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Knives come out early for Mayor-Elect Nithya Raman, the cost of traffic violence, and why bike riders don’t fit the usual stereotypes

November 13, 2026 / / No comments

The knives are already out for Nithya Raman on City Watch.

Mihran Kalaydjian follows the lead of the rightwing California Post — actually just a rebranded version of the New York Post — earlier this week in attacking Raman’s support for the $3.1 billion overhaul of Los Angeles streets called for by Measure HLA.

Except that $3.1 billion estimate from the city budget office includes virtually the total cost of all street work, including ADA-mandated sidewalk work, which they lumped into the estimate in an effort to defeat the measure.

As Los Angeles faces mounting financial pressures, the mayor-elect must explain why a multibillion-dollar street redesign deserves priority—and whether ordinary residents will pay the price.

Los Angeles has a budget problem, a public safety problem, a homelessness crisis, and streets that are falling apart. Apparently, City Hall’s next big priority may be making it harder to drive on them.

Mayor-elect Nithya Raman is preparing to advance an ambitious transportation agenda that could reshape some of Los Angeles’ busiest streets, replacing portions of existing roadway with bicycle lanes, bus corridors, and other infrastructure.

The estimated price tag associated with implementing Measure HLA? $3.1 billion over a decade, according to a previously reported city estimate that transportation advocates have disputed.

Kalaydjian goes on, as the Post driveled, to blame the the nearly $8 million spent by “wealthy transportation advocate and hedge fund manager Aaron Sosnick” to support Raman’s campaign, calling on readers to “follow the money.”

As if Sosnick’s support bought Raman’s any more than the millions spent by the police and city employee unions bought Bass.

I would be the first to call for ending that kind of massive outside spending in political campaigns. But you can thank the Supreme Court for tossing out the post-Watergate limits on campaign spending for creating the high-dollar political world we live in.

He goes on to point out the obvious, that Los Angeles is not a bicycling utopia where just anyone can trade their car for a bicycle.

Which is kind of the point of HLA, isn’t it?

It is not currently safe or practical for most people to ride bikes, simply because there are few safe spaces to ride in due to a lack of spending to create them.

And no one is saying that everyone has to leave their car in the driveway and ride a bike absolutely everywhere. But merely that the people who want to ride a bike or take a bus somewhere should have that option, rather than being forced into their car by the design of our streets.

Studies have shown that nearly two-thirds of Angelenos would like to ride a bike if they felt safe on the streets. And that the overwhelming majority of car trips are three miles or less, which most people could easily ride.

Never mind that ped-assist ebikes can easily reduce the effort required, and effectively reduce distances for most people — even elderly and handicapped people, for whom an ebike becomes a mobility device.

Or that bike lanes actually represent just a tiny part of the street repair budget, in most cases costing no more than the striping the city would do anyway after repaving.

But it gets worse.

In another article, a self-identified Spencer Pratt supporter starts his diatribe this way —

IN MY OPINION – The occult ballot-harvesting election machinery in Los Angeles has declared Nithya Raman to be the new Mayor. An obedient media has goosestepped along with that pronouncement. A less deserving candidate would be hard to find anywhere in the country. Nithya and her DSA-Communist comrades should be congratulated for their superior ballot-harvesting skills.

Funny that Pratt supporters still haven’t grasped the concept that he lost because the people of Los Angeles didn’t want him as our mayor. Pratt garnered less than 30% of the vote — even less than Donald Trump received in heavily Democratic LA County just two years earlier.

But maybe someone could explain the difference between a Democratic Socialist and a communist to the writer, Eliot Cohen, who has clearly never heard that the bike-riding, Democratic Socialist Nordic countries consistently rank as the world’s happiest countries.

The drivel doesn’t stop there, however.

Start with the streets. Raman’s transportation agenda favors protected bicycle lanes, bus corridors and aggressive road diets. Her supporters expect aggressive implementation of Measure HLA, which voters approved in 2024. You would think a mayor of a car-driven city would seek to speed up commutes and reduce pollution from idling cars. Instead, Raman prioritizes reallocating road space while fewer than 1% of Los Angeles workers commute by bicycle.

The budgetary problems begin before a single traffic lane disappears. Prop HLA ties qualifying repaving of at least 660 feet on designated Mobility Plan streets to additional planned improvements. The city’s chief budget officer estimated implementation at $3.1 billion over ten years and called it an unfunded mandate. Supporters dispute that estimate, which includes extensive sidewalk work. But where is the money to deliver these obligations while repairing our roads? City report

The consequences are already visible. By May 2026, StreetsLA estimated its budget would support only 60 lane miles of resurfacing that fiscal year, compared with more than 300 the previous year. HLA, coupled with separate federal wheelchair-access requirements and staffing shortages, constrains the work. The city has shifted toward large asphalt patches to avoid triggering additional obligations. Raman’s promise of aggressive HLA implementation requires a funding plan and a tax increase before HLA improvements to street paving can take place. LAist

I’ll let you read the rest, if you have the stomach for it.

But let’s at least consider that $3.1 billion spread out over ten years works out to $310 million a year — less than the current $396 million annual budget for LADOT alone.

It’s also less than the $316 million in unfunded pay raises Karen Bass and the city council gave to the police union and other city employees this current year, which rises to a more than $1 billion burden on taxpayers in 2028.

Or looking at it another way, it’s slightly more than 2% of the total Los Angeles city budget for the current fiscal year.

So if the streets aren’t getting fixed, it’s not because of HLA.

………

This is the cost of traffic violence.

The family of two-time NCAA triathlon champ Hannah Henry blasted the sentence for the hit-and-run driver who killed her during a morning bike ride earlier this year.

Even though any California family would be thrilled to see a killer driver sentenced to ten years behind bars, plus five years probation, which far exceeds the maximum for a DUI hit-and-run in the Golden State.

“I feel some relief that this part is over,” Henry’s mother, Della Doore said. “The pain and the hurt will never be over…”

Doore said she spent her whole life keeping her daughter safe, only for her daughter’s life to be taken carelessly for nothing.

“Hannah didn’t get a plea bargain,” Doore said. “When he got behind the wheel after taking fentanyl, he gave Hannah the death sentence. All she was doing was riding her bike on a Sunday morning. Thank you for hearing me.”

The former Arizona State University star was training for a triathlon, riding in a Phoenix bike lane when she was run down by a driver who had been smoking the drug before getting behind the wheel. He later told the cops that he blacked out, and thought he’d hit a fire hydrant after waking up.

Every traffic death is a death sentence for the victim and their loved ones, who have to live with the consequences for the rest of their lives, leaving a hole in their home and hearts that can never be filled.

Never mind that it happens nearly 40,000 times every year in the US, to nearly 40,000 families, needlessly snuffing out the population of a small city.

Every year, after year, after year.

If a plane crash kills a couple hundred people, it makes headlines around the world. But 40,000 traffic deaths go virtually unnoticed, like the drip of a kitchen sink.

And until that changes, nothing else will.

Et tu, Brute? Photo by Annie Gavin from Pixabay. 

……….

He gets it.

A New Orleans writer discusses a 10-mile community bike ride this weekend, noting that the city’s bike riders don’t fit the usual stereotypes.

To those watching, bicycle riders often fall into easy stereotypes and stigmas. There’s the hipster gentrifier, the commuter, the tourist on a Blue Bike, the geared-up road racer, the trick-bike kids riding on their back wheels, the tour guide leading 12 matching bikes.

Others, observing from behind a steering wheel, will always see bikes as an unwanted obstruction to their dominance of the roadway.

The reality is more nuanced, rooted in diversity and community…

There are the French Quarter-Marigny artist bicyclists who live in neighborhoods where parking is tight and stores are a short ride away. Then there are Carnival and Jazz Fest riders, who pass stopped traffic on their ways home. Then there are native-born New Orleanian men who ride no-frills cruiser bikes — and now growing numbers of e-bikes —  because bicycling is more reliable than our transit system.

