Tag Archive for Donald Trump

Bashing Boerner’s ebike safety bill, dismount bikes signs to be removed, and the Biden-Trump bike race we deserve

Just 322 days until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025.
So stop what you’re doing and sign this petition to demand Mayor Bass hold a public meeting to listen to the dangers we face walking and biking on the mean streets of LA.

Then share it — and keep sharing it — with everyone you know, on every platform you can. Just over 70 signatures to go to reach 1,000!

Photo by Maxfoot from Pixabay.

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Streetsblog’s Melanie Curry responds to Encinitas Assemblymember Tasha Boerner’s bill to ban ebikes for kids under 12, and require a driver’s license or completion of an online training course for anyone else.

E-bike safety is certainly important. Asm. Boener has been working on developing safety training – more on that below – but the idea of requiring licenses for riding a bike introduces a range of problems. There is racial profiling, for one – the people most likely to be pulled over for potential violations of this law are youth of color. Then there’s the whole problem with making the police deal with what is fundamentally a safety issue in the first place. And as the California Bicycle Coalition has pointed out:

“The bicycle is an efficient and essential tool to fight climate change, and e-bikes make bicycling accessible to a wider range of people. E-bike licensing requirements are unlikely to measurably reduce the prevalence of crashes (see below for why), but they will reduce ridership just as California needs to employ every strategy to mitigate the climate crisis.”

Electric bikes can be easier – and faster – than “acoustic” bikes. This brings both benefits and hazards, particularly to inexperienced riders. But the solution is better information and training, not more policing.

Curry also points out that California law already bans anyone under 16 from riding the fastest category of ebikes.

And that the “real and present danger” associated with ebikes is cars, and the people who drive them. Because even the best trained ebike rider is no match for a speeding, overly aggressive or otherwise distracted driver.

Meanwhile, a comment on the Electrek site sums it up pretty well.

Hard disagree with the current iteration of this bill, the way it reads right now its another power move under the guise of “for the safety of children” and an overblown way to solve a problem that affects some cities locally. There’s smarter and more cost effective ways to increase ebike safety rather than making a big conundrum out of it and then finding a new way to ticket people who have been following the law, while people breaking the law will continue to ignore it…

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Credit Streetblog’s Joe Linton with getting Los Angeles and Beverly Hill to remove signs posted near the Purple Line construction zone on Wilshire which tell people to get off their bikes, for no apparent reason.

It’s questionable whether these signs were ever enforceable to begin with, since they don’t conform to the MUTCD, and look more like something a Metro contractor might have ordered off Amazon.

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Daily Kos says forget all this talk about who is “infirm” or “feeble,” or capable of passing a basic cognitive test.

What we really need to settle the issue once and for all is a Biden-Trump bicycle race.

I know who I’d put my money on.

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Bike Portland celebrates the city’s Boom Bike, a human-powered, mobile soundstage.

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GCN explains how to commute on an ebike.

Which is kind of like commuting on any other bike, just less sweaty.

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It’s now 54 days since the California ebike incentive program’s latest failure to launch, which was promised no later than fall 2023. And 31 months since it was approved by the legislature and signed into law — and counting.

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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.

Something tells me there’s more to this story, after an alleged hit-and-run driver was charged with first-degree murder for killing a British Columbia bike rider; the suspect is accused of planning or conspiring to murder the victim, as mounties describe the investigation as “sensitive.”

But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.

An unknown bike rider is the prime suspect after a former British sports commentator found his car slashed by what could have been a bicycle pedal.

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Local 

Los Angeles now has a bicycle-based mobile espresso bar serving Westside communities with beans exclusively sourced from West African farms.

Politico looks at the bad blood delaying Lyft’s takeover of behind-the-scenes operations for LA’s Metro Bike bikeshare program, as political and labor leaders decry awarding “hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to a company that is car-centric and anti-union.”

Torrance is moving towards approval of a proposed multi-use trail linking the city’s new regional transit center with its downtown district.

