I’m going with a shorter format today, after running out of time to keep working as the clock leaves 4 am in the rearview mirror.
The problem stems from my attempt to set our apartment on fire with an overheated wok last night, said attempt failing only after I remembered the $28 fire blanket I bought last year and stashed next to the stove, thinking I might need it someday.
That someday was yesterday.
So we’ll go with the day’s main stories for now, and catch up on the rest tomorrow. And if it seems like my heart’s not in it today, I can assure you it’s on the saddle and in the bike lane, where it always is.
My head, on the other hand, is another matter.
Today’s photo of 3rd Street Toronto barriers shamelessly stolen respectfully borrowed courtesy of Streetsblog’s Joe Linton
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Sort of good news today, as the LA City Council Transportation Committee voted to install new concrete Toronto barriers on the city’s protected bike lanes.
Which should raise the question of why LA city departments continue to be siloed, with one agency tasked with planning city streets, another with engineering them, and a third with actually building them.
But this being LA, no one bothered to ask that.
Instead, assuming the motion passes the full council, the department will be tasked with compiling yet another report to report back to the council on, reporting why they should or shouldn’t install the barriers themselves, or if they even can.
So I will report on the report, if and when they actually report on it.
And people wonder why nothing reportedly gets done around here.
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Seriously, would you like some cheese with that whine?
A WeHo Online op-ed complains that West Hollywood City Councilmember Lauren Meister was treated unfairly in her attempt to undo what the council had already done in voting to approve the planned protected bike lanes on Fountain Ave.
Meister, said the mister who wrote it, “demonstrated something increasingly rare on the West Hollywood City Council: a willingness to listen, reconsider, and think beyond the confines of a predetermined political position.”
According to the op-ed,
Her proposal was neither radical nor unreasonable. It simply asked whether there might be a better way to achieve safety for ALL users of Fountain Avenue.
Which is what the council had already done, in approving a plan that considered the needs off all road users, rather than just the ones who want to keep parking on it.
Apparently, all the councilmembers who supported the plan were unreasonable, if not downright rude, in their refusal to reconsider the votes they had cast mere months before, while those who didn’t were perfectly reasonable in requesting that they do.
Then there were the several dozen written comments originating from ZIP codes well beyond West Hollywood. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but the voices of outside advocacy networks should not be confused with those of residents who will live with the consequences of these decisions every day. Their interests deserve particular consideration, not dismissal as obstacles to someone else’s ideological vision.
Which would make perfect sense, if this was a matter that only affected residents of the city. But Fountain Ave has long been used more by people attempting to drive — or bike — through WeHo to some other destination, than as a quiet side street for those who live along the busy corridor.
If memory serves, Blake Ackerman, whose ghost bike sits at Fountain and Gardner, was riding home from work in DTLA to an apartment in Beverly Hills when he was killed by a hit-and-run driver just last year.
Countless studies show that improving safety on Fountain will benefit everyone who drives, bikes or walks along the corridor, while improving the quality of life for those who live nearby.
So it is not unreasonable for councilmembers to stick to a previous decision that was made after years of street studies and public meetings. It is, however, unreasonable to demand that it be reconsidered every few months.
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Apparently, the Central Valley Young Republicans are opposed to a proposed sales tax measure on next month’s ballot.
The Fresno County Transportation Sales Tax, otherwise known as Measure S, is a scam. The measure will extend the already high sales tax throughout Fresno County. And, while its creators promise “better roads” and “safer streets,” it will not improve either.
Instead, it pads the pockets of the nonprofit CEOs who wrote it and prioritizes the fundamental transformation of our beautiful, family-friendly Central Valley into a dump, similar to what the once beautiful city of San Francisco has become today.
This measure’s main objective is to create a more urban, public transit-dependent, cluttered way of life, similar to the disasters of Los Angeles and San Francisco, with unending bike and bus lanes driving cars off the road, funded and supported by the same elites and politicians who destroyed California and now want to destroy Fresno County.
Okay, but how do they really feel?
Because, evidently, clogging local streets with more and more cars, trucks and SUVs will somehow maintain their high quality of life, while providing alternatives to driving will destroy it.
Never mind the non sequitur of nonprofits padding their pockets.
There is a valid argument to be made about resisting higher taxes, or at least considering them very carefully. There can also be a discussion as to where and when to build bus and bike lanes.
But this ain’t it.
I only wish LA had “unending bike and bus lanes driving cars off the road.” Because what’s really driving cars off the road are all those other drivers in other cars, with increasingly less space to maneuver because of all the other drivers driving them off the road.
And they wonder why Republicans are an endangered species in California.
