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Walk your bike signs cropping up in DC
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Riding prohibited, new signs in Georgetown warn.
The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) has been making a lot of noise in recent months about pedestrian safety. In June, Mayor Fenty announced the city will use $4 million of stimulus funds to shore up shoddy sidewalks. Last month, DDOT released the final findings of the District's Pedestrian Master Plan. "Pedestrian safety is one of this administration's top priorities," Mayor Fenty has emphasized.
Perhaps that's why pedestrian safety signs admonishing cyclists have been cropping up across the city at a noticeable clip. It seems everywhere you look there's a new sign urging cyclists to dismount, slow down, or ditch their bikes entirely. For example, there's nearly a dozen new safety signs in quick secession on the waterfront in Georgetown.
Do such signs work? Rarely have I actually seen a cyclist abide by a dismount sign, though that's not to say they don't guilt riders into somewhat safer cycling habits. I certainly feel compelled to at least slow down when passing such signs. However, there are also plenty of riders chaffing at the new signs.
A colleague of mine, a competitive mountain rider, shared her exasperation about the signs after a pedestrian chewed her out for not dismounting--as a sign instructed--near a bridge on the Mount Vernon bike trail. "The signs probably caused--or at least exacerbated--the problem," she said. "We’ve become overly concerned about safety, and we’ve forgotten that what we really need on the bike paths is for people to exercise good judgment."
Much easier said than done, but some urban planners are convinced that less is more when it comes to safety signage. NPR, for example, has published a piece about a German town that has intentionally eliminated signage on its busiest roads. Wired has a profile of a traffic engineer set on phasing out traffic lights, safety signs, and road markings. And a Duke University professor has argued in the Atlantic that safety signs are more distraction than help.
The bottom line, proponents of this style of traffic engineering argue, is that roads that incorporate elements of controlled chaos and ambiguity about who has the right of way force both pedestrians and motorists to pay better attention to the road, making the roads safer for all.
Jay Mallin, a local photographer and blogger, created the slideshow of cycling safety signs in the DC area that's below.
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