Because 1 in 5 New Orleans households don’t have access to a car, people must weigh options and bicycles often win over buses (waits) and Uber/Lyft (expensive).

When I lived in Louisiana back in the early ’80s, the idea of almost anyone riding a bike in the city was a totally foreign concept. As a friend of mine from New Orleans put it when I invited him to ride with me one weekend, he said you’d never see a Black man on a bicycle, because everyone would assume he couldn’t afford a car, or he stole it.

He wasn’t joking, either.

Nice to see just how much the city has changed, even if it only took 40 years.

……….

Get ready for Sunday’s CicLAvia with BikeLA’s annual Bike Fest fundraiser tomorrow.

………

Make time during Sunday’s CicLAvia for Streets Are For Everyone’s observance of the World Day of Remembrance for the victims of traffic violence.

………

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

A Nashville TV station follows the usual template, asking if the measly $14.5 million the city spent on bike lanes over a three-year period is worth the cost, when only 0.4% of Nashville commuters bike to work — which is like asking if it’s worth $14.5 million to build a bridge, when less than half of 1% of drivers attempt to ford the river.

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

Sad news from New York, where a 49-year old man riding an ebike was killed when he was hit head-on by a 50-year old ebike rider traveling the opposite direction in a two-way Bronx bike lane. As usual, there’s no mention of what type of ebikes they were riding, whether legal ped-assist bikes or e-motos.

A London bike rider complained about a “psychopath level” road raging driver who cut in front of him to turn into a gas station, causing the rider to fall off his bike to avoid him, which escalated into a shouting match with the driver threatening to hit him, then squirting a bottle of motor oil into the bicyclist’s face and mouth. Yep, sounds like a psychopath to me, anyway. 

The good news is that former Aussie world road champ Rohan Dennis could end up behind bars after all; the bad news, it’s not for killing his wife, Olympic cyclist Melissa Hoskins, it’s for driving with a suspended license, which was the harshest penalty he got for killing her with his SUV.

………

Local 

The Los Angeles Times considers how much of the county’s 500 miles of open flood control channels can be used for hiking and biking trails, green spaces and parks under a new coalition of LA County officials and local nonprofits known as Urban Natueways.

The Pasadena Star-News offers a last-minute guide to Sunday’s Pasadena CicLAvia. But they naturally hide it behind their paywall, apparently not wanting non-subscribers from outside the city to show up or anything.

 

State

Calbike says the Democratic blue wave — more like a king tide, kelvin wave blue tsunami — also marks a rising tide for bicyclists, with winning California candidates they’ve backed, from Nithya Raman to the Bay Area’s Scott Weiner. Although while they backed Raman in her first run for LA City Council, I don’t recall them endorsing her for mayor this time around.

Sad news from Nevada County, where a search is on for the hit-and-run driver who killed someone riding a bicycle in Grass Valley Wednesday afternoon.

 

National

The Bike League has once again named Washington as the country’s most bicycle friendly state, followed by Oregon, Minnesota and Massachusetts, with California checking in ahead of Colorado for the fifth spot, as unlikely as that may seem; Mississippi, which just entered the 20th Century by electing its first Black senator since Reconstruction, unsurprisingly takes up the rear.

A former Michigan state representative suffered a critical spinal injury when he hit black sewage pipe on a dark sidewalk as he was riding to a bible study class at a nearby Catholic church.

A Toledo, Ohio man was sentenced to a mandatory term of nine to 13.5 years behind bars for the hit-and-run death of a popular 44-year old local chef as he was riding his bike in a designated bike lane; he also received a lifetime driver’s license suspension after his release.

Tragic news from Massachusetts, where a renowned Boston cardiologist who disappeared after leaving for a bike ride last Saturday, only to be found dead in a cow pasture the next day, died of a self-inflicted gunshot.

A bill in the New York legislature would force food delivery services to foot the bill to create rest areas for delivery workers, including bathrooms and e-bike charging and storage areas.

More sad news, this time from Baltimore, where the bike rider who was fatally stabbed in a local park was identified as a 62-year old adjunct music professor at Towson University.

 

International

Stuttgart, Germany is investing the equivalent of $12.6 million to build new seven-foot wide bike lanes on both sides of the city’s Main Bicycle Route 2 on Ulmer Straße, to complete the project.

Japan’s Cycle Trains are growing in popularity, allowing bike riders to board without having to disassemble their bikes.

 

Finally…

That feeling when the city bans student ebike parking near an intermediate school, but car parking is just dandy. Or when your new Chinese ebike folds up into a little 41-pound square.

And the solution for everyone who wants to take a pipe on your bike, in case you need a few puffs while you puff up and down the road.

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin.

 

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

61-year old NoHo mofo arrested for DUI & murder, and Culver City approves Sepulveda upgrade over objections from Tracy Park

November 12, 2026 / / No comments

No surprise here.

As many, if not most of us, have probably guessed, the driver in Tuesday’s North Hollywood massacre, 61-year-old Ihor Demianenko, was arrested yesterday on suspicion of driving under the influence, and was allegedly speeding as he drove down Lankershim Blvd.

Demianenko also faces three counts of murder after jumping the curb on the opposite side of the street, and plowing into food vendor stands outside the North Hollywood Metro station.

He is currently being held on $6 million bail, which will likely keep him behind bars until his case goes to trial.

The murder counts suggest this is not Demianenko’s first offense, and that he has previously received a Watson advisement informing him he could be charged with murder if he killed someone while driving under the influence anytime in the future.

Either that, or police believe the crash that killed three beloved food vendors, and injured two other people, in addition to Demianenko, was somehow intentional.

At least one of the women was known to feed local homeless residents when they couldn’t afford to buy a meal.

As for today’s photo, I really don’t give a damn how drunk you get. Just don’t get behind the fucking wheel afterwards.

………

Culver City approved an overhaul of Sepulveda Blvd through the city, despite pushback from a Los Angeles city councilmember.

The plan includes 1.2 miles of physically protected bike lanes linking Culver Blvd and Ballona Creek, along with 1.8 miles of bus-only lanes. The plan will maintain two traffic lanes in each direction, with a center left turn lane and retaining parking on one side of the street. The city council also certified the project is exempt from CEQA review.

Not surprisingly, LA’s CD11 Tracy Park urged Culver City to delay a vote on the proposal by citing the usual fear tactics over traffic gridlock and cut-through drivers clogging nearby side streets in her district — even though those fears have failed to materialize on other similar projects, such as on Venice Blvd.

Park also voiced objections over potential high-density rezoning under Senate Bill 79, which allows construction projects up to nine stories within half a mile of major transit stops.

However, unlike Los Angeles where councilmembers enjoy a virtual fiefdom in their districts, Park has no power over Culver City, and the council approved the project anyway.

……….

Nithya Raman’s support of Measure HLA could change the way Latino workers get around the city, according to Parriva.

A 2015 national study by the Breakaway Research Group, commissioned by PeopleForBikes, found that Hispanic bicycle riders reported particularly high levels of transportation-related cycling.

Among Hispanic respondents who already rode bicycles, 58% reported using them to travel to work or school, compared with 40% of white respondents. Nearly half, 49%, reported riding to connect with public transportation, compared with 23% of white respondents.

The study also found that 65% of Hispanic respondents used bicycles for shopping or errands…

For workers who cannot afford a vehicle or live far from reliable public transportation, a bicycle can make the difference between having access to a job and spending additional time and money getting there.

Bike lanes have been accused of being tools for gentrification, under the false assumption that they will be used primarily by wealthy white bicyclists for recreation.

Yet bike lanes also serve what used to be known as Los Invisibles, or the invisible bicyclists — the students, bus boys and laborers who use bicycles as their primary means of transportation because it’s all that they can afford, and too often go unnoticed on the roads.

So when councilmembers block or delay bike lanes, that’s who they are really hurting. And who HLA will benefit as much or more than anyone else.