Long Beach says not so fast to California’s new intersection daylighting law.

 

State

Instead of succumbing to the ebike panic plaguing SoCal’s beach cities, Newport Beach has taken a more rational approach by launching a new webpage devoted to ebike and traffic safety.

Bad news from San Diego, where a 63-year old man suffered severe injuries when he was right hooked by a 33-year old woman while riding in a Carmel Valley bike lane; fortunately, his injuries were not considered life-threatening.

More bad news from San Diego, as a man in his 70s suffered injuries to his head and legs when he was struck by one of the city’s downtown trolleys while riding his bike.

Sad news from Fresno, where a 33-year old man died after he was struck by a driver while riding his bike just doors from his home.

 

National

Velo talks with PeopleForBikes about the five principles required for the year’s best US bicycling infrastructure.

Five years after launching it with much fanfare, PeopleForBikes will shut down their Ride Spot mobile app at the end of this month, after deciding the resources could be better spent in other areas. Which is just business speak for it flopped. 

Bicycling offers their picks for the best President’s Day deals on bike gear. This one doesn’t appear to be available anywhere else, but it also doesn’t seem to be hidden behind the magazine’s paywall. 

Cycling Weekly advises doubling up on bike locks to make your bike less inviting to thieves as bike theft rates rise.

Good question. The Good Men Project says public health and urban planning go hand-in-hand, so why aren’t we doing more to promote bicycling? Actually, that’s easy. It’s because we care more about allowing drivers to go zoom zoom than we do about keeping people healthy.

In a complicated story, the owners of a Houston bike shop got a classic 1950s Columbia bike back after a photographer they loaned it to never returned it; a year later, a friend found it for sale after someone discovered it on the street when the photographer was evicted for nonpayment of rent.

 

International

Momentum makes the case for why building bike lanes is good for more than just people who ride bikes.

Ebike conversion kit maker Swytch recommends the most romantic cities for bike-riding couples to spend quality time together. That none of them one is Los Angeles should go without saying.

Virgin owner Richard Branson once again suffers “nasty” injuries falling off his bicycle, this time after hitting a pothole in the British Virgin Islands.

Toronto bicyclists celebrate riding on the coldest day of the year, on one of the warmest days of the winter.

Um, no. A Manchester, England website explains how the city became the European capital of bicycling. Which will likely come as a big surprise to Amsterdam and Copenhagen, not to mention Paris and Barcelona.

A British community learns the hard way that the equivalent of $17 million won’t even buy a straight bike lane anymore.

The consumer standards regulator for the Netherlands is investigating a cargo bikemaker, after complaints of broken frames on fragile Babboe bakfiets.

 

Competitive Cycling

That feeling when a bike race fan does a face plant trying to keep up with a cyclist in the Tour Columbia.

 

Finally…

Presenting a crossdressing bike ride that could be banned in some red states. When you’re riding your bike at 1 am with illegal drugs, a fake handgun, knife, pepper spray and a half-dozen outstanding warrants, don’t ride salmon without lights on the damn thing,

And that feeling when a magazine thinks every bicyclist needs a new Pinarello — and a balance bike.

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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.

Oh, and fuck Putin

Morning Links: Donald Trump the bike-riding bully; Bike Night at Union Station, and new bike stuff

We finally have proof that Donald Trump used to be one of us, as reporters for the Washington Post talk to people who knew him as a child.

Steven Nachtigall, now a 66-year-old doctor, recalled the time Trump, the “loudmouth bully,” jumped off his bike and pummeled another boy.

As long as we’re on the subject bike-riding celebrities, Cindy Crawford is one of us, as she goes for a ride in the ‘Bu with her fat bike-riding husband.

Gerard Butler is one of us, too, looking none too pleased to be stalked by paparazzi as he rides and dines in New York.

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Metro wraps up the official Bike Month activities with tonight’s Bike Night at Union Station.

