow the rest of the way- I don't need bike commuters to be conflated with drunken Georgetown students and subsequently coalesce further neighborhood opposition to, well, pretty much everything.
A motorist exiting his car on New Mexico didn't open his door in my path on account of seeing me. Good thing there wasn't a bike lane there, lest he might have been confused and throw open his car door with reckless abandon. Because as we all know, bike lanes cause people to top paying attention to the world around them and act with no regard to consequences. It's a fact. I read it in the New York Post, maybe.
Do you live in Maryland (for some reason)? If so, read this and take whatever action you see fit. This concludes the advocacy portion of this blog post.

Ride Home 3/25

I thought that it was supposed to be 50. It wasn't 50. I didn't wear gloves. My hands were cold. Boo.
There's nothing quite as unlucky as getting stuck at successive stop lights on your big downhill ride away from work. It's just not as fun as getting through the lights.
I guess that four-way intersections are confusing, but they're not that confusing. We all take turns, right? There are two kinds of motorists at four-way stops with a cyclist: the overly deferent, who instead of taking their proper turn, decline and prompt the cyclist through. This confuses the motorist opposite them, who either cuts off the cyclist, who thinks he's being waved ahead, or aborts their initial movement forward in a lurching and probably uncomfortable to them manner. I appreciate the consideration, but sometimes it's just better to play by the rules. The other kind of motorist is the "I've got internal combustion, so I was obviously here first." Just because you have the power of hydrocarbons doesn't mean that I didn't get to the stop sign before you. You gotta yield, dude.
On my ride in Arlington, I decided to take what the lights gave me (like a good quarterback would do an NFL defense, maybe?). Instead of following my usual route, taking Nash to Wilson, when denied a left turn by a green light, I just kept going up the Custis. Some guy was wheeling his bike out from behind the Marriott. Secret path? At Veitch, again my left turn was blocked, so I kept going along Lee Highway. I wish there was a bike lane on the right side of Lee Highway from, let's say, where the bike lane stops before Sprout Run to at least Quincy. I guess the road gets a little narrow by the Cherrydale Safeway (so narrow, I bailed to the sidewalk even), but it'd be nice to have one if it's possible. I'm guessing it was deemed not possible, since there's one on the downhill side of the road. It's not a route that I take a lot, but ceteris paribus, I recommend for bike commuters to always consider taking the path of least resistance. I'd rather be moving forward on a bike than wait at a light.
I rode down Quincy, which was fun because I was moving essentially at the speed of car traffic. It felt pretty badass. They cleaned the street, and by street I mean bike lane, of the horrible little sandy dirt bits in front of Washington & Lee High School.  At Quincy and Fairfax, there were cyclists traveling in each direction: up and down Fairfax and up and down Quincy. Saturation. Arlington is the Portland of the DMV.

Ride to the Beach 3/23

For those of you who don't look closely at the title or don't have calendars, this is a description of my ride from a few days ago when I was I was not in Washington.

On occasion, I’ve seen pictures posted of riders triumphantly straddling their bikes on the sandy beaches of the Pacific, having accomplished riding there from some distance out, sometimes even a whole continent out, like from Rhode Island or wherever. Since I covered most of the continent (like pretty much all of it) by airplane, I thought that I could cover the last few miles to the ocean by bicycle. That's just as impressive, right?. My accomplice in this endeavor (and actual instigator of what I’m calling “Ride to the Pacific From Our Hotel That Wasn’t Especially far Away but Still a Little Far Away 2011”) was the official wife of this blog, my wife.

The hotel had a few bikes for rent cabled-locked out front. We chose two of the more crusiery types out of the all cruiser selection, but not the most crusisery with the super-swept back handlebars.  Big fat tires, chain guard, three speed  grip shifters, a color that can best be described as reddish brown- they were some sweet rides. I like California bike style because it’s so wildly different from the all-hybrid, all-the-time DC commuter bike scene that I encounter pretty much every day.

We set off from the hotel and rode the first about 2 miles solely on the sidewalk. We would have taken the bike lanes but there weren’t any. We would have ridden in the street, but that would have hastened a condition known as getting hit by a car. To say that where we were riding was bike unfriendly would be charitable- to say that it was downright hostile would be accurate. I don’t think that even the sidewalks were especially bike friendly. What a waste for a place that has great weather and is flat. Maybe this will help.

We took something called the Ballona Creek Bike Path, which ran next to a dried out canal which I guess is the creek, but it looked more like what they  raced through in Grease, albeit less monumental, all of the way to the ocean. It was a pleasant ride and the trail was lightly trafficked. I got the impression that we weren’t really near anything (like places of employment),  so there weren’t that many commuters coming through. A few recreational cyclists dressed in cycling get-ups were availing themselves of the beautiful morning. Would that I could go for a nice recreational ride on a Wednesday morning (I’d go through the Navy Yard, since that’s basically the only time I could get in). Anyway, it was probably about 6 or 7 miles to the first beach we went to, which wasn’t exactly the beach we were aiming for. Our intention was Venice Beach, where I guess there’s “stuff.” This was a beach where there wasn’t stuff, unless you count sand and water as “stuff,” which as far as a beach goes should count as “stuff” but that's not the kind of “stuff” that Venice Beach allegedly has to offer. (Did I "overuse" scare quotes there?)