……….

Japanese bicyclist Ryo Murata finished his viral bike ride from Chicago to Los Angeles, rolling onto the Santa Monica pier on the 100th anniversary of Route 66, as well as his own 27th birthday.

Murata actually completed a two-part ride across the US that began in New York two years ago, stopping in Chicago when his bike broke down and his tourist visa expired, forcing him to return to Japan.

The LA Dodgers also surprised Murata with a custom Shohei Ohtani jersey; his last stop before the finish was at the massive mural for his idol and countryman in Little Tokyo.

……….

How to rent a bike in Mandarin, courtesy of a Chinese government media service.

………

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

It took a BBC story about a bicyclist left in a coma for a section of England’s popular bikeway linking Bristol and Bath damaged by tree roots to finally get repaved, despite years of requests to get it fixed. As usual, it not only took someone getting hurt, but also national news coverage to get anything done.

A 40-year old British man was convicted of the road-rage murder of a 50-year old father of three, after he deliberately swerved his car into the victim’s bicycle following a brief argument in which the victim had knocked the wing mirror off the driver’s car; the driver had been drinking before picking his kids up from school, who were undoubtedly traumatized by watching dad use his car as a weapon to murder another man.

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

Police in Philadelphia are looking for the shmuck man who smacked a 60-year old woman in the face, for no apparent reason, as he was riding by on the sidewalk.

………

Local 

Los Angeles voters have apparently approved Charter Amendment EE, which would allow the City Council to hold a full meeting just once per week, as opposed to the current three, with the measure leading with 52.76 percent support in the latest vote drop; other amendments leading in the vote count would switch the city to a two-year budgeting plan, and increase the required signatures to put citizen amendments on the ballot from 10% to 15% of the mayoral vote in the last election.

The LAPD’s Pacific Division issued a theft-prevention advisory warning about the dangers of cable locks, after 100 ebikes were stolen in the division in the last six months.

Yet another reminder about Sunday’s 2.7-mile Pasadena CicLAvia, the final one of the year.

 

State

The Regulatory Review reviews California’s efforts to regulate ebikes.

Mountain View is replacing a traffic signal at a busy downtown intersection with a traffic circle, as well as protected bikeways.

Palo Alto is planning a series of upgrades to the nation’s first bicycle boulevard, including traffic circles, curb extensions and other improvements.

 

National

Velo ranks the best bike helmets, skipping over the one rated highest by Virginia Tech, and rates the best bike lights for added measure.

A fifth-generation “preacher’s kid” and grandnephew of the late, great civil rights activist and musical legend Nina Simone is undertaking a 3,300-mile bicycle religious pilgrimage retracing routes slaves traveled to freedom on the historic Underground Railroad.

Bikepacking questions whether the current spike in gas prices will spark the second great American bike boom, following the boom of the 1970s. Even though the most recent bike boom sparked by the Covid pandemic has already come and gone, and even though high gas prices haven’t even made Americans trade in their massive trucks and SUVs yet. 

Speaking of bikepacking, a local writer spent five days and 400 miles riding around Washington’s “breathtaking” Olympic Peninsula, riding past black bears and my brother’s new home in Port Angeles.

Mexico’s Bike Guy has given away over 400 bicycles this year, and plans to give away another 200 to children in need for Christmas. No, the other Mexico, in Missouri. 

A mystery in Massachusetts, after top Boston cardiologist left his home for a bike ride Saturday morning, and was found dead in a cow pasture Sunday afternoon, although police don’t suspect foul play.

New York Streetsblog says Brooklyn’s new bike boulevards will benefit the 90% of residents who don’t drive to work, despite “lazy” reporting that they will divide the neighborhood.

Evidently, Hoboken, New Jersey has decided that ten years without a traffic death is long enough, and will modify a protected bike lane to restore 20 parking spaces.

Philadelphia groups are planning dueling pro and anti-Israel bike rides for this Sunday.

A Baltimore man was stabbed to death while riding in a local park; police were treating his death as a homicide, after apparently concluding he had not repeatedly fallen on a random sharp object.

An Atlanta man drove six hours to install a ghost bike on the North Carolina country road where 63-year old Patrick Turner was killed when an alleged DUI driver plowed into the members of a bike club, injuring 22 other riders in addition to Turner; it was the 217th ghost bike installed by Dave Matthews in the past 15 years. And no, not the musician.

 

International

Garmin and Waze are teaming up to alert drivers to the location of bicyclists via the Waze app — but only if you’re using a Garmin device on your bike.

Another one bites the dust, as 12-year old English bikemaker Temple Cycles announced it’s going out of business.

A 20-year old British man was jailed for six and a half years for a series of violent bike thefts on a Leeds canal towpath, which left two older bike riders “deeply fearful” of riding their bikes.

The best places to ride a bike on your next trip to Abu Dhabi.

American mountain biker Hannah Otto became the first woman to ride up and down Tanzania’s Mt. Kilimanjaro in a single day, finishing the ride in 10 hours, 18 minutes and 51 seconds, despite breaking her leg two miles from the finish line; following a 30-hour trip to return to the US, she was diagnosed with multiple tibia fractures, a blood clot and an ACL that had pulled off her knee, taking a section of the bone with it.

 

Competitive Cycling

Sixty-nine-year old Gulf War veteran Ellie Kennedy is training for the Los Angeles Paralympic Games on her three-wheeled bike; Kennedy suffers from ataxia, a neurological condition that affects her balance, and didn’t start racing until her 60s.

Escape Collective describes what it’s like to have Remco Evenepoel accidentally steal your KOM.

 

Finally…

You, too, could have bought the very same Colnago V5Rs Tadej Pogačar rode to victory in last year’s Liège-Bastogne-Liège for half price. Who among us can honestly say we haven’t taken part in a late night ‘cross event dressed as a duck?

And bad enough we have to deal with distracted drivers without having to worry about sewer equipment, too.

Especially when riding to Bible study.

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin.

 

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Update: Another mass casualty car crash in NoHo with 3 dead, 3 critical — and the CA Post should go back to New York and leave LA the hell alone

November 11, 2026 / / No comments

Thank you to all who have served this nation, at home or abroad, in peacetime or in war. 

Let’s all work to ensure that every veteran comes all the way home after their service — mentally, physically and emotionally.

………

It’s happened again, again.

Just one day after I wrote about the North Carolina mass casualty crash, another driver’s car became a ballistic weapon of mass destruction, plowing through of group of innocent bystanders, this time right here in Los Angeles.

But at least there weren’t any bicycles involved, that I know of, anyway.

According to multiple reports, just before 6 pm yesterday, the driver of a minivan plowed into a group of pedestrians and street food vendors outside the North Hollywood Metro station on Lankershim Blvd, killing three people on the scene and critically injuring at least three others, including the driver.

The driver, reported to be a man in his 60s, was headed south on Lankershim before jumping the curb on the opposite side of the street, and coming to rest on the sidewalk surrounded by scattered bodies.

According to the Los Angeles Times,

Kassandra Guzman, 12, was sitting at her family’s smash burger stand across Lankershim when she saw a car barreling down Lankershim drove straight through the blue tarp where a number of food vendors usually set up.

The vendors sell coffee, tamales, hot dogs and pastries, according to Guzman, who said the people who were injured have been working there for years.

“I’m just glad it wasn’t my family, but it still hurts,” she said.

There’s no word at this time why the driver slammed onto the sidewalk, or how fast he may have been going prior to the crash. Nor is there any word on whether he was under the influence, may have suffered a medical emergency, or if there was another vehicle involved.

All we know for sure is that this wasn’t caused by a bike lane, because the protected bike lane we were promised on Lankershim through the NoHo Arts District was never built, after former councilmembers Tom LaBonge and Paul Krekorian teamed up to kill the project a decade ago.

Whether those bike lanes could have prevented this tragedy is impossible to know at this time; it might have just put more bike riders in harm’s way.