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Finally, we’ll end on the sad saga of ICE agents crashing into, detaining and breaking the arm of an American citizen in Long Beach on Saturday.
According to My News LA, four California lawmakers — US Representatives Nanette Barragán, D-San Pedro, and Robert Garcia, D-Long Beach, as well as Senators Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, both D-California — sent a strongly worded letter to Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari demanding an investigation into the ICE attack on Ricardo Gonzalez.
But what’s missing from the letter — aside from the likelihood that it will be taken seriously under current DHS leadership — is the presence of any lawmakers with an R following their names.
Maybe I’m dating myself, but I remember when government agents in black SUVs detaining — let alone attacking — an American citizen would have drawn howls of protest from the GOP, as well Democrats.
Maybe someday, our Republican leaders will find their missing integrity. But today is clearly not that day.
The motion: Meister’s motion, which critics said came at the last minute, aimed to avoid the loss of 60% of the street’s parking as a result of the roadway changes. Meister said on Monday her motion was an attempt to weigh the approved plan against an alternative that “might accomplish the same safety objectives while preserving parking.”…
The vote: The motion failed in a 3-2 vote on Monday night. It would have directed staff to evaluate an alternative plan for the road that maintained street parking but didn’t include bike lanes. West Hollywood City Councilmembers Chelsea Byers and John Erickson and Vice Mayor Danny Hang voted to reject the motion. Mayor John Heilman and City Councilmember Lauren Meister, who introduced the motion, supported the effort.
Except, of course, it wouldn’t have accomplished the same safety goals. Studies show that protected bike lanes increase safety for all road users by as much as 90%. But forcing riders to use the traffic lane, or risk riding in the door zone, would make the street even less safe than it is now.
And right now, it’s pretty deadly.
Bluesky post
Today’s photo: Maybe we’ll have fewer ghost bikes now, like this one installed for Blake Ackerman last year on Fountain Ave. But let’s hope they move fast, because who knows what will happen after next month’s election.
Yet video shows the SUV speeding the wrong way on a one-way street before swerving into the path of Ricardo Gonzalez’ ebike, apparently based on nothing but the color of his skin.
A statement from ICE says Gonzalez hit their wing mirror. Which is hard not to do when a massive SUV cuts right in front of you.
An ICE officer can be seen jumping out, gun drawn. Gonzalez was tased and wrestled to the ground before ICE agents pinned him face down in the gutter, his hands cuffed behind his back.
Never mind that Gonzalez is a native-born American citizen who works for the City of Long Beach.
In the video footage, Mr. Gonzalez can be heard yelling. “You hit me with your car. I’m a U.S. citizen!” he says, using several expletives.
Mr. Gonzalez was later taken to a hospital for his injuries, the Long Beach police said. The police was not involved in immigration enforcement and did not make any arrests at the scene, the department added. It said its officers were called in for backup by ICE, which had reported that vehicles were being vandalized and that a person needed medical attention. The extent of Mr. Gonzalez’s injuries was not clear on Tuesday.
It gets worse.
In its statement, a spokesperson for ICE said the agency had been conducting a targeted operation to arrest a “criminal illegal alien.” The agency did not say whether it thought Mr. Gonzalez was that person. The agency also said its officers had used “the minimum amount of force.”
“ICE did NOT hit an individual on a bike. An individual was arrested after he smashed the mirror of a government vehicle,” the spokesperson wrote.
ICE described the man, whom the spokesperson did not name, as a “rioter.”
So evidently, getting hit by federal agents with their SUV, tased, cuffed and having your arm broken in an apparent case of mistaken identity is “rioting.”
Got it.
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Heartbreaking story from Cleveland, where police are looking for the driver who killed a 35-year old man riding a bicycle, after striking several other vehicles.
According to Cleveland’s WKYC, the tragic series of event began as police were directing traffic just before the end of the Brown’s football game. After officers observed the driver of a pickup truck squealing his tires, they tried to get him to stop, but he just fled on the wrong side of the road.
He struck one vehicle, then several others as he fled down the road, eventually losing a wheel. Despite that, he continued driving before striking and killing the victim.
He then abandoned the truck, fleeing the scene on foot.
Compounding the tragedy, the victim, William Mays, was riding a bicycle he was given him by the suburban Highland Hills Police Department this past July, after officers learned the bicycle he used to get to and from work had broken down.
They posted a memorial to Mays following his death, calling him a beloved member of the community, “remembered for his kindness, warm smile, and the joy he brought to our department.”
The only good news in this whole mess is that no one else was injured in this traffic violence rampage.
He says that parts of the city are beginning to feel like Amsterdam, thanks to more segregated bike lanes, or what we would call protected bike lanes.
