My apologies.
Whether it’s due to the time change, the change in weather, or the blood sugar roller coaster I’ve been on today — or any combination thereof — I’m down for the count with a killer migraine.
I’ll be on Tuesday when my head’s not exploding.
We mentioned it the other day.
However, David wants me to remind you about Sunday’s Marathon Crash Ride, which follows the traffic-free route of the LA Marathon in the wee hours before all those runners and walkers take it over.
And he’s not the only one who thinks it’s one of the year’s best bike rides in LA every year.
Photo by Laurence Hamdy from Pexels.
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Los Angeles has replaced the heady scent of asphalt with the pungent smell of bullshit.
Streetsblog’s Joe Linton looks at the sad two-year history of Measure HLA, and the city’s so-far successful efforts to block any progress in implementing the measure.
HLA has a very simple premise. The measure, championed by Streets For All and passed with a two-thirds margin by Los Angeles voters, requires that the city implement its already approved mobility plan anytime a significant portion of a street in it gets resurfaced.
But instead of following the clear will of the voters, the city has implemented a lousy 300 feet — the length of a football field, sans end zones — since the measure was passed.
City officials have gone so far as to invent the entirely fictional descriptive “large asphalt repair” instead of resurfacing streets, leaving just a small strip of unpaved asphalt to avoid triggering the requirements of HLA, as well as the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Consider this one section from Linton’s article.
June 2024 – City departments started announcing that they had an HLA plan. LADOT and StreetsLA stated that they were working together on “a joint work plan” for the coming fiscal year starting July 2024. As of June 4, DOT and StreetsLA claimed that their HLA work plan “is currently being finalized and will be made publicly available in coming weeks.” In late June LADOT General Manager Laura Rubio-Cornejo stated that DOT had submitted its list of project-ready Mobility Plan corridors to StreetsLA.
For several months Streetsblog requested that the city share the HLA work plan. In September, StreetsLA claimed that the “StreetsLA/LADOT work plan for FY 24-25 is in the final stages of assessment, and we expect it to be finalized this month. This work plan will serve as this fiscal year’s blueprint for bicycle facilities that require resurfacing or other paving treatments in order to be implemented.”
No plan, draft or final, was ever released.
HLA gives the public the option of suing the city if they fail to implement the measure when a street is resurfaced. But there’s no legal recourse when Los Angeles officials simply refuse to resurface anything.
At this point, the only apparent option is to remember that this is an election year, with a primary in June and the general election in November, as Mayor Karen “Do Nothing” Bass is up for re-election, along with half of the city council.
Which makes this the best possible time to pressure candidates to commit to implementing Measure HLA. Or simply pull the lever for someone else in the voting booth.
I’ve spoken to a number of people in recent weeks, of all political stripes. And I’ve yet to find anyone who plans to vote for Karen Bass.
Myself included.
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People For Bikes is bringing their Bicycle Leadership Conference to Dana Point for three days, starting on St. Patrick’s Day.
Which is appropriate, because it’ll cost you a lot of green to get in.
Here’s a (very long) press release for the event.
Bicycle Leadership Conference Convenes Industry’s Most Senior Leaders at a Defining Moment for the Bike Business
PeopleForBikes will host the 2026 Bicycle Leadership Conference (BLC) March 17–19 at the Laguna Cliffs Marriott Resort and Spa in Dana Point, California, bringing together the most senior concentration of bicycle industry leadership in the event’s history.
The gathering comes at a pivotal moment for the bike business as leaders across the industry navigate continued trade volatility, waning consumer confidence, margin compression, evolving e-bike regulations, participation shifts, and increasing pressure to define and protect the bicycle category.
Headlining the conference are three of the most influential figures in modern bicycling:
- John Burke, President of Trek Bicycle
- Phoebe Liu, CEO of Giant Group
- Mike Sinyard, Founder of Specialized Bicycle Components
Together, their presence reflects a rare alignment of executive leadership, global manufacturing scale, and multigenerational industry stewardship.
Burke will present the U.S. Congressman James L. Oberstar Awards for Outstanding Advocacy Leadership. Liu will deliver a keynote focused on ESG integration and long-term supply chain strategy. Sinyard will outline his vision for expanding youth cycling participation through Outride as a foundation for sustained industry growth.
The 2026 conference also features California State Senator Catherine S. Blakespear, who will join a session focused on the growing e-moto problem at a time when states are reconsidering electric bicycle definitions. Her participation underscores the industry’s active engagement in protecting the three-class e-bike framework and ensuring high-powered electric motorbikes are not misrepresented as e-bikes. This distinction is critical to safety, access, and protecting the e-bike category nationwide.
A Leadership Agenda for a Complex Market
The BLC program is structured around four themes: leadership and vision, market forces and public policy, innovation and technology, and data and intelligence.
Sessions will address federal trade and tariff strategy, e-bike classification and category protection, youth cycling participation, artificial intelligence, operational efficiency, cross-category profitability, and the launch of the PeopleForBikes Data Suite.
“We are not spectators in this moment,” said Jenn Dice, president and CEO of PeopleForBikes. “When trade policy is debated, this industry has a voice and must lean in. When category confusion threatens our future, this industry has a coordinated response. The leaders in this room are not just reacting to change, they are directly shaping what comes next.”
Over the past year, PeopleForBikes led senior-level engagement across federal agencies, Capitol Hill, and state legislatures while organizing industry comments, model legislation, and rapid-response communications on trade and category issues. The 2026 BLC builds on that coordination, bringing CEOs into direct alignment around shared priorities rather than isolated advocacy.
“This is where collaboration becomes leverage,” said José Maldonado, chief marketing officer and BLC director at PeopleForBikes. “Trade strategy, e-bike category protection, infrastructure investment, and participation growth are not separate conversations. They require senior alignment and collaboration. The concentration of executive leadership at this year’s BLC reflects that understanding.”
Alignment Beyond the Stage
The BLC week opens with a reception featuring remarks from Burke and recognition of Oberstar Award honorees Daniel Langenkamp and Jill and Michael White, families who became national advocates for safer streets in response to personal tragedies.
Morning group rides — including guided road rides, mountain bike rides led by Hans Rey and Richie Schley, and a townie e-bike ride, provide small-group environments for extended discussion among executives.
PeopleForBikes will also present its Bicycle Leadership Honors, recognizing industry members whose lifetime achievement, rising leadership, outstanding service, catalytic change, and philanthropic guidance are shaping the future of bicycling and the bike business.
Early registration data reflects presidents, founders, CEOs, general managers, board members, and international trade leaders representing major global brands, retailers, suppliers, and advocacy organizations.
Registration remains open, but limited spots are available.
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Calbike wants you to demand a more complete state highway bill.
Demand a Better 2026 SHOPP
Every two years, California approves a massive spending plan for the state’s highways. It’s called the State Highway Operations and Protection Program (SHOPP) and at several billion dollars per cycle, it’s the single largest pot of money Caltrans controls. It funds repaving, bridge repairs, safety upgrades, and more across thousands of miles of state roads.
It also, by law, must fund safe infrastructure for people who walk, bike, and take transit. That law is the Complete Streets Bill, sponsored by CalBike, SB 960, passed in 2024. It requires that each SHOPP make measurable progress toward 10-year targets for bike lanes, sidewalks, and crosswalks on the state highway system. It was a hard-won victory, an acknowledgment that California’s highways aren’t just for cars, and that Caltrans has a legal obligation to build streets that work for everyone.
The California Transportation Commission has the authority to approve or reject the SHOPP, and to recommend that Caltrans fix it before they do. Send them a message now and tell them to stand up for Complete Streets.
Click through for an email response form and sample message.
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It’s looks like the long hope-for extension of the Ballona Creek bike path is really becoming a reality.
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It also looks like the long-gestating Mid-City Greenways are finally taking shape.
Spot some sidewalk work done/underway on Mid-City Greenways project – on Formosa and on Rosewood
— Joe Linton (@lintonjoe.bsky.social) 2026-03-06T04:56:33.059Z
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ActiveSGV wants to know what you want the San Gabriel Valley to be, on behalf of the San Gabriel Valley Collaborative.
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Metro Bike is hosting a virtual bikeshare workshop on Thursday. Although just to be clear, it’s the workshop that’s virtual, not the bikeshare.
You’ll also get a free 30 day pass for participating.
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Our old friends Walk ‘n Rollers is hosting a Westwood ride on March 21st.
Speaking of which, their Walk ‘n Roll Festival will take place in Exposition Park from 11 am to 3 pm March 14th, complete with free bike skills courses, helmets and tuneups.
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Clearly, Black Girls Do Bike. And have for a very long time.
US, late 1800s, Kittie Knox was among a small group of African American women cyclists in Boston. Kittie broke taboos by wearing knickerbockers,which she designed herself #WomensHistoryMonth
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No bias here. British bike riders were in disbelief after a traffic safety group tells bicyclists to give parked cars a one meter — roughly three feet — passing distance to avoid getting doored, but fails to offer any advice on how motorists can avoid dooring someone.
A Singapore bike rider got hit with a hefty five grand fine for blocking a traffic lane for half an hour when he mistakenly thought a driver had “inched out” while he was riding in a crosswalk.
