Boston Biker Goes To Washington

Written by Boston Biker on Feb 25

Last weekend I got on a train and headed south, to the land of hot air…AKA Washington DC.

Lamentably I was unable to take my bicycle. I was a sad state walking all over the place, but it did give me the chance to check out all the other bikers in town. And there were a lot of them. I started seeing cyclists the moment I got out of the train station.

Messengers, guys in suits, ladies in dresses, DC was experiencing a bit of a warm spell and it seemed everyone was determined to enjoy it via bicycle.

The second thing I saw after getting out of the train station was this little gem, conveniently located right across the street from Union Station.

This is DC’s bike share system. I was curious as to how it worked, lucky for me they had lots of good instructions on site.

You can sign up for a day, a week, or longer. A day pass is 5 bucks (but they do put a 100 dollar hold on your card till you bring the bike back), and the price is more cost effective as you sign up for the longer times. I was highly tempted to get one and toodle around, but I didn’t have the 100 bones on my debit card (bikers are cheap).

I did however see a lot of these stations, in places people want to go, all over town. I also saw them being used by a lot of people. You simply roll up, swipe your card, take a bike and ride off. When you return the bike it just slots into the holder and a lock engages.

The bikes themselves are sturdy, heavy, and built like tanks. They are also designed it seems to minimize maintenance as the chain and gears are all covered. They have full fenders, a rack, a step through design for the less flexible, and bright LED lights that light up when you start pedaling, and seem to stay lit even after you come to a stop (must be some kind of dynamo-battery setup).

When things do go wrong, these guys are called. I bumped into them during my wandering.

They are a dispatch mobile repair crew. When one of the bicycles is reported to be broken a central dispatch sends them out (on bike no less!) to fix it up right there on the spot. They said they get around to several stations a day, keeping the entire system up and running smoothly.

We also talked about how this was the first year DC let the bike share run all winter, and how even with all the snow it performed well.

This is the same kind of system that is planned for Boston, so it was nice to get a taste for how it might work here. The interesting thing about DC is that it seemed slightly scarier to ride in than Boston. I am sure this is just some sort of Stockholm syndrome, but those wide straight high traffic streets made me nervous. I like my cars slow, honking, and always on the lookout for things popping into the street.

The natives of DC didn’t seem to have any trouble however, I saw a good number of them navigating the strange angled intersections, the high speed multi-lane boulevards, and the heavy traffic with ease, many of them on bike share bikes.

The one thing I will say surprised me about DC, they don’t have cross walk buttons. You just saddle up to the curb and wait till the walk guy comes on. And everyone waits. Everyone. They don’t really have a choice, the streets are like 8 lanes wide, they would never make it. But even at night when there was no traffic, and even on the smaller streets, nearly everyone just stopped waited and then crossed.

All in all my weekend in DC was pretty sweet, next time I am going to bring my bike and join in the fun.

Tags: Bike Share, pilgrim in a strange land, washington dc
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