BikinginLA

My apologies for yesterday’s unexcused absence. 

I’m still having problems with extreme, sudden-onset illness, either due a bad reaction to one of my diabetes meds, or yet another physical problem resulting from diabetes that recently came to light. 

Or maybe both. 

Which serves as yet another reminder to get yourself tested if you’re at risk, watch out for symptoms of diabetes, and do whatever you need to do to avoid it. 

Because you really don’t want this crap. God knows I don’t.

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LAist reports that three in ten LA teens suffer from obesity.

No one needs any preaching from me about the need to maintain a healthy weight, or to get out and exercise.

Even though that’s one of the best ways to avoid diabetes, despite not working in my case.

But what we do need is safe bike and walking infrastructure that would allow people of any age to travel under their own power, instead of forcing kids into the back of their parent’s SUVs.

Which makes the Los Angeles Mobility Plan one of the city’s most vital public health interventions.

And a prescription for better health for our kids, both now and for the rest of their lives.

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Orange County bike advocate Mike Wilkinson forwards news that Buena Park is hosting a Safer Streets Popup tomorrow.

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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on rolling.

New York disability advocates are calling for restrictions on ebikes, citing NYC stats showing more than 1,200 incidents of ebike, motorbike and bicycle crashes in the past year. Even though there’s no way to credibly lump motorcycles in with bicycles, either in the number or severity of crashes.

London’s conservative Spectator continues its bizarre attack on bikes, this time warning about the “rise of the ‘vigilante cyclist’ and ‘lycra-clad informant’.”

British residents call for registering and licensing bike riders, “like other road users.” Never mind that pedestrians are unregistered and unlicensed road users, too.

You’ve got to be kidding. A road-raging driver in the UK walked without a single day behind bars, despite physically attacking a man riding a bicycle, threatening to shoot him, and attempting to run him over with his car. But at least he lost his license for a whole three years — even though it should have been a lifetime ban. 

But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.

The LAPD is looking for a gang of bike-riding armed thieves who robbed five people at gunpoint in Panorama City, pistol-whipping one victim, before speeding off on their bikes.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies busted a man following a high speed chase through the San Gabriel Valley, after he abandoned his car and somehow commandeered a bicycle, calmly riding through the neighborhood until he was taken into custody.

An Ohio woman tried to do the right thing by not driving after drinking, and ended up getting cited for public drunkenness after apparently riding her bicycle into a telephone pole.

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Local 

Streetsblog confirms that LADOT and Metro once again ignored the city’s mobility plan while making modest bike improvements around the new Downtown stations for the regional connector line.

Speaking of Streetsblog, editor Joe Linton shares his photos from Sunday’s Juneteenth CicLAvia.

Metro highlights 15 projects planned for completion before the 2028 Olympics, with a focus on “first mile, last mile” projects that will encourage people to walk or bike at the beginning or end of their journeys.

The Bicycle Film Festival screens Shimano’s documentary The Engine Inside tonight, telling the story of six people around the world “who reveal the unique power of the bicycle to change lives and build a better world.”

ActiveSGV is teaming with Nature For All this Saturday for the first of four bike rides that will explore some of the rivers and mountains in the San Gabriels.

 

State

Calbike wants your support for AB 413, which would mandate daylighting to improve sight lines — and safety — at California intersections, as well as another measure extending California’s ebike incentives beyond this year.

A man in his 50s was rushed to the hospital after falling off his bike in San Diego’s Carmel Mountain Ranch.

Santa Barbara’s CycleMAYnia Bike Month celebration drew around 1,800 people to 22 events throughout the county.

Santa Barbara calls for bike riders and pedestrians to cooperate to improve safety on the State Street Promenade, while commenters demand a return to a car-centric street and blame people on bikes for any problems.

The LA Times says bicycling is the best way to experience the iconic 17-Mile Drive between Pacific Grove and Carmel-by-the-Sea. Although you do have to watch out for errant golf balls from Spyglass Hill. 

The controversial, still-unfinished center-line bikeway on San Franciscos’s Valencia Street is being criticized after at least two bicycling crashes in the first two months, as bicyclists call it an “abomination,” “designed by people who don’t ride bikes.” Meanwhile, Streetsblog calls for ripping it out and replacing it with Dutch-style, side-running bike lanes immediately, sort of like this one.

San Francisco supervisors voted to make permanent a pandemic-era lane reduction and protected bike lane on Fell Street, after a study showed crashes declined 40%, despite a 9% increase in traffic, while weekday driving times increased just 17 seconds.

This is who we share the road with. A San Francisco cop tried to turn a restaurant into a drive-thru, after running a red light during a police chase, clipping a motorcycle and crashing through the front of the building, injuring a child.

 

National

Canary Media says driving less could be as easy as riding a big electric bike.

Gran Fondo Magazine rates the year’s best gravel race bikes.

Sadly, no surprise here, as witnesses contradict the official police statements about the death of a Vancouver, Washington man riding his bike with his young son; the state police say he fell over in front of a passing pickup, while a witness says the truck never moved over and ran him down from behind, while questioning why cops would protect the driver.

