The route for the first ever — but far from last — San Fernando Valley CicLAvia has been announced.
The March 22nd open streets event will follow Ventura and Lankershim Blvds, and be the first of four this year; later stops include Pasadena, Culver City/Venice and the ever popular Heart of LA route.
Th best part is, for those of us south of the Hollywood Hills, Metro’s Red Line will drop you off right to the middle of the route.
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Adventure Cycling notes that it either is or isn’t legal to ride on Interstate 40 east of Barstow.
According to Caltrans, bikes are banned from the highway, even though the only alternate on famed Route 66 was washed out last year.
On the other hand, signage on the Interstate clearly says bikes are allowed.
Nope. No confusion there.
Thanks to prinzrob for the link.
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In a touching must read piece, a New York cyclist opens her heart, and her wallet, to the pregnant girlfriend of the man who stole her much loved bike.
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In another must read, a writer clearly explains why the current rules of the road don’t keep people from dying. In fact, they’re often a contributory factor — including the 85% rule used to set deadly speed limits throughout the US.
And it includes this statement from the executive director of New York’s Transportation Alternatives, which should become the new mantra for every traffic planner and government official.
“It’s completely unacceptable for someone to die in a plane crash or an elevator,” he said. “We should expect the same of cars.”
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Local
Streetsblog looks at what may be a positive end to the long-running fight over bike lanes on North Figueroa. I’m not holding my breath, but I’m willing to be surprised.
Milestone Rides offers six road safety tips for dealing with angry drivers, noting it’s not if you’ll be harassed but when.
Things are getting serious in the campaign for the March LA city council election. This weekend you’re invited to help canvass for Jose Huizar, one of the most effective voices for bike riders on the city council, on both Saturday and Sunday. Huizar is in what promises to be a tough re-election battle against termed-out county commissioner Gloria Molina.
Somehow I missed this one earlier this month, as Boyonabike discusses bike advocacy and the importance of getting involved to change our streets.
State
Calbike looks at the state’s bike bests of 2014, including the hiring of Seleta Reynolds to head LADOT and Tamika Butler as Executive Director of the LACBC.
San Clemente plans to beautify a bike trail along the beach; replacing the guard rail with a planted median should improve safety for riders, as well.
No bias here. After a Palm Springs cyclist suffers major injuries in a collision with a van, all the local paper seems to care about was the road closure.
Wait, what? A Palo Alto commissioner wants a new bike and pedestrian bridge redesigned to make it less of a landmark; maybe what he really means is less expensive.
A San Francisco jury awards $4 million in damages after concluding the truck driver who killed a San Francisco bike rider was negligent in causing her death. Police had brushed the case under the rug, blaming the victim until a member of the local bike coalition found security camera footage that captured the impact — which the SFPD hadn’t bothered to look for. Thanks to John McBrearty for the heads-up.
National
Virtual traffic lights on a heads-up display promises to revolutionize driving. Of course, no one else will be able to see them, but who really cares about cyclists or pedestrians, anyway? Thanks to John Montgomery for the tip.
A Nevada video shows how to sell Vision Zero to a skeptical public.
Bike-friendly Colorado gets it. The state’s governor calls for a system of bike trails connecting the entire state. A Colorado professor says drivers think we’re rude if we obey the law and criminals if we break it. And Denver will close a busy interstate highway through the heart of the city to install a new bike and pedestrian bridge.
Cheyenne, Wyoming considers bailing on plans for bike lanes on a pair of busy streets, since people only ride bikes for recreation and no one would ever actually use one to get anywhere.
Now that’s more like it. Nebraska considers a far tougher version of the three-foot passing law, requiring drivers to change lanes to pass a bike rider, or give three feet if that’s not possible.
Evidently, they take traffic crime seriously in the Midwest. A Nebraska driver who fled the scene, leaving left a cyclist paralyzed from the neck, down gets six to ten years in jail, while a hit-and-run driver who killed a Kansas cyclist is sentenced to 11 years on a second degree murder charge.
Even in Iowa, a new apartment building is being designed around the needs of bike riders.
The spin has begun. The Austin TX paper says the cancelation of last Sunday’s national cyclocross finals was a mutual decision between city and race officials to protect heritage trees; USA Cycling’s VP of national events says not so much.
Interesting case from New Jersey, where an appeals court ruled that someone who texts another person when they’re behind the wheel can be held responsible for any injuries caused by the distraction.
Bad road design may have been a contributing factor in the case of the allegedly drunken, hit-and-run Baltimore bishop who killed a popular cyclist last month. And the city’s new draft bike master plan calls for cutting the red tape and getting serious about bike improvements — especially with intoxicated prelates careening around the streets.
International
An Australian writer who doesn’t ride a bike says outrage over the anti-bike Family Feud question is misplaced, while a cyclist responds with eight annoying things a bike hater might say.
A road raging Singapore cyclist is lucky to get off with a light charge after throwing his bike at a car; of course, no reason is given for why he might have been so angry with the driver.
Finally…
If the police catch you in the act of cutting the cable on a key-operated bike lock, don’t tell them you forget the combination. An Aussie family of four and their two dogs travel 3,700 miles by bike along the country’s coast, subsisting on what they could forage along the way — including road kill.
And caught on video: a Brit cyclist is knocked off his bike by a van, then attacked by the driver; police are looking for the victim to investigate the case. Be patient, it get’s interesting about 50 seconds in. And thanks again to John McBrearty.
