BikinginLA

Just 279 days until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025.

So stop what you’re doing and sign this petition to demand Mayor Bass hold a public meeting to listen to the dangers we face walking and biking on the mean streets of LA.

Then share it — and keep sharing it — with everyone you know, on every platform you can.

We’re slowly gaining signatures, up to 1,027 now, so keep it going! Urge everyone you know to sign the petition, until the mayor agrees to meet with us! 

Photo is an 1897 military bicycle with a machine gun mounted on the handlebars. 

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My apologies for yesterday’s unexcused absence. 

My Monday went to hell before I even got out of bed, and didn’t get any better until late that night, by which time I was too tired to form a thought, let alone a sentence. 

That was followed yesterday by a shot in my right eye to control bleeding in the retina, yet another of the boundless joys of diabetes.

Good times. 

But if you’re reading this, I guess that means I literally saw my way through my work tonight. So there’s that, anyway.

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It’s now 98 days since the California ebike incentive program’s latest failure to launch, which was promised no later than fall 2023. And 33 months since it was approved by the legislature and signed into law — and counting.

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

A Marin columnist says a proposal to remove the bike lane on the Richmond-San Raphael Bridge on weekdays doesn’t go far enough, and he wants to give the lane back to drivers full time, even on days when they don’t need it. Because autos uber alles, evidently.

Providence, Rhode Island is considering the same thing, as city officials debate a plan to close the bike lane on a local bridge to make more room for motor vehicles. After all, it makes far more sense to remove alternatives to driving than to try to get more people out of their cars. Right?

Police in Yorkshire, England are looking for the person who ran away after pushing a woman off her bicycle in a “wholly unprovoked attack.”

New bike symbols on a London street appear to encourage people to ride in the door zone and into parked cars in an apparent attempt to thin the herd, while the city insists they were “carefully developed in line with guidance.”

Residents of a UK city are “furious” over “confusing” bicycle symbols painted on a street with no bike lanes, apparently unable to comprehend that bike riders are encourage to ride there.

British motorists slam a photo of a Dutch father carrying his five kids on his cargo bike, claiming he’s endangering them and that not one is wearing a helmet, while one driver bizarrely claims almost everyone in the Netherlands wears a helmet, in a country where almost no one does.

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

Police in Salinas posted a number to call to report kids riding their bikes recklessly and without regard for their own and drivers’ safety. Because evidently, teen and tween kids on a bikes are the real risk on the streets, not the people in the big, dangerous machines. 

Police in the Sultanate of Oman have arrested over 20 young people and seized more than 200 unlicensed motorcycles and bicycles for traffic violations, in a crackdown on reckless riding during Ramadan. Because, once again, the real danger is kids on bikes of all kinds, motor and otherwise.

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Local 

Streetsblog talks with former Bicycling editor and South Bay-based bike writer Peter Flax about his new book, Live to Ride: Finding Joy and Meaning on a Bicycle. Which is a lot of italics for one lousy sentence.

West Hollywood gave Bird the bird, and will now allow only Lime e-scooters to besmirch their streets.

 

State

Caltrans is finally putting its money where its Complete Streets policy is, pledging to invest a cool billion dollars into bike lanes across the state over the next four years.

Streetsblog offers a non-comprehensive list of sustainable transportation bills to watch in this year’s state legislative session. Which is better than the legislature’s usual non-comprehendible bills. 

About damn time. The hit-and-run death of fallen Oceanside bicyclist and mother Tracey Gross is raising concerns about the safety of bike riders on State Route 76, where at least eight people were injured riding bikes over the most recent five year period. Those concerns should have been raised when the first person was struck, not the latest.

The small farming community of Lamont, located southeast of Bakersfield, just got its first protected bike lane.

Bad news from Davis, where a UC freshman is in a coma after she was struck by a driver while riding her bike on campus. Parents should have a right to expect their kids will be safe when they send them off to college.

 

National

Streetsblog accuses New York officials of putting safety last, after four Brooklyn neighborhoods named Vision Zero “Bike Priority Areas” in 2017 still don’t have any protected bike lanes. To which Los Angeles says “hold my beer.”

A Manhattan community board rejected a planned ebike charging hub intended to replace an abandoned newsstand, after concluding it looked too modern.

The mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey signed a bill requiring ebike delivery riders to be licensed by the city, saying he was doing it in the “spirit of collaboration” despite shortcomings in the law. Even though no one bothered to collaborate with the low-wage workers. 

WaPo is the latest newspaper to pick up the story of the Atlanta bike rider who tows a large magnet behind his bike to clear the streets of flat-inducing nails, screws and other metallic detritus. More proof that not all heroes wear capes. Or tights, for that matter. 

 

International

Momentum offers an introductory guide to Velomobiles, and writes that “getting serious about active transportation in Europe it starts with street parking.”

A writer for Cycling Weekly debunks common myths about fat bicyclists, who turn out to be pretty much like anyone else who rides a bike, but bigger.

British Columbia authorities are investigating after a bike rider was injured by a mountie driving an unmarked car.

Hundreds of bicyclists rode for cleaner air in Birmingham, England.

A British newspaper says ebikes are the future of urban transport in the UK.

Another Cycling Weekly writer says he went to the Netherlands, and saw for himself how much better bicycling could be in the UK. And pretty much anywhere else, for that matter. 

They get it, too. The Irish government is considering new financial incentives to encourage bicycling, after the country’s Cycle to Work program failed to entice enough people to bike to work and leave their cars at home.

Pope Francis sold the Pinarello Dogma given to him by Egan Bernal for the equivalent of more than $15,000, which was half the predicted price for the holy roadie.

An Austrian study reports that an average of 600 children are injured by bicycle handlebars each year, with half involving tears and bruises to the liver, pancreas or spleen.

A drunk driver in India plowed his SUV into a car, three motorcyclists and a bicyclist, leaving the bicycle literally folded in half, and one person in critical condition. And you can probably guess which person that was.

A heartbreaking photo shows a Palestinian boy sitting next to his bicycle in front of a building destroyed by an Israeli bombardment in Rafah.

A new Chinese study shows that ebikes serve as a crucial alternative to cars, as well as complementing transit services, and that banning ebikes “would not be conducive to curbing car growth.”

 

Competitive Cycling

Cyclist answers the burning question of what the hell is a soigneur?

Bicycling reports that former Tour de France champ Egan Bernal took a remarkable third place at this year’s Volta a Catalunya, behind Tadej Pogačar and Mikel Landa, just two years after a near fatal crash in his native Colombia. Read it on AOL this time if the magazine blocks you.

 

Finally…

Your next gravel bike could cost more than a cheap new car — unless you’d rather have a track bike that costs more than a decent one. Your next full-suspension mountain bike could be made of plywood.

And this is who we share the road with. Or the river, in this case.

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

Oh, and fuck Putin