It’s a relatively light news day, so let’s just get right to it.
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Somehow, I just can’t spot the bike lane causing all this traffic congestion on Robertson Blvd yesterday.
So it must be a scooter.
Right?
Or maybe it’s just more LA drivers who can’t see the traffic for the cars.
………
Local
Los Angeles will host a series of public workshops to help create proposals for the city’s Great Streets Challenge Grants, beginning tonight in Van Nuys.
Metro will hold a series of committee meetings to discuss congestion pricing to help reduce traffic, and a report on secure bike parking at Metro stations today and tomorrow.
Thanks to LA Streetsblog for the links.
State
San Diego continues to face a lawsuit claiming dockless e-scooters discriminate against people with disabilities, at the same time the city is finalizing regulations for them.
Great reporting job here. An apparently ageless and nameless El Centro child was injured when he was struck by an apparently driverless truck on his way to his apparently nameless school.
A tip of the hat to the Palm Springs Police Department for busting two bike thieves, and recovering a pair of bikes worth $12,000 that had been stolen from a locked rack on the victim’s car.
Oxnard police are looking for a BMX-riding attacker who assaulted a school employee.
National
The new owners of the parent company of the late, lamented Performance Bicycle say they’re back in business, shipping Fuji, Kestrel, Breezer, SE Bikes and other brands owned by the company to dealers. But Performance itself is dead as a physical presence.
Even Pink’s two-year old son is one of us.
Montana considers clarifying the right-of-way rules regarding bicycles, requiring drivers to move to the left lane or cross the center line to pass bicyclists, even when they’re riding on the shoulder, and to yield to bike traffic traveling in the same direction before turning.
Bike riders are warned to use lights and reflective gear to improve safety. But that wasn’t enough to keep an Austin TX man from getting run down by a possibly stoned bus driver earlier this month.
Even enhanced security wasn’t enough to keep thieves from hitting a Chicago bike shop for the second time this month, making off with $20,000 worth of bicycles.
A Concord NH woman faces a vehicular assault charge for running down a man on his bike from behind while driving without a license; prosecutors contend she was following the victim too closely, even though he was in a bike lane. Although the charges are just misdemeanors and traffic violations, so let’s hope survives that vicious slap on the wrist.
New York Mayor de Blasio defends the NYPD’s bizarre crackdown on bike riders — including using physical force and ticketing riders for breaking nonexistent laws — which followed the hit-and-run death of a bike rider. Even though the victim wasn’t breaking the law, and even though police still haven’t arrested that driver, or any of the other drivers in recent hit-and-runs.
A New Orleans attorney offers tips on riding your bike to Mardi Gras, including advice to avoid riding drunk. Which kind of defeats the whole purpose of the Carnival Season.
A well-deserved hate crime charge has been filed against a Florida driver who threatened a group of young black bike riders with a gun while shouting racial epithets, after one of the teenagers allegedly ran over his wife’s foot.
It’s a sad comment when even someone riding on the sidewalk isn’t safe from drivers on the street, as a New York man visiting Florida was collateral damage in a crash between two motorists.
International
Four men completed an eight day, 372-mile frozen fat bike journey on Canada’s Ice Road in temperatures dipping down to 40 degrees below zero. Thanks to Norm Bradwell for the heads-up.
An official police watchdog group has recommended charges against Vancouver police officers for the death of a bike rider, who was somehow killed during a traffic stop because he didn’t have a helmet, lights or reflectors. None of which would normally call for the death penalty.
London blames good weather for a dramatic increase in bicycling and pedestrian fatalities last year, and not just bad drivers and poorly designed trucks.
There’s a special place in hell for the bicycle-riding bandit who injured an 85-year old woman as he made off with his purse; police eventually used dogs to chase him down and take him into custody.
Caught on video: This is what it looks like to be punched by a road raging driver, for the crime of riding on the correct side of the road as the British van driver sped towards him on the wrong side.
Copenhagen residents say Dublin, Ireland’s bike lanes really aren’t.
Caught on video too: A South African bike rider gets ambushed by a man who pushed him off his bicycle to steal his cellphone.
Bicycling Australia says it’s a battlefield out there, offering five tips to improve bicycle safety.
Competitive Cycling
The La Cañada Valley Sun fondly recalls when the 2009 Amgen Tour of California rolled through town on its way to Pasadena; the Peloton included both of America’s future ex-Tour de France winners, as well as eventual winner Levi Leipheimer.
The BBC examines cycling’s obsession with suffering.
Bicycling visits the first-ever Ice Cycle Crit, held on a frozen Massachusetts pond. And examines three current and former pro cyclists to see if there really is a bicycling gene, including cycling scion Taylor Phinney and LA’s own Phil Gaimon.
Cycling Tip’s Neal Rogers writes that he used to be a not-very-good bike racer, with emphasis on the past tense.
Finally…
Put your indoor cycling time to better use baking bread. You can carry anything on a bike — even a basketful of stolen copper pipes.
And most of us can’t walk on water, but at least you can ride on it.