Spanish motorcycle racer Aleix Espargaró was criticized after a driver posted video of him passing cars on the left while descending on a training ride on his bicycle, pretty much riding like he would on a motorbike.
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Cafecita Coffee will host a group bike ride this Sunday for International Women’s Day, beginning and ending with coffee at Cafecita. Although with a route that includes Mulholland Drive, the ride promises to be scenic, but not exactly family friendly.
If you’re not busy Tuesday night, Metro Bike wants your input on where the bikeshare system should expand.
The inaugural Bike the Coast Ventura come back to Ventura coast for the first time this June, offering rides of 17, 35 and 65 miles.
If you’re one of the 40,000 people who bought a Concord 360 Degree Rechargeable Light-Up bike helmet from Walmart, the Consumer Products Commission says to stop using it immediately because it poses a risk of death in the event of a crash or fall. Which is probably a bad thing.
An Ashland, Oregon school has offered the nation’s only standalone certified training program for bike mechanics for more than 40 years.
Rad Power Bikes is apparently rising from the dead, after South Florida-based Life EV bought what’s left of the moribund Seattle e-bikemaker in bankruptcy court.
A 57-year old Brooklyn man riding a bicycle was repeatedly stabbed by a woman who approached him at 3 am, and attacked him with a sharp object for no apparent reason.
A professor of environmental management and the principal of Urban Cycling Solutions joins the parade condemning New Jersey’s draconian and wrong-headed crackdown on ebikes.
Bicyclists in Columbia, South Carolina say the state’s capital is on its way to becoming a bicycling city.
Georgia Public Radio observes a ghost bike ceremony for a fallen bicyclist, killed by a motorist outside of Macon last year.
The father of a five-year-old girl who was knocked down by a bicyclist on a Belgium pathway on Christmas Day 2020 has won his appeal of a lawsuit filed by the guy on the bike, who claimed he was defamed by a viral video of the incident; not only was the case dismissed, but the bike rider was ordered to pay the equivalent of nearly $2,400 in costs after the judge concluded the video was a matter of freedom of expression.
The Irish Times says there’s a reason there’s only one bicycle parked outside a Dublin school, as the lack of a bike lane means it’s not safe for people walking, let alone riding a bicycle.
A writer for Cycling Weekly takes extreme riding to the limits with a snowy nine-hour ride through Norway in the middle of winter.
Three-time winner Tadej Pogačar now has a dirt section of the Strade Bianche course named for him, just days before the Saturday race.
Aussie pro Michael Matthews is out of action for the foreseeable future after breaking both his wrists in a training crash.
And this is what a real cyclist looks like.
Belgian racer Georges Ronsse enjoys a snack during 1932 Tour de France, in which he won Stage 4.Happy #BicycleBirthday, Georges!March 4 (1906-1969)
— Cool Bike Art (@coolbikeart1.bsky.social) 2026-03-04T17:09:37.318Z
Yes, bicycle gymnastics really is a thing. Your bike helmet has an expiration date.
And what’s so funny about someone riding a Penny Farthing?
Or peace, love and understanding, for that matter.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
He gets it.
In a Washington Post op-ed, a Virginia bicyclist and writer builds an effective case that new laws cracking down on ebikes are going too far, “making a basic form of transportation and a familiar element of childhood less accessible.”
In fact, he calls said laws “tyranny on wheels.”
Kevin R. Parker explains that ebikes make the bicycles that gave him a sense of freedom as a child more accessible for people who might not want, or be able, to ride.
But laws like New Jersey’s draconian new restrictions that treat every form of ebike the same destroys that newfound accessibility.
The justification for New Jersey’s legislation is safety. A 13-year-old boy was killed on an e-bike when he collided with a landscaping truck in September, and there are real safety concerns for riders and pedestrians when it comes to faster and more powerful e-bikes. E-bikes that hit high speeds can be a problem. But the law doesn’t distinguish between different kinds of e-bikes when it comes to licenses, registration and age limits. A 70-year-old on a pedal-assist bike riding to the grocery store is treated identically to a teenager on a powerful e-bike doing 40 mph. The proposed regulations are a blunt instrument that restricts transportation options and increases cost for people,
New Jersey isn’t alone. Cities across the country are debating new regulations, and not just for e-bikes. After Murphy signed the bill into law, New Hampshire introduced a bill requiring a $50 annual registration fee on all bicycles that operate on paths, roads or trails funded by state or local government, including children’s bikes. In California, progressive Bay Area communities have moved to ban or restrict e-bikes on paths and in public parks — the same communities that spent years and millions promoting alternatives to cars, now cracking down on the most effective alternative.
We’ve seen similar moves up and down the Southern California coast, as cities crack down on ebikes of every kind, repeatedly conflating electric motorcycles and non-street legal dirt bikes with far slower and less powerful ped-assist bikes.
The answer, Parker says, isn’t found in the usual progressive arguments. Instead, he offers a case that should appeal just as well to conservatives, if not better.
Freedom.
Activists fighting e-bike restrictions frame it as climate policy or transportation equity. The political language focuses on progressive political priorities. There’s a stronger argument to be made based on personal liberty: State governments are restricting personal mobility and imposing licensing and registration on bike riders across the board. There are reckless e-bike riders who break the rules of the road and put themselves and other citizens at risk. If they violate the speed limit, ignore traffic lights or blow through stop signs, local law enforcement should hold them responsible. But by pursuing aggressive blanket regulation, policymakers are making a basic form of transportation and a familiar element of childhood less accessible.
Works for me.
Hopefully, it will work for members of the California state legislature when they consider SB 1167, which would redefine electric bicycles, mopeds and motorbikes to create a clear distinction between them.
This is how I explained it last month.
The bill would require that an electric bicycle must have fully operational pedals and an electric motor capable of no more than 750 watts; anything else could not be legally called, marketed or sold as a bicycle or ebike.
What is currently termed a motorized bicycle would be redefined as a moped, with clearer definitions of vehicle design, power output, and a top speed of 30 mph on level ground.
The term motor-driven cycles would include electric motorcycles offering less than 3,750 watts and 5 brake horsepower.
Both categories would require that manufacturers and marketers clearly specify that they are not electric bicycles.
The bill represents a rare case of successfully splitting the baby, allowing restrictions on high-power electric motos while maintaining the freedom offered by lower-speed ped-assist ebikes.
Let’s hope it passes intact.
And not the other one.
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Apropos of the above discussion, an Orange County candidate for Father of the Year faces charges after his son was seriously injured running a red light and crashing into a car on a modified ebike.
it seems dear old dad helped his son convert the bike to an electric motorcycle by replacing the pedals with motorbike pegs, removing the 20 mph speed governor, and rewiring the engine to do up to 60 mph.
Let’s hope he at least bought the kid a helmet.
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Bad news from Palm Springs, where a bicyclist was critically injured in a collision yesterday morning, after allegedly riding into the path of an oncoming vehicle, and being struck by the driver.
That driver’s car was then rear-ended by another driver, because of course it was.
However, only person on the bike was injured.
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You’ve got to be kidding. A Pennsylvania driver is accused of intentionally hitting a boy on a bicycle in a road-rage incident that lasted multiple blocks; the man claimed he didn’t hit the kid on purpose, even though security video shows him blaring on his horn before attempting to cut the boy’s bike off, then ramming him from behind at a red light even though he had plenty of room to stop. He also claimed “he would have never struck the kid if the kid had stayed in his lane,” and bizarrely blamed the boy for purposely trying to upset him. Somehow, I’m guess that the only thing the kid did to purposely upset him was riding his bike in front of the guy’s car.
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No news is good news, right?
Streetsblog’s StreetSmart podcast offers a comprehensive compendium of what transportation bills are moving forward in the California legislature, and what isn’t.
A 61-year old heart transplant recipient set out from Ocean Beach on a 3,000-mile bike ride to St. Augustine, Florida to raise awareness about the need for organ donors. Meanwhile, Southern California drivers do their part to create more every day.
A Hesperia family is hoping to win an adaptive bicycle for their 13-year old special needs son who suffered more than a dozen strokes after getting a virus two years ago, leaving him with permanent brain damage.
An Oakland man received a $400,000 settlement after he suffered a fractured skull, concussion, multiple spinal fractures, broken nose, ligament tears, and lacerations to his face, neck and shoulders when his bike hit a pothole that was obscured by shadows and a bend in the road.
The Bay Area’s Caltrain commuter line does exactly the wrong thing to address overcrowded bike cars by banning oversized bikes, such as cargo bikes, as well as bikes with panniers, both commonly used by bike commuters, instead of merely adding more space. Because that would just be crazy, right?
No bias here. An editorial from The Marin Independent Journal argues that a $52.6 million plan to re-open the 142-year old abandoned railroad Alto Tunnel for use by bicyclists and pedestrians is just too costly to consider. Never mind that it’s a fraction of the estimated $270 million cost to build a new highway bridge, which they didn’t seem to have a problem with.
A Davis petition calls on the city to recognize and improve the nation’s first bike lane, built nearly 60 years ago.
Swedish pop star Zara Larsson is one of us, joining Portland’s weekly elementary student bike bus before her concert in the city.
