Posts Tagged ‘advocacy’

It should surprise no one that WABA has been working to improve traffic enforcement and the protection of bicyclists on the District’s roadways. We have worked countless hours on this issue and testified at two hearings held by the DC Council’s Committee on the Judiciary on this matter. Those hearings led to a finding by the Office of Police Complaints of deficiencies in the Department’s enforcement and relationship with cyclists and led MPD to appoint a liaison to the bicycling community to work with the District’s Bicycle Advisory Council.

These are positive steps, but there is much more to be done.

Often, when there is a major crash or a cyclist is cited for an infraction that he or she feels is undeserved, that cyclist or a family member calls WABA for advice. And often, when a WABA staffer or an attorney for the cyclist/family follows up on the facts of the case, we find that the story is quite different than the one contained in the police reports. In some cases, the facts presented in the reports or the citations issued simply do not match the stories of those on the scene.  In other cases, even as presented, the facts do not justify the conclusion drawn or the citation issued.

We have been working to make the case that as cycling grows in the District with the support of District programs and infrastructure, the District also has a responsibility to educate police officers on the application of traffic laws to bicyclists. Absent the physical protection of an automobile surrounding us, we rely on the protection of the law.

Unfortunately, we tend to encounter these enforcement errors on an individual basis, one at a time, as impacted cyclists contact us. We have worked to systematize this and get better data through the creation of our crash tracker survey, and it has been useful in getting more information on more crashes. But we are still working to show that the issue is not an occasional error by an occasional officer who misunderstands a provision. Rather, it is a systemic lack of appropriate training for all officers that needs to be rectified by a significant training effort.

Lacking the resources to launch a full analysis of every crash report related to bicycling, we recently chose to focus on a single regulation and review every citation for a violation. We submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to MPD and the DC Department of Motor Vehicles. Because the names and contact information of the cited party are not disclosed through the FOIA process, we attempted to select a provision in which we would not need to contact the cited party or follow up with witnesses to show errors. For this reason we selected the District’s “riding abreast” regulation, 18 DCMR 1201.7:

Persons riding upon a roadway shall not ride more than two abreast except on paths or part of roadways set aside for the exclusive use of bicycles. Persons riding two abreast shall not impede the normal and reasonable movement of traffic and, on a lane roadway, shall ride within a single lane.

Note that this law:

1. Cannot apply to a bicyclist riding alone;
2. Does not relate to the relationship between any bicycle and any non-bicycle vehicle.

We submitted our request seeking information on citations for violation of the “riding abreast” regulation on March 16. The statutory period for acknowledgment passed without response from MPD. On April 9, we followed up with MPD, noting the delay beyond the statutory limit, and also submitted an identical request with the District’s DMV, which oversees adjudication services. On April 19, we did receive acknowledgement of the initial request from MPD but have received no substantive response to date.

DMV, however, has provided both an initial response with overview data of the citation history in its records, as well as a more detailed supplemental response including individual Notices of Infraction. Both responses are below.

Dmv Foia Riding Abreast 1 of 2

Dmv Foia Riding Abreast 2 of 2

A very quick analysis reveals that not a single citation is supported by the officer’s description. In many cases no description is provided, so one cannot conclude whether the citation was justified. But in every case in which a description was provided, a violation of 18 DCMR 1201.7 is not described. Also, notably, there was no instance of two citations being issued at the same location, as might be expected for a law requiring two bicycles.

We continue to be concerned that officers entrusted with enforcing the laws that we need to help keep us safe on the roadways are not adequately trained on those laws or the application to cyclists. Wrongful citations have ramifications, and those ramifications can go well beyond the $25 fine or the frustration of being ticketed when the other party committed the unlawful act. Under the District’s contributory negligence system, insurers will frequently rely on a citation to deny coverage for injuries in a crash, forcing the cyclist who acted entirely within the law to run a complicated legal gauntlet of contesting the wrongful citation and winning, then taking legal action to compel the insurer to provide compensation for any injuries.

