Stop signs at crosswalks. Do you yield to cars?

[StopMeansStop]

Where the W&OD crosses many a road as many of you know there are stop signs for the trail users. Technically, trail users are required to stop, and yield to road users. Road users are required to yield to anyone in the crosswalk.

Most drivers I see will be nice to yield to the trail users. If I see traffic coming up, I usually wave the driver on. The times I dont is if there are cyclists behind me, fearing they will blow the stop and get crushed.

For most of the trails this isn’t a big deal, but for crossings around the GW parkway and MVT drivers yielding creates a very dangerous situation. As a driver and cyclist I’ve seen cars go from 50 to 0 and almost get rammed from behind, or one driver in a lane yields and the cyclists starts to cross and cars in the other lane don’t stop and almost hit the cyclist. How can a situation like this be made safer for everyone?

Topic

[StopMeansStop]

Maybe we should bitch to Moran to get funds for this. He likes trying to get the monies

[americancyclo]

Have there been proposals to do tunnels in the past? Feasibility studies? I know it’s NPS land, and from what I’ve gathered in the media, NPS is a pain to deal with, and funds are tight, but can we draft up a petiton, or at least send some emails to get this on an agenda somewhere?

[Justin Antos]

Very cool, thanks for the map. I’ve never tried this route. But to echo PotomacCyclist, this route bypasses only 1 of the 2 crossings to get you from MVT to Memorial Bridge, and I think it forces you to cross Washington Blvd twice, right?

And the second crossing – just at the top of your map – is the one where you have to guess at whether the cars are going straight up to the circle, or bearing gently right and smack towards you. This one is particularly hard at night or in the winter, in my experience.

[5555624]

@Justin Antos 6237 wrote:

But to echo PotomacCyclist, this route bypasses only 1 of the 2 crossings to get you from MVT to Memorial Bridge, and I think it forces you to cross Washington Blvd twice, right?

To get to Memorial Bridge, you only cross Washington Blvd once, where it splits off to go under Memorial Bridge, although you do cross an exit (to GW Parkway south). It does, though, only eliminate one of the “dangerous” two crossings.

[americancyclo]

A post over at GGW about this today. Cited the video and we got a shout-out in the comments. They’re already up to 76 comments over there….
http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/11407/crash-shows-need-for-safer-crossings-is-nps-listening/

[KLizotte]

@5555624 6201 wrote:

Except for part of the route through the marina parking lot and along the Pentagon north parking lot, it’s all on trails.

The blue spot is the cross-walk we’ve been talking about.

You still have to cross quite a few very busy road crossings with poor sight lines via this route.

[5555624]

@KLizotte 6369 wrote:

You still have to cross quite a few very busy road crossings with poor sight lines via this route.

But it does get rid of one that is particularly dangerous and which I, personally, think is the worst one.

In my experience (and limiting it only to the PM commute*), the one from 27 to the southbound GW Parkway never seems to be busy. (Most cars seem to go straight on by on 27.) The sight line is tricky if you are heading north, because it’s not really perpendicular to the road.

The one from the northbound GW Parkway onto 27 is busy, but it’s not too busy. I only actually have to stop maybe once every other week, if that. As the crossing is perpendicular to the road, the sight line is fine, coming in both directions.

Those are the two “additional” crossings and I’d rather have both of them, than the GW Parkway crossing.

Of course, it’s actually easy to avoid the GW Parkway and Rt 27 crossings to get from the Mount Vernon Trail to Memorial Bridge — go across the George Mason Bridge (14th Street) and take Ohio Drive up to Memorial Bridge. The only “busy” crossing is Independence Avenue and there’s a light.

* — In the morning I cross both of these, as well as the entrance and exits from 27 to the Pentagon North Parking Lot and the exit from 27, just before Memorial Bridge, and have never had a problem. Of course, other than CCrew, everyone else is asleep.

[Author]

Replies