A Florida couple finds sea lions and romance on a stormy bike-and-surf odyssey along the Oregon coast.
A handful of Chicago drivers staged a protest at the site of a half-finished protected bike lane, saying it didn’t help bike and e-scooter riders who were struck by drivers there. Um, maybe because it’s not finished yet, and there’s nothing to keep cars out of it yet.
Sometimes, I don’t even know what to say. An Ohio ebike rider was killed, and a driver injured, when the ebiker tried to turn left into a church parking lot and struck the side of the other man’s SUV — then they were both stuck by the driver of a second car when the first driver got out to check on the original victim.
New York Mayor Mamdani is requesting $25 million build 500 long-promised bike lockers across the city.
A website for “the world’s urban leaders” examines how cities are making the European Declaration on Cycling a reality, which recognized bicycling as a fully-fledged mode of transport for the first time.
That’s more like it. After bicyclists packed a Winnipeg, Manitoba city council committee meeting to demand temporary protected bike lanes, the committee voted to make them permanent, instead. Although they’d have to be pretty damn strong barriers to keep out the speeding driver who killed a bike rider in 2024, doing up to 100 mph.
London’s bikeshare system marks International Women’s Day by naming a whole ten bikes after notable women bicyclists. Although something tells me most women would just prefer a safer place to ride them.
Speaking of ebikes, a writer for the London Telegraph calls them the future of bicycling holidays for mid-lifers. Which is evidently a kinder, gentler term for middle-aged. Or maybe it’s just shorter.
An Aussie writer explores the dark side of the bicycle marketplace by deciding to buy and return a hot bike to its rightful owner, and ends up going for a ride with a self-described “licensed gun outlaw.”
A new documentary tries to answer what separates world-class cyclists from elite ones.
Former Tour de France Femmes champ Demi Vollering says “it’s very important to keep speaking up” about periods, nutrition and health affecting women’s cyclists.
Cyclist explains “everything you need to know” about this Saturday’s Strade Bianche Classic, which marks its 20th year.
That feeling when a mountain of “gross stuff” threatens to melt into a bike lane graveyard. Don’t they say, dirty bicycle drive train, dirty mind?
And okay, even I think that’s funny.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
Good riddance.
The San Francisco judge who let an elderly driver off the hook for killing an entire family of four announced he’s riding off into the sunset.
And it can’t happen soon enough.
The Voice of San Francisco reports that 69-year old Judge Bruce Chan is retiring this year, one month after announcing he’ll let 80-year old Mary Fong Lau walk without a day behind bars, and three years before he’s set to face the voters again.
Because something tells me voters might have a long memory in this case.
It was just short of two years ago when Lau plowed her car into the bus stop where 40-year old Diego Cardoso de Oliveira and his wife, 38-year old Matilde Moncada Ramos Pinto were waiting with their two children, 1-year old Joaquim Ramos Pinto de Oliveira and 3-month-old Cauê Ramos Pinto de Oliveira, after celebrating their wedding anniversary.
Diego and Joaquim were killed instantly, while Matilde and Cauê died days later in the hospital.
Lau was driving on the wrong side of the divided roadway at 70 mph at the time of the crash. Yet Chan bizarrely ruled that there was no point in punishing her, because she’s old and really, really sorry.
Which must be why she tried to hide her assets before the inevitable lawsuit.
According to the website,
As if the family of the victims hasn’t suffered enough, last month, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Bruce Chan expressed sympathy for the now 80-year-old Lau and stated it was unlikely she would serve any jail time or even a community service mandate after pleading no contest to four felony counts of gross vehicular manslaughter…
After Lau changed her plea from not guilty to no contest, Chan said his duty “was to balance the deaths with the other factors of the case.” Those factors included Lau’s age, her lack of criminal history, and “her remorse,” as well as the fact that her own husband had died in a car accident early on in their marriage.”
Chan even injected some hearsay into the proceedings, saying that in the hospital after the crash, “Lau tearfully told medical staff she wished she could trade places with the family.”
Chan said jail time would mean Lau would probably die in prison. As opposed to her victims, who just died in the street and the local hospital.
Instead, he said he’d sentence her to a lousy two to three years probation. But at least she won’t be able to drive — legally, anyway — until her probation ends.
So we can expect Lau to get her license back when she’s 83, with the blood of four innocent lives on her record.
Seems reasonable.
But as writer Susan Dyer Reynolds notes, remorseful people don’t usually hide their assets.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, in July 2024, the surviving parents of Cardoso de Oliveira and Ramos Pinto filed a wrongful death civil suit against Lau. In May 2025, the relatives filed another civil lawsuit, this time asking a judge to void alleged financial transfers that Lau made after the first civil lawsuit was filed. The victims’ families accused Lau of transferring her ownership interest in several properties to new limited liability companies and selling properties to third parties, including her son-in-law, thereby transferring millions of dollars to avoid potential financial penalties from the civil suit. Hiding assets doesn’t sound like remorse to me…
Me, either.
So if you wonder why people keep dying on our streets, overly lenient judges like Chan are a damn good place to start.
But at least he won’t be around much longer to let any other killer drivers walk.
Photo by Sora Shimazaki from Pexels.
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This is why people keep dying on our streets, part two.
An estimated 77% of bike lanes in the US offer nothing but paint for protection.
And a new study in the Journal of Cycling and Micromobility Research shows that nearly two-thirds of those are on high-stress roads — aka, “fast, multi-lane corridors where traffic speed and volume make riding uncomfortable for most people.”
In other words, like virtually every bike lane in Orange County and much of Los Angeles, county and otherwise.
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Sadly, humans aren’t the only victims of traffic violence.
LA Reported says the number of animals killed by LA drivers reached a new high last year, with 33,458 deaths reported, including everything from family dogs and cats to deer, squirrels and birds.
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The annual Marathon Crash Ride returns to the streets of Los Angeles in the wee hours of Sunday morning, following the route of the LA Marathon before all those runners take over.
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This is who we share the road with. A 55-year old man was arrested on suspicion of felony DUI, vehicular manslaughter and misdemeanor battery after he somehow threw his car into reverse at high speed, backing over a curb and slamming into people sitting on the stoop of a Long Beach building, killing a 20-month old toddler and hospitalizing a 45-year old woman and a 12-year old girl.
A proposed San Diego ordinance would ban kids under 12 from riding Class 1 and 2 ebikes, as well as prohibiting a passenger from any ebike without a permanent passenger seat; children under 16 are already prohibited from riding Class 3 ebikes.
A 51-year old Hesperia man was hospitalized with major injuries, and his dog killed, when they were struck by a van driver while walking his bike across the street early yesterday morning. But you’ll have to get around the paper’s paywall to read the whole story.
Alameda’s mayor writes that the city’s efforts to make roads safer for all users is paying off.
This is who we share the road with, part two. A Sacramento website reports that Black pedestrians are disproportionately more likely to be killed on the city’s streets, illustrating the story by describing a 26-year old South Sacramento man who was struck by a driver while crossing the street, then repeatedly run over by multiple drivers — all of whom fled the scene, and none were ever brought to justice.
A proposed IRS regulation could mean that bike couriers and pedicab drivers could write off their tips.
A Mesa, Arizona woman has filed a pair of $15 million claims against the city and county, after her 71-year old father was killed while riding an ebike when the lane he was riding in suddenly ended in a large pothole and a patch of gravel, with no warning in the dark because the stop sign was on the ground and there were no streetlights.
No surprise here. After the police chief of Greeley, Colorado hit a 15-year old bike rider while driving off-duty, the state police charged the kid, not the cop, for failure to yield.
An 82-year old Iowa man spends his winters repairing and refurbishing bicycles in Tucson, Arizona, before going home in the spring to work on more bikes.
That’s more like it. A Texas man was sentenced to 15 years behind bars for the hit-and-run that killed a popular 38-year old bike rider four years ago, and reporting his car stolen in an effort to cover up the crime. Does that ever work?
Indianapolis adopts Vision Zero, vowing to end traffic deaths by 2035. Let’s hope they take it more seriously than Los Angeles did.
New York’s city council rakes the city’s new transportation commissioner over the coals for the miserable job expanding bike lanes done by the previous administration, with one councilmember arguing that meeting just 50% of the city’s goals earns it a “big, fat F;” however, the new DOT head won’t commit to doing any better.
Residents of Maplewood, New Jersey are raising funds for the leader of a local bike bus after a hit-and-run driver left him with life-threatening injuries; a crowdfunding page has raised nearly $40,000 of the $55,000 goal.
A Virginia driver says he’ll be riding a bicycle now after the war with Iran caused gas prices to spike. So there’s that, anyway.
Seriously? Police in Raleigh NC have no intention of filing charges against the driver who killed a 65-year old man riding a bicycle, even though he was in a crosswalk with the green light, apparently because a) the victim was riding against traffic, and/or b) because the driver wasn’t drunk — even though the investigation is still ongoing, for no apparent reason. Never mind that crosswalks are bidirectional, and being under the influence isn’t the only way a driver can be at fault. And be forewarned, there’s no way to opt out of the cookies if you click on the damn link.
Road.cc takes you on a tour of the wonderful world of the year’s best bicycling shoes for beginners.
