note: i have backdated this post so as not to post over chris' extra-ordinarily good post this morning.  yesterday an email went out from the current waba director.  i could find no link to thison their website so I have attached the text of the email below...

Dear Friend,

In the recently released Environmental Assessment for the Visitor Transportation Study for the National Mall and Surrounding Park Areas, the National Park Service has again failed to take into account the thousands of visitors and commuters that bicycle in the National Mall area each year. WABA needs your help to make sure that the concerns of cyclists are heard. At the beginning of the study, WABA submitted detailed comments on what needed to be done to further encourage bicycling on the Mall. Interest among cyclists was strong, and during the initial meetings former NPS regional Director Terry Carlstrom was quoted in a study newsletter as saying the public process, “indicated a great deal of interest in bicycling as a mode of transportation.”

Among our recommendations were to: update the 1991 Paved Recreational Trails of the National Capital Region and include a prioritization of implementation of the plan. integrate bicycle information in all National Park Service communications regarding transportation to and through National Capital Area Parks, such as, websites, wayfinding and directional signage, maps and brochures improve bike parking at Mall destinations by added new parking racks and replacing broken ones widen and improve Mall trails and improve connections between area parks and the DC street network. However, instead of safer trails, better facilities, and increased signage, the NPS is recommending a mandatory helmet policy for adults. And while there are new designated signed routes, they are creating them for Segways! Cyclists have been all but ignored despite the stated goals of the project to provide sustainable transportation solutions and to coordinate with other long term plans in DC that aim to reduce vehicle congestion, improve air quality, and provide a continuous system of hiker and biker trails. Comments are due by January 5th, 2007. Click here for more information and to see what you can do to help. Sincerely, Eric Eric Gilliland Executive Director Washington Area Bicyclist Association

i honestly have no beef with waba, and i share many of their goals but i read and re-read this note and i can't quite get over the tone.  it sort of coveys a mixture of surprise, indignaiton and frustration.  so i'm going to one up him and react to this thoughts with a mixture of surprise, indignaiton and frustration.  i can't believe that any but the most optimistic and naive would be surprised by this.  we have a joke about things like this: we say that it's not a bug, it's a feature.  this post does a very amusing job of pointing this out in another arena, but once you understand the motif, you'll see it replicated fairly often.

the issue here is the same as access to roads.  omnibus federal bills such as the intermodal surface transportation efficiency act have at various points mandated that new construction projects incorporate alternative transport friendly design.  but it never happens.  that's because the system that uses the funds has no incentive to do so.  you can write blog posts and send emails and circulate petitions all day long, every day but it won't make a difference.  that's because the lack of accomodation is not a bug (i.e. an oversight or a mistake or a mis-implementaiton) but a feature or something that essentially was planned, designed for and executed to bring about a desired result.

what we need is a new process: one that starts from a different set of assumptions.  i will try to dig through some of the authorizing bills and see if there is anything that can be used as a lever here but i suspect that the process is pretty far along (see my earlier post on the proposed bike station) and can't be re-engineered at this point.  i may be wrong and i will submit some comments, specifically asking about the segways.  so far as a i know, only commercial outfits have segways so why we would have a design program that singles a business like that out for special treatment when many users and citizens own bikes is beyond me.

let's submit comments where we can but let's also get more involved in the front end of the process.  more on this shortly.

- - - posted by scott