[M II A II R II K]

D.C. struggles to keep pace as bike population grows


March 21, 2012

By Katie Rogers

Read More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/...RSS_story.html

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Authorities and advocates alike are struggling to keep up with a crowd of riders whose skills range from expert to novice in an already congested city.

- According to rush-hour counts conducted in 20 intersections throughout the city each year by the District Department of Transportation, bike traffic during those peak times surged an average of 20.7 percent from 2010 to 2011, with 7,113 total bikes moving through those intersections. Nearly 25 percent of those riders weren’t wearing helmets, according to count data.

- A chunk of the District’s growing user group comes from Capital Bikeshare, a regional rental system opened by D.C. and Arlington County in September 2010. By January of this year, it had mushroomed into a 1,200-bike, 140-station system. Compared with overall ridership, the actual number of reported collisions is small, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the problem is much bigger. Police have logged 829 reported bicycle collisions in the District in that time frame.

- Miscommunication and human error can result in serious accidents and fuel tension between motorists and cyclists. When a cyclist riding a Bikeshare bike Feb. 28 was struck by a tractor-trailer during morning rush hour, he was issued three citations; however, one of them, biking without a helmet, doesn’t exist in D.C. law for people older than 16. The ticket was issued in error and withdrawn, according to police spokeswoman Gwendolyn Crump. For the police department the relatively quick expansion of bicycling on the city has led to a need for better training in the bicycle regulations,” Crump said in an e-mail.

- To help make sure riders of all wheel counts are on the same page, area police will begin a spring Street Smart campaign this week across the region. The program is geared to enforcing safe bicycling and safe driving. But bike advocates say even more can be done to make biking a safer mode of travel; in short, they want more funding to be freed up for bike paths, lanes, walkways and pedestrian bridges in cities across the country. Bicyclists attending the National Bike Summit this week will lobby for what they see as a lack of funding. “Our goal is equity across mode of transportation,” Hoagland said. “Equal share of the roadway for every type of user.”

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