OK, I give up. What’s with the bike fixed to the fence at Euclid and Champlain Streets NW? Is it a protest against Christian Science? A demonstration of the little-heralded cantilevering abilities of U-locks? A prank played on a drunk friend? Telllllll meeeeeeeeee.

Last Thursday, Eastern Senior High School’s marching band paraded through the streets of Capitol Hill, west to Lincoln Park and then back on East Capitol Street. There was no actual event going on. The band was just practicing.

“Honestly, we do it a lot,” says staff band leader James Perry. “A lot of the times, the cars don’t mind. We never get any honks. They roll down the window and bop along.”

Although it’s the dead of summer, Eastern’s band convened every weekday last week, according to Perry. The reason: next Saturday, August 2, the group is expected to play in a parade for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Enshrinement Festival in Canton, Ohio.

The key word here is “expected.”

This year, six people will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Two of them are known for their time with the Washington Redskins: cornerback Darrell Green, and wide receiver Art Monk.

In April, the Eastern band was contacted by a parade coordinator, and asked to apply “to represent D.C.” as part of the festivities, says Perry. After the group was selected to play in the parade, Eastern students began raising money holding car washes and selling candy in school. The band does not plan to stay over in Canton. They’re just fund-raising for the bus ride, which amounts to $3,900. Roughly 65 to 70 musicians, as well as six dancers and six flag girls, will be going. Each student is responsible for raising $70 for his or her passage, says Perry.

The group was relying on paychecks from students’ jobs with the Department of Employment Services’ Summer Youth Program. But, when the District’s payment system failed, many were left with insufficient funds to cover their shares. As of the last count, the group had $500 total. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve gotten several reports of D.C. police issuing tickets to bicyclists going the wrong way down one-way portions of New Hampshire Avenue NW near the intersection of 16th and U Streets yesterday and this morning.

A bystander took a picture of about 10 cyclists being ticketed north of the intersection at about 9 a.m. this morning:

We’ve heard the tickets came with a $25 fine. A police spokesperson said he hadn’t heard of any enforcement effort, but is currently checking into it. The ticketing effort comes about two weeks after the tragic death of cyclist Alice Swanson in Dupont Circle; it can’t be said enough that Swanson appears to have broken no laws when she was struck by a private trash truck, but the incident focused attention on issues of bike safety and road-sharing.

If you saw the ticketing or, gasp, got a ticket, tell us in the comments.

Flickr photo by p373

UPDATE, 1:05 P.M.: Pete Welsch, who lives near the intersection, is the fellow who took the photo. He calls in to report that police were waving down cyclists as they approached the 16th-and-U intersection from the north. “People were whipping out camera phones and things like that,” he says.

LL is going to take the departure of D.C. Department of Transportation Director Emeka Moneme as an opportunity to mention a problem that he knows is being solved by Moneme’s old agency in a thoughtful and thorough manner but has been such a longstanding menace to LL’s quality of life that he feel compelled to rant about it to no particular end.

Seriously, what the hell is up with Columbus Circle?

OK, DDOT, LL knows that you’re aware of the problems and you’ve done a painstaking redesign, but let me tell you: As he rides his bike across the cracked and bus-deformed asphalt in front of Union Station, almost popping his tire there for the 900th time in his life, He had to wonder: What in AASHTO is taking so long?

The thing isn’t just a menace to cyclists (which it has been for years). When LL drives through there at night, he can never tell if he’s in the proper lane, seeing as (a) the lane markings are severely worn and (b) the lighting is piss-poor. Seriously, coming off Mass Ave from the west after dusk, it’s suddenly like you’re on a desolate stretch of rural interstate highway at 3 a.m. (That probably has something with special lighting regs for the federal core, but Jesus, it’s dark!)

