BikinginLA

Just 222 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’ve made it up to 1,145 signatures, so don’t stop now! I plan to forward the petition to the mayor’s office next week, so urge anyone who hasn’t already to sign it now! 

………

Today’s photo comes from La Cienega Blvd across from the Beverly Center yesterday afternoon, when the non-existent bike lane was somehow closed for construction work.

Maybe they’re just getting ready in case there ever is one.

………

Politico looks at Governor Newsom’s ill-advised attempt to cut $600 million from the state’s climate-change fighting Active Transportation Program — $200 million a year for three years — rather than take the money from the state’s massive $5.2 billion highway maintenance fund.

According to the story,

“Continuing to divert state highway account funds could negatively impact the key work that Caltrans does to maintain the state highway system,” budget analyst Benjamin Pollack told lawmakers last week.

Marty Greenstein, a spokesperson for the California State Transportation Agency, said in an email that $650 million has already been pulled from the highway account to support various programs, and more shifts could hurt clean transportation efforts, “including complete streets, climate adaptation and other multimodal projects.”

Which seems strange, since the ATP funds active transportation programs like — wait for it — complete streets, climate adaption and other multimodal projects.

And maybe I’m unclear on the concept, but it seems like maintenance funds are more likely to be used to patch potholes and restripe highways than re-engineer roadways to make them more welcoming to people who aren’t safely encased in motor vehicles.

Meanwhile, Calbike says the state has a climate deficit to go along with its massive financial one.

………

It turns out the UK’s draconian new law criminalizing deadly bike riders was just political vaporware.

The legislation, which would have created a crime of causing death by dangerous, careless or inconsiderate cycling with a penalty of up to 14 years behind bars, was put on hold Wednesday when the country’s Prime Minister called for new elections in July.

Hopefully by then, the demonization of bike riders by the British press will have subsided, and cooler heads will toss the bill into the dustbin of history, where it belongs.

Meanwhile, The London Telegraph buried a correction to its bizarre claim that Strava data showed bicyclists riding through the streets of London at an impossible 52 mph by placing it at the end of the online version of the story, nearly a week after blaring the claim in huge type above the masthead on the paper’s front page.

And a writer for The Telegraph says the solution to dangerous bicyclists is the utterly impractical idea of requiring bike riders to carry numbered license plates, which would have to be large enough to read at a distance, making them too big for a big.

Unless they want to make us wear them on our backs, like a bicycling scarlet letter shaming us before all those good, honest and law-abiding people in cars.

………

Beverly Hills will rip out a short protected bike lane along Roxbury Park to restore the angled parking spaces that were removed for the bike lane, citing the bike lane’s limited use, with an average of just 35 riders using it each day.

Because evidently, bike riders are somehow supposed to go out of their way to ride on dangerous high-speed streets just to get to a lousy 900-foot bike lane completely disconnected from any other bike infrastructure.

Someone needs to tell officials in the former Biking Black Hole that even the best bike lanes are worthless unless and until they’re integrated into an actual bike network, with safe routes to get to and from them.

And that goes for 85 of the other 87 cities in LA County, with the limited exceptions of Long Beach and Santa Monica.

………

Assuming this passes the Assembly — and gets the governor’s signature, which is not guaranteed — Caltrans will be required to implement complete streets measures whenever they do major work on state-owned roadways.

✅ PASSED THE SENATE FLOOR:
SB 960 – the complete streets bill – will ensure better conditions for transit riders, cyclists & pedestrians on @Caltrans streets.

Round of applause to @Scott_Wiener for this big win for safety and the climate. pic.twitter.com/cBUJMjP9bJ

— Streets For All (@streetsforall) May 23, 2024

………

GCN considers why bicyclists really should care about average speeds.

………

It’s now 154 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.

While we continue to wait for California’s new moribund ebike voucher program to finally get off the ground — if it ever does — Contra Costa County will provide up to $300 in cash rebates for any ebike purchased within the last six months.

………

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

No bias here. A San Diego writer says the ghost bike installed for 16-year old fallen bicyclist Brodee Champlain Kingman says everything you need to know about ebikes, including throttle-controlled Class 3 ebikes capable of up to 28 mph. Except, to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever said what kind of ebike Kingman was riding, and he was hit by a driver while apparently making a legal lane change, and doing nothing else wrong.

No surprise here, as New Jersey bike riders aren’t crazy about plans to require even low-speed ebikes and electric scooters to be registered and insured. Which is putting it mildly.

………

Local 

Metro Bike is teaming with the California African American Museum to host a three-mile community ride this Saturday celebrating the opening of the Paula Wilson: Toward the Sky’s Back Door exhibit.

