Weekend Links: LA election debates, reforming CA Trans Commission, hi-viz skin, and better libidos through biking

Please forgive yesterday’s unexcused absence.

The sudden failure of a hard drive cable took my laptop down without warning, wiping out all the links I’d been saving, and leaving me without access to this site.

The good news it, it was a quick, easy and relatively affordable fix. So we’re back in business, and serving up a virtual smorgasbord of fresh, hot bike links.

………

Local

Bike the Vote LA provides a list of upcoming candidate debates before the March city elections.

Streetsblog’s Damien Newton talks with Bike SGV Executive Director Wes Reutimann about better bike parking for the Gold Line.

In case you wondered, this is why many bike paths shut down before heavy rains. And if you were planning to use the protected bike lanes on the California Incline this weekend, you might want to plan another route.

Santa Monica is conducting yet another of their frequent bike and pedestrian safety enforcement days this Monday. You know the drill; follow the letter of the law until you cross back into the scofflaw loving arms of LA.

A Long Beach city councilmember says people are free to push for changes to the number and color of the green bollards on Studebaker Road, but they were put there to slow traffic and improve safety.

 

State

A bill to restructure California’s Transportation Commission would require at least one of the six members to have expertise in bicycle and pedestrian safety; two would have a background in sustainable transportation, one in mass transit, and two working with disadvantaged communities.

Calbike is looking for an administrative manager.

After starting out with ambitious plans for a Complete Street makeover of San Diego’s El Cajon Blvd, the city settles on a watered-down approach with buffered bike lanes instead of protected lanes.

Bring your rain gear. Today’s Tour de Palm Springs will roll rain or shine. Or 40 mph winds.

This is the cost of traffic violence. Thirty-three years later, a writer in Half Moon Bay still struggles with the hit-and-run death of his bike-riding father two days before his dad’s 38th birthday.

A Redding man is facing a murder charge for calmly riding away on his bike after setting a gas station clerk on fire; authorities still don’t know why, though.

 

National

Lawsuits are flying back and forth at the new company formed by America’s last remaining Tour de France winner to make low-cost carbon fiber, but not for bikes.

Bicycling explains why you should keep riding outside all winter, and how to organize a bike pub crawl.

Men’s Journal offers commuter gear every cyclist needs. None of which anyone really needs, but most of which seems pretty good for a change.

Who needs hi-viz when your skin can glow in the dark?

This is how Vision Zero is supposed to work. Oregon will build a bike path to fill a gap in a bike lane where a man was killed last year.

A Colorado man beat depression by bicycling across the US with just $600 to his name; now he’s preparing to race 5,770 miles across Russia.

The war on bikes continues, as a Montana legislator introduces a bill that would ban bikes from virtually every two lane road in the state. Which is most of the highways in the state, as I recall.

If you build it, they will come. Nearly one million people used the bike trail system in Sioux Falls SD last year, in a city of just 165,000.

Caught on video: A road raging Wisconsin driver rolls a stop sign, then repeatedly attempts to cut off a bike rider before getting out of his car to confront him, and complaining that the cyclist is taking up too much of the road. Even though the sharrows indicate he’s exactly where he’s supposed to be.

The bike-born coffee and bread deliveries must go through, even in a Minnesota winter.

When a local hotel is razed, an Indiana woman asks for, and receives, the 600 pound boulder she used to sit on to watch her late husband, a county sheriff, ride off to DC every year to honor officers killed in the line of duty.

A Michigan TV station lists three surprising benefits of bicycling, including boosting your libido. Which probably isn’t much of a surprise for those of us who do.

Amsterdam’s bike mayor is taking her act on the road in an attempt to remake the former New Amsterdam into a bike riding city.

Philadelphia police are getting serious about ticketing people who park in bike lanes.

Now that’s more like it. A Pennsylvania man gets five to twelve years behind bars for the hit-and-run death of a motorized bike rider who was on his way to see his dying father.

Life is cheap in Louisiana, where a hit-and-run driver walks after killing a cyclist; his victim wasn’t killed in the crash, but drowned in a ditch because the jerk who hit him didn’t bother to stop. Something’s seriously wrong with the prosecutors who made this deal; instead of being released on probation, he should be doing hard time on a 2nd murder conviction.

New Orleans is launching a fleet of 700 custom-designed bikeshare bikes at 70 stations around the city.

 

International

Cycling News asks if sexual abuse will be cycling’s next big scandal.

A British Columbia snow biker wants his cliff-hanging ski-bike back.

Bad British roads killed or injured 99 bike riders over a recent two year period. Meanwhile, in a totally unrelated story, the BBC asks if sidewalk riding should be legal in the country.

A Belfast woman is looking for the hit-and-run cyclist who killed her dog. I’ve had to dodge a number of dogs whose irresponsible owners let them wander across pathways on a loose leash. But, if you can’t avoid hitting a dog, human or any other animal, just stop already.

Caught on video too: Aussie police are looking for a sidewalk raging pedestrian who grabbed a 62-year old woman’s bike by the rear wheel and flipped her over the handlebars, tossing her face-first into the pavement.

A Santa Barbara couple spends three weeks riding 600 miles around Taiwan.

 

Finally…

No, bikeshare bikes don’t grow on trees. Helmets have been around almost forever.

And your next bike could actually fly. But only if you define “bike” very loosely.

 

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