More Bike Week news.
The Pasadena Complete Streets Coalition is teaming with Day One to host a free evening taco ride tonight.
Pasadena’s Day One is hosting a bike-in movie Saturday night, screening Together We Cycle, a documentary about the history of bicycling in the Netherlands.
Santa Clarita is hosting a Bike to Work Week Challenge for businesses and their employees, including five pit stops on Thursday’s Bike to Work Day.
Metro is sponsoring a series of Bike Week events —
- May 18 @ 8:30 am – 10:30 am
- Perloff Hall at UCLA, 1317 Portola Plaza
- Los Angeles, CA 90095 United States
It’s Bike Week! Come to Perloff Hall to learn more about Metro Bike Share at UCLA.
Bike Share 101: Bike Safety Basics at UCLA Bike Week (In-Person Class)
- May 18 @ 11:00 am – 12:30 pm
- UCLA LuValle Commons, 398 Portola Plaza
- Los Angeles, CA 90095 United States
- RSVP HERE
The BEST Bike Share 101: Bike Safety Basics class, presented by Metro, Metro Bike Share, and LA County Bicycle Coalition, is a 1.5-hour in-person class where you will learn how to navigate the Metro Bike Share system and improve your safety while riding Metro Bike Share on campus. RSVP REQUIRED.
- May 19 @ 8:00 am – 12:00 pm
- Union Station, 800 N Alameda St
- Los Angeles, CA 90012 United States
Ride Metro Bike Share to work on Bike to Work Day! Stop by our booth in Union Station East for free coffee, pastries, and passes for FREE 30-minute rides.
Bike to Work Day Lunch Community Ride
- May 19 @ 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm
- Union Station West Portal, 834 N Alameda St
- Los Angeles, CA United States
Are you a bike commuter? Do you work from home and want to get out for a bike ride? The Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition and Metro Bike Share invite you to celebrate National Bike to Work Day with a short, fun-filled lunch hour bike ride sponsored by Metro’s Bicycle Education Safety Training (BEST) Program. Join us at Union Station, where we’ll ride along to Chinatown and the LA State Historic Park to enjoy a tasty fresh lunch.
- May 21 @ 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm
- 3rd & Santa Fe, 999 E Third Street
- Los Angeles, CA 90033 United States
Are you looking to visit the Arts District this weekend? Visit our table at 3rd & Santa Fe and get a free 1-Ride pass for you and your friends.
In addition, Metro is offering a one-year Metro Bike bikeshare pass for $75 this Thursday and Friday only.
You can find still more Bike Week news in yesterday’s post, in case you missed it.
Photo by Ana Arantes from Pexels.
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Bike accessibility advocate Megan Lynch will be speaking at next month’s meeting of the Pasadena Complete Streets Coalition.
https://twitter.com/may_gun/status/1526308359820914688
As she notes, her appearance builds on the successful panel discussion she hosted at last month’s Calbike summit.
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Apparently, Los Angeles has a new electric bike lane sweeper.
Now we just need more bike lanes to sweep.
https://twitter.com/TorresKristen/status/1526252066909216768
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. NFL quarterback Tom Brady rode a bikeshare bike through the streets of New York over the weekend, but all anyone seemed to notice is he wasn’t wearing a helmet.
No bias here, either. Bike riders in a British city decry plans to cope with periodic flooding by removing a bike lane to make room for the flood waters, rather than actually dealing with the problem.
Or here. Scottish bike riders criticize an Edinburgh website for posting a video purporting to show a bike rider racing through a roundabout, which has obviously been speeded up to make it appear far more dangerous than it was. While ignoring the real problem of the person on the soundtrack singing about how he’d like to run the rider down with his truck.
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Local
Los Angeles looks at the battle between challenger Dulce Vasquez and incumbent Curren Price for LA’s CD9 council seat.
Streetsblog’s SGV Connect podcast talks with bike-riding state Senator Anthony Portantino, who has sponsored legislation requiring communities to make progress on bicycle and pedestrian planning, as well as talking with the leaders of the very active Active SGV.