In short, bicyclists need MPD to get these citations right. We have seen recent cases in which the intervention of the officers appointed to act as liaisons to the cycling community–Lt. Breul and Commander Crane–have led to the withdrawal of improper citations. The documents provided reveal another such instance. But this sort of intervention is only available in the rare and clear-cut cases in which the officer’s description fails to match the citation as a matter of law. Intervention of this sort is unavailable when the dispute is a factual matter, such as which party has the duty to yield. In any event, the District cannot rely on one or two individual officers to catch the mistakes of many. MPD needs to improve its understanding and application of laws as applied to bicyclists, and that requires a real, robust, and funded training effort.

We hope that the District’s leadership will view this analysis broadly and conclude that we have a real, systemic problem with MPD training that needs a solution. In the absence of that, we hope that this law–which seems to do nothing but provide an invitation to wrongly cite bicyclists–will be amended or repealed to ensure that the wrongful application stops.

And finally, we hope that this analysis will spur others to help us to evaluate the application of laws to bicyclists and push for improvements. We focused on a single, seldom-used citation in this analysis. There are many other provisions that need exploration, but that will generate much more data and, potentially, require much more investigation and follow-up. If you are interested in focusing on these issues, WABA has applied for and received a $3,000 Advocacy Advance Rapid Response Grant to provide stipend(s) to support this campaign and our efforts to show the need for better training of law enforcement officers in the District.

If you are interested in helping WABA make our streets safer by helping us in this manner, send an email to advocacy@waba.org explaining the approach you would take or provisions of law of interest to you.

And please mark your calendar for the next hearing on bicyclist and pedestrian safety and enforcement before the DC Council Committee on the Judiciary: May 30th at 10am. It is important that as these hearings continue bicyclists continue to show up, tell their stories, and ensure that the Committee and the Council takes bicyclist safety seriously. To sign up to testify, contact Jessica Jacobs at jjacobs@dccouncil.us.

Join America Bikes, Senator Ben Cardin, Congressman Earl Blumenauer for a press conference announcing new survey results on Wednesday, May 9.

A new national poll by Princeton Survey found that the overwhelming majority of Americans want to maintain or increase federal funding for sidewalks, bike lanes, and bike paths. These results add a critical perspective to a pressing national debate about transportation, as lawmakers conference to develop a new transportation bill that will affect bike infrastructure funding in DC, Maryland, and Virginia.

The press conference is open to all and will take place from 9:30 until 10:15 AM on Wednesday, May 9 at the House Triangle on Capitol Hill.

Speakers will include Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, a statement from Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, and Angela Fox of the Crystal City Business Improvement District.

The press event at the House Triangle follows a National Bike to School Day celebration in Lincoln Park. From 7:30 – 8:30 a.m., school children will gather in Lincoln Park and ride in bike trains to nearby Capitol Hill public schools.

Sandra Moscoso, a lead organizer of the Capitol Hill Bike to School Day event, will also speak at the America Bikes press conference. As a parent who enjoys biking with her kids to school, Sandra is glad that federal bike funding has benefitted her neighborhood.

“My best days are the ones when I bike to school with the children,” says Sandra. “It’s really fun, biking to school. We have this time together on the road, not plugged into a cell phone or reading in the back seat.”

Sandra appreciates the bike lanes in her neighborhood and the educational programs that make biking more accessible. Sandra’s family recently took WABA’s ABCs of Family Biking class, and her kids have participated in bike education offered through DDOT’s Safe Routes to School, a federally funded program for students.

Federal funding had provided education and infrastructure to make biking safer and more accessible for her family, says Sandra.

“There are mental barriers to biking, and there are physical barriers. We need federal funding to address both.”

This post was written by WABA Member and America Bikes Communications Coordinator Mary Lauran Hall.

Congratulations to all the jurisdictions awarded Maryland Bikeshare Program grants.  Within our immediate area, Montgomery County and UMD/College Park received implementation grant awards, and Prince George’s County/City of Greenbelt received feasibility study grants.