A writer for Cycling Weekly explains why his high-end bike tires cost three times as much as his crappy car tires.
A London law firm says they get contacted by an average of ten people a month who have been injured riding Lime bikes in the city, even though the company says 99.99 percent of journeys end without incident.
An Irish detective was awarded the equivalent of nearly $290,000 after he was suspended for three years for the crime of loaning a farmer an unclaimed bicycle that had sat for a long time at the police station during the pandemic.
Ireland’s transportation authority says active transportation takes up to 660,000 cars off the road every day in the country’s five largest metro areas. It could here, too, if people felt safer walking and biking.
If this ebike bill passes, you’d better get used to lentils. How to make the bike of the year even better.
And now you, too, can be a super secret motor doper.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
Sigh.
A few weeks ago, we mentioned in passing that Oceanside police found a 52-year old man lying in the roadway next to an ebike after midnight, suffering from severe upper body injuries.
Today, we got the sad news that he didn’t make it.
According to The Coast News (scroll down), the victim, identified as Oceanside resident Scott Weiler, died 19 days after he was taken to Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla.
Apparently, Weiler somehow lost control of his ebike and crashed into a light pole near Coast Highway and Seagaze Drive sometime before 12:11 am on Wednesday, February 11th.
Although The Coast News oddly places the crash shortly after noon the day before.
Unfortunately, there’s no word on what kind of ebike Weiler was riding, so we don’t know if it was a ped-assist bike or an e-moto. But either way, his death is no less tragic.
This the 17th bicycling fatality that I’m aware of in Southern California this year, and the second in San Diego County.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Scott Weiler and his loved ones.
Facebook post from the Oceanside Police Department
Not again.
For the second time in just over a month, someone has been found down next to a bicycle in a Boyle Heights intersection after an apparent hit-and-run.
But this time, the victim was still alive, though severely injured.
According to KTLA-5, the victim was discovered at Cesar Chavez Ave and Fickett Street around 11:18 Sunday night, just two miles from where a man was found dead at 7th Street and Boyle Ave on January 29th.
There’s no information at this time on the identity of the victim, or any description of the suspect vehicle or the driver.
A photo from the scene shows a dark colored bicycle with flat handlebars, with a plastic shopping bag hanging from the left handgrip.
Let’s hope the victim makes a full and fast recovery.
And that police find the heartless coward who left them there.
Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay.
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The Westchester Playa del Rey Neighborhood Council is hosting a special meeting tonight to discuss traffic safety improvements around Pershing and Manchester.
Apparently, it only took the death of a 36-year old mother and her unborn baby to spur them into action, and consider re-reversing the Complete Streets improvements that were installed in 2017, then ripped out later that same year to appease angry motorists.
Not to mention business owners who somehow thought they’d get more sales from drivers zooming past, usually without stopping, than from people who could safely walk or bike to their establishments.
But hey, if I sound disgusted, it’s only because I am.
So if you live, work, walk or bike in the area, or know anyone who does, you owe it to yourself to be there tonight. Or at the very least, take the survey from CD11’s Traci Park.
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We’ve recently featured Calmatters‘ excellent License to Kill series discussing California’s lax DUI laws, and how the state seemingly goes out of its way to keep dangerous drivers on the streets.
So I thought I’d share a legislative update I received yesterday from CalMatters Investigative Editor Andrew Donohue.
Really quick:
The Legislature has planned a number of hearings in the coming days that I thought you might want to know about.
Tomorrow (March 3): The Assembly Public Safety Committee will take up discussion on a bill to tighten punishments for repeat drunk drivers and another bill to close a diversion loophole that allows people charged with vehicular manslaughter to avoid having the case on their driving record.
The meeting starts at 9 a.m. You can attend in person (room 126 of the State Capitol) or remotely. The bills are two of many issues on the agenda.
The bills address two issues we’ve covered in our investigation: the state’s weak DUI laws and how the diversion program means you can face more consequences for a speeding ticket than a deadly crash.
(The committee is also slated to tackle two more related bills the following week.)
March 10: The Senate Transportation Committee will hold an informational hearing titled “Examining California’s DUI and Traffic Safety Laws.” It’s the first such hearing in well over a decade.
We don’t yet know who will be speaking, but it will begin at 1:30 pm at 1021 O Street, Room 1200. You can also stream the live video or audio.
If you can’t make these hearings but would love to watch or read what happened after, we’ll also have access to recordings and a transcript. If you’d like me to send those to you when they become available, reply to this email and let me know.
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Streetsblog reports LADOT will host a couple meetings to discuss the long overdue safety changes to Westwood Blvd.
Starting Thursday 3/5 – The L.A. City Transportation Department (LADOT) will host two Westwood Boulevard Safety and Mobility Project public input meetings. The in-person meeting will be Thursday 3/5 from 6-8 p.m. at Westwood’s Village Square at 1109 Westwood Boulevard. The virtual meeting will take place on Thursday 3/19 from 6-8 p.m. via Zoom. Details at LADOT newsletter.
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Ask, and ye shall be answered.
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Is Ed Sheeran one of us, or is it just AI?
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The decision to reverse an Encinitas CA Complete Streets project means the city will rip out a protected bike lane in front of a public high school with more than two thousand students.
Middlesbrough, England is removing what’s been called the UK’s “most hated” bike lane, after it was criticized for causing injuries and offering a “clear getaway” for shoplifters and drug dealers — never mind that it will cost over a million dollars more to remove the four-year old bikeway than it cost to put in.
Someone in the UK seems to be responsible for an epic screwup, after a 13-year old girl was injured falling off a scooter on a new bike lane, where the red grit surface somehow wasn’t bonded to the roadway.
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Culver City is creating a weekly bike bus starting at 8 am today, and continuing every Tuesday going forward.
West Hollywood is responding to a rash of residential burglaries by putting sheriff’s deputies on bicycles, which gives them the ability to respond quickly, go where patrol cars can’t, and roll up silently on suspects and crime scenes.
Burbank will post a table on the Chandler Bikeway from 9 am to 12:30 pm this Saturday to answer questions and solicit input about planned bicycle infrastructure in the city, focusing on the upcoming extension of the Chandler Bikeway; you’ll find them at the east end of the bike path at Chandler Blvd and Mariposa Street.
Sad news from bike-friendly Davis, where a woman riding a bicycle was killed in a collision with a teen ebike rider on a popular bike path.
He gets it. A writer for Mountain Bike Action pens an open letter to the bike industry, saying we need to stop calling anything with an electric motor an ebike, and create clear distinctions between electric bicycles, electric mopeds and electric motorcycles.
A surprising new mural in the Downtown Las Vegas Arts District celebrates the Southern Nevada Bicycle Coalition’s “Let’s Get There Together” safety campaign. I mean, who knew Las Vegas even had an arts district?
They get it, too. Police in St. George, Utah cited a driver for hitting a bike-riding boy in a right-hook crash, leaving the kid with minor injuries; she was cited even though a cop said utility boxes and the position of the sun could have obscured her view of the boy, adding “Regardless, you still have to yield the right of way, especially when you’re at stop signs.” Can we hire that guy to be our LAPD police chief? Pretty please?
A Sioux Falls software engineer has ridden his bicycle to work every day for the past ten years, continuing a streak that began in 2016. Which isn’t easy to do through a single South Dakota winter, let alone ten.
That’s more like it. A 69-year old Louisiana man was sentenced to 9 years behind bars for the hit-and-run that killed a 67-year old man riding a bicycle, along with six months for driving while intoxicated, to be served consecutively. Or concurrently. Or maybe both.
A 30-year old Greensboro, North Carolina man has pled guilty to scamming bicycle companies out of tens of thousands of dollars worth of high-end bikes by posing as a North Carolina-based bicyclist and YouTuber with nearly 4 million followers on his two channels.
Nope, no bias here. A Florida county discusses “essential safety protocols and the legal responsibilities shared by all road users” with a huge graphic listing a dozen safety accessories for people on bicycles, along with advice to use that safety equipment, wear a properly fitting bike helmet and replace it after a crash, and follow the same laws as drivers and use hand signals — then tells drivers to just remain vigilant and give bike riders at least three feet passing distance.
Momentum says London’s annual Tweed Run could be the quirkiest bike ride on the planet, as participants dress in their finest early 20th Century attire.
Dubliners make over half a million journeys by bike and foot every day, after investing the equivalent of nearly $700 million in active transportation over just the past five years, in a metro area with a population of less than 1.4 million.
South African seniors are taking advantage of the coastal climate and the health benefits of bicycling by taking up gravel riding.
Dutch cyclist Rick Pluimers proves hockey players aren’t the only ones who sacrifice teeth for their sport, after landing face first on the cobbles of Omloop Nieuwsblad. I sacrificed mine to diabetes, so same thing, right?
That feeling when you finish first in a race after a nearly 40-mile solo breakaway, then get DQ’d for illegal brakes that were legal when you started. Or when your wheel blows up because you didn’t fix a damn flat.
And nothing like a purported eco website apparently using AI to say bike lanes make traffic worse — without apparently knowing there’s a difference between New York City and New York State.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
A bike rider was doored in West Hollywood Sunday morning. And naturally, the guy on the bike got the blame.