But – and this is a big But – very few people will be able to get from A to B on segregated lanes alone. For virtually every cycle journey, however much you try to avoid busy roads without segregated lanes, it will prove impossible.
However, in my experience, it’s far worse than that, as older cycle lanes may well be all but invisible or in a decidedly poor condition, if not also litter, leaves and debris-strewn. I would go so far as to describe the worst examples as roads apartheid – smooth running for cars while cyclists have to put up with bumpy, rutted surfaces.
I believe where that has occurred, councils have got their priorities all wrong. The condition of cycle lanes should be as good as or better than that of the main carriageway – not the other way round.
Unfortunately, the story is hidden behind a paywall for the paper’s “premium” users. But it’s worth finding a way around it to read the whole thing.
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Note the lovely smoking factory in the background neatly framed by the tire.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. A clip resurfaced this week of Texas Republican congressional candidate and “gunfluencer” Brandon Herrera fantasizing about killing bicyclists for the crime of being in front of him on the road — “They want to be treated like vehicles, like cars. But they’re not, they travel at fucking arrestable speed limits of not being a fucking car. And they expect you to respect the fact that they just want to be an asshole on Sunday mornings. I had fucking fantasies of running them all over and, you know, maybe one of these days I will.” Nice guy.
No bias here, either. A writer for London’s The Independent — yes, the same paper sportswriter Trent Crimm worked for on Ted Lasso — says now that the UK’s new prime minister is fining people who play loud music without using headphones, he needs to tackle the problem of people who ride bicycles on the sidewalk. Which sounds reasonable, until you consider that no one rides on the sidewalk if the street next to it is safe.
Congratulations, California. We’re number 2 — in more ways than one — on the list of states with the most bicycling deaths. Although with a population more than 24% larger than Texas, the next largest state, it would be surprising if we didn’t rank near the top.
He gets it. An op-ed from a New York bike advocate says the city needs smarter rules for Central Park, where pedestrians have access to all 51 miles of streets in the park, while bike riders are confined to a single 6.1-mile roadway shared with runners, rollers, walkers and dogs.
And apropos of nothing, this is my only companion as I work in the dark tonight, while my wife and corgi — no, two separate beings, thank you — sleep in the other room.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
A 27-year old Florida man faces felony child abuse charges for allegedly pushing a child off his bicycle following a brief altercation; he insists he didn’t push the kid, but merely knocked the boy off his bike by kicking its front tire. Which somehow doesn’t seem to make it any better.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
A 40-year old Rohnert Park man was lucky to escape with non-life threatening injuries when he ignored railroad crossing gates, a train’s horn and warning lights to ride his bike across railroad tracks as a SMART train was crossing. Seriously, train crashes are the easiest collisions to avoid, since they’re confined to a narrow space and usually provide ample warning that they’re coming. And they’re fucking loud.
Golden State Report’s Paul Thornton says San Francisco’s Prop G is the most LA thing on the city’s ballot; the measure would rip out the popular sunset Dunes Park to restore the former Upper Great Highway. Which clearly wasn’t so great, or they never would have shut it down to create a linear park in the first place.
A 33-year old Pennsylvania man was sentenced to 10 to 40 years behind bars for beating another man to death with his own bicycle, after pleading guilty to 3rd-degree murder while insisting he didn’t remember doing it, but admitting video evidence was likely to sway a jury. The article kept disappearing on me, but maybe you’ll have better luck.
An Alabama woman received 25 years behind bars for killing a 13-year old middle school student as he was riding his bicycle, while she was speeding, “under the influence of multiple substances,” and ran the red light he was legally crossing.
Yucatán Magazinelooks at the dangers faced by bike riders in Mérida, the Mexican state’s capital city, from disconnected and poorly maintained bike lanes to hazardous urban corridors. Sounds kinda like a certain SoCal megalopolis we could name.
A new joint German-Israeli study used a robotic bike — no, not what you think — to determined that “dynamic, trunk-related control that keeps the upper body stable while the world tilts beneath the wheels” is more important than general steadiness on two feet in keeping older bike riders balanced and stable on their bicycles.
Once again, someone has been killed riding an ebike.
And once again, we have to take the police at their word that the victim was on an actual electric bicycle, rather than the e-motos and hacked bikes that too often pass for ebikes.
It’s also apparently unknown what kind of ebike she was riding, whether she was alone or with others, how fast she may have been going, if she struck the curb as a result of carelessness or because of some sort of obstruction or uneven pavement, or even if she was wearing a helmet. Which may matter, for a change, because she died as the result of a fall, although we don’t know if she suffered a head injury.