State
A San Diego man was shot in the leg following an argument with another man in the city’s Logan Heights neighborhood, before the shooter made his getaway on a bicycle.
National
The Biden administration is sending out $5 billion to cities and localities to address the rising traffic death toll on our streets by by “slowing down cars, carving out bike paths and wider sidewalks and nudging commuters to public transit” under the Transportation Department’s new Safe Streets & Roads for All program. Needless to say, right wing Breitbart News does not approve.
Mas mojitos, por favor! Bicycling says drinking mint could make you faster in the summer heat. As usual, read it on Yahoo if Bicycling blocks you.
A writer for Electrek says “acoustic bikes” are incredible, but he only rides ebikes for transportation.
Cosmo offers their picks for the best cruiser bikes, with prices starting at just $190. Although that’s for a Huffy, so “best” may be relative.
Kindhearted Spokane cops replaced a seven-year old girl’s stolen bicycle after a group of teens pushed her off and rode off with it.
In a sign of pent-up demand, it only took three weeks for buyers to max out Denver’s new ebike rebate program. A fate that’s likely to befall California’s $10 million ebike rebate program as well, once it kicks off later this summer.
Nice gesture from the Pro Football Writers of America, who gave a lifetime achievement award to former Denver Broncos and New York Jets assistant coach Greg Knapp, who was killed in a collision while riding his bike in San Ramon last summer.
Houston is holding its annual Bike Summit for the first time since it was cancelled by the pandemic, amid calls to do more to improve and maintain the city’s bikeways. Los Angeles held a bike summit once. And needs to do it again.
More on the murder of rising gravel cyclist Moriah Wilson, who was shot to death in Austin, Texas last week while preparing for Saturday’s Gravel Locos race in Hico, Texas.
Once again, an elderly driver has taken the life of an innocent victim, as an 85-year old Oklahoma woman ran down a popular dentist from behind as he was riding his bike; investigators described it as “unfortunate,” while saying it’s unclear why she didn’t see him. Once again raising the question of how old is too old to drive.
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has withdrawn a request for the death penalty for the truck-driving terrorist who killed eight people by speeding down a New York bike path, opting for life in prison instead of the death penalty requested by former Trump AG Jeff Sessions.
Unbelievable. The driver who killed a man and woman riding in a green bike lane on Miami’s Rickenbacker Causeway has been ticketed, but isn’t facing charges for their deaths; meanwhile, advocates call for safety improvements on the deadly bridge. Because evidently, killing two innocent people while breaking traffic laws is just an oopsie.
International
The United Nations is marking next month’s World Bicycle Day with a set of ten bicycle postage stamps. Raise your hand if, like me, you had no idea the UN had its own post office.
Treehugger says there’s an ebike and cargo bike revolution happening, and cities need to catch up with bike storage solutions to accommodate them. Add adaptive bikes to that list, too; as Megan Lynch has pointed out, bike parking for non-traditional bikes is woefully lacking.
More proof that not even physically separated bikeways are safe from reckless drivers, after a Toronto bike rider was left with life-altering injuries when a driver lost control of their car, jumped the curb, crossed a grass divider, and struck the victim on a bike trail before slamming into a guard rail. Sounds like maybe the guard rail was on the wrong side of the pathway.
The Conversation asks if New Zealand’s new budget will be another lost opportunity to get drivers out of their cars.
Competitive Cycling
LA’s Bahati Foundation, founded by Compton’s multiple US crit champ Rahsaan Bahati, is sponsoring five young people of color in this summer’s SBT GRVL race in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, to “help broaden their cycling experience and bring diversity to gravel’s starting line.” Unfortunately, this one doesn’t seem to be available on Yahoo, so you’re on your own if Bicycling blocks you.
Finally…
Hide your AirTag inside your tire. That feeling when you catch a bike thief in the act, and the cops never show up.
And turn your bike into an ebike with a pocket-sized battery. As long as you have a very big pocket, that is.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin, too.
Don’t ask for cops, request the coroner come pick up the body even if the body is still breathing and talking. Trust me on this one, never fails to get a whole station worth of cops.