From the MDOT release:

The grant-winning projects include both feasibility studies for several jurisdictions and actual implementation and opening of bikeshare stations for others that are further along in the planning and design process.  The winners are divided into two categories – funding to implement a bikeshare facility and funding for a feasibility study to determine potential bikeshare station locations.  The Bikeshare Grant Program is funded through the Maryland Department of Transportation’s Federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) Program and will cover 80 percent of the total project cost.  Local jurisdictions are required to pay a 20 percent match.

The winners of grants to implement bikesharing systems are:  Baltimore City, Montgomery County and joint partners with University of Maryland at College Park and the City of College Park.  The winners of grants for feasibility studies of potential bikeshare stations are:  Frederick City, Howard County and joint partners with Prince George’s County and the City of Greenbelt.

Prince George’s County Council voted unanimously to support becoming a more walkable and bikeable county this past week. Voting 9-0, Councilmembers passed the “Adequate Public Pedestrian and Bikeway Facilities in Centers and Corridors” Act (CB-2-2012) which requires developers to build bicycle and pedestrian connections from their new developments to nearby destinations. This bill seeks to begin fixing the years of allowing street designs that were inhospitable to pedestrians and bicyclists.

This is giant step forward for Prince George’s County. The County has one of the highest rates of pedestrian deaths in the Maryland and has recently been dangerous and deadly for bicyclists too. The County Council, under the leadership of Councilmembers Olsen and Franklin, has made a statement about a future vision for the county and has recognized the need to begin building safe, connected and protected places to walk and bike.

WABA staff testified several times in support of this initiative and we are pleased with the unanimous result.  We would like to thank the Prince George’s County Council for providing county residents with expanded transportation choices. We would also like to thank our friends at the Coalition for Smarter Growth for their dedication to this initiative and their work in Prince George’s County.

On Saturday, WABA provided our first mobile bike repair clinic of the season alongside the Anacostia River & Jazz Festival at the Anacostia Park skating rink.  We made lots of friends, gave out nearly 100 DC bike maps, and fixed dozens of bikes.  Thanks to all who came out, and especially to our volunteer mechanics.

DDOT has released its evaluation of its innovative bike facilities and is hosting a meeting to discuss those projects and future projects, including the L Street cycletrack.  Please plan to attend, review the evaluation, and provide your feedback on the proposals.  (Hint: this might be a good chance to weigh in on whether you think anecdotal evidence from New York provides sufficient justification to include “mixing zones” on L, or whether you believe better separation is merited.)

From DDOT:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, April 18, 2012

***PUBLIC MEETING NOTICE***
Public Meeting on Innovative Bicycle Facility Research and Protected Bike Lane on L Street, NW

(Washington, D.C.) The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) will host a public meeting on Thursday, May 3, 2012 to discuss the results of the Innovative Bicycle Facility Research Project and present and take comments on a proposed protected bike lane for L Street, NW.

The Innovative Bicycle Facility Research Project is a one-year effort to analyze three existing bicycle facilities:  (1) bicycle signals and bike boxes at the intersection of 16th Street, U Street, and New Hampshire Avenue, NW; (2) the two-way cycle track on 15th Street, NW between E Street and V Street; and (3) the center median bicycle lanes on Pennsylvania Avenue, NW.
An executive summary of the study is now posted online at http://ddot.dc.gov/DC/DDOT/Publication%20Files/On%20Your%20Street/Bicycles%20and%20Pedestrians/Bicycles/Bike%20Lanes/DDOT_BicycleFacilityEvaluation_ExecSummary.pdf.

The study assesses the operations, safety, and perceptions of the bike facilities through extensive quantitative data collection and analysis, as well as intercept, neighborhood and business surveys.  The objectives were to improve the safety and operations of these existing facilities, and guide future DDOT projects, including the proposed L Street, NW protected bike lane.