A WTOP article from last summer suggested this whole thing could be done by 2009. DDOT spokesperson Karyn LeBlanc says design work on the plan—which isn’t just about repaving, but re aligning lanes, including “intermodal” features, etc—is now 90 percent complete, and designs will be presented for approval by the federal Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission in September. Best case scenario, reconstruction starts in January; most likely, LeBlanc says, it won’t kick off till later in spring.

Yarrrgh!

The Washington Post has a nice story today by Paul Schwartzman about the dangers of riding on top of the double-decker buses operated by Open Top Sightseeing—low-hanging tree branches, power lines, etc.

I liked the story even better, though, when I watched it on the WUSA-TV 11 p.m. newscast last Monday:

Good job, Channel 9! All of this attention, of course, has been prompted by the tragic deaths of Joshua Stoll and Michael Feiock last Friday en route to a Nats game.

Schwartzman, to his credit, added some more factual meat to the story, including the fact that Open Top itself has trimmed tree branches to prevent injuries. Still, the Post is notoriously stingy about acknowledging other press outlets’ coverage, and that’s especially true when it comes to TV and radio newscasts.

I’m probably the last person to see this, but I still think it’s worth posting. This video provides enough reason for people to use better bike locks (and use them correctly).

Metro accidentally releases workers’ Social Security numbers

Transit agency offers identity theft monitoring services to affected employees

Metro has advised nearly 4,700 past and present employees that their social security numbers were published accidentally on the transit agency’s Web site last month.

The information was posted between June 9 and 25 as part of a solicitation from Metro to companies interested in providing worker’s compensation and risk management services. The document mistakenly included the social security numbers of 4,675 employees. A smaller group of employees had their names and social security numbers posted in the lengthy document. Metro officials continue to analyze the information for any other data breaches.

In the sad aftermath of Alice Swanson’s death, blogs left and right have been awash in comments about the great urban biking vs. urban driving debate, which inevitably drills down to versions of the following claim (from Megan McArdle’s Atlantic blog): “if bicyclists want to be respected like other vehicles, they have to obey the same rules.”

Allow me to voice the unspoken secret of urban bicycling: No, we don’t. The whole fun and profit of riding your bike in the city is breaking the rules when safe and possible. That’s why I can get from my office in Adams Morgan down to city hall in 10 minutes or less during even the worst times of day traffic-wise. It’s what makes riding a bike around this city worthwhile.

I ride pretty much everywhere I need to go in the city, averaging about 50 miles a week, not counting any recreational/fitness rides. I also own a car, which I drive an average of twice a week. I’ve been in exactly one bike accident in nine years in town, when a driver made an illegal U-turn in front of me mid-block.

That said, I thought I’d share my “sensible scofflaw” strategies:

1. Running stop signs. My usual MO is this: As I approach a four-way stop, I assess traffic and slow down so that I take my turn while still rolling. If I can piggyback on a car moving through the intersection, I do. Actually stopping would mean wasting a considerable amount of energy getting back up to speed, especially seeing as I rarely downshift as I approach. Pet peeve: Fairly often, drivers will stop and wave me through at four-way stops. I can’t tell you how much I hate this: Do not make exceptions for me. When drivers make exceptions to the rules of the road, that’s when accidents happen. Take your turn, I’ll take mine.

2. Running traffic lights. I generally don’t do it when there’s heavy traffic or at complicated intersections with multiple protected left turns. But, when traffic is light, I’ll jump the gun after looking left-right-left and watching closely to see if any cars stopped with me are signaling or contemplating turns. Another thing I tend to do is wait to cross in the middle of the lane, edged almost into the intersection, where I can be easily seen.

3. Going the wrong way down one-way streets. Try to avoid it, with one big exception. I live on the 1400 block of W Street NW, which is one way heading east. Every day I have to head west to work, so I generally ride west on the sidewalk to the intersection with 15th Street and Florida Avenue, ride through the intersection (after going through it four or more times a day for more than a year, I’ve got the signal timing down), then continue across the 1500 block of W/Florida, still going the wrong way. If I didn’t do this, I’d have to detour east and south to V Street NW, which would just be stupid.

