The Georgetown Metropolitan

The ANC is meeting for its October session next Monday night via Zoom at its normal 6:30 pm time slot. The agenda is a full one but one item really jumps out at GM: The resolution concerning a proposed bike lane on Dumbarton St.

The city is proposing to add a contra-flow bike lane on Dumbarton St. This is a type of bike lane that the city has successfully installed across the city, particularly in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. It essentially adds a lane just for bikes in the opposite direction from the normal traffic. This is what it looks like:

To those not familiar with them, they appear weird. But they work, and they provide a way for cyclists to travel safely in both directions on a street. For that reason they are often installed on quieter less busy streets, as it gives them a safe option away from nearby more dangerous parallel routes.

The proposal for Dumbarton St. would not call for the removal of any parking. It would not limit the use of the road by anyone who currently uses it. It would simply add a new safer route for people traveling through Georgetown on a bike.

And, of course, people lost their goddam minds about it.

Starting off, the Commission expressed skepticism about the lane, primarily focused on the contradictory assertions that the lane is neither necessary nor good enough because it wouldn’t connect with other bike lanes. (“These bike lanes are terrible, and what small portions!”).

But then caller after caller from the public vented their spleens about how much they were offended that such a proposal was even put forth. Essentially the complaints boiled down to assertion that to provide this lane, you would attract cyclists. That’s it. That’s the complaint. Attracting cyclists is a priori viewed as an assault on a certain group of residents. And any facility built by the city to offer even meager protection to cyclists is viewed as nothing but an attractive nuisance by these upstanding residents.

And since that last meeting a five year old girl riding a bike was run over a killed right in front of her father in a DC crosswalk.

A contraflow bike lane would not have saved her. But her death was just part and parcel with a transportation system that says dead children is an acceptable cost of moving cars around. It’s a system that is willing to make roads safer only up until the point at which those measures slightly inconvenience an impatient driver or offend the sensibilities of a Georgetown homeowner who has never met a bicycle safety measure they didn’t object to.

It’s a system where a simple bike lane that removes not a lick of parking gets greeted with howls of condemnation and makes progress towards a future with genuinely zero traffic fatalities literally impossible. It’s a culture where safety advocates have to trade in tombstones to get speed bumps.

And on Friday, a four year old boy on a bike was run over in a crosswalk in Dupont.

It’s so, so, so tiring to face the same pushback from the same people over and over again. People who swear up and down that they are for safe roads. (They even have a bike they use on the weekends!) But who will never actually back any measure to make roads safer if it means even the slightest inconvenience to a non-cyclist. Even when the inconvenience doesn’t actually exist, as is the case here.

And so the ANC will likely successfully block this lane, and a culture that produces ghost bikes with training wheels will just keep rolling on.

https://twitter.com/tbridge777/status/1441901883652808709

(Update: Literally minutes after this article was posted, yet another child was slammed into by a driver on DC streets. They’re already chalking it up/excusing it due to “the sun”):

My team responded to the scene. A child and a mother crossing the street were struck by a driver who was turning onto Georgia Avenue, whose vision was obstructed by the sun.

Thankfully the child and mom are in good condition but are going to the hospital to be checked. https://t.co/PyCVcp2xNf pic.twitter.com/Bt5R8nhlv5

— CM Janeese Lewis George (@CMLewisGeorgeW4) September 30, 2021

Here’s the rest of the agenda:

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Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• The story (once again) of how Country Roads Take Me Home was written along Georgetown roads.
• Update on the GU Norovirus situation.

The French Market returns this weekend to Book Hill. The festivities start Friday and they run all the way till Sunday. Friday and Saturday, it is from 10 am to 5 pm, and on Sunday it’s noon to 5:00.

This is a return of an in-person French Market for the first time since the pandemic. There was a virtual French Market last spring, but this will be a return to the lively street fair that characterized the event in the past. This is a great opportunity for huge crowds to descend on Book Hill, with stores from Q to Reservoir out showing their wares on the sidewalk.

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Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Although a norovirus is spreading on campus, GU has turned its Covid numbers down.
• The book and movie of the Exorcist was based in Georgetown, but the real house that inspired the book was in Cottage City, MD.

A new juice shop is coming to the corner of N And Wisconsin (1300 Wisconsin Ave.) in the space formerly occupied by the Papyrus stationery store. The company is called Pressed, and it’s got locations scattered across the US. This appears to be one of at least two stores in DC the company is planning (the other is on P St. in Logan Circle).

The company appears to have offerings ranging from the woo-woo “cleanse” type juices to simply lemonades. But one thing that doesn’t vary is the cost; the bottles go for about $5-$6 a pop. And like most new internet companies that use all lower case in their branding, it appears that getting you into a subscription is their goal.

But having a shop right here will help you avoid that, if you’re so inclined.

No word yet on when the shop will open, but GM would guess that it will be up and running by mid-winter.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• The bizarre egging spree continues.
• The incredibly unpleasant norovirus is roiling GU’s campus.

Large planks from the trunks will be used to reconstruct several of the iconic bridges that hop scotch back and forth over the park’s brook. One of the bridges is the Clapper Falls bridge, seen in this vintage photo:

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