A Milwaukee newspaper digs deep into the World Naked Bike Ride to explore the connection between two-wheeled nudism and fighting climate change. The Los Angeles edition rolls this Saturday with dueling rides at 10 am and 1 pm. And no, I won’t be participating, because no one wants to see this diabetic corgi dad bod naked. Trust me.

A Wisconsin woman faces charges for allegedly running down a bike rider while high on heroin; a blood test revealed she also had oxycodone and fentanyl in her system at the time of the crash.

Chicago is budgeting $17 million to add another 150 miles of bike lanes, with infrastructure targeted to historically underserved and overlooked communities.

An Illinois judge acquitted a Chicago cop facing charges for violently slamming a Black teen to the ground and pinning him with his knee, after mistaking him for the man who stole his son’s bicycle.

It takes a special kind of schmuck to leave a seven-year old bike-riding Michigan girl bleeding in the street, with a broken femur, broken pelvis and severe abrasions.

A new Maine law allows the creation of an ebike rebate program, without actually establishing one. Meanwhile, California’s long-delayed program is promised to launch sometime in the next nine days. Fingers crossed.

Horrible tragedy in New York, where four elderly people were killed, and two others critically injured, when a fire caused by a lithium-ion battery broke out on a ground floor bike shop beneath their apartments; the New York Times considers how ebike fires became a deadly crisis in the city, with over 100 so far this year.

A writer for Slate complains about the absurdity of getting a ticket for briefly riding a bikeshare bike on a New York sidewalk, when over 30 drivers were idling in the bike lanes.

Actors Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany are two of us, as the couple were seen on a casual bike ride through New York; more impressively, they’ve been married for 20 years.

Republicans in Congress want to ban red light cams in DC and keep right turns on red legal, despite a ban scheduled to go into effect in two years. Which is about as good an argument for DC statehood as you could make. 

He gets it. A North Carolina columnist says motorists could learn a lot from bicyclists, which could make anyone a better driver.

An Air Force Chief Master Sergeant has spent two years recovering from the collision that killed her two teammates, and nearly killed her, as they were nearing the finish of a 72-hour race across Florida.

 

International

Ex-pros Marcel Kittel and Tony Martin introduced their new line of kids’ bikes at the Eurobike bike show, although the bikes aren’t currently on the market.

Cycling Weekly considers the best bikewear brands, “from heritage labels to value-focused disruptors.”

A London columnist imagines what the city could be like if bicycling was for everyone, not just men in Lycra. Even though the city has a pretty good contingent of suit-clad bike commuters every weekday.

A London industrial design student has developed a handlebar add-on that would control your lights, provide turn signals and create your own laser-light bike lane as you ride.

Life is cheap in England, where an 88-year old woman walked without a day behind bars for the hit-and-run crash that knocked a 46-year old mother off her bike, where she was killed by another driver as she attempted to get up; the driver said she felt a thud, but had no idea she hit someone. Once again raising the question of how old is too old to drive. 

The return of the Raleigh Chopper was clearly welcomed with pent-up demand, as hundreds of people stood in the Nottingham, England rain for hours to be among the first to get one, while thousands more queued online.

Unbelievable. A British paramedic will be allowed to keep his medical license, despite being sentenced to five years behind bars for the drunken, distracted off-duty crash that killed a man riding a bicycle; he had ten pints of beer before getting behind the wheel, and was looking at his phone when he veered onto the wrong side of the road.

Killing a vulnerable road user in the UK is now an aggravating factor that can lead to longer sentences.

A travel magazine visits the “garden paradise” of Flevoland, just 30 minutes from Amsterdam, which the Dutch built on reclaimed land, along with a city where bicycles take precedence over automobiles.

German prosecutors have released the truck driver accused in the hit-and-run death of 30-year pro cyclist Davide Rebellin in Italy last year, pending a decision in his extradition case.

No surprise here, either, as a Spanish study from three months in the future confirms that commuting by motor vehicle is bad for your mental health. And not great for your financial health, either.

Proving once again the elections matter, a conservative new Spanish government is promising to rip out recently installed bike lanes in an effort to reverse the previous governing coalition’s green agenda.

Parents in Australia’s New South Wales are calling for safer roads around schools to enable active transport.

 

Competitive Cycling

Men’s Journal considers who will win this year’s Tour de France. 

Outside’s Velo looks at who’s coming to the Tour de France, including Caleb Ewing, while Primož Roglič confirms he’s sitting this one out, along with the worlds.

RAAM competitor Jeff Conaway will need surgery after an apparent solo crash on a Colorado roadway left him with a head injury, broken scapula and a broken collarbone; he doesn’t remember the crash, and no one on his team witnessed it to say what happened. His Garmin alerted his team to the crash by calling 911.

Start training now for the first-ever snow bike world championships in Châtel, Haute-Savoie, France next February.

 

Finally…

That feeling when you take a hundred mile roadtrip pulling a 500-pound DIY bike camper. Or when you’re on a 3,000-mile mission from God.

And it’s hard enough riding a mountain bike by yourself.

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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.

Oh, and fuck Putin, too.