Let’s talk dogs on bikes.
Earlier this week, we mentioned a story with tips on how to ride a bike with your dog.
Something I hope to do with our corgi, once I find a decent e-cargo bike I can mange to ride without her killing me.
And something Adam Ginsberg is already doing with his.
Well now…..it’s just so happens I started riding with our rescued Boston Terrier, Bailey, last July. During one of our daily walks, my wife and I saw a man riding with his dog…but the dog was in a backpack!! I had a good hunch Bailey would enjoy doing the same. So, I employed my mAd Google sKiLlz, and found…..www.k9sportsack.com.
They have all manner of pooch backpack goodness so us 2 legged humans can take our 4 legged family members on adventures. Within a few days, a pack arrived, and I immediately set about training Bailey to ride. My hunch proved correct, and she fell in love with riding.
To help protect her vulnerable eyes, I added a pair of Rex-Specs, too.
Now, we go on rides 2-3 times a week, down to the beach, and thru downtown Ventura, where the city closed off Main Street to cars and opened it up to restaurants, shops, people and bikes (yay!!!).
We get so many great reactions – people from 1 to 100 love seeing us riding around town. We regularly are asked if they can take a picture, and Bailey never says no.
I already have the backpack Ginsberg mentioned, a gift from a fellow corgi aficionado. And a pair of pink corgi-sized goggles that our last corgi never took to.
So maybe I’ll have to give it a try once my hands heal enough to get back on a bike.
Photo by Adam Ginsberg
Photo by Adam Ginsberg
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Maybe LADOT had a better year than we thought.
The Los Angeles Department of Transportation received four Outstanding Project Awards from the Metropolitan Los Angeles Branch of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
The agency was recognized for —
- An outstanding emergency response/preparedness project award for its COVID-19 pandemic response programs, including the al fresco dining program, slow streets program, automated touchless traffic signals, and support for COVID-19 testing and vaccination sites.
- An outstanding bikeways and trails project award for the new protected bike lanes on Fifth and Sixth streets from Spring Street to Central Avenue.
- An outstanding applied mapping technology project award for its GIS strategic plan, which uses all available department and city data to create a network to identify priority projects for Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Green New Deal.
- An outstanding big data project award for its pandemic travel behavior study, which analyzed travel trends during the pandemic, affirming long-standing racial inequities created by decades of policies oppressing people of color.
What’s not on the list, of course, is any mention of popup bike lanes created during the pandemic. Because there weren’t any, unlike most other major cities.
Nor was there any attempt to speed up implementation of the city’s mobility plan or traffic elements of the Green New Deal while traffic was lighter during the pandemic, squandering a once-in-a-generation opportunity.
There was also no mention of an award for implementing LA’s Vision Zero program, apparently acknowledging that nibbling around the edges with easy to implement, non-controversial projects will never make a significant dent in the city’s traffic fatality rate.
A rate that’s measured in broken human lives and shattered families.
So let’s all give LADOT a warm and well-deserved round of applause for what they accomplished last year.
While recognizing that it’s nowhere near enough. And that we’ll be paying for a generation for what wasn’t done when they had the chance.
Evidently, I’m not the only one who thinks so.
Yesterday, we asked @LADOTofficial what it would take to double their pace of active transportation implementation as part of LA’s Green New Deal. LADOT built a lot of bike lanes during the pandemic, but it’s not enough and not fast enough to meet our climate and mobility goals. https://t.co/MOIuMhs4pt
— Eric Bruins (@ejfbruins) June 16, 2021
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And yes, it can be done, if we have the will to do it.
In 2012, #Ghent Belgium’s bike trip mode share was 22%.
They wanted to get it to 35% by 2030.
Thru creative, decisive action, they reached 35% by 2019, in 7 years, 11 YEARS EARLY!@Streetfilms tells the #Ghent story that I learned working there in 2019.pic.twitter.com/pEVhCUh65z
— Brent Toderian (@BrentToderian) June 16, 2021
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This is who we share the road with.
After an Ohio man was shot by an assailant, he was run over by a driver as he lay bleeding in the street before paramedics could get to him.
Or rather, he was run over by the police officer responding to the call, who was too busy reading street address numbers to pay attention to the roadway ahead of her.
Never mind the actual crime scene.
And never mind that the initial police report didn’t even mention the collision, which the police chief later wrote off as just an oopsie.
No word on whether it was the oopsie or the gun actually killed the poor guy.
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LA County wants your input on how we’ll all get around in the eastern San Gabriel Valley in the years to come.
Your ideas wanted! We want to hear from you about how you walk, bike, or roll around your community. Visit https://t.co/jBmuHFBjzb to get started, and you may be featured in public art throughout the East San Gabriel Valley! #SGV #ESGV #mobility #streetsforpeople pic.twitter.com/1cGSnsSTfV
— LA County Planning (@LACDRP) June 16, 2021
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GCN considers how to avoid bonking on your next long ride.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
This is what it’s like to get buzzed — repeatedly — by Denver motorcycle cops in violation of Colorado’s three-foot passing law.
