To the Editor:
Out of sheer curiosity I counted bicycles and observed pedestrians and cars at the intersection of Royal and Cameron on Thursday, Sept. 4 from 5-7 p.m. This day and time corresponds with those used by the city and its data collection volunteers from BPAC (Bicycle, Pedestrian Advisory Committee). I did this in order to provide a “blind” count of the flows, i.e. one uninfluenced by prior alerts. Here is what I found.
A total of 43 bicycles passed through the intersection of Royal/Cameron. Royal Street was used by 32, mostly going south; the majority (27) did not stop at the stop sign. For Cameron Street there were 11 bicyclists, 10 did not stop, all except one were going west. One person using Royal Street made a complete stop, recognized the drivers, and proceeded; this is considered by most experts to be “best practice.” There was one Capital Bikeshare rider going north.
All cars, and there were many using the Royal/Cameron intersection, stopped and honored the protocol for proceeding through a four-way stop sign. Two SUVs made u-turns in order to get parking spaces. Pets and people come out at 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. There were no runners.
It will be interesting to compare these counts with those of the city and BPAC, which in searching for volunteers published the places, dates and times for the count. In standard research practice, this would be expected to inflate the count, and is a regular way of evaluating the effectiveness of advertising.
Before making any decisions on installing bike lanes for Cameron and Royal streets, the electronic counts must be done. It would be best to do them very close to the BPAC counts in order to validate both – with and without prior notification of the large, regional advocacy audience. Valid research outcomes make for better decisions.
Kathryn Papp
Alexandria