The proposed L Street protected bike lane between 25th and 12th Streets is planned for summer installation.  Separated by flexible posts, the bike lane will be placed on the north side of the road.  It will be the second of its kind in the city (15th St was the first), and will provide more protection from cars than a typical bike lane.  The plans will be available for review at the meeting.
What:               Public Meeting on Innovative Bicycle Facility Research
and L Street, NW Protected Bike Lane

When:              Thursday, May 3, 2012
6:30 pm – 8:30 pm

Where:             Reeves Center
2nd Floor Community Room
2000 14th Street, NW

Getting There
Transit: The Reeves Center is one block from the U Street/African-American Civil War Memorial/Cardozo Metrorail station on the Green Line. It is also accessible via the Following bus routes:
*       DC Circulator – Woodley Park/Adams Morgan/McPherson Square Route
*       Metrobus – U Street lines 90, 92, 96 and 14th Street lines 52, 53, 54
Bicycling: There is a Capital Bikeshare station adjacent to the Reeves Center on 14th Street and another at 16th and U Streets, NW.
Parking:  On-Street metered parking is available.
DDOT is committed to ensuring that no person is excluded from participation in, or denied the benefits of, its projects, programs, and services on the basis of race, color, national origin, or gender, as provided by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or on the basis of disability as provided by the Americans with Disabilities Act.
If you need special accommodations or language assistance services (translation or interpretation), please contact Mike Goodno at             202-671-0681       ormike.goodno@dc.gov<mailto:mike.goodno@dc.gov> in advance of the meeting. These services will be provided free of charge.

This post is part of WABA’s Women on Bikes program, an ongoing campaign to create a community, share resources, and develop strategies for getting more women on bikes. To read about the project so far, click here to check out the WABA blog. To learn more and sign up to receive emails about this project, click here.

By Kiera Zitelman & Laura Jean Shane, WABA’s Women’s Bicycling Interns 

WABA is proud to introduce our new Women’s Bicycling Outreach and Advocacy campaign, Women on Bikes.

It’s a fact: Women in our region bike less than men. We learned from the Women’s Forum last winter that WABA needs to step up and do something about it. So we’ve been hard at work developing a plan. With spring in the air and bike month on the way, now is the time to get moving. Now is the time to bring together the women in your life that say, “I’m interested in biking , but…”

Women on Bikes is WABA’s new approach to women’s bike outreach and for this to work we need your help. Our goal is to help women who bike for recreation/fitness to become transportational bicyclists and we plan to do it by bringing women together. We want to reach out to you, your best friend, your aunt, your co-worker, your favorite women of all ages and experience levels–whether they already bike or have only thought about biking.  We’re asking you to become our Bike SpokesWomen. To us, a Bike SpokesWoman is a bicyclist who sees the benefits of more women on bikes and wants to step up and help make it happen.

This campaign will truly be only as successful as our ability to get new faces in the room or in the bike lanes! That’s where Bike SpokesWomen come in. You can be a bike buddy and mentor, and you can turn a recreational rider into a city rider by bringing her along for the ride to our events and to bike rides and outings throughout the region.

How to Get Involved

So we’re asking two favors of you, our Bike SpokesWomen:

1. We need you to sign up for our email updates. You can do that here.
2. And we need you to bring one woman–just one!–to a Women on Bikes event. You can use our handy Tell-A-Friend tool to start the conversation.

The Women on Bikes campaign consists of educational meet-ups, bike classes, and friendly rides that will seek to address the concerns of new transportational bicyclists. These FREE events will present opportunities to turn the interested but concerned riders in your life into confident, effective street riders.

Women on Bikes Events

The action begins this weekend:

On Saturday, April 7th, we are hosting our first Women on Bikes Meet-up, a conversation about bikes. We want you—our friends and cyclists—to bring along a woman you know who wants to ride and who has questions and concerns. The event is designed to present useful information in a fun and social setting.

Sign up for Women on Bikes email updates to learn how to register for this and future events.

Become a BikeSpokesWomen now!

Then pass along the invitation.

Laura Jean Shane is a spring 2012 Women’s Bicycle Outreach & Advocacy Intern. She  came to WABA as a former sports medicine professional and current Masters of Public Health student at GWU. A devotee of RAGBRAI, she moved to DC last year and cannot imagine getting around any other way.

Kiera Zitelman is a spring 2012 Women’s Bicycle Outreach & Advocacy Intern. She has gotten around the DC area by bike for years since growing up in Silver Spring. As an environmental science and policy student at UMD, she uses her bike to navigate campus every day and ride the Anacostia Tributary trails near College Park on the weekends.