A Toronto bike rider exchanged more than words with a road raging driver, puncturing the pickup’s tire as the driver got back in, then attempting in vain to escape as the irate man chased him down and grabbed his bike, smashing it against a building.
https://twitter.com/livingbyyyz/status/1404959122202808320
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
After a man violently punched an Orthodox Jewish boy on LA’s Melrose Ave for no apparent reason, his bike-riding friend walked up and threatened to kill the boy’s entire family, as well as a bystander who was documenting the assault.
— Eve Barlow (@Eve_Barlow) June 16, 2021
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Local
More details on yesterday’s tragic news about the fatal driveby shooting of a 22-year old man in South LA, which also wounded an eight-year old girl; the victim was Marcelis Gude, son of the man behind the Twitter account @FilmThePoliceLA, who was apparently mistaken for a gang member as he stood speaking with a woman. The girl, who is in stable condition, was just collateral damage, caught up in the gunfire as she was riding by on her bike.
State
Nice. San Diego’s $30 million spacious, curb-protected Rose Creek Bikeway is wide open and ready to ride.
The California Coastal Commission gave the thumbs-up to expanding Santa Barbara’s bikeshare system along the city’s waterfront, while giving a solid thumbs-down to an appeal from a self-appointed city hall watchdog who complains they’ll mar her views.
Treehugger talks with dads who use their cargo bikes to take their kids everywhere, including an English father of two who now lives in Thousand Oaks.
Thirty-one people have suffered broken bones at the hands and batons of Bakersfield cops over the last four years, including a 37-year old man who was beaten for the crime of not having a light on his bicycle, ending up with a compound fracture and charges for assaulting an officer and resisting arrest by allowing them to beat him.
National
Cycling Weekly considers how to safely store your ebike.
Next City says cars want the streets back now that the pandemic is — hopefully — ending, but cities would be better off without them.
Regardless of what the advertorials say, no bike lock offers “impenetrable bike security;” with the right tools and enough time, a determined bike thief can get through anything.
Support is growing for a repeal of Seattle’s counterproductive bike helmet mandate, which is blamed for unfairly targeting riders of color.
There’s a special place in hell for whoever stole the bicycle a 57-year-old Arizona man with autism and schizophrenia used as his only form of transportation, as well as therapy
Not only is RAGBAI back this year, you can leave your mask at home for the annual ride across Iowa.
Members of a Twin Cities Facebook group were honored by the Minneapolis Police Department for helping capture a wanted felon while trying to recover a stolen bike; the group has helped return more than 100 stolen bicycles to their owners over the past five years.
The Green Bay Packers annual tradition of borrowing bicycles from young fans to ride the last few yards to training camp could be in jeopardy for the second year in a row, as the NFL warns players not to interact with fans due to Covid risks.
New York graffiti artist Futura has teamed with Cinelli for a line of bikewear, recalling his days as a bicycle messenger.
A team of New York developers has come its senses, and will stop fighting the legally required 286 bike parking spaces for an 83-story mixed-use tower in Midtown.
A WaPo columnist says Republicans could actually improve Biden’s infrastructure proposal by ensuring the money is spent well, rather than merely on how much gets spent.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution profiles the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition, and their efforts to make bicycling safer and more comfortable in the Big Peach.
International
Cycling News says no, you can’t legally chip your ebike to overcome the manufacturer’s speed limitations. But you can make other improvements, starting with a second battery.
An Ottawa, Canada man was overjoyed to get his stolen bike back, newly repaired by a local bike shop; he had initially gone viral for wishing the thief well when it was stolen back in January, saying he hoped they treated it with respect and enjoyed the ride.
The numbers don’t lie. Montreal’s new bicycle network is a clear success, with over 6,200 riders passing a bike counter on the 2nd of this month; anything over 4,000 daily riders is considered exceptional usage.
A London writer is terrified of being run down by someone on an e-scooter, while another woman says a teenage boy riding one once crashed into her.
A British man learns the hard way that just because you’ve safely left your vintage bike outside for the last decade doesn’t mean someone won’t steal it.
That’s more like it. The UK warns local governments to be “ambitious” in bidding for funds for bike projects, suggesting that mere paint won’t make the cut.
A Chinese company wants to put a 23 tool bike multitool in your pocket for just $29 on Kickstarter.
Competitive Cycling
Giro champ Egan Bernal had an audience with the pope, and gave the former bike-riding Argentine bishop his winning bike and the winner’s pink jersey.
Racing is underway in the annual cross-country Trans Am Bike Race, as the competitors begin passing through Kansas.
Finally…
Never mind your laptop, hackers could be after your Peloton. Riding a bike shouldn’t be a pain in the butt.
And your next bike could be a Louis Vuitton for the low, low price of just $28,900.
For less than that, you could have had a $24,000 Radiohead Brompton.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Too bad, I wish I had pictures of Hank riding in our Burley up the 605 Bike Path from Long Beach. He just LOVED it. We’d get up to Cerritos and stop at Liberty Park where he was always popular with kids. There’s a clever water feature there, he always had a ball playing and barking at the water.