The main Bike to Work Day (BTWD) pit stop in DC, Franklin Park, is not served by any bike infrastructure of any kind. Unless and until this is remedied, all cyclists and all vendors should avoid this pit stop completely.
This was my 12th BTWD. Ok, 11th if you don’t count Boat to Work Day where it rained so much they had to park a Circulator Bus at Freedom Plaza to give out t-shirts.
I ride a few thousand miles a year, mostly in DC. I’m okay riding in traffic. But the point of BTWD is not to get cyclists like me a new cheap t-shirt and a water bottle with some vendor name on it. The point is to show regular people that they can bike to work. It’s lunacy to expect inexperienced or hesitant cyclists to brave lower 14th St NW. I certainly wouldn’t send my friends and family there.
I can’t imagine sending someone to that stop who wasn’t already an experienced city cyclist. And not all stops are like this. The main Virginia stop at Rosslyn is well-served by bike infrastructure (and the Intersection of Doom is better-ish, I haven’t been nearly killed there in years). The old spot at Freedom Plaza in DC shows off the lanes on 15th St NW and PA Ave NW (and to a lesser extent 11th NW, which is still WAY better than 14th NW).
But Franklin Park has none of this. The lanes on 13th NW and 14th NW end before the park. I St and K St are absolutely not bikeable for an inexperienced cyclist. And you can’t even bike on the sidewalk (legally) because it’s in the weird CBD trapezoid.
We need to demand better.
@complain That (and my BTWD tour) got me thinking – how many of the 110 BTWD pit stops are detached from anything resembling safe biking infrastructure? Heck, even ones that are *on* a trail might be challenging to get to (e.g., there was a pit stop by the Coast Guard HQ on the new trail parallel to 295…but there's a gap between that nice path and any of the other nearby trails/lanes)…
Riding around and evaluating how to get to each stop from a central location would be a fun project for someone with time on their hands
@complain I'll add it to my list of such projects. Maybe once "learning coach" duties take the summer pause I can get one or two of those done.