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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
