15th Street cycletrack gets s*** on ... literally
Bicyclists can often feel like people treat their infrastructure like crap, such as parking in the lanes on a regular basis and construction closing them without offering an alternative route. But now, people are literally moving their bowels instead of their bicycles on part of the 15th Street cycletrack:
Photo by @KG_DC on Twitter reposted with permission.
This portable toilet appeared astride the cycletrack on Vermont Avenue near H Street this morning, next to the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. After Twitter user KG posted the photo, Darren Buck at DDOT sent a permit inspector to deal with it.
This isn’t the first time bike lanes have encountered the brown stuff, but thus far it’s been from animals: Horses occasionally drop manure in the cycletracks.
One common response to things like this is to suggest cyclists “just go around” the offending obstacle. But each incident forces people on bikes to ride into a space that either a driver or pedestrian thinks is “theirs,” creating opportunities for anger and for dangerous crashes.
As Shane Farthing from the Washington Area Bicyclist Association said at a DC council hearing yesterday,
Despite progress in infrastructure, enforcement, and other protections, the DC bicyclist still, on a daily basis, faces the conundrum of the angry motorist shouting at her to get off the street and the angry pedestrian shouting at her to get off the sidewalk.
And even when cyclists get a small space of their own, some people treat it like a toilet.