“Dozens and dozens” of angry West Hollywood residents turned out to complain that no one told them parking spaces would be removed to make room for bike lanes on Gardner, Willoughby and Vista aves; one person called for sharrows, instead, which studies have been shown to be worse than nothing.

 

State

The state Senate has passed SB 961 and is sending it on to the Assembly; the watered down bill would just require new cars to give an audible warning when they exceed the posted speed limit, rather than require governors to prevent drivers from speeding more than 10 mph over the limit.

Streetsblog’s Melanie Curry talks with Tom Butler about his podcast “Cycling Over Sixty,” which is exactly what it sounds like.

Sad news from Grover Beach, where a 74-year old man faces a misdemeanor charge when a woman died 12 days after she was struck by the driver while riding her bike; prosecutors did the defense lawyer’s work for them, blaming glare from the sun and the time of day for contributing to the crash.

A new minor league baseball team in bike-friendly Davis is named the Yolo High Wheelers, which isn’t an acronym for You Only Live Once, but named for its home in Yolo County, along with a term for Penny Farthings.

 

National

Bicycling answers 15 key beginner biking questions. Which you can read for free on AOL, even though the story says it’s for Bicycling members only.

A woman recounts her epic 3,500-mile bike ride from Alaska to California. Once again, read it on AOL if Bicycling blocks you. 

The annual CABDA West bike show will move to Las Vegas next year.

An Arizona man faces up to 33 years behind bars for an allegedly stoned hit-and-run, even though his bike-riding victim only suffered a little road rash on elbows; the 31-year old driver was booked on charges of hit and run, aggravated assault, aggravated DUI, drug DUI, driving with a revoked license and injuring someone in a crash. Even I think that’s just a tad extreme, given the limited extent of the victim’s injuries.

Terrible story from South Dakota, where a nine-year old boy was killed by a pack of feral dogs as he was riding his bike on the Sioux Nation.

A new documentary follows a Black father and son as they take a challenging ride from St. Louis to Chicago, while describing the father’s journey to a healthier lifestyle.

Life is cheap in Chicago, where a speeding driver walked with a lousy $500 fine for failing to reduce his speed before killing a woman riding a bicycle two years ago. Gentle wrist caresses like this are exactly why people keep dying on our streets.

An Indianapolis father and his young son will continue their annual tradition of biking 16 miles to see the Indianapolis 500.

Tribal officials announced the twelve bicyclists from the Cherokee Nation who will participate in June’s Remember the Removal Bike Ride, retracing the 950-mile route of the tragic forced march that removed their ancestors from their tribal homelands.

More proof that bikes mean business, helping revitalize a small Vermont town even before a new bike path intended to connect it to a larger network, as residents work on improving the downtown area to attract new bike tourists.

A Massachusetts talk radio station bizarrely conflates bicycle-pedestrian crashes with deaths and injuries to vulnerable road users resulting from motor vehicle crashes, with one single paragraph inserted into the story about bicyclists crashing into pedestrians, and no stats or other evidence to show bike-ped crashes are actually a problem.

 

International

Momentum shares the six best wine regions in North America for a summer bicycling getaway. Because biking to the wineries is a much better idea than drunkenly driving from one to another.

St. John’s, Moncton, Charlottetown, Montreal, Ottawa and Edmonton top the list of the most dangerous Canadian cities to ride a bike in. Meanwhile, the most dangerous citiy in the US to ride a bike in is all of them.

An 81-year old British Columbia woman draws a distinction between throttle-controlled ebikes and the ped-assist kind she rides, saying throttled ebikes are really motorbikes that don’t belong on trails or in bike lanes.

A new London study shows that pedestrians are twice as likely to get hit by quiet operating electric and hybrid cars, compared to noisier gas-powered vehicles.

Britain’s pandemic bike boom appears to be going bust, as the latest stats show driving rates climbed 3% while traffic miles by buses, coaches and bicycles declined, with bicycling rates dropping a drastic 7.3%.

 

Competitive Cycling

A 53-year old Italian cyclist faces criminal charges after he was caught motor doping in the 40th annual Routes de l’Oise French amateur stage race, and carried the race director on the hood of his car for more than the length of a football field while he attempted to flee afterwards.

 

Finally…

That feeling when your new $230 Chinese ebike is a literal road hazard. Or when Ed Sheeran puts on an impromptu acappela concert while cruising on a bikeshare bike.

And when is a bike lane not a bike lane? When it’s a right turn lane — or a parking lot.

Or doesn’t exist, for that matter.

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin