BikinginLA

Just 238 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 all face on the mean streets of LA.

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

We’re up to 1,130 signatures, so keep it going! Urge everyone you know to sign the petition, until she meets with us! 

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Somehow, I missed this one last week, as Streets For All called out Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ proposed new budget for the City of Angels.

Which doesn’t just fail to fund safer streets, but actually makes cuts to vital programs — include the city’s ability to roll out Measure HLA as streets are resurfaced, something required by the ballot measure that passed with overwhelming support.

StreetsLA’s Pavement Preservation Program — which is the primary mechanism for Measure HLA implementation, was cut by 21%. Even worse, despite the department now having to put in ADA compliant curb ramps every time they repave a street (maybe?), no new money was allocated for curb ramps. A budget reduced by 21% will actually repave even fewer streets because the money for curb ramps will have to come from the resurfacing budget. The net effect will be fewer streets repaved, meaning fewer Mobility Plan safety improvements implemented.

LADOT’s budget was cut by 1%, from $217M to $215M. However, this is worse than it seems on the surface, as there are zero new positions for LADOT to be able to keep up with StreetsLA’s (reduced) repaving, meaning the current plan at LADOT is status quo (ie. very slow implementation of the mobility plan). The net effect will be that LADOT will struggle to do even a fraction of what StreetsLA could repave in the next year on mobility plan corridors, further slowing down mobility plan implementation. You can read LADOT’s response to the budget here.

The mayor has made a billion dollar commitment to housing homeless people and preventing the needless deaths of the unhoused on LA’s mean streets.

But she has failed to show any concern for the record number of needless traffic deaths on our streets — including the 77 people who have already lost their lives in just the first quarter of this year.

Which is yet another reminder why we need to demand a meeting with her to listen to the risks we face just walking or biking on our streets.

Streets For All also criticizes the City Administrative Officer’s blatant, last minute attempt to sink Measure HLA prior to the election with a vastly overinflated cost estimate.

Perhaps most egregiously, the CAO claimed that HLA would cost $310M/year over 10 years, and told the City Council that, if passed by voters, “Council would need to make hard decisions immediately about how to pay for it.” While we called out his numbers as a political stunt at the time, this budget makes it very clear how much of a stunt it actually was, as the only money the budget actually allocates specifically to HLA is $102,000 to LADOT to create the measure’s mandated dashboard. That’s a difference of $309,898,000.

Fortunately, the people of Los Angeles saw through their attempt to put a heavy hand on the scale in an effort to sink HLA without openly opposing the measure.

Shameful doesn’t begin to describe it.

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The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments today on a case we’ve been following since last year, which will determine whether a DEA agent can be held accountable for killing a woman riding a bicycle in Salem, Oregon.

After the local press caught the police deliberately slow walking the investigation, county prosecutors finally charged Samuel T. Landis with criminally negligent homicide last September, after Landis admitted to running a stop sign and killing the victim.

However, his lawyers successfully argued that the case should be moved to federal court because he was part of an undercover team surveilling a major drug dealer at the time of the collision.

Which means he could escape accountability entirely, as the Salem Reporter explains.

The key dispute is over whether Landis should be prosecuted at all for Allen’s death. The agent can only seek immunity in federal court because that legal defense doesn’t exist under Oregon law.

Landis’ attorneys say that he only needed to claim that he might get immunity at the federal level to justify the shift to federal court. Landis could then argue for the case to be dismissed entirely by claiming immunity. Otherwise, prosecutors would then try the case in federal instead of state court.

The proceedings will be streamed live if you want watch it yourself.

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David Drexler offers photos from the CicloIrvine open streets event in Irvine on Saturday.

According to Drexler, the cloudy skies and threatening weather may have limited the turnout, though he notes the extremely wide streets could have also contributed to a perception that there were fewer people than there actually were.

It’s also possible that the short route distance may have kept more bicyclists from attending, as well as the fact that it was a first time event with little advance publicity outside the city.

He also added this thought —

Irvine really put on a first-class event and I would have liked to see more of a cycling turnout.

But really in Irvine everyday is CicloIrvine because they have miles and miles of dedicated bike paths/tunnels/bridges all over the city where you can cycle without dealing with a car combined with their wide street bike lanes on almost every road.   I can take you on a 40+mile ride in Irvine, crossing back and forth, up and down and not even have to stop for a traffic light or car or even ride in the street with cars. (50+ miles if you combine it with Newport Beach into Back Bay.)  I think cycling infrastructure in Irvine is 2^nd to no other non-beach front city.  But it’s a totally master planned city with modern road engineering.