Anyone with information is urged to call Traffic Investigator Vishal Rattanchandani of the Huntington Beach Police Department’s Multidisciplinary Accident Investigation Team at 714/536-5231.
It’s not clear if the police or the medical examiner’s office will release more information, or if this is all we will ever learn about this crash.
This is at least the 58th bicycling fatality that I’m aware of in Southern California this year, and the eighth we know about in Orange County. It’s also at least the second this year in Huntington Beach, which was recently named the state’s most dangerous city for bicyclists.
I can’t remember the last time a migraine knocked me out like that, or affected me so badly for so long after the pain was finally gone.
I’m told my migraines, and the associated dizziness, stem from a traumatic brain injury suffered in the infamous beachfront bee incident that put me in the ICU for a few days 20 years ago.
The impact knocked me cold for several minutes, erasing any memory of the crash and leading to one of those life-after-death visions you read about, which, real or hallucinated, both shattered and cemented my own personal faith.
The ER doctors at Santa Monica’s St. John’s hospital told me my helmet probably saved my life. But in those pre-MIPS days, it did nothing to prevent the concussions I suffered.
The first migraine I ever had came four years after that, and they’ve continued to grow more frequent and worse in the years since.
I’ve often been a critic, not of bike helmets, but of the overpromises made by so many people who equate bike helmets with seat belts or air bags, as if they would somehow magically protect you from a multi-ton motor vehicle traveling at highway speeds.
They won’t.
Even the best bike helmets are intended to protect you from relatively low speed falls off your bike, not collisions. But as I’ve learned the hard way, that limited protection can still make a huge difference in your health decades after a crash.
Now the Canadian-made Pikio Si Oblik has been rated the safest ever by the testing institute at Virginia Tech. It’s hard to recommend a helmet that costs nearly $400, especially when you can get a decent MIPS model for so much less.
But based on my own experience, it might be worth it.
Meister tells WeHo Online that the council didn’t receive any other options other than the bike lanes when they voted to approve the project — even though the street was subject to nearly a decade of discussion and public meetings — and she prefers a plan that would replace the bike lanes with parking spaces, calling it a “compromise.”
Although the C-words I would use are “capitulation,” and “convenience,” as in a surrender to the whims of motorists who are used to parking on the deadly street.
Never mind that protected bike lanes have been shown to improve safety up to 90% for all road users, while maintaining parking would only serve to keep the corridor deadly by forcing bike riders to use the single remaining lane or ride in the door zone.
Parking proponents will undoubtedly be out in force at the meeting, and will need to be met with an equal and opposite demand to improve safety for everyone. The alternative will be to keep Fountain Ave unrideable and unsafe to walk along and cross, as well as to drive.
If that’s the plan, they might as well save the money to pay for ghost bikes and white tires for all the victims yet to come.
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More evidence that ICE is out of control, after a Long Beach man was intentionally run down by ICE agents as he was riding an ebike and struck with an unmarked vehicle, then tased twice and handcuffed face down in the gutter, suffering a broken arm in the attack.
Ricardo Gonzalez was attacked by agents on Saturday, apparently because of the color of his skin, since they had no other means of determining his immigration status as he was riding his bike. Never mind that Gonzalez was born in Hanford, California, making him a US citizen by birth, despite Trump’s efforts to change that.
Note to ICE agents: Maybe try to determine someone’s citizenship and immigration status before you run them down with an SUV — or better yet, just don’t run them down in the first place.
Here’s what these critics miss: A bike lane makes a road safer even when no one is riding in it. Wide lanes invite speeding and inattention. Narrowing them slows traffic, and the striped buffer puts extra feet between moving cars and people on the sidewalk. Federal data cited by city staff show bike lanes on arterial roads cut car-bicycle crashes roughly in half. If anything, the city should go further and add bollards or other barriers, so a drifting driver hits a barrier before a person. That would also make riders feel safe enough to use the lanes more.
Now consider the money. Many roads in northwest and southwest Bakersfield were built with two lanes each way but enough pavement for three or four, on the theory that traffic would someday need it. At the pace we grow, that day is decades away, if it comes at all, and these roads will need rebuilding long before then. Where were the fiscal watchdogs when we paved all that unnecessary asphalt? Repurposing a few feet of it for the safety of everyone is a bargain by comparison…
And when it comes to bike infrastructure itself, fiscal conservatives have been making the case for years. The Kern County Taxpayers Association, hardly a group of free spenders, has long pushed for a better network of bike and walking paths across the city, including more than 50 miles of trails along abandoned and underused rail lines. When the region’s leading fiscal watchdog says safe places to walk and bike are worth the investment, critics who call it waste should take note.
None of this is a liberal plot to take away anyone’s car. It’s about two things conservatives have always championed: freedom of choice and public safety. People should be free to choose how they get around, whether that’s driving, biking, walking or some mix, to save money on gas, to get some exercise, or to let their kids gain a little independence. But that choice only means something if every option is reasonably safe. Too often, it isn’t. A parent may hesitate to let a 12-year-old ride to school. A retiree may not be able to safely walk to the corner store. Someone who can’t afford a car, or can’t drive one, may be taking their life in their hands just crossing the street. Keeping people safe is among the most basic jobs of local government, and the right to get home alive shouldn’t depend on being encased in a car. Responsible spending, personal choice, public safety and strong families are supposed to be conservative values. Safe streets serve all four.
Maybe someone should show this to Sean Duffy, our current Secretary of Transportation, and tell him enough with the “DEI bike lane” crap.
And I say “current,” because no one seems to have job security in this administration, except for those who seem to least deserve it.
My colleague Lily Janiak, our San Francisco Chronicle theater critic who bikes to shows and everywhere else, coaxed me along like a mother duck, warning me about the risks of tires sticking in streetcar rails, getting “doored”, and even other cyclists. Struggling to remember it all, I felt certain I was going to die.
In the process, I’ve gotten healthier, spent less money and saved time cruising past traffic jams. But the results extend beyond all that (and the smugness that often comeswhen cyclists lecture about health, money and traffic). I’ve become a better journalist and a better community member. I may not live longer — did I mention that I bike in San Francisco? — but I’m definitely doing a better job working for you.
Unfortunately, the story is hidden behind the paper’s draconian paywall. But it’s worth finding your way around it if you can to give it a read.
Years ago, Maximilian Schnell left his job and his life in Paris and began a nomadic lifestyle on his bicycle. The road has given him freedom and adventure. And he has set himself grueling physical and mental challenges.
Perfect Road, a documentary from Danish directors and cousins Adam and Christian Bonke, follows him on an extreme journey through some of Europe’s highest mountain passes, while also providing a meditation on modern life and character study. For one, even in an age of digital nomads, Schnell’s lifestyle pushes the envelope. And then, his relationship with his partner Nina makes him question his life priorities.
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We’ve seen this video before, depicting a Slovakian mountain biker outrunning a bear, possibly without even knowing he was doing it.
In one of the most shameful episodes I’ve seen, a Quebec City family called off a planned ghost bike ceremony for their 11-year old son after receiving “hateful” messages; a member of the group Souliers et vélos fantômes Québec — Ghost Shoes and Bicycles Quebec — called the comments “wildly inappropriate.” Seriously, there’s not a pit deep enough for anyone who’d send something like that to parents whose child had just been killed, under any circumstances.
There’s a special place in hell for anyone who would crash into two six-year old kids as they’re riding their bikes in Half Moon Bay, and just drive off leaving them on the side of the road; 37-year old Robert Schumann faces multiple charges after cops used a drone to track him down as he bravely hid in the woods to avoid capture. Fortunately, the children are hospitalized in stable condition. Once again, however, you’ll have to work your war around yet another unproductive paywall.
National
Aussie pro cyclist Lachlan Morton succeeded in setting a new record for the old Pony Express route last week, beating the relay team that carried Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural address to California by nearly 12 hours, while covering the 1,966-mile route in 6 days, 21 hours and 15 minutes. Although Morton did have the advantage of paved roads, pneumatic tires and something slightly more aero than a horse.
A London writer who wisely chooses to remain anonymous justifies why they’ve ridden though roughly 40,000 red lights and have no plans to stop, although kindly choosing not to ride through red lights and crosswalks when pedestrians are present.
Two German men are retracing the route of China’s Long March by bicycle; the military maneuver by the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army became a defining chapter in modern Chinese history, leading to the defeat of the forces of Chiang Kai-shek in the Chinese Civil War.
Competitive Cycling
Former cycling scion Taylor Phinney finished eighth in the men’s individual pursuit at the 2026 UCI Track World Championships, while beating his personal best by a massive 11 seconds, nearly seven years after he retired from road racing. Although his wife Katarzyna Niewiadoma-Phinney is still kicking ass on the women’s road circuit.
I hate to give up on this week, but after trying to respond to a few comments on here, I realize I’m just not up to looking at this screen for an extended period, and this ringing in my ears is driving me crazy.
One day, we’ll have a discussion about persistent post-concussive syndrome and the need for a helmet designed to prevent concussions. But we’ll save that until I’m feeling better.
In the meantime, have a good weekend, and get some good riding in. And I’ll see you next week.
