DC Strategic Bike Plan and survey

 -- Strategic Bike Plan webpage

(Since we still have our house in Ward 4, I felt justified in answering.) The survey is interesting because it's qualitative--asking questions which require written answers--rather than the usually rote-ness of multiple choice quantitative questions.

I forgot to mention e bikes as a game changer--I've come around this, getting more people to bike who wouldn't before, and/or to commute longer distances.

What about bike share?  The other thing there wasn't a place for is to ask questions of your own.  I think there needs to be serious research about "the overnight success of bike share"--not really, I'm joking.  It has taken 15 years, but now each month seems to have more bike trips than the year before.  

Why did this happen?  Expansion of the system?  I don't think so, it's hard a large number of stations to begin with.  Expansion to other communities?  I don't know, are there a lot of city-to-city bike share trips.  Just seeing it in action and testing it out?  I do think adding electric bicycles is one reason why use has increased, even if the pricing is by the minute, not by the trip.

The two big things I mentioned.

1.  Needing to be more focused on assisting people in making the transition to cycling for transportation.

-- "Revisiting assistance programs to get people biking: 26 programs," 2024

2.  The need for a secure network of bicycle parking, especially with the rise in use of expensive cargo bikes and electric bikes.

-- "Another mention of the idea of creating a network of metropolitan scale secure bicycle parking facilities," 2019

The question that wasn't asked: About equity and the provision of biking infrastructure in the low income areas of the city.  I actually get worked up about this.  I've argued with black community organizers about the value of biking to work, and they think bikes are toys not to be taken seriously.  

Plus, bike infrastructure has been positioned as a tool of whitey/gentrification.  Which has made take up harder.

Years ago I criticized a study that said since blacks didn't want the biking infrastructure it shouldn't be built.

-- "Urg: bad studies don't push the discourse or policy forward | biking in low income communities (in DC) edition," 2014

To me that's dumb, because the point of planning isn't really choice so much as it is optimality.  For reasons of health, economics, access to jobs, and joy, biking can be a lot more optimal and cheaper than transit, and of course, driving (not to mention the difficulty and cost of parking).

Anyway, there is writing out there implying that less infrastructure in black neighborhoods is a plot ("Bike lane distribution in DC is unequal. DDOT’s new bicycling plan could help," Greater Greater Washington).  It isn't.

FWIW, I plan to write about this, based on reading a couple books looking at equity issues in transportation (Reclaiming the Road: Mobility Justice beyond Complete Streets)and cycling (Cyclescapes of the Unequal City: Bicycle Infrastructure and Uneven Development).

As the now deceased professor Donald Shoup used to stay, it's best to help people who are already helping themselves.  It's a losing proposition to try to "force" infrastructure on people who claim they don't want it.  Sadly, that means they screw themselves.  That's been true in DC with both streetcar service and cycling infrastructure.