City Desk » memorial bridge circle

Morning Roundup: “You Lie!” Edition

Andrew Beaujon — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:54:48 +0000

ANOTHER HORSE'S ASS NAMED JOE WILSON, this time a Republican, breaks decorum and accidentally says what he thinks. This is a cause of great concern! In American politics, there is a ridiculously precious conceit called decorum, which means you can Twitter a retort or pound your opponents on a chat show later, but you must never, ever, show the passion for your job one would take for granted in a high school football coach.

Someone just called me, from Germany (!) to say that there are 22 ghost bikes in Dupont Circle today to honor Alice Swanson. Great!

AFTER THE JUMP: Trees, eagles, bells, weird traffic circles, Giants fans, Beatles, Big Star

Yesterday at the circle on the western end of Memorial Bridge, which I have written about before, police were ticketing motorists for an offense I can't quite figure out. (A Park Police spokesperson is looking into it for me.) My totally uninformed take, then: That circle is a magnet for crazy, sure, but it's also the worst-marked and least intuitive traffic hazard in the region. Instead of penalizing people for not knowing what the hell to do there, how about re-engineering the whole shebozzle?

Mosquito farms appearing around trees on Champlain Street NW. I don't have a call out on this one. Anyone know the score?

BIKE COMMUTING TIP: The weather is glorious, and people who had been in hiding from the heat are once again taking their jogging clothes out for walks. This is a concern if your ride, like mine, takes you on bike trails. You simply must have a bell. Local bike stores have fine bells, but Annapolis' Velo Orange offers classy Japanese bells that you can mount to your handlebars or, if you're even a little handy, to your stem. Your bike will look great, and you will receive shrugs rather than glares when you pass people walking in Lycra.

POWERPOP UPDATE: It is a good week to be a sad geezer. While I save up for the mono Beatles reissues, I've been listening to the Big Star box set, which Marc Hirsh did a great job of reviewing/destroying in this week's paper. (Hirsh wrote this marvelous piece for the Boston Globe, and I'm really glad to see him in our paper.) Like Hirsh, I am not convinced of the necessity of this box set, which I should add I got for free so take that for what it's worth. But it has made me re-listen to the Big Star albums I already had, as well as Chris Bell's I Am the Cosmos, which still sounds sooo good.

GIANTS FANS: This is a big week for you. (1) (2) Embrace it. Also: Wemple is one of you. Dumbasses.

EAGLES TERRIFY SUBURBAN RODENTS: Morning Roundup's previously unnewsworthy neighborhood of Del Ray was the site of an eagle attack yesterday, reports Mrs. Morning Roundup, who watched one of the grand birds fall out of a tree and bounce off our sandbox with a baby squirrel in its beak. The eagle gathered itself and flew off with its lunch, leaving behind a bereft mama squirrel, who ran around our yard making weird noises. Circle of life!

Follow me on Twitter.

That is all.

Avant-Garde Driving at Memorial Bridge Circle

Andrew Beaujon — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 14:37:57 +0000

This morning I saw some driving that was remarkable, even by the standards of Memorial Bridge Circle, where as I've written before, I see near accidents daily.

Here's what happened:

I (represented by bicycle icon) am pausing and drinking some water. Driver of beige Corolla with Maryland plates (represented by the satellite icon) finds herself facing an inconvenience: She hadn't meant to follow the lane she was in over Memorial Bridge! Rather than put herself out further, she...just stops at the bridge entrance. Traffic backs up behind her, all the way onto the circle. Car horns are honking. Drivers are freaking out.

Not the driver of the beige Corolla with Maryland plates. She calmly waits for a break in traffic going the other way, does a U-turn, crosses another solid line, and scoots off in the direction indicated with a wobbly red line and an arrow.

While I'm marveling at this advance in driving science (usually you have to go to, like, Madrid to see this sort of thing), a rescue vehicle from a department I can't identify does the exact same thing.

Memorial Bridge Circle: A Victim of “Peculiarity”

Andrew Beaujon — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 15:52:40 +0000

Coming off Memorial Bridge onto the George Washington Parkway is enough to get anyone flustered. As Wikipedia says:

A peculiarity of the at the western terminus is that traffic already in the circle must yield to traffic entering the circle — the exact opposite of the usual rule.

Every morning I see exactly the same traffic incident resulting from this "peculiarity."

A Virginia-bound car (a) exits the bridge just as a car in the traffic circle (b) inches forward, not sure to whom it's supposed to yield. At point (c), car (a) nearly rear-ends car (b) at point (c) then lays on the horn and chases car (b) all the way down toward 395, honking, flashing lights, and flipping the bird. (I'm at point (d), glad I'm on a bike.)

I see this every. single. morning. Anyone have any idea how this "peculiarity" could be addressed? You can't have bridge traffic yield; that would quickly back traffic up across the bridge and probably up 23rd Street NW and the Rock Creek Parkway. Could signage address it? A light?