4. Sliding past cars stopped at intersections. Don’t know if this is even illegal, but this is the whole reason why you ride your bike around town! In fact, I dare a driver to cite a time they saw a cyclist actually wait in line with traffic. The secret to doing this safely and successfully is to be defensive. Generally, as I approach the intersection, I’ll slide to the inside of the waiting cars to avoid the right hook, then while waiting for the light, ride in front of the right-most lane to the outside, making eye contact with the driver. If the light changes while I approach the intersection, I slow down, allow a car to pass and slip in just behind.

Any other cyclists out there care to share their own sensible-scofflaw strategies?

This is a bike-friendly workplace. A lot of CP employees bike to work, or at least keep their bikes in the office. And I think it’s safe to say we’re all pretty freaked out about Alice Swanson’s death.

That tragedy has been discussed, with predictable results, on a lot of blogs. The comments tend to break along two lines: 1) cyclists need to obey the rules more; 2) vehicles need to watch out for cyclists more. So what do you do when there’s a case where, at the moment, it’s not clear that either Swanson or the truck that hit her were necessarily to blame?

Today on my way to work I was crossing the P Street NW bridge. An SUV with Maryland tags was waiting at the egress from the Rock Creek Parkway. The driver waited for me to cross but didn’t look the other way and hit a cyclist crossing from the other side. The cyclist shouted “Woah!” and hit the SUV’s grille; fortunately it seemed the car had just rocked forward and hadn’t gotten going. I called back to the cyclist to see if he was OK, and he said he was. At the next light I had to pull in front of the stopped SUV to turn left when it turned green. I gave him the stinkeye but he was very absorbed in whatever he was drinking through a straw.

I’m jumpy. I think everyone on two wheels is. And I don’t think there are any easy answers here.

The Post reports that a cyclist was killed just north of Dupont Circle this morning. A garbage truck “just ran completely over her,” according to D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services spokesperson Alan Etter.

I just got hit by a car. I was biking across Euclid at 16th Street NW, and everything seemed to be in order: I was in the crosswalk, Euclid had a red light, I had a walk signal. Prime crossing time, I thought, dutifully looking both ways. Nevertheless, a bouncy old Cadillac, which was stopped at the intersection long before I started crossing, still managed to lurch forward just as I rolled in front of it, thereby hitting me.

It’s not a huge deal. I didn’t fall over; I didn’t lose consciousness; I simply extricated myself from his grill and made my way to the corner.

What surprised me most was my own reaction to the incident. I’ve never been hit by a car before, but had you posited the scenario to me in the hypothetical, I would have certainly imagined myself enraged and vengeful. This morning, however, once the hypothetical became a gruesome reality, I found myself timid and awkward. As I waited at the corner for the light to change, I could not bring myself to make eye contact with the driver who had just hit me. Even though I was in the right of way, I still hung my head in a backwards kind of shame. It felt like the moment after a drunken hookup at a bar that both parties regret and neither wants to talk about.

So, in order to take my mind off a mildly throbbing right hamstring, I wonder: was I wrong? Should I have put this irresponsible motorist in his place? Pounded his hood? Kicked his windshield? Twisted his tailpipe?

And the question that is truly pestering me: if I, the hapless victim, was catapulted into such a moral quandary after this encounter, what is going through the driver’s head? Anything? Anything at all?

Via TheWashCycle, the news (to me; the story’s been out for over a month, ouch) that D.C. has for the first time in many years slipped off the list that the lock company Kryptonite keeps of the Top 10 cities with the most bike thefts.

I’ve got no idea how rigorously the data are parsed over at Kryptonite, but its blog post on the subject expresses surprise that Philadelphia rocketed to the top, displacing New York City for the top spot it’s held for the past nine years. “When we did the compilation, there wasn’t even a city close to Philly. Not even close,” says Kryptonite’s Donna T.

