BikinginLA

Just 194 days left until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025. 

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Don’t forget Sunday’s CicLAvia on Western Ave in South LA, where you’ll find the good folks from Bike Talk and KPFK hosting a booth at the Western/Florence Hub.

Or if CicLAvia seems a little too formal for your last, the Los Angeles edition of the World Naked Bike Ride rolls tomorrow. Tip: Bring lots of sunscreen. And a few disinfectant wipes if you’re using a bikeshare bike.

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Evidently, some people just don’t like separated bike lanes.

Or what Los Angeles insists on calling “protected,” even though the usual flimsy plastic car-ticklers wouldn’t stop a Yugo, if you could even get one running.

That was driven home in a new post by Cycling Savvy’s Keri Caffrey.

She explains how she was never a fan of bike lanes. Until moving to California, that is, when she got to experience her first wide buffered bike lane.

But some people insist on ruining those “good enough” buffered lanes by adding little white plastic bendy posts and other assorted permeable and semi-permeable barriers.

In her opinion, anyway.

Imagine my horror at seeing a movement to convert these bike lanes to “separated” bikeways by adding barriers such as flex posts, bollards, curbs, and a host of other innovations.

I get the desire to feel protected from cars, but at what cost? First of all, “feel protected” is all you get. Posts and curbs will not stop a moving car. They will, however, cause a bicyclist to crash. This is a known hazard which causes actual casualties, including serious injuries. Yet, these crashes don’t show up in national crash data, because it counts bicycle crashes only if they involve a moving motor vehicle.

She also takes issue with the stat up there on the right from the Federal Highway Administration.

The research behind the FHWA’s claim didn’t include junctions, only mid-block segments.

The only relevant crash type is a mid-block overtaking crash, around 5% of total crashes for all roads, including ones with no bike lane. The majority of overtaking crashes are actually sideswipes in narrow lanes (the motorist misjudges the space). We have a robust dataset from Mighk Wilson’s crash analysis in Orlando. In it, overtaking crashes on streets with bike lanes were 1.5% of crashes. The majority of bike lanes in the area are narrow and non-buffered. Paul Schimek’s study in Boston came to a similar conclusion.

I get what Caffrey is saying. And it’s worth reading to get a different perspective from what we usually share here.

My personal take is that separated bike lanes aren’t for confident bike riders like her who are comfortable riding nearly anywhere. They’re for the people who would like to ride, or ride more, but are afraid to mix it up with the people in the big dangerous machines.

Although calling them protected does a disservice to everyone by overpromising on safety.

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Any kind of separation or buffer might have helped those Texas bicyclists who were run down by a drunk driver in a crash caught on bike cam earlier this week.

The driver who was allegedly three sheets to the wind at more than three times the legal blood alcohol limit has been identified as an American Airlines cargo worker.

Which could explain why your bags always seem to get lost or crushed beyond all recognition.

Thirty-one-year old Benjamin Hylander has been booked on two counts of intoxication assault with a vehicle causing serious bodily injury, accident involving injury, and driving while intoxicated with a BAC greater than 0.15.

Meanwhile, the victim shown getting run over by Hylander’s SUV after the initial impact, retired physician Tom Geppert, credits his bicycle with saving his life. And allowing him to walk away — if that’s the word for it — with “just” a concussion, injured left hamstring, a fractured rib and a severe laceration.

The other victim, Deborah Eads, suffered a severe laceration as well.

We can only be grateful it wasn’t much worse.

Maybe someday, carmakers will be required to use already-existing technology to ensure intoxicated people can’t get behind the wheel.

And can’t go anywhere if they do.

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It’s now 182 days since the California ebike incentive program’s latest failure to launch, which was promised no later than fall 2023. And three full years 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.

An English town has waived fines for bicyclists targeted by “cowboy” traffic wardens who wrote them up for breaking a nonexistent ban on biking through the city center.

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Local 

Streetsblog’s Joe Linton takes a look at the new $11.2 million 1.4-mile Pacoima Wash multi-use path, expected to open this fall.

Santa Clarita has begun work on the new Bouquet Canyon shared-use pathway.

LAist offers a reminder that Caltrans needs your input on a proposed protected bike lane on PCH through Long Beach.

Long Beach hosts the city’s 12th Annual Kiddical Mass bike ride this Sunday.

 

State

No news is good news, right?

 

National

Yes, you can go bikepacking on an ebike.

Congress is considering the Domestic Bicycle Production Act, which would use a combination of tariffs and incentives to reshore American bike manufacturing.

Streetsblog says there’s a pedestrian death and injury crisis in New York City this year. Unlike Los Angeles, where there’s always a pedestrian death and injury crisis.

Tragic news from Michigan, where an 83-year old Florida man on a cross-country bike ride was killed when he was rear-ended by driver, who was allegedly distracted for some undisclosed reason.

 

International

Cycling Electric makes the case for why ebikes are the best vehicles for the environment.

Road.cc offers tips on how to avoid getting scammed buying a used bike on Facebook Marketplace.

Momentum recommends a new bike route that “glides along rainforests and epic beaches” on the west coast of Canada’s Vancouver Island.

A community group in Glasgow, Scotland has launched bikeshare service using refurbished bicycles, allowing anyone to rent a bike for free, or purchase one for whatever they can afford.

I want to be like him when I grow up. A Scottish man is marking his 90th birthday by taking part in a 460-mile fundraising ride.

Not all the news from Scotland is good, however, as a 17-year old boy faces a murder charge for killing another 17-year old boy as he rode an ebike.

Country star Blake Shelton is one of us, as he posts a picture of himself biking back to his hotel in Italy after drinking too much for his birthday.

An Aussie architecture site asks if ebikes and e-scooters could be the answer to the country’s affordable housing crisis, since removing a single car from a household could cover the full cost of a $300,000 mortgage.

 

Competitive Cycling

Road.cc takes a look at what all the best teams will be riding in the Tour de France this year.

The Visma-Lease a Bike cycling team unveiled their line-up for next month’s Tour de France, headlined by two-time winner Jonas Vingegaard and former points winner and three-time world champ Wout van Aert.

British two-time Olympic track champ Katie Archibald is out of next month’s Paris Games, after breaking her leg in two places tripping on a garden step.

A Palestinian paracycling team is working to keep the dream of competing in the Paris Paralympics alive for cyclists in Gaza.

 

Finally…

That feeling when a drivers prefer a genuine horse’s ass to a butt on a bike seat. And when your new e-foldie comes with a name that reminds you size doesn’t matter, except when it does.

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

Oh, and fuck Putin