Meanwhile, Santa Monica Spoke closes out the month next Wednesday with a presentation by Chris Morfas on his work in Bogota, Columbia, home to 600,000 daily bike trips. Tickets are available here.

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Today’s common theme is new bike stuff.

A new bike bell promises to make itself heard inside nearby motor vehicles. And not necessarily politely.

Your next ebike could fit in a backpack, right next to your collapsible folding helmet.

Wired says a new bike from California-based Yuba means we should all ditch our cars and start riding cargo bikes.

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Cycling Weekly offers five talking points from stage 18 of the Giro.

Thursday’s stage could have relieved the pressure on Teejay van Garderen, or increased it.

And the Wall Street Journal asks if Tom Dumoulin can stay No. 1 after the No. 2 heard ‘round the world.

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Local

Part of the money Metro saves by not finishing the 710 Freeway could go to street improvements, including bike lanes.

LA is testing low-cost pedestrian safety improvements in South LA, but may be complicating matters for people on bikes.

The attn: website picks up the story the LAPD’s tone-deaf Vision Zero tweet encouraging bike riders to use lights and helmets in response to a possibly homicidal driver.

Time Out LA looks forward to the coming bike, foot and horse bridge over the LA River connecting Griffith Park to Atwater Village.

Taking time out from an increasingly busy advocacy schedule, LA Bike Dad bikes the kids to the La Brea Tar Pits.

A Burbank letter writer says the city’s bike lanes don’t really inconvenience anyone, and could save lives.

The La Verne Bicycle Coalition is using GoFundMe to raise money for bicycling improvements. Thanks to Lester Walters for the heads-up.

A Malibu paper talks with a man who’s bicycling an estimated 11,729.17 miles to visit every major league baseball stadium in the US this summer.

 

State

A homeless Orange County man swears he’s not running a bike chop shop, and all the bikes he sells were collected from sidewalks, trash bins and junk yards; local authorities — and people who’ve had bikes stolen — aren’t so sure.

A Newport Beach elementary school paused to remember Brock McCann, the eight-year old third grader killed by a garbage truck while riding his bike home from school one year ago.

No surprise here. The Fallbrook teenager accused of killing a bike rider while under the influence of a controlled substance has pled not guilty. Meanwhile, a GoFundMe account has been set up to benefit the victim’s family.

A Santa Barbara writer describes how he cracked his pelvis falling off his bike on wet cobblestones on an underpass maintained by Caltrans — and met another rider who was injured at the exact same spot. Caltrans’ warning sign telling cyclists to walk their bikes is probably not sufficient for the agency to avoid liability.

A Sacramento writer says the city may finally be becoming more bike-friendly, but it needs to pedal faster towards that future.

 

National

People For Bikes wants you to just say no to the Trump budget, which says no to bicycling.

A physically disabled eight-year old will be able to ride a bike with his family for the first time, thanks to the efforts of volunteers from Utah State University.

There could soon by a protected bike lane on Nashville’s famed Music Row.

A Florida woman rejects a call for bicyclists to pay their fair share, saying we already do. In more ways than one.

 

International

Bicycling is helping a Syrian refugee adapt to his new home in Canada. This is the kind of scary person our government wants to bar from the country.

Toronto discovers the hard way that a bike path with no barriers separating it from the roadway doesn’t pass the 8 to 80 test; a regular bike commuter says nothing prepared him for the crash he witnessed.

A London writer says “smug” cyclists are the key to a fume-free future. And bike riders might not be so paranoid if drivers would stop knocking them over.

The Guardian considers which British political party will do the most for bicycling in the country; not looking good for the major parties.

A new survey from the UK shows exactly what you probably already knew. Most drivers don’t understand the law when it comes to bicycling.

 

Finally…

Every cyclist needs mom to coach them up the hard parts. If you’re going to make a run for it on your bike after stealing tools, try not to carry so many purses with you.

And if you’re going to ride drunk, try to pee facing away from traffic.

Then again, that holds true for taking a dump while leading a Grand Tour, as well.