[…] The route for the first ever — but far from last — San Fernando Valley CicLAvia has been announced. The March 22nd open streets event will follow Ventura and Lankershim Blvds, and be the first of four this year; later stops include Pasadena, Culver City/Venice and the …read more […]
For those who missed the prior stories which included till today me about the found video footage and efforts prior to that almost successfully evaded by state task I announce here a plan to try to recover what I already wrote and lost in response, and outdo it, soon.
I should of taken the time, and managed to realize I would need much more time and not assumed I had understood how much more time I had left to save my words, as I had even less then the error already realized in the countdown on the machine presently reset.
This is not that, but I will emphasize the four days, the paltry four million dollars agreed upon, a fifth of that more reasonably sought I assume, and frankly assume further that only $20M was sought to give the jury a chance to seek more but much research on this case is deserved.
I had pasted the streetblog link with it’s picture and long list of comments about a cop crashing to post events and creating a photo anyone with a mustache should regret.
I will dare meditate on the first mile to train slain’s beauty, as her health, and her loss, are just two of the findings we can take from that picture. For those who are female, and as healthy and posed we must shove as much as possible this picture in front of them. Women who buy and drive cars do so with far too little resistance by such imagery. The blood of others so just like themselves they shed doing so needs little prodding, but some, and her picture being shown for even fifteen seconds or more in this superbowl upcoming is one thing the four million might be paid in time to fund.
A gesture like that by ‘Woody’ to his redfording wife brought her back to his life, donating the entire million as token, washing his hands of it but not wasting it, understanding such impulse is anything but that some times.
I consider it- knowing so many women will climb on bikes and out of SUV drivers seats after watching the game, in the weeks and months it’s echo brains there soul into no longer pressing the beauty exterminating petal -pedal- needlessly.
Prefer petals unmolested to pedals overtested. Nvidia talks about supercomputers preserving the pavements value, but parts suppliers demo cars not past makers precisely because it is feared then more then it’s magic will find takers.
Such companies choose to support death machines instead of alternatives. Discretion is exercised in the short term thinking.
It makes it almost certain that in a decade to evolve still relatively few people moving under a ton will rule, way under, instead of even more then that unbelievably, to get someplace over and over and over, thousands of times routinely, will remain cursing all that is bright and right in part being the result of the most just terrorists especially having lost the fight because we cheat as we incinerate etc. them as easy meat so sleazily.
Again this is not that comment. This is me being glib, reacting for myself not just the cause. IN the near future I will better earn and expect actual applause, not now.
For now though I resent the use of “must” for a novelists however accurately true thrust about a old brown steel bike not remaining forever stolen nor denying her yet another chance to feel far too golden for carrying cash not just herself upon it.
We should not clap before the nieve. Kids drive cars as kids, not just get pregnant by thieves and I say can do no more worse then that, then drive, and adults who help them, well, is there anything anyone can do that more defines what eternal hell should be imposed for?
Plenty of parents turn away given bikes for there kid and instead cosign loans or leases for four huge wheels. As a kid I signed I would never abuse drugs. Yet today I have not heard of any petitions to boycot new cars for at least twenty years.
She had a face to support such a pledge for just twenty years.
To not surrender the right to buy or worse a car until your old enough to be president is to condemn the world to no real democracy anywhere. We all know too many hearses are needed if most of us continue to think owning or operating such a tumor upon our potential to as a species show intelligence for real.
There are thousands of such pictures to print across square yards and carry by tens of thousands in every ‘city’ many times a year forever without running out of fresh faces slaughtered in our lifetimes. Dozens of times as many as the military portraits we awe at for there deliberate proven fatal risks. As much or even more so those of us slain by cars are the doing of those of us who think it’s not most shameful to always drive and only drive, the norm need not be the most evil concocted conduct, in this case it is.
Before America is twice as old as it is now, and we are barely born, our production and use of cars can be judged as so more vile then slavery, and before it kills six million gorgeous teens if it’s not already too late even. It will be so regarded if we abstain, if we spent thousands on bike like solutions instead of tens of thousands on cars with viral acceleration unstoppably, something only hinted at as possible by the toying with the possibility so far.
Many ask if they would be cheering on Hitler. Do you drive a car? I say there is the answer. Drive a car? You would of raped your slaves. Drive a car? I’m sure your collection of human skin shades and hair deepest shag rugs would of been stunning.
Sell them? We know how far your SS career ambitions would of taken you.
Design them? The only thing worse is to pull punches for the alternatives, also the rule. I know a lady who runs a transit system and sleeps with a garage builder. I have no defense and deserve being charged for at least destroying humanity in failing to prevent or stop that from continuing in that most evil for it semblance of a town.
Nobody, nearly that, gets it. The best people in the world are being killed because we tolerate it because we consume thoughtlessly not even to our own betterment. Not ‘just’ thousands or millions of species going extinct, but our own lives made worse for reflexively as if hypnotized crawling out of our parents jalopies into one of our own.
If your not a millionaire then spending what it costs to own and operate a car almost anywhere is martyrdom, is servile, is so much more then suicidal and purest folly, to say it is evil is cliche’d, it is madness. Provably, like the fault of the truck driver, only he is, and his employer, deliberated for the pittance of four million.
The other millions of trillions is our fault. I know we can do better. Parents of those who drive still wrongly 30 years after there first car must be put in prison soon or some other solution found. No hope is better kept then for such salvation.
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