This post is part of the WABA Women Bicycling Project, an ongoing campaign to create a community, share resources and develop strategies for getting more women on bikes.  To read about the project so far, check out Quick Release, the WABA blog. To learn more and sign up to receive emails about this project, click here.

At long last, we are proud to present the audio recording of our Regional Women’s Forum, held last December.

WABA’s Women’s Forum Audio – December 12, 2011

This is the uncut audio from the event, and to help you identify the speakers, here is a list of the women who were on the panel:

Panel moderator

Jesse Cohn, WABA’s Women’s Bicycling  Advocacy & Outreach Intern

Panelists

Veronica Davis, Black Women Bike DC
Heather Deutsch, DDOT
Tracy Hadden-Loh, Rails-To-Trails
Ellen Jones, DC Bicycle Advisory Council
Katie Knight, Revolution Cycles
Finnuola Quinn, Alta Planning & Fairfax Advocates for Better Bicycling
Kate Ryan, WTOP news
Elizabeth Sherwood, BicycleSPACE
Katie Sihler, goDCgo

Sign up to receive emails about this project here.

Here at WABA, we are still thinking very much about this topic and the bigger questions it raises, as well as how it relates to the ideas that WABA talked about at our Regional Bike Summit in November. We will have some new projects here soon that will help further the conversation and keep the wheels turning. With that in mind, we would like to introduce our new Women’s Bicycling Advocacy & Outreach Interns: Keira Zitelman and Laura Jean Shane! We are very happy to have them both and we will have more details on their projects for the spring in the coming weeks.

One idea that came up again and again during the planning for the forum and afterwards was that this is not a gender-based problem. There is a large proportion of the general public (as high as 60%) who define themselves as “interested in cycling” but with significant reservations–about safety, about buying a bike, about infrastructure, about sweatiness and showers–and this group includes men and women, the old and the young, and people of every description and demographic.

These are the people who are on the cusp of taking up cycling for transportation, and at the core of our Women’s Bicycling Advocacy & Outreach project is the desire to determine what an organization with WABA’s reach and resources can do to convince women (and men) to take the plunge.

You can join the conversation by signing up to receive emails about our Women’s Bicycling Advocacy & Outreach project and by posting on this thread on the Washington Area Bike Forum.

National Bike Summit Event Roundup

When this year’s National Bike Summit participants roll into town, DC is going to be a hub for bike-related socializing. WABA encourages you to attend some of the fun (FREE) events surrounding the Summit.

If you haven’t signed up for the Summit yet, don’t worry! There’s still plenty of time. Online registration is closed but you can register on-site at the Grand Hyatt on Tuesday, the 20th at 1:30pm. Click here for more information.

Tuesday

1:00pm Tim Johnson’s Ride on Washington
Join Cyclocross superstar Tim Johnson for the last leg of his bike advocacy fundraising tour. Tim and his group started in Boston, but you can join him in DC.

2:00pm First-Ever National Women’s Cycling Forum
Women across the US bike at much lower rates than men. Come explore the issues and discuss ways to encourage  the ladies in your life to get on bikes (Co-hosted by the Alliance for Biking and Walking and the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals).

Wednesday

6:00pm Women’s Cycling Social
Come mingle with the women who are making waves in the active transportation world at BusBoys and Poets (Co-hosted by the Alliance for Biking and Walking and the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals).

6:00pm For your Disapproval Ride
Join local shop, BicycleSPACE, for a group ride to the BikeSnobNYC book-signing of his latest, ever-so-cynical gem: The Enlightened Cyclist (Check out the trailer).

Friday

9:30am-11:00am Congressional Bike Ride
Take the morning off,  jump on your bike, and meet up with hundreds of bike advocates throughout the country for the Summit’s final hoorah hosted by WABA. We’ll tour new bike infrastructure and you’ll make some new friends.

Know of anything else going on, organizing a ride or a happy hour? Share your NBS events in the comment feed.  And don’t forget to share your experiences on Twitter using the Summit’s hashtag: #NBS12