BikinginLA

The big news this week is the city’s slightly revised Mobility Plan (pdf), which goes before the Planning Commission on Thursday.

According to LA Streetsblog, the city has apparently given up on eliminating all traffic deaths, since the plan now calls for a Vision Zero for cyclists and pedestrians only, and leaves motorists to their own fate.

Good news for those of us who travel by two wheels or two feet, who would like to feel confident we could go out into the city and return home again in one piece. But a tacit admission that city leaders fear our traffic problems may be too big to solve in the next 20 years, and LA’s overly aggressive drivers too difficult to rein in.

Streetsblog’s Joe Linton also complains the plan’s weak-ass, mealy-mouthed, non-committal wording remains intact. Although he puts it far more politely.

Which sounds like more of LA’s traditional can’t do attitude that we hoped was finally over with the arrival of new leadership at LADOT and city hall.

On the bright side, this is the same Planning Commission that threw out the original 2010 bike plan and ordered the city to come back when they had a real plan to connect the city and keep cyclists safe. Which they did.

Maybe the Planning Commission will do that again this time.

And tell the city to come back when they’re finally ready to make a commitment.

……..

Local

Bike Radar asks if a vegan diet can work for cyclists; LA cyclist and dietician Matt Ruscigno is living proof it does.

A writer for the Santa Monica Daily Press misunderstands the basic premise of bike share, suggesting it benefits businesses and their out-of-town employees at the expense of local residents.

Santa Monica Spoke is having a meeting and party this Saturday to celebrate the third anniversary of the city’s Bike Action Plan.

 

State

Auto-centric Orange County gets $13 million for bike and pedestrian projects.

Proof that open streets events are good for business, as 83% of participants in San Diego’s recent CicloSDias dined at local restaurants along the route and 85% said they’d come back again to shop or dine in the neighborhood.

A 13-year old bike rider is hit by a car in Wildomar; fortunately, he’s expected to recover.

A Sacramento cyclist is killed in a train collision; sadly, it sounds like it may have been a suicide.

San Francisco has seen three recent cases of road raging drivers attacking cyclists and pedestrians, including one fatal hit-and-run.

 

National

The seven health benefits of riding a bike.

The Bike League is out with their latest list (pdf) of Bicycle Friendly Communities; doesn’t seem to be any changes here in SoCal, though.

Too sad. A newlywed Las Vegas bike rider is killed by a heartless hit-and-run driver just two weeks after getting back from his honeymoon. Thanks to Steve Herbert for the heads-up.

New York Daily News says high-end customized bikes are becoming the status symbol of choice for deep pocketed professionals.

New York responds to bike/pedestrian collisions in Central Park by lowering the speed limit for bikes to 20 mph, so scofflaw riders will have a lower limit to ignore.

More evidence of our auto-centric world, as a Florida man is refused service at drive-through Taco Bell, not because he was drunk, but because he was on a bike. Then gets arrested when he refuses to leave.

 

International

A writer for the Guardian says it’s time to stop blaming the bike riding victims, and put the focus on the fact that driving can kill.

Great photos from 69 years of the Tour of Britain; Tony the Tiger beats podium girls in my book any day.

Caught on video: UK police don’t seem to care that a driver buzzed a bike rider. Or that he was impersonating a police officer.

The Dutch concept of shared space brings order through chaos to create safer streets. Although it would take a major attitude change before that could work here.

Velonews bikes the hidden gems of the Taiwanese countryside.

 

Finally…

Now that’s one drawing I’d like to enter. The pope is raffling off some of the gifts he’s received to raise money to feed the homeless; five of the top six prizes are bicycles. Just what we all need, a bike helmet that can read your mind; it would want to know what I think sometimes.

And he may have won, then lost, the Tour de France seven times, but Lance can’t get past the first lap of a Beer Mile. But can we please stop adding “disgraced former cyclist” to every mention of his name before he has to put it on his drivers license?