Not only does this crash come days after the North Carolina massacre that killed one bicyclist and injured 22 other, it also occurred just two months after an allegedly drunk driver plowed into the side of a Metro bus at Nordhoff and DeSoto, killing two passengers on the bus. Then a few hours later, a helicopter covering the crash for KNBC-4 tumbled from the sky, killing the pilot and an onboard reporter, as well as a man on the ground.

All because we all trust our lives to motor vehicles and the people operating them, resulting in nearly 40,000 needless deaths and around 2.4 million injuries in the US each year.

Now you can add three more to that morbid score, on both sides of the equation.

Update: No surprise here, as the driver, 61-year-old Ihor Demianenko, was allegedly speeding, and arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence. He also faces three counts of murder, and is being held on $6 million bail. 

The murder counts suggest this is not his first offense, and that he has previously received a Watson advisement informing him he could be charged with murder if he killed someone while driving under the influence anytime in the future. 

………

Which brings us to this idiotic editorial from the conservative California Post, arguing that “leftist snobbery” is behind Nithya Raman’s $3.1 billion bike lane plan.

Never mind that the total they cite includes the cost to build out the entire Mobility Plan 2035, from fixing sidewalks and crosswalks to building bus lanes. And that $3.1 billion was a worst-case scenario basically pulled out of the asses of opponents of Measure HLA in an effort to defeat the proposal — which passed with overwhelming support anyway.

You can almost hear the editors of the paper slobbering with glee at the prospect of once again owning the libs — which in this case means anyone who doesn’t want to die on the mean streets of LA.

Nithya Raman and her allies want to make LA — a city built around the automobile — more congested and even less drivable.

The mayor-elect and some of her large campaign donors have pushed for a $3.1 billion road overhaul that would add bike and bus lanes, while squeezing and subtracting driving lanes.

That would mean less space for motorists, more traffic and longer drives on main city arteries such as Lincoln, Santa Monica, Sunset, Venice, Sepulveda and Ventura boulevards — along with the streets around them.

Let’s see how many mistakes you can find in those three paragraphs.

First of all, Los Angeles was never built around the automobile. Depending on how far you want to go back, the city started with Tongva, Chumash, Serrano and Tataviam Indian trails, followed by the ruts of Spanish horses and donkey carts, and western wagons.

That was followed by the city’s first paved roads, which were built for bicycles, not motor vehicles. But Los Angeles was really built around one of the world’s great rail networks, the Red and Yellow cars, whose former tracks now account for the city’s many wide boulevards.

Then there’s that highly disputed $3.1 billion figure, which the paper’s editors are just running with, without bothering to determine its source or accuracy.

As we noted yesterday, Raman did have a few large donors on her side. But nowhere near as many, or willing to invest as much, as those supporting Karen Bass’ failed effort at reelection. But if you really want to talk about big donors, the tale begins and ends with Elon Musk’s half-billion dollar failed bet on MAGA extremists.

It’s also not the mayor elect, or her donors, pushing that road overhaul. It was the Los Angeles City Council, which passed the bike plan unanimously, followed by a 12-2 vote to adopt the mobility plan that subsumed it. And former mayors Antonio Villaraigosa and Eric Garcetti who signed and supported them.

Then there’s the two-thirds of Los Angeles voters who passed Measure HLA, which made implementing those plans part of the city charter. All Raman and her supporters have done is call for implementing that plan as legally required.

But yes, it would require narrowing many of the city’s traffic lanes, which are currently far too wide to encourage safe driving, as well as the removal of some parking and traffic lanes, less in the name of installing bus and bike lanes than in an effort to improve traffic safety and save human lives.

And slowing traffic is the whole fucking point, because that’s how you accomplish that.

But the Post’s editors slobber on. And on.

What a bleak prospect for LA residents. This plan is woke ideology masquerading as a health initiative.

Raman would do well to drop it, and spend city time and resources on initiatives that would enhance — rather than degrade — the lives of everyday Angelenos.

Never mind that those same “everyday Angelenos” must have thought it would enhance their lives, or they wouldn’t have voted for it. Instead we get the Post’s editors pushing rightwing ideology in a city that has overwhelmingly rejected it — or Spencer Pratt would be getting sworn in next month instead of Raman.

Or did they even stop to consider that she received over 53% of the votes cast for mayor just last week, which kinda suggests that a fair number of Angelenos must have thought she has a few good ideas beyond her so-called “woke ideology.”

Then there’s this.

But reconfiguring LA roads would likely decrease safety — clogging and removing lanes used by police, fire and paramedics — while doing nothing to lower global temperatures. In fact, all the idling in extra traffic might drive emissions up.

Those arguments have been repeatedly studied and found to be false. Where lanes have been removed in Los Angeles, it has not appreciably slowed emergency response times, nor has it done so in other cities. Never mind that bus and bike lanes can be used by emergency responders to get around the traffic congestion caused, not by bike lanes, but by too damn many motor vehicles and the solo drivers in them.

It has also been repeatedly disproven that drivers idling in the traffic congestion they cause drives up emissions to any significant degree.

And the left’s carless utopian vision is particularly ill-suited for LA.

The city is vast, sprawling, spread out. It’s often impractical to take a bike or a bus to one’s destination.

And even if it were feasible to ride a bike for, say, 10 miles each way to work, what then? Can a person also pick up the kids from school on a cycle, and then balance a few grocery bags on the handlebars?

Most trips in Los Angeles are three miles or less, which can easily be done by bus or bike — and could be done a lot faster if we had dedicated lanes to safely get around all those cars.

Then there’s this crazy new invention called an ebike, which does a masterful job of shortening commuting distances, while making that long, boring drive to work — wait for it — fun.

And yes, there are people right now who pick up their kids at school by bicycle, as well as doing their shopping by bike.

Then there’s the reality that impeding mobility impairs economic growth. Large-scale road reconfigurations that restrict vehicle traffic or scrap parking — already a grand frustration in LA — would deter shoppers, hurt merchants and dampen prosperity.

Studies have repeatedly shown that retail sales and sales tax revenue tends to go up, not down, after protected bike lanes are installed, while increasing the walkability and livability of neighborhoods previously choked by pass-through drivers. And that bike riders tend to spend more at individual shops and restaurants over time than motorists, spending less per trip but frequenting businesses, well, more frequently.

Not to mention that protected bike lanes reduce crashes and crash severity for all road users, with significant benefits in reduced car repair, medical and insurance costs, as well as less worker downtime.

Raman conceded on Tuesday that HLA’s exorbitant costs have slowed road fixes to a crawl, and she vowed to determine how many barrier-protected bike lanes the cash-strapped city can afford to install.

What has slowed road fixes to a crawl is the city’s reluctance to comply with the curb cuts required by the Americans with Disabilities Act, not the minimal costs of striping bus and bike lanes, or even the higher cost to install curb-protected bike lanes.

Which the Post’s editors would know if they had any fact-checkers on staff. Or knew how to Google.

They conclude thusly,

But so long as HLA remains on the books, City Hall should address it without punishing motorists. That means no road diets, no lane subtractions, and no pipe-dream notions that people will suddenly, en masse, find the bus convenient.

LA does not need $3.1 billion worth of street redesigns.

It needs mobility — including and especially by car.

Maybe they could ask the families of those people killed and injured in North Hollywood yesterday if we need still more cars on the streets.

Because the simple fact is, cars are the problem, not the solution.

And adding more cars to our already congested streets won’t help anyone anymore than gas fueled, MAGA-fied drivel like this.

………

I’m sorry, but it’s now well after 3 am, and I’ve already wasted too much time and over 1,800 words discussing the harm motor vehicles and California Post editors continue to inflict on this city.

So I’m calling it a night. We’ll be back tomorrow to catch up on the rest of the news.

Oh, and if you’re a subscriber to the California Post, I mean, what the fuck, dude?

Just flush your money down the toilet and spare your brain cells.