According to WeHo Online, the crash occurred at 8275 Santa Monica Blvd, across from Hamburger Mary’s, around 11:17 am.
A witness said the victim cut through between two cars, one parked and the other in the right lane, when the driver threw open his door right in front of the victim. “He literally just cut through,” she said. “This guy was opening the door, and there’s no way he could have seen the biker try to cut through the two cars.”
Unless, of course, the driver checked his mirror or looked behind him before opening his door.
According the website, the bike rider was expected to be okay, but his vintage road bike was totaled. And the car door didn’t fare too well, either.
Bicyclists are legally allowed to split lanes like that in California. Though it’s more prudent to ride outside the door zone, for reasons exactly like that.
The road is slated to get a green, painted bike lane. However, if it’s like the bike lanes further west on the boulevard, it will still place bikes directly in the door zone.
WeHo Online ends the story like this, showing that they get it, anyway.
Dooring — when a driver or passenger opens a vehicle door into the path of an oncoming cyclist — is one of the leading causes of bicycle injuries in urban areas. California law requires drivers to check for cyclists before opening a door, but enforcement is rare, sadly, for all involved, crashes like Sunday’s are not.
There’s no word on whether the driver was ticketed. Or if, like the witness, sheriff’s deputies blamed the victim, too.
Image by DJ_Moertel from Pixabay.
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CicLAvia has announced the first two events of 2026, starting with a CivSalon next week, and a new route connecting Santa Monica Blvd and Westwood in West LA next month.
Although if they’ve posted anything about the former online yet, I can’t find it.
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South Pasadena stands accused of going from the promised protected bike lanes to…sharrows, which have been shown to literally be worse than nothing.
Let them know what you think about that.
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Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
(“The more things change, the more they stay the same,” for anyone who’s forgotten high school French or philosophy.)
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Gravel Bike California fights the freeze in LA County.
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A Toronto bike rider was doored by a cop, then blamed for the crash — without doing anything wrong.
No bias here. Someone opposed to a Cork, Ireland bike lane set up a crowdfunding page to pay legal fees to fight the “Gaza destruction project that is active travel;” after 20 days, it has raised the equivalent of a measly $463.
A former British Big Brother winner went on the attack against people riding bicycles on park trails “at Tour de France speeds,” and getting “absolutely furious” at dogs wandering across the trail. Admittedly, as one of the commenters said, you should always slow down around dogs and children because they are utterly unpredictable, and prone to running out in front of you at any time. On the other hand, it’s up to dog owners to keep their dogs leashed and under control, if only because it’s their responsibility to keep their pet safe.
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KCBS-2 and KTLA-5 report on Friday’s Critical Mass ride in honor of fallen bicyclist and mom Regan Cole-Graham and her unborn daughter Ophelia, who were killed riding an ebike in Playa del Rey; they were killed by an 87-year old driver on Pershing Drive, where a road diet and bike lanes were installed in 2017, then removed a few months later because a relative handful of pass-through commuters complained.
Hundreds of bicyclists turned out on Saturday for the annual Chinatown Firecracker run and bike ride to mark the year of the Fire Horse.
The ebike industry is backing California’s SB 1167 to separate the ped-assist ebikes from electric motorbikes.
A 34-year old man riding a Class 2 ped-assist ebike suffered serious injuries in San Diego’s Southcrest neighborhood Saturday morning, when he allegedly rode through a stop sign and was broadsided by a driver crossing on the cross street; the victim suffered multiple broken bones, including a fractured vertebrae, jaw, multiple ribs and left wrist.
Seventy kids took home new bicyclists in Goleta on Saturday, thanks to the Boys and Girls Clubs of Santa Barbara County and primary fundraiser Kirk Greene, who raised close to $17,000 by riding over 6,200 miles for the 2025 Bike4Kids campaign.
Around 150 people turned out for San Francisco’s first-ever Bayview Black History Month bike ride on Saturday.
The Southern Nevada Bicycle Coalition launched the third phase of their Let’s Get There Together campaign, urging everyone to “slow down, look twice, be respectful, and follow the rules of the road,”
That’s more like it. Oklahoma is building a walkable, bikeable masterplanned community on the shores of Lake Eufaula, designed so a car isn’t needed for people who live and work there.
Road.cc takes a look back at the first Trek built, a hand-brazed, steel-frame sport touring bike built in a Wisconsin barn in 1976.
Road.cc recommends the world’s steepest, hardest and most fearsome road gradients to put on your bike bucket list.
Congratulations to World Bicycle Relief, which has now put its one millionth heavy-duty Buffalo Bike on the roads of Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Reuters says Havana is experiencing yet another bike boom, as the US cuts off Cuba’s oil supply.
A “self-confessed leisure cyclist” recounts his five-day, Lycra-free ebike journey from London to Paris.
Dutch prosecutors are appealing the acquittal of two manufacturers of Stint e-cargo bikes for culpability in the death of four children, who were killed when the brakes failed on the ebike while a daycare worker was taking five kids to school, and she rode into the path of an oncoming train; only the daycare worker and one of the children survived. Prosecutors can’t appeal an acquittal in the US, but it’s more common in European courts.
Here’s another one for your bike bucket list. The 450-mile La Voie Bleue bikeway stretching from the Luxembourg border to Lyon, France has been voted the most beautiful long-distance bicycling route in Europe.
Yet another study shows that ebikes aren’t cheating, as Spanish researchers compared e-mountain bikes to regular mountain bikes, concluding it’s the terrain and level of assistance that matters, not whether or not the bike has an engine.
A 30-year old South African man is attempting to set a world record riding 6,200 miles from Cairo to Cape Town to raise funds for a grocer trying to create jobs for about ten thousand young people.
Reputed cycling superstar in-waiting Paul Seixas soloed to victory at the Faun-Ardèche Classic with a more than 28-mile breakaway on Saturday.
Saturday’s Omloop Het Nieuwsblad turned into a demolition derby, with 39 riders failing to finish the men’s race and 28 in the women’s, including Swiss cyclist Stefan Küng, who required surgery for a broken leg.
As for the race itself, European champ Demi Vollering outsprinted Polish champ Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney to win the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad in a two-woman breakaway, while Mathieu van der Poel soloed to the win with a ten-mile attack on the men’s side.
Twenty-year old British cyclist and former Junior World Track Cycling Champ Matthew Brennan scored an impressive victory in his debut with Visma-Lease a Bike, sprinting to victory in Sunday’s Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne.
Also on Sunday, France’s Romain Grégoire claimed the Faun Drôme Classic, outsprinting American Matteo Jorgenson on an uphill finish following a ten-mile, two-man breakaway.
Road.cc reminisces about the crappy kits of yore.
If you can’t park a car, maybe you should ride a bike — or just ride a bike, period. If you’re carrying a loaded gun and over an ounce of coke on your bike, with two prior felony convictions, maybe obey the damn traffic laws.
And that feeling when you crash your bike and go to the ER, but your 28 buck lipstick is still perfect.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
Let’s start with some good news for a change.
A former Olympic racewalker can credit a retired nurse and a PVE cop for the fact that he’s still alive and pedaling.
Former nurse Rachel Ebright and Officer John Zabukovec were honored by the Palos Verdes Estates city council Tuesday for saving the life of 61-year old Allen James after finding him lying in the street, bleeding and badly injured, following a crash on his bicycle.
Allen was riding near near Paseo Del Mar and Palos Verdes Drive West when he went over his handlebars and through the windshield of a parked car, leaving him with a severely gashed neck, along with a broken rib and scrapes on his arms and left knee, disoriented and near death.
There’s no time or date given for the crash, only that it happened at night, roughly four months ago.
KTLA-5 describes what happened next.
Rachel Ebright, a retired nurse, was driving nearby when she spotted James lying on the road. She quickly pulled over and ran over to help.
“I told him to stay with me,” she recalled. “Whenever he flexed his neck, there was massive arterial spray, so I had to restrain a 6-foot-3 elite athlete and try to keep him down.”
John Zabukovec, an officer with the Palos Verdes Estates Police Department, arrived at the scene soon after and also stepped in to help.
“There was an overwhelming sense of chaos,” he said when he first arrived. “I knew immediately that I needed to apply life-saving measures.”
Allen was rushed to a nearby hospital, and recovered after emergency surgery. He’s back on his bike and riding again — and still alive — thanks the efforts of two kindhearted strangers.
Thanks to Chris for the heads-up.
Image by FuzzyRescue from Pixabay.
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About damn time.
A new bill has been introduced in the California Assembly to rein in the worst speeding offenders.
AB 2276 would require drivers convicted of particularly egregious or excessive speeding and/or reckless driving violations to install active intelligent speed assistance devices that use GPS and digital maps to determine posted speed limits in real time, and limit drivers ability to exceed them.
Drivers would be required to install the devices for a specific period, based on judicial discretion and offense history. The bill would use income-based fees for device costs and installation to protect low-income drivers from excessive fees.
Similar ISA programs are already in place in Virginia, Washington State and the District of Columbia.
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If you haven’t participated in LA Critical Mass lately — or ever — tonight might be time to start.
