At my most passionate, I think of bicycles as a cure for just about all of society’s ills. Bicyclists are doing their part to combat global warming by keeping 20 pounds of carbon dioxide (per gallon of gas!) out of the atmosphere. We’re two-wheeled warriors against the American obesity epidemic (that gasoline we’re not burning is being replaced by calories – roughly 30 burned per mile.) And don’t blame us for beltway congestion or the 42,000+ car accident fatalities every year. Oh, and the paving of the planet? We’d be happy with a skinny little bike path – no 12-lane highways for us, thanks.

Maybe they’re not all as self-righteous as I am about it, but it appears that much of Washington, DC, agrees with me. As of the last census, almost 37 percent of DC households didn’t have access to a car. Throughout the city, more than one in every 100 work-related trips happens by bike, and that number continues to grow. In our “bikey-est” neighborhoods – Mount Pleasant, Logan Circle and Capitol Hill – that figure surpasses five per 100.

Besides the do-gooder reasons listed above, my motivations for riding a bike include much more personal factors. For instance, I don’t drink coffee in the morning, and the adrenaline rush from a morning ride to work gets my blood moving. And I figure I’m saving the money that I would have spent on a gym membership and enjoying my exercise without having to try to make time for it in my busy schedule.

We’re entering the nicest time of year to be a bicycle commuter in DC. Even our relatively mild winters are a hassle for bicyclists, who need multiple bulky layers to brave the cold, but then we end up sweating inside of them. And there is not a pair of gloves or socks out there that are thick enough to keep wind-exposed fingers and toes warm on our coldest February days. (Not that waiting for the bus in subzero temperatures is any great joy either.)

Biking under the blazing sun of a DC August is no picnic, but the bike-induced breeze cuts the heat and dries your sweat, cooling you off considerably. My friend Scott credits me with solving the problem that was keeping him from bike-commuting from Takoma Park to downtown every day – he now keeps a stash of baby wipes in his desk. Sometimes solutions can be so simple.

And even though several bus routes offer practically door-to-door service between my home to my work, I still get there in less than half the time on my bike. And I save my $1.35 each way.

DC Bikes
DC is fortunate to have avid cyclists in positions of power. Former Mayor Anthony Williams wore his bike helmet almost as much as his trademark bowtie. He commuted to work on a bicycle and showed up at the Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA)’s famous Bike to Work Days. Mayor Adrian Fenty is a triathlete who bikes 30-40 miles for his training rides (on a $4,000 bike, according to rumor.) And Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells describes his approach to getting around the city as “multimodal” but likes bicycling because “it's usually quicker than a car in the city, there’s never an issue of parking, and it's a way that I can more intimately see what's going on in my ward.”

This enthusiasm for cycling has led to some concrete benefits for city cyclists. After a financial crisis (and not enough bikemongering in the upper reaches of DC government) in the 1990s, a new bike coordinator for the city was hired in 2001, ushering in a new era.

In 2001, there were three miles of bicycle lanes in the entire city, according to current DC Bike Coordinator Jim Sebastian. The DC Bicycle Master Plan went into effect April 2005, and our three miles of bike lanes have become 30. You can see the Transportation Department’s 800 new bike parking spaces on almost every corner.

The city is still behind – according to their own plans, the city should have striped 40 miles of on-road bike lanes by now, and a couple of trail-building projects have become mired in bureaucratic stagnation. Take for example the Metropolitan Branch Trail, which someday will connect Union Station with Silver Spring in an unbroken, off-road dedicated bike trail, connecting to the Capital Crescent Trail and the Anacostia Trail system. This biker fantasy is still far from a reality. Work has gone mind-numbingly slowly on this project, and though completion was projected for last year, it’s still only one-fifth done.

Similar problems have beleaguered the Anacostia Trail, which is overdue for improvements. The city has only completed one-eighth of its work plan on that. And it hasn’t even started improvements to the Rock Creek Trail, which is dangerously narrow for the amount of traffic it gets. Rock Creek was under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service, but they cried poor and handed it over to DDOT, which hasn’t done anything with it so far.

These delays are significant, because when you ask DC bicyclists what is the best way to encourage cycling, almost 60 percent answer that you have to build bikeways. Bike parking is nice – including the valet bike parking at the new baseball stadium and the bike station they’re building for Union Station – but none of it matters if we don’t have safe places to ride.

Road Hazards
It’s illegal for bikes to ride on sidewalks downtown, and it’s dangerous to ride anywhere with a lot of pedestrians, as their behavior is less predictable than cars’ behavior. And as for roads, Tommy Wells says, “Roads are hostile to bicyclists. Bike lanes are painted next to parked cars that can open their doors on one side and traffic on the other side. You're on a bike, you're exposed as a person, and there are three tons of metal on other side of you. It's intimidating.”

Car drivers often don’t understand the rules of the road when it comes to bicycles. The fact is, bikes have as much right to the road as cars do. And especially where there’s no sidewalk we can ride on, it’s the only place we have. But car drivers still harass bicyclists by telling them to get off the road and driving in threatening ways. Area bike commuter Kadd Stephens recently experienced anti-biker road rage, when a driver, furious that he was driving behind a bicycle, screamed “all sorts of threats about beating me into the ground” and “even motioned as though he might exit his vehicle and offered up a rather impressive string of emasculating taunts.”

Bikers in the past few years have experienced a puzzling new road hazard, in the form of the mysterious brick-throwers on 11th Street NW, which have nailed more than one cyclist.

I lived in Bogotá, Colombia, for a few months in 2002. When we think of the world’s great bike-friendly cities, we’re more likely to think of Amsterdam and Beijing – and maybe Boulder and Portland – than Bogotá. But a few years back, a visionary mayor named Enrique Peñalosa built new bike lanes, instituted an annual Car-Free Day, and closed down 75 miles of roadways so that people could jog, bike and enjoy car-free living. A million and a half people come out every weekend.

When you ask Peñalosa how wide a city’s sidewalks should be, he answers, “as wide as your love for your city.” There’s no such thing as too much space for bikes and pedestrians. If we know there is a safe place for us to be, we will occupy it. And more and more people may start leaving their cars at home.

To learn more about DDOT’s bicycle programs and initiatives, visit ddot.dc.gov. The District’s bicycle program specialist can be reached at 202-671-0681. Also visit www.waba.org or call 202-628-2500 for information on the WABA.