The good news is that no one riding a bicycle appears to have been killed in Southern California yesterday, for only the fourth time in the last eight days.
The bad news is that a report on the Citizen app showed the aftermath of a bike rider struck by a driver in my own Hollywood neighborhood yesterday, at Sunset and Detroit a little before 4 pm.
The video showed police closing Detroit to investigate, which is never a good sign, likely indicating a serious collision.
So fingers crossed.
Rendering of West Valley LA River bike path project shamelessly stolen from LA Streetsblog. And I’ll try to catch up with all the recent email submissions in tomorrow’s post.
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I hate to say it, but she’s got a point.
Writing for CityWatch, Miriam Preissel says she continues to fight the completion of the many named LA River bike path through the Sepulveda Basin, not because she hates bikes, but because she questions how the price tag ballooned to nearly $100 million.
I am not anti-bike. A safe, continuous RiverWay through Los Angeles is a good idea. But taxpayers should still be able to ask a basic question: How did less than three miles of bike and pedestrian improvements become a project approaching $100 million, while five major undercrossings once included in the plan were pushed into the future?
That is where this stops being just a bike-path story and becomes a public-accountability story.
That’s nearly double the original estimate.
Preissel also questions why the bike path has to take a chunk out of the San Fernando Valley’s only dog park, located in Balboa Park.
For years, I have asked a simple question: Why not keep the path on the south side?
The City has never provided what should settle the issue once and for all: a side-by-side analysis comparing the north-side and south-side routes, including cost, engineering constraints, available width, environmental effects and recreational impacts…
In 2023, the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Areas Steering Committee questioned the north-side alignment and said it could find “no supportable justification” for moving approximately a mile of the path from the south side to the north.
The committee also noted that the proposed north-side route would run only a few hundred feet from the existing Orange Line bike path along Victory Boulevard and questioned whether existing bicycle connections might provide much of the same transportation function. It also raised concerns about future floodplain and habitat restoration.
Then there’s the question of lighting, both on the bike path and in the dog park.
The RiverWay is expected to include roughly 233 lights. The dog park still has none.
The park closes at sundown. During the shorter days of the year, that means many working residents may not get home in time to use it. For apartment dwellers, the dog park is not merely a recreational luxury. It may be the only large, legal place nearby where their dogs can run off leash.
Yet the park continues to struggle with basics: irrigation, bare ground, supplies and routine maintenance. At the same time, a nearly $100 million transportation project is moving forward next door.
I wish I had the answers.
I suspect part of it is because construction on the bike path is paid for with grant money, while the dog park comes out of city funds. But if Los Angeles is ever to become the great city it professes and pretends to be, we’ve got to be able to do the basics.
Chop wood, carry water.
This city is failing, and has continued to fail for the past decade, to do the simple things that make a city livable.
Fix potholes. Pick up trash. Get the drug users and people with mental illnesses off the streets, and into housing and treatment programs. And for God’s sake, light and maintain the damn dog parks.
We may have a spiffy new bike trail to show off to the world at the ’28 Olympics, but it will only hide the fact that we’re failing as a city.
Yes, I want all 52 miles of the LA River bike path finally finished, from the headwaters of the Los Angeles River to its mouth to the Pacific in Long Beach.
But I also want a livable city.
Is that really too much to ask?
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Today is the last day for Governor Newsom to sign a number of outstanding bike and traffic safety bills. Anything left unsigned at the end of the day automatically becomes a veto.
Meanwhile, CalMatters looks at the four DUI laws that Newsom signed last week.
Now let’s focus on getting something passed in the next session allowing DAs to charge hit-and-run drivers with second-degree murder for making a conscious decision to flee rather than helping the victim, or at least calling for help.
Is that really too much to ask?
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LA Taco looks at the dispute over improving safety on Forest Lawn Drive.
Which isn’t really a dispute over safety, or even bike lanes. But whether a city street should be kept dangerous to placate the wealthy owners of Forest Lawn and Mount Sinai cemeteries.
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At least Culver City can get things done. Even if it takes a couple decades.
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As a side note, I revised that Spanish language version of my ghost bike t-shirt to make it brighter and highlight the bike, after realizing the previous version was a tad too dark.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
A 34-year old North Dakota mother faces multiple charges after allegedly driving her car at a group of children at a reported 55-60 mph before swerving away at the last minute, allegedly because the kids hid her son’s bicycle as a prank before returning it; she says she was only doing 35 to 40 mph, which does not make it better.
But sometimes, it’s the person on two wheels behaving badly.
The arch-right Daily Caller reports that bicyclists berated bystanders tending to the father who was struck and killed by a bike rider while walking in New York’s Central Park. Which is something no one else seems to have reported, so take it with a grain of salt, if not the whole bag.
A Singapore man calls the police after a teen riding with a group of boys accidentally crashed into his bicycle and apparently didn’t apologize sufficiently. He then tells the group they’re “kind of pathetic,” to which one of the kids answered “thank you for the compliment.” I’ll leave it to you to decide which side belongs here.
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Local
Volunteers with People’s Vision Zero once again embarrassed city officials by painting their own crosswalk where a 16-year old boy was killed by a driver in South LA last week, and his sister seriously injured. As we noted above, a city that can’t do basic things like install crosswalks will never be great, and barely be livable.
