BikinginLA

While workshop participants imagine what North Figueroa could be, CD1 City Council Member Gil Cedillois backing off from the already approved, funded and shovel ready bike lanes planned for the street.

Instead, he suggests replacing them with a complicated — and virtually worthless — network of sharrows that would do absolutely nothing to tame traffic on the street. Or encourage traffic-averse bike riders and potential riders to take to a street that would be only marginally safer than before. Let alone more comfortable to ride.

If you can make next Thursday’s community meeting, show up and tell him no.

Make that hell no.

Maybe there’s a reason Cedillo didn’t complete the LACBC’s candidate survey in last year’s election.

Meanwhile, he has also come out against a plan to turn the old Riverside-Figueroa Bridge into an elevated bike and pedestrian park over the LA River.

Mayor Garcetti wants to turn Figueroa into one of the city’s first Great Streets. But that will be hard to do if our elected officials are standing in the way.

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Lexington KY police cite a bike commuting woman for reckless driving — not once, but three times — because she insisted on riding in the traffic lane for her own safety, as she had every right to do.

Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed. Even though she wasn’t scheduled for trial until August, a judge ruled in her favor this week.

Thanks to Bob Young for the heads-up.

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If you’re looking for a good cause, you can’t do much better than this.

After a bike advocate struggling with cancer is forced to sell her bike to pay medical bills, a group of cyclists are raising funds to buy her a new one.

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Local

Flying Pigeon asks which approach is a more efficient use of space — Downtown LA’s massive parking lots or Portland’s downtown bike parking?

Help clean up the LA River this Saturday, then bike over to Golden Road Brewing to celebrate over some of LA’s best beers. Or if you’re closer to the coast, help reimagine what Santa Monica could be.

Sweet Ride USA invites you to join in on their next ride,which will roll along the beachfront bike path this Sunday.

Wrap up Bike Week Pasadena with a bike-in movie on Friday, May 16th.

More on Saturday’s sixth annual Long Beach Bike Fest; the free event sounds like a lot of fun. Meanwhile, it may be the most bike-friendly city in SoCal — though Santa Monica is giving it a run for it’s money — but Long Beach still has some work to do.

 

State

A shirtless bike rider uses the center divider of I-80 through San Francisco as his own personal bike lane.

New OC bike safety campaign tells riders to “Bike Smart. Bike Safe.” And for parents to teach their children to do the same. Now how about telling drivers not to run us over.

Google donates a cool $1 million to Mountain View for bike projects. Now that they’ve got a major center in Venice, maybe they could spread a little of that bike love our way.

 

National

Big step forward as an experimental medical process enabled a group of men with disabling leg injuries to grow new muscles, improving enough to walk or ride a bike for the first time in years.

Treehugger looks at the disparity between bike and ped funding, mode share and funding. And it ain’t pretty. The site also points out that a warmer climate doesn’t result in higher ridership levels.

Intoxicated Oahu driver deliberately rams a group of bicyclists on a metric century ride to honor an advocate for safer cycling. Oddly, only three riders were hit, but five people were injured.

Evidently, there’s only one acceptable form of transportation in Oregon, as the Oregon Humane Society refuses to let a bike riding woman take her adopted cat home because she wasn’t driving a car.

Meet the Boulder CO woman behind CycloFemme, sponsors of the CycloFemme LA Mother’s Day Ride and hundreds of others around the world.

Colorado’s AAA will now offer roadside assistance for cyclists. But they won’t fix your flat.

Bad headline, good story as a Florida bicyclist looks at why the state is so dangerous for people on bikes.

 

International

Hats off to Ontario, Canada man who bought an apparently stolen bike off the street for $10, then set out to return it to its rightful owner.

A new reports says a diabetic Ontario driver suffering from low blood sugar should never have been behind the wheel when he killed three people in 2009, including an 81-year old bike rider — then was allowed to keep his license for another 18 months. It recommends a series of steps to keep dangerously diabetic drivers off the road.

Evidently, the bike boom is in decline in the UK.

Looks like a 12-year doping ban isn’t enough to keep former pro rider Riccardo Ricco from buying EPO. Lots of EPO.

 

Finally…

For the second year in a row, Tour de Fat will bypass LA. And a Brit tandem cyclist rides with a bony stoker even skinnier than I am these days.