For months, L Street has remained under construction, covered with dirt piles and barricades, much like a war-zone.
Finally, construction is over and silence has returned. But the battle continues – only now, it’s between cars and bikes.
The reason? A poorly designed, one-way bike path recently installed along the left hand side of the street.
The path has already drawn skepticism. The Washington Post on Nov. 9 included the headline, “Whose lane is it anyway?” That’s because the mixed-use lane allows cars to enter at parts, and because drivers turning left cross the path without stopping the bike lane’s traffic. The result is a dangerous traffic hazard and an invitation for accidents.
This city needs to make biking easier, and bike paths ought to service the many college campuses around the area, particularly GW. It is unconscionable that 23rd Street and Pennsylvania Avenue do not have bike paths. These central arteries service a campus of nearly 20,000 students. Students certainly bike to school – try finding a Capital Bikeshare bike on campus in the evening.
The Hatchet reported last spring that plans are underway to build a new path through a redesigned Washington Circle. That’s an important step in increasing bikers’ ease of access to campus. But the new lane shouldn’t take cues from the L Street path. It needs to be safe, offset and well marked with traffic signals and signs.
L Street is a busy commercial center. Many students walk or bike down L Street to get to internships, to grab lunch downtown or to commute to GW. The poor design makes access to the area more complicated. After a bike trip downtown, returning to campus is made difficult by the one-way path.
The path, which begins at Pennsylvania and L streets and continues through the downtown area, passing by the 15th Street bike path, is a marvel of incompetent city planning. In the first few blocks, the path runs between parked vehicles and a narrow driving lane. At some points, cars can park right in the lane itself on weekends.
Starting at New Hampshire Avenue, the lane closes off, with white rods protruding awkwardly from the road’s service. Two mark the beginning of this closed portion, built so that cars cannot enter the path. These rods are not marked with orange reflecting material and are easy for unsuspecting drivers to miss at night.
This bike lane makes access more difficult. Along the stretch separated by these rods, 150 parking spots have been displaced, according to the Washington Examiner. Garbage collection and delivery to businesses is complicated, as the bike path separates the road from the curb.
To make matters worse, drivers turning left must actually enter the bike path. But that defeats the purpose. Cars cross the bikers' lane, and then drive in it until they turn left. Mere white lines drawn in the ground – not physical barriers – keep these cars only inches from bikers.
These lanes need to be designed for bikers. They can’t be one-way. They can’t take over a lane once dedicated to drivers. They can’t give bikers a false sense of security while complicating traffic patterns.
Instead, they need to be physically offset from the road and given their own traffic lights. And they can’t just run in one direction. They need to be built throughout the city, especially on GW's campus.
Planning traffic in this fast-moving city isn’t easy. Bike paths are key to any urban area, but before they come to GW, they need to be built with drivers and bikers in mind.
Alex Schneider is a first year student in the GW Law School.
Not to mention how many bikers swerve into the car lane to avoid the posts at L and New Hampshire.
This article is rubbish. I’d make a compelling argument with evidence and research to prove it, but since the author didn’t bother, neither will I. The L street track is great and soon enough will be paired with one on M. Ride it. Research it. Try again
I have ridden it several times, both day and night. I love it. It is true you cannot just day dream as you pass the areas where the cars merge, but with just a little bit of awareness and a willingness to share, this lane gives bicyclists a safer way to get across town. Thank you DCDOT. I also like riding in the old fashioned kind of bike lane, but this article doesn’t mention how alert you have to be as cars idle in them or suddenly pull in front of a rider to get a parking space and, of course turn at intersections. As to the lost parking spaces, when you go from car absolute dominance in all planning to mixed use there is going to be some adjustment. It’s not a big deal.
Regrettably the author is opining without knowing much about the subject. The author’s primary objection seems to be that he wants a brand new bike path that is physically separated from the street without requiring the removal of a travel lane. This seems like an absurd with. “Bike paths” are possible in Rock Creek Park and along existing and abandonned rail lines, but elsewhere the only place to put any type of bike lane is on the existing roads–bikes are going to have to deal with automobiles and pedestrians at every intersection.
The author has not clearly thought about intersections. The most common source of accident at intersections results from right hook turns, in which a car barely passes a bike and makes a sharp turn into the bike. On one-way streets, a left-hook turn is a similar risk.
There is a reason why drivers are not allowed to make right turns from a left lane or left turns from a right lane, and thereby cross another lane. Whether that other lane is a general travel lane or a bike lane, the essence of the hazard is the same. Instead, you change lanes to get as far to the side of the road before turning–and there is no danger of hooking anybody.
The author’s complaints about the merge area is thus, in effect, a request to adopt a discredited and dangerous intersection design that would reinforce the right-hook tendencies of drivers who don’t know any better.
I hope the author does not drive a car near any bike lanes, because he sounds dangerous.
The author’s preference for a 2-way lane here reflects a total lack of awareness that this has always been a one-way street, and that a similar lane will be built going the other way on M street.
Finally, there is his preference for additional signals for the L street cycle track, as an alternatve to the mixing zone. That is theoretically possible, but it would have been infeasible on L Street and basically ensured that the lane never got built. As constructed, the new cycle track has minimal adverse impact on traffic during afternoon rush hour because cars are able to turn left as needed and the entire roadway always narrowed to 3 lanes at 12th Street.
The author’s proposal would–for all practical purposes–reduce the flow of traffic on L street to 2 lanes. Instead of curious confused drivers having to learn how to navigate something new, we would be hearing about massive traffic tieups by design.
. That is theoretically possible, but the
My favorite part of this is the DRAWING of the bicycle. Really Hatchet, you couldn’t find one real bike on campus to photograph?
I’ve used the L street cycletrack about two weeks now. I do not agree that this is an example of incompetent city planning. While I would like a completely separated bike lane, there’s no way that’s going to happen in DC. We have too much existing infrastructure. There is no space for that. Also, as one other commenter alluded to, DDOT will be doing a one way cyclectrack heading west to complement L street.
In the meantime, while it’s less convenient, cyclists can head north to R street. Please, for heaven’s sake, do not ride the wrong way on L street. You’ll put your fellow cyclists at risk, as they’ll have to dodge you. I’ve already seen two people do this.
The author does raise a good point about cars having to mix. I have seen a number of cars turning from the non-turn lane. It seems that drivers aren’t getting the message that they need to cross the bike lane to the shared turn lane. And to be fair, that’s no surprise: there are always cars in front of you, so they can’t see the road markings, and there’s no similar design in other large US cities. So, this aspect may not have been well thought out. The author still shouldn’t have condemned the entire project as incompetent.
Meanwhile, I wonder if it might have been better to keep the turn lane separate from the bikes, and give cars a left turn arrow, like they already do on the 15th street track.