The monthly ride will roll in honor of two victims of needless traffic violence, 36-year old mother Regan Cole-Graham and her unborn daughter Ophelia, who were killed by an 87-year old driver while Cole-Graham was riding ebikes with her husband and two young sons last month.
They were run down from behind on Pershing Drive in Playa del Rey. That’s where a road diet and bike lanes were installed in 2017 to improve safety, then removed a few months later after loud complaints from motorists used to using the street to bypass traffic on the 405.
Here’s a press release from Streets Are For Everyone about the memorial ride.
1500 Cyclists Ride to Remember Regan Cole-Graham and Ophelia Graham
Advocates Call on Mayor Bass to Prioritize Safer Streets in Wake of Multiple Mass Traffic Fatality Events.
LOS ANGELES, CA — 1500 cyclists, street safety advocates, and family members will gather for a public ride to remember Regan Cole-Graham and her daughter Ophelia Katherine Graham, who were both killed after a driver hit them while they were riding a bicycle along Pershing Dr on 31 January 2026.
This is being done as part of the monthly LA Critical Mass ride held on the last Friday of each month. LA Critical Mass has modified the route so all cyclists will end up at the location where Regan, Ophelia, and her other daughter were hit for a memorial vigil.
The vigil will include:
- Gathering of cyclists led by LA Critical Mass organizers
- Remarks from Jeff Cole, father of Regan and grandfather of Ophelia.
- A live amplified song
- Remarks from advocates and LA Critical Mass
- A banner calling on the city and Mayor Bass to make roads safer
WHEN: Friday, February 27
Ride departs 7:15 PM from Wilshire & Western
Vigil approximately 9:15 PM – 9:30 PM at Hacienda Playa
8415 Pershing Dr, Playa Del Rey, CA 90293
EXPECTED ATTENDANCE: Approximately 1,500 cyclists
WHO:
- Lisa Lundie — President, LA Critical Mass
- Jeff Cole — Father of Regan and grandfather of Ophelia
- Kat Primeau (vocals) and Ryan Ross (keyboard) singing Ophelia from the Lumineers. Regan and Matt named their daughter after the song, Ophelia.
- Damian Kevitt — Executive Director, Streets Are for Everyone
- Many of Matt and Regan’s family will be joining the ride when it arrives at Del Rey Lagoon between 8:45 and 9:00 PM.
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Streets For All and the Housing Action Coalition are hosting the first of what promises to be many debates in this year’s race for mayor next month, with three of the whopping 40 or so candidates already confirmed.
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No bias here. Reading, England is “scaling back” an “underused” bike lane to relieve pressure on the city’s road system, and make “best possible use of road space we have.” Because evidently, providing a safe alternative to driving isn’t the “best possible use.”
Now the people on dirt bikes are out to get us, too. A New Zealand man suffered a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament and dislocated kneecap when a motocross biker made a U-turn and deliberately crashed into him as he rode past on his bicycle, for no apparent reason.
Once again, a driver has been violently attacked by a group of teenagers on a bicycle ride out, this time in San Francisco; the assault apparently began when one of the kids groped a woman in the car and she threw her drink on the boy, who responded by punching the driver in the face, as the kids kicked the car and slammed it with their bikes.
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Los Angeles broke ground on the new $152 million Avalon Pedestrian Bridge and Promenade Gateway project, providing bike and pedestrian access to the Wilmington Waterfront Promenade.
Burbank is fighting the recent trend of cities cracking down on ebikes, adopting an ordinance that aligns local laws with state ebike regulations, as well as defining other electric mobility devices including scooters and motorized boards.
Learn to ride a bicycle for free in El Monte this Sunday, courtesy of ActiveSGV and the El Monte Mobility Nexus Program.
Carson is planning to build 20 miles of new bike lanes before the ’28 LA Olympics, creating an actual bike network in the city.
Calbike has opened registration for the biennial California Bicycle Summit, to be held in Sacramento in April.
The nonpartisan California Legislative Analyst’s Office is urging legislators to reject Governor Newsom’s proposed $200 million EV rebate program, as the state faces a looming $18 billion shortfall. Which means the $18 million in ebike voucher funding that was shifted to pay for electric cars represents a lousy 0.1% of the deficit.
Encinitas will move forward with a redesign of the redesigned Santa Fe Drive, which will spend around $3.5 million to widen traffic lanes and remove back-in parking, while exploring “alternatives” to the existing bike lanes; that comes after already spending $4 million on the previous redesign that was completed less than a year ago.
Police in San Diego are investigating a pair of ebike crashes that left the riders seriously injured, in the East Village area on Thursday night and Wednesday in University City, though only the latter appeared to involve a driver.
San Diego is considering rule changes that will bar anyone under 12 from operating an ebike, and allow a passenger only if the bike has a permanent second seat. Which will presumably prevent parents from riding their kids to school in a bucket bike, without permanent child seats. Or even carrying their kids in a nonpermanent child’s seat.
Despite President Trump’s claims in the State of the Union that his tariffs have made the economy stronger and more affordable for Americans, an El Cajon bike shop owner says they’re hurting his business.
A section of Goleta’s Maria Ygnacio Bike Path will be closed through summer after the recent rains undermined a roadway.
Marin County bicyclists are calling for the reopening of nearly half-mile abandoned rail tunnel built by Chinese laborers in the 1880s, even though engineers say it would cost $48.6 million to make it safe for bikes and pedestrians.
A Sacramento public radio station examines the proposed California bill that would require licenses and registration for ebikes capable of going faster than 20 mph, although a researcher at San Jose State’s Mineta Transportation Institute correctly observes that all those shocking ebike injury stats lump legal ped-assist ebikes together with illegal dirt bikes and e-motos.
Two Redding bicyclists are suing the city, claiming they were injured as a result of poorly maintained sidewalks.
Seattle is building a new bike lane to close a critical gap in the city’s bicycle network. Which is what happens when a city actually has a bike network, and cares enough to do the hard things required to finish it.
A Washington State couple fighting for more accessible streets, after spending the last ten years riding all over the country and across Europe on an accessible tandem bike built to accommodate her double leg amputations.
Ebikes get the blame when teens riding electric motorbikes tore up the greens on a Henderson, Nevada golf course, as the media once again conflates ped-assist ebikes with e-motos and dirt bikes.
Seriously, there’s not a pit in hell deep enough for the 18-year old Arizona man accused of stealing a nine-year old boy’s bike at gunpoint; a 14-year old kid busted with him could also face charges.
Unbelievable. A Tyler, Texas woman faces charges for hitting and killing a 19-year old man riding a bicycle, after saying she should have gone back to see what she hit, but she was ready to go home. Apparently, it was just too much bother to see who or what she killed.
More sad news from Texas, where a 67-year old man riding a bicycle was killed in Arlington when he was apparently right-hooked by a school bus driver.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is supporting the controversial 15 mph Central Park speed limit imposed by previous Mayor Eric Adams, even though a judge blocked implementation of the law after the city’s oldest bike club sued, calling it a perversion of a new law meant to crack down on reckless drivers.
The Florida Senate passed an ebike bill that would impose a 10 mph speed limit around pedestrians, and create a state task force to recommend changes in state law to improve safety and reduce injuries and fatalities involving ebikes and electric scooters.
Road.cc lists the best reflective bikewear and accessories, for anyone who wants to give off a healthy glow when they ride.
Sad news from British Columbia, where professional snowboarder Stratton Matteson was killed in an avalanche; the 28-year old Bend, Oregon splitboarder — a snowboard that separates into two halves, allowing the user to climb uphill like cross-country skis, then reconnect them and snowboard down — was a pioneer of the “bike to board” movement, riding his bicycle hundreds of miles with his gear in tow instead of relying on motor-driven transportation.
A London borough councilor is using his GoPro on his bicycle to hold scofflaw drivers to account, and says he doesn’t care what the anti-bike Daily Mail says.
Four in ten London bicyclists say they still don’t feel safe riding in the city, despite the recent improvements.
A British man recreated his father’s 1984 bike ride to Australia, following the same route and recreating the same photos 40 year later — even meeting and photographing the same Belgium man his father met when they both were 40 years younger.
Fifteen years after an Irish advocacy group identified the ten worst intersection in Dublin, none have been fixed, and only two have seen any improvements.
Luxembourg — the city, not the country — is removing parking spaces to close gaps in their existing bicycle network.
That’s more like it. Drivers in New Zealand could face fines up to $3,000 for passing bicyclists too closely, though advocates are calling for the distance to be increased to roughly 4.5 feet, rather than the current 3 feet below 37 mph, and 4.5 feet above that.
Speaking of New Zealand, Kiwi researchers followed Māori and Pacific adults for a year to study the health benefits of riding an ebike, concluding it’s an “achievable and enjoyable way of moving,” well-suited to the older and bigger riders, as well as people with chronic conditions like joint pain. Although the site may make you prove you’re human before they let you read it.
Twenty-nine-year old French cyclist Damien Touzé may have to call it a career after hitting a raised reflective pavement marker at high speed during the Tour of Oman, suffering a ruptured spleen, broken leg and busted knee, as well as an intestinal perforation that wasn’t diagnosed until he was discharged from the hospital and returned home.
