Zack needs to ride a bike

Renting bicycles at a gas station on East Potomac Park.
Originally uploaded by rllayman.

From Steve Eldridge's column in the Examiner, "Georgetown: a tough trip via transit":

Georgetown can still be a difficult place to get to via transit, though once there, you’ll find a local bus service. The D.C. Circulator service was established in part to get visitors and even locals from the downtown business district into Georgetown. Even so, I get occasional e-mails like this one from Zack: “I wanted to ask you about a certain high-profile Metrobus route that is notable only in its nonexistence. I recently moved to Adams Morgan and work in Georgetown. My home and office are less than three miles apart and yet it takes me nearly 40 minutes to commute to work one-way, and that’s during rush hour when the busses run most frequently. Surprisingly, there is no direct connection between these two neighborhoods. I recently submitted a comment to Metro via its Web site.

The best way is to ride a bike. Zip up Florida Avenue and then west on P Street NW and I imagine you'd be to work in 15 minutes, not pedaling hard.

I frequently make the point that compared to transit, bicycling doesn't save me much money (stolen wheels need to be replaced and are expensive to boot, etc.) but it provides me with more time, at least 30 minutes/day, because I get around faster.

Zack would have 50 more minutes/day if he would choose this course.

And maybe there is a transit solution that's "efficient," like Steve's suggestion of getting over to the G2 bus, but a bike will be faster!
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Image: Renting bicycles at a gas station on East Potomac Park.
Washington, D.C., 1942. Notice the "no gas" sign on the nearest gasoline pump. From the Library of Congress/FSA-OWI collection.

Index Keywords: mobility