Silver Spring Trails

I was unable to attend the Nov. 29 Bike Share planning workshop hosted by MC DOT, but the WABA blog post Bikesharing Growing to Montgomery County gives a good account.

A major concern I had about whether Bike Share can work in Silver Spring was whether bikeshare stations clustered around Silver Spring might be too isolated from the system in D.C. The WABA post reports that planners are addressing this:

…A side note, in planning talks DDOT has agreed to expand bikeshare stations north between the system core and the new clusters in Bethesda, Silver Spring & Takoma Park to help connect the entire system.

The public is invited to submit ideas for locations of future bikeshare stations at the Capital Bikeshare crowdsourcing map.

One important item is still missing from the plan – a serious commitment to beef up the bicycling infrastructure to make the street network more bike friendly. Much can be done with signs and paint. Bike lanes, bike sharrows, and signs marking routes and reminding all to share the road can make a difference. Yet little has been done to mark streets in the Silver Spring CBD that have long been identified in the Master Plans as on-road bike routes. Two examples:
1) Spring Street was recently restriped to narrow the traffic lanes by creating approx. 6′ wide “dead zones” adjacent to the center median in a several block long section centered at Second Avenue. MCDOT could as easily have narrowed the traffic lanes by placing them adjacent to the center median, and placing full width bike lanes on the outside.
2) When Cameron Street was restriped there was room for bike lanes, yet MCDOT instead chose to install a center turn lane that was not needed.

I am excited that MCDOT appears to be serious about bringing bikesharing to Montgomery County. Now if we can only get MCDOT to read the approved Master Plans when it restripes streets, and use stripes and sharrows to show that bikes have their place on the road.

I’m in Minneapolis for a convention – my wife’s convention, I’m the spouse free to explore the city while she works. It is ironic that I have traveled 900+ miles to get my first experience with bike share when we have the best bike share system in the nation right next door to my Silver Spring home, in the D.C. Capital Bikeshare.

The Nice ride system appears to be the same as our own Capital Bikeshare system, except that the bikes are lime green. I’m impressed with how well the system works, at least for a tourist just trying to see the sights. I’ve taken 10 rides in two days, and have found the system to be very easy to use. I’ve never found a bike station that had no bikes or no empty spaces. The only glich so far has been one station kiosk that balked briefly when I tried to exchange a bike that was nearing its 30 minute free limit for a fresh bike – and that was quickly resolved by a phone call to the trouble number displayed at the kiosk. I’m impressed, and I’m starting to think our own Capital Bikeshare system can work in Silver Spring if it has the right distribution of stations.

And I’ve found yet another CCT in Minneapolis, to confuse acronyms with our own Capital Crescent Trail and the Corridor Cities Transitway. Minneapolis will soon have its own CCT in the Central Corridor light-rail Transit now under construction. Minneapolis already has the Hiawatha light-rail that extends from downtown Minneapolis south through the airport to the Mall of America. This new light-rail line will share the rail and stations with the Hiawatha line in downtown Minneapolis, then will head east across the Mississippi River on the lower deck (south side) of the Washington Ave. bridge, through the center of the University of Minnesota, and continue on to Saint Paul.

If you are ever in Minneapolis, you should explore the Mississippi River bridges by bike. Almost all the bridges are very accessible by bike, and several have full width bike paths. The views are spectacular. We talk about “complete streets” that provide for bike and ped traffic. Minneapolis has “complete bridges”.