Inferior beach meets inferior photography

We turned our bikes around (take that inferior beach!) and biked along the assigned path, a mix of separated trail and on-road marked routes. On the marked routes, we were told to bike in single file. God forbid cyclists take up more than 3 feet of the two lanes of road. That would be anarchy. In the marina parking lot we saw lots of parked boats. The High Cost of FreeParking indeed. 

Traffic engineers either think people read bottom to top or just love Yoda.

We eventually got to Venice Beach, but our bike trail ran out before then. We biked along a pretty busy thoroughfare that had a one block gap in bike infrastructure right before you got to another separated bike trail that runs along the beach. Seems like poor planning.

At Venice Beach, the “stuff” didn’t seem to be open, where it even existed. Again, let me clarify that it was 9 AM on a Wednesday (PS- we’re not industrious early birds- it’s just the time change had our sleep schedule all screwed up). We biked along a serpentine trail that was often covered in what amounted to more than a patina of sand, but less than a dune. I was glad for our fat tires. I don’t know why the path couldn’t be straight. 

Though it was allegedly reserved for bicyclists exclusively, there were many, many walkers, joggers, and tired joggers walking/jogging/slowly jogging on it. At one point, we were passing a group of people walking on the trail slightly before a cyclist passed them in the opposite direction. My wife said that he said “this is a bike path” with both hauteur and derision to the gadabout tourists. She also said that he (the cyclist) was “my people.” I still don’t know what to make of that.

We wended about Venice Beach, past the skateboarders, homeless, dispensaries, souvenir shops, tattoo parlors, and beach front houses, all the while looking for the Venice Beach that maybe has ice cream carts and Annette Funicello. You know, the one advertised by the Hog Dog on a Stick lemonade stand. Maybe we were there too early.

We took some pictures. Here’s one of me. It’s my “Everything I know about posing for pictures I learned from John McCain” pose. There’s not even water or palm trees in the background. Lame. 

This is what I was thinking as I posed.

We never quite found the elusive “stuff” we were looking for on Venice Beach, but at least we biked cruisers along Venice Beach, which is probably about as bike cliché a thing you could do in LA. We biked back to the hotel along the same way we came, including the last mile plus on the sidewalk. The street only had a sidewalk on one side.

On the cruiser: this is not a practical bicycle for someone who lives anywhere other than near the beach. But it was super fun to ride. It was comfortable and easy to handle and did everything that we asked of it. Cruisers are cool. And they were ubiquitous- aside from the few “roadies” that we saw, almost every single person we saw riding was on one.All in all, I’m glad that we got to bike a little while we were on our trip. This was definitely the longest outing that I’ve ever done with my wife and the longest bike trip she’s ever done. It was definitely a great way to spend the morning and take advantage of the nice weather in a fantastic location and I recommend it to anyone who's ever jet-unlagged in LA.

Ride In 3/25

Mercurial weather (though no Mercurian weather, which would be very hot) meant that once again the hat and gloves were required for the morning ride. I was looking forward to my ride because it's nice to get back on the bike after some time off (though we did bike once in LA, which I'll post about later), but I was laden like a pack mule with two pairs on shoes, a towel, and a laptop that says Dell but was probably made in the neolithic it's so heavy all stuffed in my pannier, along with my change of clothes. I find that sometimes a little weight on the rear rack makes the bike run smoother (this might be all in my imagination), but this wasn't really the case today. I just went slower.
Remember the hipster I saw once? Or at least remember me mentioning him? Saw him this morning riding in down Fairfax. He timed the lights better than I did (or just got lucky) and passed me as I slowly started pedaling after a red changed to green. I caught back up to him, but he successfully darted through traffic in a way that I did not find replicable. He was past Northside Social before I managed to turn onto Kirkwood. So elusive.
I saw a mom riding with her daughter this morning along Key Boulevard with the daughter on the sidewalk and the mom on the left side of the street (in the path of oncoming traffic). I thought, "well, that's good and bad." The girl was young, maybe 6 or 7, but it would still be nice if streets were such that parents and kids could ride in them together and feel safe.
Crew teams in the Potomac, in spite of the cold and the fact that they've been putting motors and sails on boats for a  very long time. Did you hear that DDOT was launching Capital Boatshare? Well, not really. But the launch of Capital Boatshare will feature prominently in my counter-factual alternative fake history of the second Fenty term called Myopic Little Twits.
Slow going through Georgetown and up to work. I saw a bumper sticker that read "No Forced Vaccinations in America." I think that's a nice complement to my tattoo of "Polio 4-ever."
When I got the work, there was a sign hanging from the door knob of the locker room that looked like a Do Not Disturb sign from a hotel. It said "Locks Changed." I can aver that they were because I tried to use my key anyway. I'm highly incredulous of signs. Someone had lost her purse, so they changed all the locks on the first floor. As a result, I got to wander through the building wearing my bike ensemble which is always fun. I eventually got a master key and my new key should be coming today.