Category: Injuries and Fatalities / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

NC DUI driver’s weapon of mass destruction, cars ever-expanding size and lethality, and not everyone cheering after Raman win

November 10, 2026 / / No comments

Well, that sucked.

I sat down to get to work Sunday night, only to find my site was down and I couldn’t access anything, let alone do anything.

The good news is that we’re up and running now. But Monday’s gonna Monday, I guess.

………

As you’ve probably heard by now, a motor vehicle in the wrong hands was once again turned into a weapon of mass destruction, this time in North Carolina Saturday morning.

The result was one person dead, and as many as 22 people injured, out of a group ride variously reported as 30 to 40 people. One way or another, that means he took out over half the people on the ride.

And considering how it happened, it seems like a miracle that only one person was killed.

The driver, 76-year-old Donald Robert Morris-Jones, was allegedly under the influence when he drove onto the wrong side of a country road near Raleigh, North Carolina, and slammed head-on into the members of the Capital Cycling Club.

Sixty-three-year old Patrick Turner died at the scene, while seven other riders were seriously injured. Up to 15 others suffered less serious injuries of varying degrees.

Morris-Jones fled the scene, crashing into a ditch about half a mile away, where he attempted to flee on foot.

Oh, did I mention that this all happened around 9:40 am?

Reports have not yet said why Morris-Jones was suspected of being drunk. We should learn more in the next day or two after he’s arraigned.

At last report, he was still being held on $1 million bail, after a magistrate said he posed an “overwhelming danger to society.” Morris-Jones faces one count of felony death by vehicle, seven counts of serious injury by vehicle, eight counts of hit and run, driving while impaired, reckless driving, and driving left of the center line.

Which means, at his age, he will probably die in jail, unless prosecutors give him one hell of a sweetheart plea deal, although that seems a lot less likely in North Carolina than here in California.

According to a statement from the Capital Cycling Club,

“We are all in shock by the senseless decision by the individual that caused the collision. This horrific event was no accident. As far as we know, the individual made a decision to drive in a way that put others in grave and mortal peril.

“We do not think there was any possible way the driver did not know that he had collided with the group. He chose at that moment to keep driving away from the scene leaving mass carnage in his wake. We are working closely with law enforcement on their investigation. We will continue to follow this case closely as it proceeds to see that justice is done for our friends.”

Which is exactly the point. Alcoholism is a disease, as is chemical dependency. And there are any number of prescription medications that can cause someone to appear intoxicated, as I know all too well.

But getting behind the wheel in that state is a choice — as is the decision to keep going after a mass casualty crash. There is nothing that excuses that, particularly when it results in the death of an innocent person.

Needless to say, the local bicycling community was deeply shaken.

………

From what I understand, vehicle size wasn’t a factor in the North Carolina massacre.

But an op-ed in California Streetsblog is worth reading, explaining the role that the ever-increasing vehicle size plays in the lethality of motor vehicle crashes, and what can be done about it.

The deadliness of crashes can in part be traced to these big pickups and various heavy SUVs. SUVs used to alarm transportation planners by their size but now are dwarfed by large pickup trucks. American pickup trucks can weigh 4,000 to 8,000 pounds. Many have high front ends that instead of hitting pedestrians low and crushing their legs, instead crush internal organs. And their size leaves no safe space on a travel lane for a bicycle rider. Some in the auto industry are acknowledging the problem. “[Cars] that used to weigh a ton and a half are now three tons,” said Ned Curic, chief technology officer of automaker Stellantis N.V., the parent company of Jeep, Dodge, Chrysler, and Fiat.

And vehicles are getting heavier as they are electrified. Electric vehicles are 10% to 25% heavier than gas-driven ones; in a growing future of electric pickups and SUVs, fatality rates will get worse.

I’ve caught some heat for describing the high, flat grill featured on so many cars, trucks and SUVs these days as murder grills, with people arguing that vehicle designers and buyers don’t intentionally plan to kill anyone.

Yet that is the inevitable result of having so many of these oversized vehicles with their oversized grills on the road. Maybe your SUV will never kill anyone. Most won’t. But someone’s will. Make that a lot of someones.

And that doesn’t even get into the massive size of trucks and SUV that are up to 50% larger than a couple decades ago, increasing both their lethality and the space they take up on the road, too often crowding bike riders and other vehicles off it.

Anyway, give it a read. Because we have to do something about it.

Like, now.

……….

LAist says Los Angeles transit and safer streets advocates have been cheering Nithya Raman’s win since she defeated incumbent Karen Bass for Mayor of Los Angeles.

”It is time for a cultural shift towards a city that prioritizes pedestrians and cyclists and people who take public transit,” (People’s Vision Zero founder Jonathan) Hale added. “We finally have a mayor who believes that.”

It’s not just bike lanes. Raman’s successful campaign hinged on a policy platform that viewed broken sidewalks, streetlights in disrepair and pothole-ridden roads not as intractable issues, but urgent crises that can be addressed with better governance.

Raman, who has said she used trains and buses to commute to work in the past, also has her eyes on L.A.’s larger transportation network. On election eve, while riding the L.A. Metro B Line with supporters, Raman said the region can buck its car-centric reputation and be home to a fast, safe and connected transit system.

“That vision is totally achievable, if you have the will. I have the will,” Raman said.

I only wish I was cheering.

I mean, like Charlie Brown, I really want to believe that this will be the time we finally kick the damn ball. But I’ve seen it pulled away too many times.

Maybe I’ve just been at this too long. But I’ve seen this movie before.

We’ve passed progressive bike and mobility plans. Vison Zero. A Green New Deal. None of which we’ve actually seen come to pass.

Eric Garcetti made a lot of big promises, but failed to live up to any of them. Karen Bass made a big deal about riding a bike and being one of us, then seemed to forget we existed until she needed our votes once again.

Of the recent mayors, only Antonio Villaraigosa took actual action to improve safety on the streets. And that was only after he went to a mayor’s conference in Copenhagen, and saw what bikes are capable of, and had his Road to Damascus conversion when he got knocked off his bike by a cab driver, despite riding with his security detail.

I truly hope that Raman can emulate her fellow Democratic Socialist mayor in New York, and swiftly prove to everyone that she was the right choice for mayor, while making rapid changes to increase city efficiency and improve bicycling, walking transit and street safety in time for the ’28 Olympics.

But we live in a city that was deliberately designed to be inefficient and practically impossible to govern, with power intentionally taken away from the mayor’s office and distributed to 15 little kings and queens with their own little fiefdoms, all in the name of avoiding the corrupt officials of the past, as the Los Angeles Times’ Patt Morrison explains.

So maybe this time we’ll finally be able to kick that football, and you’ll hear me cheering from Boyle Heights to Santa Monica.

But while I may be hopeful, I’m not ready to start cheering yet.

……….

Sigh.

The judge hearing Joe Linton’s Measure HLA lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles tentatively ruled that he didn’t have standing to sue as a “transit activist.” However, he agreed to let Linton’s lawyers amend the complaint to demonstrate standing, with another hearing to be held on Christmas Eve eve.

Or, hear me out, maybe Linton just wants the city to uphold its commitments so he doesn’t get killed.

………

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

Montreal plans to remove one half of a controversial bike lane during the winter to restore a whopping 60 curbside parking spaces, bike safety be damned.

Progress on installing bike lanes in Northern Ireland is “very, very slow,” as planners are told to avoid putting bike lanes in front of homes and businesses. Which basically leaves schools, parking lots and farms. Except the latter two are forms of businesses, too.

………

Local 

The conservative California Post looks at the “powerful,” “influential” forces behind Nithya Raman’s victory — like, um, Streets For All — and a “$3.1 billion street overhaul” that could give drivers the squeeze on some of LA’s busiest streets. God, let’s hope so. Never mind that there were more and bigger powerful and influential forces backing Karen Bass. 