Danish pro Mads Pedersen is already back on his bike, despite breaking his wrist and collarbone at the Volta a Comunitat Valenciana just three weeks ago.
Four-time Tour de France champ Chris Froome may have effectively retired from professional cycling, after he was unable sign on with a new team when his contract with Israel-Premier Tech expired.
Cyclist offers a preview of tomorrow’s Omloop Nieuwsblad, the first true Classic of the new racing season, as the pro peloton takes to the historic cobbles.
American Neilson Powless will miss the entire Classics season after having successful knee surgery to remove inflamed tissue.
Forget doping, now cycling teams are turning to AI to get a jump on the competition, as doping cases involving pro cyclists dropped for the first time in three years.
Your next bike could be a big red multi-directional ball with handlebars. Or maybe $14,500 titanium e-gravel bike.
And when you’re operating a crime den out of your apartment, complete with illegal drugs, guns and a roommate with an outstanding warrant, maybe don’t advertise a hot bike for sale online.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
You’ve got to be kidding.
Life is really cheap in Georgia, where a 30-year old Augusta man was sentenced to a lousy two years behind bars for the hit-and-run that killed a 62-year old man riding a bicycle, while driving at nearly three times the legal alcohol limit.
He was facing up to 15 years for first-degree vehicular homicide. Yet prosecutors negotiated a nearly minuscule plea deal, despite an extensive record of traffic crimes dating back more than a decade — including a pending case for a previous DUI.
According to the Augusta Press,
At the time of the crash, Walker had a pending DUI case from an October 2019 arrest. While awaiting trial on the vehicular homicide charge, he pleaded guilty to the earlier DUI, receiving a one-day jail sentence, probation, a $1,000 fine, and a risk-reduction program requirement from Judge Monique Walker.
Walker’s driving record spans more than a decade, including multiple speeding convictions, driving with a suspended license, attempted eluding of police, and prior DUI allegations. In 2015, he served 40 days in jail for attempting to elude police, driving with a suspended license, and a stop sign violation, as well as 10 days for driving with a suspended license and marijuana possession. His 2019 DUI case lingered in court for years before being resolved during the homicide case proceedings.
Read that again.
One damn day behind bars for driving under the influence, even after he killed someone while driving drunk yet again.
Talk about authorities keeping a dangerous driver on the road until it’s too late.
The plea deal also includes credit for time served. And since he has a record of driving without a legal license, we can expect he’ll be back on the street and free to kill again in no time.
Yet just acouple hours away in Savannah, Georgia, prosecutors have thrown the book at another DUI hit-and-run driver, who killed a popular local known as the Flag Man for riding his bike around town carrying an oversized American flag, while driving stoned and with multiple prior DUIs.
That driver faces charges of homicide by vehicle, hit-and-run resulting in death, serious injury by motor vehicle, tampering with evidence, operating a vehicle without a tag, no proof of insurance, driving with a suspended license, and failure to yield right of way to a bicyclist.
Make it make sense.
Photo from Pexels.
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This is the cost of traffic violence.
The parents of a 13-year old Utah boy killed by a drunken hit-and-run driver told a parole board that “you never move on” from the death of a child like that.
The driver was asking for early release from a sell-deserved sentence of up to 15 years behind bars, along with a second term of up to five years — even though he had five — count ’em, five — previous DUIs.
And once again, authorities can take pride in knowing they kept a dangerous driver on the road until it was too late for a 13-year old boy.
And for his family, who will never be the same.
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Famed DJ Diplo is one of us, recording himself riding a bikeshare bike along a busy Miami highway to catch a flight to Milan, where he performed at the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics.
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An insurance expert criticizes New Jersey’s draconian, “knee-jerk” ebike law, which requires licensing and registration for all ebikes, regardless of power or speed, which he says will be particularly harmful to delivery riders.
No bias here. Traffic tickets issued to London bicyclists dropped by a remarkable two-thirds in just two years, but The Times summarily rejects even the possibility that bike riders are behaving better by blaming it on a drop in the police force.
A Scottish letter writer says you can just forget implementing strict liability for drivers who hit bike riders or pedestrians, as long as those darn scofflaw bike riders continue to run red lights and ride in dark clothing without lights.
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LADOT is hosting a public meeting at 6 pm tomorrow to discuss protected bike lanes on Ohio Blvd, a key east-west bicycling corridor, as part of the Ohio Avenue Safety and Mobility Project; oddly, though, the Los Angeles agency is hosting the meeting at the Collins & Katz YMCA in Santa Monica. Apparently, they couldn’t find any venues in Los Angeles willing to take them.
The Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition is appealing a decision to add a traffic lane and parking spaces in front of Santa Rosa’s downtown mall, which they say would make the street much riskier for people riding bicycles.
You can find a lot of things while riding your bike with friends, including a litter of abandoned puppies.
That feeling when a bike advocate is behind a Portland neighborhood group’s opposition to replacing the plastic bollards currently protecting marking bike lanes with concrete curbs.
A Portland lawyer accuses the local cops of going easy on drivers who hit bicyclists, especially if the drivers say they’re really, really sorry.
The Washington State legislature is also considering a bill that would create a new category for mopeds and e-motos between ebikes and motorcycles.
Singletracks looks at five of the best mountain bike trails in Nevada, “From high-alpine descents near Lake Tahoe to bone-dry technical lines in the Las Vegas desert.”
Travel site Islands looks forwards to New York’s massive annual TD Five Boro Bike Tour through all of the city’s boroughs. And no, I’m not making the same mistake I made with Montreal, because this time I know Manhattan is an island, as is Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens.
That’s more like it. A 52-year old Rochester, New York man was sentenced to up to seven years behind bars for the drunken hit-and-run that killed a man riding a bicycle last year.
Momentum readers share why they ride their bikes to work.
Mérida, Yucatán now officially ranks sixth among Latin American cities when it comes to bicycling, even though only 4% of city trips are made by bike.
Brompton is addressing London’s high rate of bike thefts by sending theft victims a loaner bike free for two weeks while they shop for a replacement. That’s actually a brilliant marketing move, providing a free trial of their foldies at the exact time people are shopping.
An Irish woman beats the winter blues by becoming a nearly 100-mile a week bike commuter after moving to France’s Brittany coast.
France’s 434-mile La Voie Bleue has been named the European Cycle Route of the Year at the prestigious Fiets en Wandelbeurs exhibition in Utrecht; the scenic route stretches from Luxembourg to Lyon.
A Catalan ebike maker was the victim of a massive theft over the weekend, as burglars managed to get away with around a 120 ebikes worth the equivalent of $353,000 after breaking into a Barcelona warehouse.
New Zealand is considering changes to traffic regulations that would allow children under 12 to ride their bikes on the sidewalk for the first time, as well as mandating a roughly three-foot to 4 and a half foot passing distance for bikes and horses, depending on traffic speeds.
The New York Times Athletic sports site patiently explains why 19-year old French cyclist Paul Seixas is pro cycling’s superstar in waiting.
Double Paris Olympic champ Kristen Faulkner is back on the boards aiming for track cycling gold at the ’28 Los Angeles Games, after winning two more golds last week at the Pan American track cycling championships.
L39ion of Los Angeles cyclist Jyven Gonzalez won the Elite race at the awkwardly named 4th Annual Alfred Parks “Ketch D Bull Fi Mi” Memorial Race in Belize.
Cycling Weekly examines the soaring costs of getting into youth bike racing, which threatens to keep countless kids out of the sport.
That feeling when your ebike is taking notes from cars. Or when your bike seat gets a nose job.
And honestly, who among us has not asked a driver to ram us with their car, before riding a bicycle into a creek?
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
Evidently, CARB’s cold-blooded murder of the California Ebike Incentive Program was just one of those things.
At least, that’s the takeaway from a remarkably bloodless Los Angeles Times report that finally made its way into print over the weekend, a couple weeks after first appearing online.
Take this remarkably mild-mannered introduction to the story.
To offset the cost of the e-bikes, which can run in the thousands of dollars, the state launched a generous voucher program — one that heavily subsidized, and in some cases completely offset, the purchase price. Demand soared.
That’s when the problems began.
Vouchers were quickly snatched up. A website set up to manage applications crashed amid heavy demand.
Despite wide public interest, the program quietly and abruptly ended last year — a victim, in some ways, of its own success.
Now the state is pivoting, leaving cycling advocates disappointed and those who were able to snag e-bike vouchers counting their lucky stars.
No mention there, or anywhere else in the story, of the three years it took the California Air Resources Board to even issue the first voucher.
Let alone the alleged malfeasance by, and investigations into, San Diego nonprofit Pedal Ahead, which was hired by CARB to manage the program. And failed miserably.
And then the whole damn thing collapsed, apparently because getting cleaner cars on the road mattered more than getting more cars off it.
The demand was apparent. Some cycling advocates say they were under the impression additional vouchers — that would have been funded by the subsequent $18 million in state funding — were on the horizon as soon as a new administrator of the program was secured.
But those dollars were instead diverted to CARB’s Clean Cars 4 All program, which helps lower-income Californians trade in their gas-fueled vehicles for new or used plug-in hybrid electric, zero-emission vehicles or motorcycles, she said.