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It’s now 139 days since the California ebike incentive program’s latest failure to launch, which was promised no later than fall 2023. And 35 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.

The San Francisco Fire Department was forced to apologize after they made up an imaginary traffic law requiring bicyclists to ride single file.

No bias here. After a New York council member insisted without evidence that a pair of new protected bike lanes made the streets more dangerous, the actual stats showed just the opposite.

Once again, someone has tried to sabotage a UK bikeway, tossing dozens of tacks on a 30-year old rail trail that forms a part of the country’s National Cycling Network, and is very popular with families riding with their kids, in an apparent effort to puncture their tires, which could result in serious injuries.

No bias here, either. A British writer says it’s time authorities caught up with the recklessness of ebike riders, who he accuses of “no regard for red lights, pedestrian crossings, one-way streets or right of way,” blaming everyone who rides one for the actions of a few.

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

A New Orleans woman may have stolen all the potted plants from in front of a market at four in the morning, but at least she used a bicycle to do it.

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Local 

Streetsblog offers an update on bus and bike lanes in the San Fernando Valley, including a short, newly protected bike lane on Laurel Canyon Blvd.

This sounds like fun. A social-paced group ride on Saturday, May 25th will retrace the route of the abandoned 1890s California Cycleway, an elevated wooden bikeway stretching from Los Angeles to Pasadena that was only partially built before being scrapped.

A Pasadena Urban and Regional Planning professor calls for completely remaking the city’s ugly North Lake corridor with a comprehensive plan for a complete street, greenstreet, streetscape and beautification concept, rather that simply reversing an earlier street widening.

Santa Monica police will conduct yet another Bike & Pedestrian Safety Enforcement Operation today, ticketing any traffic violations that could cause a collision between motorists, pedestrians and/or bicyclists. As usual, ride to the lett of the law until you cross the city limits today, so you’re not the one who gets fined.

 

State

The former Governator says ride your bike or walk instead of driving, because we all have to work together to reduce pollution. Although he hasn’t look like that picture for a long damn time. 

Calbike says the recent California Bike Summit in San Diego offered inspiration, excitement and new ideas.

The Seal Beach Police Department offers tips on how to protect your bike from thieves. And actually gets it right.

It’s a mixed bag on whether you’re allowed to ride your bike through a Fresno pharmacy drive-thru.

Merchants along San Francisco’s Valencia Street are calling on the city to scrap the street’s contentious centerline protected bike lane, and convert it to a more conventional curbside protected lane.

That’s more like it. The Berkeley city council will vote on a proposal to hire a program manager for the city fire department, tasked with reducing injuries and deaths on city streets, while keeping roads clear for medics to reach crashes in time to save lives.

 

National

A new study shows Louisiana has the most aggressive and angriest drivers, followed by New Mexico and Montana. The only real surprise is that California didn’t even crack the top ten. 

Houston will celebrate the arts this Saturday with the city’s third annual Art Bike Parade, featuring hundreds of fancifully decorated bicycles.

The world’s most rural bikeshare station just opened in a tiny Nebraska town of only 2,600 people.

A Michigan police dog deserves extra treats tonight for flushing a hit-and-run driver out of the woods, where she had run to avoid arrest for running down a 73-year old woman riding a bicycle, leaving the victim hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries; she left a passenger in her car behind to falsely claim she had been the one driving.

Some New York bike riders are complaining that ebike riders were allowed to participate in the city’s 40-mile, carfree Five Boro Bike Tour, somehow diminishing the accomplishment for those who did the whole thing under their own power.

 

International

Fifty bicycles donated and refurbished in Chicago were ridden across the US-Mexico border to be given to people in need in Mexico, in a ride coordinated by the consulates of both countries.

A killer UK driver is finally behind bars, 24 years after he skipped bail before he could be sentenced for killing a pair of bike riders while driving dangerously; he was finally tracked down living in France under an assumed name.

 

Competitive Cycling

Two-time Tour de France champ Tadej Pogačar leads the Giro after stage three with a 46-second lead over 2nd place Geraint Thomas, with Daniel Martinez in third just one second behind Thomas; Pogačar and Thomas nearly won Monday’s stage in a breakaway, before being reeled in by the peloton just before the finish.

 

Finally…

That feeling when you just want to give your kid a quiet post-royal birthday, and hope no one shows up with another bike. Your next vastly overpriced e-mountain bike could be an Audi.

And if you have to clear noxious plants from along a bikeway, don’t let them get your goat.

Or goats, even.

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

Oh, and fuck Putin