Ron Howard rode a bicycle to the premier of his new Netflix documentary at Santa Monica’s Aero Theater, parking it in the alley out back. But Page Six doesn’t want you to know about it unless you want to sign up for their free newsletter. I’ll pass, thanks. 

A Japanese man is concluding a ride from Chicago to Los Angeles to spread a message of hope.

Streetsblog reminds us about ongoing project scoping meetings for the Sepulveda Transit Corridor this week, as well as the year’s final CicLAvia in Pasadena on Sunday.

 

State

OC Sheriff’s deputies used the much-maligned Flock cameras to bust a Los Angeles man and woman for stealing an ebike in San Clemente.

Life is cheap in Escondido — if you’re a cop, anyway. A 36-year old Escondido cop walked with a misdemeanor diversion program for killing a 39-year old man riding an ebike during a pursuit last year; Officer Jason Ingco claimed the victim swerved into his patrol car while making what the DA termed an “ill-advised pass.”

A 40-year old Antioch man faces up to 15 years behind bars after he was convicted of the drunken hit-and-run death of a 29-year old woman riding a bicycle.

Food Network star Guy Fieri was one of us, beginning his career at ten years old peddling soft pretzels from a homemade bicycle cart in Northern California.

 

National

The founder of the Chemo Riders group spent three years riding 23,000 miles across the US to spell out “HELP” with his GPS, to call attention to the program to help cancer patients access reliable transportation to and from their life-saving treatments.

Maybe someone can explain to me what being a former Playboy model has to do with a woman’s family barely escaping their burning Oregon home after her son’s ebike battery exploded.

An Arizona site looks forward to the 11,000 people expected to participate in the annual El Tour de Tucson later this month.

The annual West Texas Marfa 100 bike ride reminds riders how much they stand to lose if Trump goes through with plans for the border wall in Big Bend National Park.

Oops. A Texas woman told an off-duty sheriff’s deputy that she hit “something” in the road after he noticed damage to the front-end of her SUV; that something turned out to be the 22-year old bike-riding woman she killed.

Former President George W. Bush joined veterans for his annual Warrior Ride mountain bike ride on his Texas ranch.

There’s not a pit deep enough for someone who would kick a Nashville man’s service dog in the face several times because he refused to hand over his bike, then stab the victim in the calf and kick his dog again for good measure before leaving with his bike and wallet.

A website for New York’s Chelsea neighborhood says it’s the forgotten pedestrians who stand to lose in the battle over ebikes and bike lanes in the Big Apple.

New York Streetsblog calls on the city’s mayor to make the former Boulevard of Death Gotham’s first bicycle superhighway.

A Hoboken, New Jersey website examines the most dangerous streets in the city, where crashes continue even though the city is nearing ten years without a traffic fatality. Then again, Vision Zero has never been about eliminating traffic collisions, just ensuring that those crashes don’t result in fatalities.

Protestors participating in a Philadelphia bike ride targeting owners of Jewish restaurants for their reputed support of Israel were overwhelmed by counterprotestors who came to buy food from the restaurants being boycotted, although another report said there were 50% more protestors than counterprotestors. I have no problem with anyone protesting the Israeli government or its decimation of Palestine; I might even join you. But protesting Jewish-owned businesses because they’re owned by Jews is racist and wrong.

Oops. A Pennsylvania cop was caught on video using an anti-gay slur while confronting a teenager on a bicycle. Raise your hand if you haven’t been called an anti-gay slur while riding a bike. Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

A Louisiana lawyer will once again give away 600 bicycles to kids in eight cities throughout the state.

A 37-year old Florida man faces a DUI manslaughter charge for killing a bike rider after leaving a bar at 3 am, claiming the victim was riding in the middle of the road even though the bike was on the shoulder when he ran it down.

 

International

Up to 69% of Northern Ireland residents expressed a reluctance to ride a bicycle, with 79% of those citing a lack of bike lanes.

Danish moviemakers spent three months in a “not so big” camper van with “a lot of equipment” to make a documentary about a nomadic bicyclist.

Japanese authorities have introduced a new bicycle helmet designed so it won’t mess up students’ hair, in order to get more young people to wear one. Personally, I’d much rather not mess up my brain anymore than it already is, but you do you.

Now even the cops are committing hit-and-runs. Two cops in Australia’s New South Wales face charges after they hit a 25-year old woman riding an ebike, and kept going without stopping. And it only took six months of investigation to make the arrests. 

Tragic news from Australia, where a 47-year old Chinese food delivery rider working in Australia to support his family was stabbed to death when he and another delivery rider confronted a man tampering with their bicycles.

 

Competitive Cycling

USA Cycling is using AI to improve speed and performance in preparation for the LA Olympics. So be prepared to see members of the US team with six fingers and an extra leg or two.

 

Finally…

That feeling when even a meteorologist goes riding in the rain, and ends up with his arm in a sling. Or when you get excited about “the greatest bike ride you’ve never heard of,” and it turns out to be about the first transcontinental motorcycle ride.

And that feeling when a potential 007 needs a stunt double because he keeps falling off his bike.

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin.

 

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Bass out as LA gets a new immigrant mayor; LA gives us all the finger with HLA noncompliance; and Claremont follows LA’s bike plan blunder

November 6, 2026 / / 3 comments

By now, you’ve undoubtedly heard that Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass officially conceded yesterday, ushering in the Nithya Raman era at LA City Hall, and making her the city’s first mayor of South Asian descent.

According to LAist,

Nithya Raman, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who offered a message of hope to a city beset by crises, has beaten Karen Bass in the race for Los Angeles mayor, the first time an incumbent has been ousted from that office in nearly a quarter century…

“And that work starts now, so that we can build housing that people can afford, parks for our children to play in, a transit system that can get people where they need to go, a city that is safe for its working people and its families, and a city government that is actually capable of delivering on its promises,” she said in the statement.

“I love this city, and I love its people, and I cannot wait to get started on building a better future together with all of you,” she continued. “Thank you so much, Los Angeles.”

She is also the first immigrant in memory to lead what has become a city of immigrants.

And in the Los Angeles Times’ look at how Raman will remake City Hall, the very first word is “bike.”

Bike lanes. Housing vouchers. A new police chief and many more new apartments, even in single-family neighborhoods.

And above all, data to find out if City Hall programs are working.

That’s a word that has been missing in action for the last four years, as the mayor led the city with a single-minded, and largely failed, focus on reducing homelessness.

Which isn’t to say that housing people living on the streets shouldn’t be a primary focus of a new Raman administration.

But it shouldn’t be the only one.

Los Angeles is failing as a city, with just two years to get our shit together before the world comes to our door for the ’28 LA Olympics. Will those visitors find today’s pothole-riddled and trash-lined streets? Or will Raman somehow find a way to make LA work in the short time before they get here?

This is how Streets For All founder Michael Schneider framed Raman’s ascension.

We will finally have a Mayor who is a trained urban planner who believes that you shouldn’t have to risk your life to cross the street, or ride a bike. Who believes in prioritizing efficient transit, and will accelerate good projects in the pipeline. Who endorsed Measure HLA and will tell city departments to stop fighting it. Who wants to build a ton more housing and will cut red tape to do so. A Mayor who is thoughtful, and cares about solving problems instead of speaking in platitudes.

However, it will be up to us to hold her feet to the fire, and ensure this becomes the bikeable, walkable, livable city we’ve been promised.

Because it isn’t now. And that, more than anything, is why Bass lost.

……….

Speaking of Measure HLA, Streetsblog’s Joe Linton reports that the city continues failing to comply with the requirements of the ordinance.

According to Linton, the city has installed only 300 feet of new bus/bike/walk/accessibility facilities since Measure HLA became law in early 2024. That’s because the city insists that the only project “HLA required the city to install is a 300 foot of Reseda Boulevard bike lanes in Tarzana,” as they’ve continued to find creative workarounds to avoid complying with the measure.