“California is committed to supporting e-bikes as a clean mobility alternative to vehicles. But, ultimately, the state has a limited budget and many competing priorities,” CARB spokesperson Bradley Branan told The Times.
That’s it.
Apparently, they couldn’t find a single disgruntled applicant willing to go on the record with a single complain against how the program was (mis)managed.
And yes, that’s me over here waving my hand until it falls off.
The whole program was the very definition of a clusterfuck and a shitshow from beginning to end. Because calling it a complete and barely mitigated disaster is being far too kind.
Instead, the Times very belatedly and very politely suggests that it was just one of those unfortunate things.
You, just another California program gone bad. Nothing to see here.
And don’t pay attention to the man behind the curtain.
Meanwhile, California continues to fall behind the ebike voucher race, as Tampa, Florida is bringing back a program that would award 248 ebike vouchers through a lottery program, offering up to $3,000 for very low income recipients.
That compares very favorably to the zero vouchers for zero dollars offered by the City and/or County of Los Angeles.
And now, California, too.
Image of the murder weapon removed from the back of the California Ebike Incentive Program and California bicyclists by Annie Gavin from Pixabay.
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Speaking of the LA Times, the paper ranked the city’s 14 worst intersections, based on LADOT traffic counts and LAPD collision data.
Even there, the language and tone are no bolder.
And once again, they couldn’t seem to find a single traffic safety advocate to talk to. Evidently, no one picked up the phones at Streets For All and Streets Are For Everyone.
Or maybe the Times just lost their numbers.
The best they could do was a traffic engineering expert from USC, who evidently doesn’t consider traffic speed or road design a contributing factor when it comes to collisions.
Consider these milquetoast stanzas.
- Many of the worst intersection were designed to take a lot traffic. They’ve been optimized for car movement (so pedestrians, buses cyclists come second to moving cars). This is controversial because some feel the city needs to prioritize getting solo drivers out of cars and onto mass transit and other alternatives. But most of these intersections lack protected bike and bus lanes.
- As frustrating as the waits at these intersections can be, Moore argues that the city has generally done a adequate job of moving so many cars and is skeptical much more can be done short the type of “congestion pricing” system being tried in New York and European cities.
While I’m all in favor of congestion pricing, I doubt there are many people who would give LA traffic even an “adequate” grade.
That said, here’s the list in all its glory.
Two of those are walking distance from my apartment. Which probably explains why I feel like my life is in danger every time I walk the dog.
And I’ve ridden, driven of bused through most of the rest, and can attest that they do, indeed, suck.
But I don’t think you can evaluate any intersection without considering the design of the roadways leading up to it, or the speed of the drivers approaching it.
This list should be a call to action to fix each of these. But if we only address the intersections themselves, we won’t solve the problems that put them on it.
Then again, I’m not traffic engineering expert.
So what do I know?
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Now that’s what I’m talking about.
Calbike, Streets for All, Streets Are For Everyone, and People for Bikes have clearly heard the call, and are backing a new bill that would redefine some electric mopeds and e-motorbikes to clear up the current confusion and separate them from Class 1, 2 and 3 ebikes.
Unlike AB 1942, which would require licenses and registration for ebikes, SB 1167 would clarify what is actually an ebike, while renaming and regulating faster and higher-powered two-wheeled vehicles.
Like these, for instance.
The bill would require that an electric bicycle must have fully operational pedals and an electric motor capable of no more than 750 watts; anything else could not be legally called, marketed or sold as a bicycle or ebike.
What is currently termed a motorized bicycle would be redefined as a moped, with clearer definitions of vehicle design, power output, and a top speed of 30 mph on level ground.
The term motor-driven cycles would include electric motorcycles offering less than 3,750 watts and 5 brake horsepower.
Both categories would require that manufacturers and marketers clearly specify that they are not electric bicycles.
Dirt bikes and other electric motorbikes intended for off-highway use will be treated as off-highway motor vehicles and must display identification plates or devices, and be certified by an accredited independent lab.
And perhaps most importantly, it would not require licenses, registration or insurance for ped-assist ebikes — a requirement that would be the best way to kill the growth of ebikes, and limit their ability to replace motor vehicle use.
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Hats off to our very own Marvin Braude Bike Trail, which leads USA Today’s list of the ten best waterfront bike paths in the US.
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This is who we share the road with.
A driver in Redlands deliberately crashed his Tesla into a crowd of people standing outside a popular restaurant and bar at closing time, after getting into an “altercation” involving several people.
Four people were hospitalized with major injuries.
The driver then fled the scene, crashing into the curb as he made his escape. After which, someone in the crowd got their revenge by shooting up a couple of nearby businesses, neither of which probably had anything to do with it.
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He gets it. A North Carolina letter writer patiently explains that bike riders already pay for the streets, and that anyone who wants to exclude bicycles from the state’s roadways because they don’t pay gas taxes might as well exclude EVs, too — then signs off that he’s “Not a cyclist or an EV owner.”
No one is happy in Manchester, England, where a key bike lane is being dug up for the third time in two years, leaving merchants, drivers and bike riders fuming.
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Los Angeles city leaders have apparently managed to get their collective heads out of their metaphorical asses long enough to request an extension on $100 million in funding from California Active Transportation Program, rather than give the money back to the state after concluding that city staff reductions meant they couldn’t meet the deadline to finish projects in Wilmington, Boyle Heights and Skid Row.
Streetsblog reports the LA City Council Transportation Committee will discus plans for automated speed camera enforcement at their 8:45 am meeting tomorrow.
Long Beach will hold a town hall tomorrow night to discuss plans for a revamp of the city’s 2nd Street Bridge, amid reports they’re backing off plans for the promised protected bike lanes, leaving bike riders with just a thin stripe of white paint to protect them from speeding drivers.
Sad news from South LA, where an LA driver continued the city’s longstanding tradition of killing innocent people without fear of retribution, after a 30-year old woman riding a mobility scooter was killed by a hit-and-run driver.
LA Bike Boy takes a carfree trip from Venice to the venerable Huntington Library in San Marino.
Sad news from Santa Maria, where a man in his 50s was found lying dead in the street next to his bicycle after a hit-and-run, at the same intersection where a pedestrian was killed in another hit-and-run just a day before. Which is exactly how you know an intersection is a deadly disaster.
WTF? The owner of a Boulder, Colorado bicycle and triathlon shop says his store was sold behind his back and without his consent, after a minority parter misrepresented himself as owner of the property and trademark, and sold it to Mike’s Bikes.
A Norman, Oklahoma man is planning to ride across the country to raise funds and awareness of multiple sclerosis, despite living with the disease for nearly two decades.
Banff, Alberta says it’s time to get all arty and funky with the city’s bike racks. Although the problem with artistic bike racks is that too many people don’t realize they are one.
Locals are enraged when an English bike path is closed for two years because someone living in van community did some unauthorized digging in an embankment next to the path.
A bakery manager in the UK got his stolen handmade bike back after posting the theft online, when a kindhearted stranger spotted the bike and bought it back for the equivalent of just 27 bucks.
When a British physician offered to give away her old tandem to anyone who wanted it, she didn’t expect to ship it off to a Kenyan paracycling group, who needed it for racing with the blind.
Heartbreaking story, as an Irish man tearfully recalls that his wife never rode a bike again after his eight-year old son was killed riding in front of her.
The 15-year old son of the chairman of Israel’s Ra’am political party suffered severe injuries, including a head injury, when he was struck by a driver while riding an ebike in Upper Galilee.
A San Francisco urbanist visits his husband’s family Taiwan, and wonders if the country’s “incredible network of protected bike paths” could be brought home to the Bay Area.
A travel website says Kyoto and Hokkaido, Japan have joined better known locations like Amsterdam, Tuscany and Mallorca, Spain as the world’s best bicycling destinations. But they bizarrely feel the need to illustrate it with an AI-generated photo of bicyclist riding in front of a spectacular mountain range and temples that don’t exist.
A New Zealand farming website profiles a Kiwi dairy farmer who somehow finds time to ride his bike while running a local gravel cycling group, despite milking 450 cows twice a day.
Heartbreaking news from Rwanda, where a race vehicle veered into a crowd of spectators watching the Tour of Rwanda on Sunday, killing two people and injuring six others.
Trailblazing Nigerian cyclist Ese Lovina Ukpeseraye is calling it a career, just two years after she became the first cyclist to represent the country in the Olympics.
Ivanie Blondin, a gold medal winner for Canada in the women’s long track team pursuit speed skating, is one of us, with top-10 finishes in two North American crits last year.
South African Imtiyaaz “Sparkie” Schultz has made the difficult jump from Cape Town gang member to professional cyclist, after asking the local gang leader for permission to walk away from gang life so he could wash enough cars to buy a racing bicycle.
Former WorldTour cyclist and current Costa Rican national cycling team head coach Andrey Amador was hospitalized in “delicate condition” after he lost control and crashed his bike while riding with the national team.
The internet has ruled — tell another bike rider his taillight is too bright, and yes, you are the a-hole. Science says the best way to get faster on a bike is to do your training rides in hot tub.
And LADOT says they didn’t mean “If you see something, say something” applies to people pooping on buses, too.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