It’s even weirder that we’re not on there because, Nationals Park aside, bike-rack availability is lousy here. And empirically, pretty much everyone I know here has had at least one bike stolen. But hey, a win’s a win.

Kryptonite also offers largely common-sense set of bike-locking tips.

Photo by Rockers generation

A local Girl Scouts troop is speaking out against major Nationals advertiser ExxonMobil. According to a press release from The Coalition to Strike Out Exxon:

The Washington Nationals ballpark is the first stadium to be LEED Silver Certified by the U.S. Green Building Council … Yet the Nationals continue to accept millions of advertising dollars from Exxon, by far one of the world’s biggest contributors to global warming.

The Girl Scouts have joined the campaign to prevent Nationals Park from being renamed in Exxon’s honor. In the process, the scouts will fulfill every girl’s dream: Getting to wear a polar bear outfit. This Sunday, June 29, the girls will bear up to raise awareness about the Nats funder:

Sunday is “Nats Conversion Day,” when the first 10,000 fans that bring in any old MLB merchandise can trade it in for a brand-new Nats Curly W cap courtesy of ExxonMobil. The girl scouts will don polar bear suits and hold up signs about ExxonMobil and global warming as people enter the stadium.

Photo by mape s

Former ANC 5B-10 commissioner Kathy Henderson tends to draw strong reactions from the people she encounters. She’s a scrapper, known for throwing all her energy into filing complaints, writing letters and putting politicians on the spot. When she relinquished her seat last year to run for city council, she had her teenage daughter, India, run in her place (Henderson told me she “told” her daughter to run). And ever since India won the seat, her mom has exhibited masterful control over the young comish, marching her out of one meeting so a quorum wouldn’t be met. Henderson has also been a vocal supporter of those controversial police checkpoints and a vocal opponent of bars and loitering kids.

Like her or not, you can’t deny Henderson has had particularly bad luck with her car, a 1991 blue Mercury Capri. First someone torched it, then, last November Henderson got a ticket for parking it in the median of Pennsylvania Avenue to attend a police oversight hearing–even though she’d put her “official business” placard on the dashboard. Now her well-known car is the object of what Henderson sees as vengeful slander. When a poster on the Fifth police district listserv ranted about the reckless driver behind the wheel of vehicle that fit the description of Henderson’s car (“blue capri with howard univ stickers in back window and dents on the back left…dc license of ‘anc 5b__ __’.”), Henderson fired right back: “I find your timing suspect and wonder why you did not immediately call the police? I suspect that your true motive is some ridiculous attempt to embarrass me in a public forum.”

Henderson hasn’t responded to my email so far.

Matthew Yglesias is all over MyBikeLane, the D.C. iteration of a site that lets cyclists post pictures of vehicles parked in bike lanes. Even though I suspect this is a grand forum for people outraged by vehicles parked in bike lanes to report vehicles parked in bike lanes to other people outraged by vehicles parked in bike lanes, there’s always the chance that public shaming will discourage this dastardly practice.

But over at DCist, a number of commenters have complained that cyclists are whiny and need to get off their high horses. I think there’s something to that; many cyclists want to have it both ways, freely disregarding traffic signals when it suits them, pulling in front of drivers without warning and terrifying pedestrians. Just the other day I was pedaling up 17th Street NW and saw a guy riding south in the northbound side of the street. He nearly hit me, then weaved through cars around me before heading over to the side of the street he should have been on all along.

Of course, he was not wearing a helmet.

There’s a lot of enthusiasm online for making D.C. a more bike-friendly place. May I humbly suggest as an advocate of that position—and someone who’s had to break rules to not get killed by oblivious drivers—that cyclists can lead by example here? Keep up the pressure on bike-lane scofflaws. And don’t be one yourself, if you can possibly avoid it.

Photo by tvol