But, according to Linton,

But you shouldn’t have to come to Streetsblog to find this quantified. Measure HLA required the city to set up a website to “provide the public access to monitoring and evaluation data for the implementation of the Mobility Plan as required by [Measure HLA].”

The city’s HLA dashboard website has been online since early 2025, but it’s basically a sad joke: incomplete, opaque, and in many places outdated and incorrect. It’s worse than malicious compliance.

The public still has no straightforward way of tracking city progress related to HLA or the Mobility Plan that HLA requires the city to implement.

In other words, just like with Vision Zero and the mobility plan, where the city was required to maintain a website listing bicycle and pedestrian death, and hold monthly meetings to update the public on progress building out the plan.

Something they gave up on in both cases, when it became just too damned inconvenient for them.

Hopefully, Raman will force the city into compliance with the law. Because right now, the city is just basically giving us all the finger.

………

She gets it.

A Pomona College professor complains that Claremont is one of the state’s most dangerous cities for children on bicycles, as well as one of the worst for speed-related injury collisions. Yet local officials are wasting funds on a hobbled transportation plan.

According to an op-ed by Heather Williams in the Claremont Courier,

Will our elected officials rise to the moment and make Claremont safer and greener? Or will they squander our best-in-a-generation opportunity to change that?

In March 2025, Claremont’s City Council authorized a $482,919 contract with Alta Planning+Design to develop an Active Transportation Plan. The objective was laudable: study our streets, consult residents, and develop a comprehensive strategy for making Claremont safer, more accessible, and more environmentally sustainable.

But she was disappointed to learn that the plan they came back with is disjointed and disconnected — because those were the marching orders Alta was given.

According to participants, Alta’s pedestrian proposals include promising improvements: raised crosswalks, curb extensions, flashing pedestrian beacons, and traffic-calming measures. But the proposed bicycle network is fragmented, with protected lanes that begin and end unpredictably, disconnected routes, and stretches offering little meaningful protection.

Why? Advisory group participants report that Alta was instructed to preserve existing vehicle lane configurations, landscaped areas, medians, and substantial on-street parking, while avoiding conflicts with driveways and school drop-off areas.

These restrictions effectively rule out many of the changes necessary to create continuous, protected bicycle routes.

According to Williams, city leaders need to explain to constituents why they’re spending nearly half a million dollars on a plan that “institutionalizes the very deficiencies it was commissioned to address.”

Most importantly, council members should ask a simple question: would they feel comfortable allowing a 10-year-old child to bicycle independently along the routes this plan recommends?

If the answer is no, the plan isn’t finished.

That was exactly the problem with the first draft of the 2010 Los Angeles bike plan, also prepared by Alta, which brought the phrase “currently unfeasible” into LA’s biking lexicon.

Alta returned a bike plan where most of the key connecting routes were considered “currently unfeasible” because they required the removal of parking spaces or travel lanes — or even just the narrowing thereof — and that was something beyond the comprehension of city leaders.

Fortunately, that plan was rejected by the city Planning Commission at the urging of the bicycling community, which told Alta and LADOT to go back to the drawing board.

Literally, in this case.

The result was a bold plan that re-envisioned Los Angeles streets, and how Angelenos could get around in the years to come. And which was unanimously approved by the city council.

Then allowed to wither and die on the shelf.

In fact, UCLA’s Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies estimates that just five percent of the bicycling facilities called for in the city’s mobility plan have been built out — which is why Measure HLA was required, and passed by an overwhelming majority of LA voters.

The question is, will that be the route that Claremont will be forced to take? Or will city leaders listen to local residents and send Alta back to the drawing board, with instructions to come back with something that actually works?

Let alone something that will save lives, and move the city far down on that list of dangerous cities for bike-riding kids.

………

Local 

Fifty-five-year old Jose Antonio Zayas pled not guilty to murder in the fatal shooting of a Culver City bus driver who refused to turn around or stop in the middle of a traffic lane; Zayas allegedly fled on a bicycle taken from the rack on the front of the bus after the shooting. No one has said whether the bike was actually his, however, or if he just grabbed someone else’s bike to get away. Which probably the least important detail, but still. 

 

State

Circulate San Diego offers an open letter explaining their Vision Zero budget priorities. Which is pretty much the same case they made in their last open letter on the subject, signifying the lack of progress. 

The Guardian examines how Lancaster transformed the former Highway 14 car sewer into a a leafy oasis of walkable ramblas rebranded as The BLVD.

The San Francisco Chronicle dropped its usual draconian paywall for a story about a “whimsical” birdhouse-lined bike trail just a BART ride from the city.

Bad news from Elk Grove, where a 72-year old man suffered life-threatening injuries when he was struck by a driver while riding his bike.

California appropriated $75,000 for an art and storytelling project by Indigenous groups at a new $400,000 bike park under construction in Northern California.

 

National

A Salt Lake City man gets his stolen Surly back after a friend spotted it at a local bike co-op, four years after it had gone missing.

Sad news from Michigan, where an 82-year old man was killed when a driver crossed the center line and hit his bike head-on. Although despite what the story says, he was not “killed after being hit by a vehicle,” unless someone put him out of his misery afterwards. 

 

International

Momentum debunks ten anti-bicycling myths used to argue against bike lanes. Which is pretty much the same arguments they debunked before.

Garmin is working with WAZE to provide drivers with an early warning about the presence of bicyclists.

Talk about missing the point. A writer for Pinkbike considers how El Salvador went from “murder capital to mountain bike haven.” Yet somehow fails to mention flawed elections and President Nayib Bukele ignoring a constitutional ban on two consecutive terms, while glossing over mass arrests, imprisonment without trials, and extrajudicial killings. But I guess none of that matters as long as it’s a great place to bike, right?

Tragic news from Bolivia, where the family of a 33-year old South Korean influencer has asked people to stop baseless speculating and malicious comments after he was killed by a hit-and-run truck driver while on an around-the-world bike tour.

London’s city assembly has called on the mayor to halt installation of floating bus stops until they agree on a better design, because of the danger they pose to blind bus riders when bike riders don’t stop like they’re supposed to.

Cycling Weekly follows a 127-mile singletrack trail along the UK’s River Wye, from its source in the boggy swamps of Wales’ Cambrian Mountains to the Bristol Channel.

A writer for The Independent makes the case for requiring numbered license plates for British bicyclists to rein in scofflaw riders. Because it has clearly worked so well to make drivers follow the laws, right?

Beijing, China has opened a new 21-mile riverfront trail along the south bank of the Qinghe River.

 

Finally…

That feeling when your KOM defeated by a squirrel. Why settle for natural loam when you can make your own?

And not all Limerick’s are funny. Or rhyme.

Especially the anti-bike ones.

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin.

 

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

’28 Olympics provide an opportunity to build a real LA bike network, and fight in-person to close a gap in the LA River bike path today

November 5, 2026 / / No comments

A Los Angeles bike shop manager says the ’28 Olympics provide a perfect opportunity to build out an effective, connected bike network.

Writing for Planetizen, Alexander Golden argues that the city could emulate Paris in the buildup to the 2024 Olympics.

With less than 650 days to go and no concrete plan for moving the 3-5 million expected visitors around the city, Los Angeles should be looking to take as much strain off its Metro system during LA28 as possible. Given that the city is more than ready to embrace cycling, one answer could be to look to Paris’ “first bikeable olympics.” Two years before the opening ceremony Paris had no Olympic bike plan at all. By the time the Games rolled around, Paris had created a robust bike network that not only served Olympic spectators, but continues to move Parisians around the city to this day. If L.A. starts now, it could see the same lasting success.

However, Los Angeles has thus far gone the other way, despite years of clearly stated demands of local residents.

Similar to Paris, L.A. residents have spent the last decade begging officials for more bike infrastructure — with limited success. LA’s Mobility Plan 2035, adopted in 2016, maps roughly 260 miles of protected bike lanes and 660 miles of unprotected lanes. Execution has been the problem. By the city’s own count, only 22 miles of the protected network had been built by late 2023, along with 285 of unprotected lanes.