Jim sends word that Palos Verdes Drive South will be fucked up for sewer repair work until next February, which may block access to the “switchbacks” on PVD East.
State
LAist says ebikes are Orange County teens’ ticket to independence, but questions if they’re too dangerous — then actually takes the time to explain the legal classifications for ebikes, noting that only 12% of ebikes used by middle and high schools in Marin and San Mateo counties fit into the legal classification system. And no, that’s not data from Orange County, but there’s probably a correlation there somewhere, and the same goes for LA County beach cities.
The LA Times reports on All Kids on Bikes classes in the Inland Empire, with Rancho Cucamonga kindergarten kids learning how to ride in gym class.
Ventura County sheriff’s deputies are cracking down on bicycle and ebike violations in the Ojai Valley, as if the people on two wheels were somehow the biggest danger on the streets.
Road.cc says the phenomenon of Oakland’s scraper bikes continues. I saw my first scraper bike outside a Hollywood Target a few weeks back, although purists would argue it wasn’t a real scraper because it wasn’t in Oakland.
Mill Valley is building a citywide culture of bicycling by focusing efforts on getting elementary students at one school to bike to class, and measuring the results.
Horrible news from Sonoma County, where a woman’s body was discovered in a ditch eleven hours after a hit-and-run driver left her bicycle more than a mile from the crash site. And no, the detail about eleven hours isn’t in this Patch article, but the more detailed information is hidden behind the local newspapers’ paywalls.
National
She gets it. A Salt Lake City op-ed says bicycling deaths like the writer’s father’s aren’t anomalies, but rather, the bloody cost of our car-obsessed world.
Iowa Democrats are calling the Republican candidate for governor a carpetbagger, after the man’s quickly deleted Strava account shows he actually lives across the border in Kansas.
A Boston woman suffered life-threatening injuries when she was struck by a bicyclist while walking near Boston University; the rider was also injured, but not as seriously.
The wacky New York Post says the city must rein in ebikes, arguing that ebikes should offer no speed advantage over regular bikes. Apparently forgetting that a skilled rider on fast bike can easily top 30 mph, which tops the maximum speed allowed by legal ebikes.
The honeymoon appears to be over for New York Mayor Mamdani, as Streetsblog contends he is allowing a street to be a fatality waiting to happen.
Two North Carolina men in their 40s were killed while sharing an ebike when they were struck by a 22-year old man; the driver was not arrested or cited, despite a history of five moving violations in three counties since 2022.
Electrek says a ticket issued to an 11-year old Florida boy for riding an illegal e-motorbike shows we don’t need more ebike laws, because the ones we already have are pretty good.
International
Momentum surprisingly offers a what appears to be a new story based on 2026 PeopleForBikes data highlighting ten North American cities quietly getting better for bicycling, including our own Long Beach.
The success of the new Gordie Howe International Bridge is reinvigorating historic neighborhoods in Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario, as bicyclists fill the streets, businesses boom and forgotten landmarks are being rediscovered.
A group of Toronto doctors, nurses and other front-line healthcare workers denounced the province’s move to rip out the city’s popular bike lanes, citing the risk of traffic violence.
A 69-year old Canadian man claimed the record as the oldest man to circumnavigate the earth by bicycle, riding 18,600 miles in 324 days in honor of his late wife.
If you build it, they will come. Gloomy Glasgow, Scotland saw a 74% jump in bicycling rates over just a two-year period after investing, and continuing to invest, in new bikeways.
Thousand’s of bicyclists turned out in Birmingham, England for a viral DJ-led drum and bass bike ride, saying it displayed the dangers bicyclists face in the city.
Life is cheap in the UK, where a 15-year old kid riding an illegal e-moto was ordered to pay just the equivalent of $652 after crashing into a 46-year old father riding a bicycle, leaving the victim hospitalized with life-changing injuries after eight full months.
Spain introduces new bicycling rules allowing bicyclists to take the primary position in the lane and requiring drivers to take more care passing bicycles; however, the law now requires all bike riders to wear a helmet under all circumstances.
An Indian travel website offers a slideshow of the world’s ten most beautiful bicycling routes, including our own PCH on the California coast, which only turns really deadly once it reaches Ventura County.
A man from Kazakhstan is 100 days into a 3,200-mile bicycle journey from the country’s capital to Australia.
Beijing opened a new 21-mile section of what will eventually form a nearly 30 mile greenway on both sides of the Qing River.
Competitive Cycling
Outside profiles Brandon McNulty, who most Americans never heard of until he won the men’s world championship last week. And still haven’t.
It was a double victory for the US at the worlds, as American phenom Ashlin Barry became the first-ever Yank to win in the men’s U-23 race.
Finally…
That feeling when rising gas prices lead a ’90s pop group to trade their tour bus for Lycra and bicycles. Your next bike could be a Bugatti, for a mere $27,000 — or you could buy your toddler a Tesla balance bike for just $225. Your old bike could be someone’s new prosthetic leg.
And it’s probably not the best idea to punch someone in the chest at a bike lane meeting and call her a “stupid cunt” when you’re an elected semi-city official.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