In 2024 voters tried to force the issue by passing Measure HLA, which won 65.5% of the vote. HLA requires the city to add the plans for bike, bus and pedestrian upgrades whenever it rebuilds a street. The City Administrative Officers report on the measurecalled it an unfunded mandate, and the ballot analysis put its cost at $2.5 billion over 10 years. Facing a roughly $1 billion deficit, the city cut the budgets of LADOT and StreetsLA, the two departments that build street safety projects.

It’s worth reading the whole thing. Because, if the current trends hold, Los Angeles is on the verge of electing a progressive mayor, like Paris’ Anne Hidalgo in the years leading up to the ’24 Paris Olympics.

I’m tempted to say we can only hope that a Nithya Raman administration would follow through on her stated support for bicycling and other forms of alternative transportation leading up to the games, and beyond.

But we can do more.

We can demand it. And we should.

……….

Speaking of which, I received the following email from Streets Are For Everyone yesterday.

A critical project to close a gap in the LA River Bike Path near Griffith Park is at risk of further delays, and we need your help!

Public comment at Thursday’s Recreation and Parks Task Force meeting will be accepted in person only, so we need as many advocates as possible to show up in support of this important connection.

Please join us tomorrow morning at 10:30 AM to speak in support of this critical project. Your presence and public comment can help demonstrate the community’s strong support for closing this gap.

Recreation and Parks Task Force Meeting Details

Thursday, November 5, 2026
10:30 AM
Valley Plaza Recreation Center
12240 Archwood Street, North Hollywood, CA 91606

Again, public comment will be accepted in person only.

Context

The approximately one-mile section between Riverside Drive and Forest Lawn Drive, known as “LARiverway – LA River Bike Path Phase 4,” is facing major opposition from some in the local equestrian community.

The project has already cleared environmental review and received City Council approval; however, the Recreation and Parks Department still needs to grant the rights necessary to establish the right-of-way and move forward. An earlier agenda item to approve the Grant of Rights was deferred following significant pushback, again, from some members of the local equestrian community.

This Thursday, the Recreation and Parks Task Force will hear from both equestrian and cycling advocates. We need cyclists and community members to attend in person and show strong support for completing this important connection.

I have written suggested talking points which you can access here: Talking Points – LA River Bike Path Phase 4.

……….

SAFE also invites you to attend their observance of the World Day of Remembrance for the the victims of traffic violence, which will be held just off the Pasadena CicLAvia route, below, a week from Sunday.

……….

The last CicLAvia of the year takes place on Sunday, November 15th when the open streets event returns to Pasadena for just the second time; CicLAvia offers highlights you can expect along the route.

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In news that really shouldn’t surprise anyone, a new study of collapsable, aka foldable, bike helmets has found that on average, they provide less protection than other bike helmets, although there is nothing inherent in their design that would prevent them from being improved to match the risks protection of other bike helmets.

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

London’s Westminster Council says it just doesn’t know where bicyclists should go after the recent pedestrianization of Oxford Street, even though the council had previously published plans for alternative bike routes. In other word, when asked where bike riders should now go, they politely said go to hell. 

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

Boston cops are looking for a bike rider who “went berserk” when a man told him to stop riding on the sidewalk, arguing with the victim before chasing him down and punching him in the face, then returning to take pictures of the man lying on the ground. While that’s major asshole behavior, it does seem to lower the bar a tad for berserking.

A Long Island man faces charges after throwing an object at a Tesla, then spitting on the car and pulling a pocket knife on the driver after the driver rolled down his window to ask him why; the driver then struck the man when he was attempting to get away. At least that’s his story, and he’s sticking to it, although it seems likely that he may have done something to provoke that response, but still.

Life is cheap in the UK, where a 38-year old London man was sentenced to less that four years behind bars for punching a man nearly twice his age to death, because the older man had told a kid riding a Lime bike on the sidewalk to slow down.

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Local 

LA officials are encouraging feedback on the second phase of remaking Westwood Blvd to install dedicated bus and bike lanes, and are willing to bribe you with the somewhat slight possibility of winning a $50 gift card.

 

State

A San Francisco woman tells the local public radio and TV station how much she loves riding her ebike 12 miles to work every day, and how much she’ll miss it when she switches back to driving for the winter. Which raises the obvious question of why switch, then. 

San Franciscans have reaffirmed their vote to remove cars from the former Great Highway, which has been converted to the Sunset Dunes linear park, by a nearly two-thirds margin.

If you think you’ve seen women’s cyclist Lotte Kopecky or her husband, Axel Merckx, riding around the Bay Area, you’re probably right.

 

National

The Pedaling Relief Project established by Seattle’s Cascade Bicycle Club reached a dramatic milestone by rescuing two million pounds of food and essential goods by bicycle and delivering them to local food banks.

A 64-year old construction flagger faces a charge of criminally negligent homicide for the death of a school teacher walking her bike through a construction zone in my ostensibly bike-friendly Colorado hometown, after allegedly flagging her into the path of a semi-truck four months ago; the charge carries a maximum penalty of one to three years, plus two years of mandatory probation. Although you’ll have to get around my hometown paper’s paywall if you want to read it. 

A woman in her 30’s describes being terrified of her own body for most of her life after living with spinal scoliosis, until she moved to Colorado and accepted an invitation for a bike ride, and what she thought would be an easy ride around town turned into a 20-mile ride into the countryside.

The family of 34-year old Boston transportation planner begged city counselors to turn their words into action, and improve safety on the street where she was killed riding to work; they also announced plans to distribute the $100,000 raised after her death to ten local advocacy groups.

Tuesday’s blue tsunami extended to ballot measures pushed by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, which all passed, including measures supporting outdoor dining and speeding the construction of bus and bike lanes.

A Philadelphia bike ride protesting against Jewish-owned businesses has been roundly and rightfully condemned by Pennsylvania’s two US Senators, the state attorney general and local organizations. Just to be clear, protesting against the government of Israel is no more antisemitic than protesting Italy is anti-Catholic, but extending that protest to individual Jews is. 

 

International

Life is cheap in British Columbia, where prosecutors are asking for a lousy two years probation for a 63-year old man who ran a red light a full six seconds after it had changed from green, killing a 68-year old woman riding a bicycle — but it’s no biggie, because he was thinking about his poor mother in the hospital instead of watching the road in an effort not to send anyone else there.

The four people arrested in Toronto for protesting the forced removal of bike lanes over the objections of local officials are contesting their arrests by arguing that police are trying to stifle dissent.

A fan of the 141-year old Luton Town football club had his effort to ride to every one of the team’s away games this year prematurely ended when someone stole his bike after he stopped at Starbucks to use the loo, but says he’s been blown away by the support he’s received from the team and its supporters.

Riding without lights in Oxford, England could cost you the equivalent of $94.

In yet another example of keeping a dangerous driver on the road until it’s too late, the killer hit-and-run driver who dragged a British bike rider under his car for nearly five minutes, while repeatedly swerving to dislodge the victim, has been sentenced to 25 to life behind bars, along with a lifetime ban on driving, after he was convicted of murder; he had 28 previous convictions, including multiple driving offenses, DUIs and fleeing from police.

 

Competitive Cycling

Classic Italian cycling component maker Bianchi has learned the hard way that you can’t mass produce handmade quality, entering the European equivalent of bankruptcy with over $112 million in debt.

Zwift’s new hi-def video world may be a little too realistic, after a user spotted a digitized Tom Doumalin taking a dump on the side of the road.

 

Finally…

Now you, too, can wear Brandon McNulty’s rainbow jersey while you ride Tadej Pogačar’s Colnago. Your old ebike batteries could have a new life as someone else’s industrial energy storage system.

And nothing like going out to ride your bike, and finding a six-foot python curled up under the frame.

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

Oh, and fuck Putin.

 

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