BikinginLA

This week certainly didn’t go as planned.

First this site went down for two full days, then I spent too much time researching and writing about the tragedy in Camarillo Wednesday night to write anything else — only to get a complaint from a member of the victim’s family that was probably better directed somewhere else.

On the other hand, I can understand the need to lash out at someone, after something like that. 

Which leaves us with a lot to catch up on. So let’s see how much we can get to before I have to pack it in for the night.

And it’s a sad commentary that I’m looking forward to shoulder surgery next week just so I can get a couple good hours of sleep.  

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Photo shows former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti signing the city’s soon-forgotten Vision Zero plan behind his massive outdoor desk, courtesy of Streetsblog.

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Just 151 days left until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025. 

Crosstown LA reports the city is on track to once again record more than 300 deaths from traffic violence — a truly obscene total that should shame every city official into taking immediate and far-reaching action to halt it.

But if past is prologue, it probably won’t.

In fact, it’s most likely to be noticed as nothing more than just a blip in their busy schedules, if they notice at all.

Move along, nothing to see here.

Maybe we should replace the current city seal with one bearing the “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” monkeys. Although, now that I think about it, trained monkeys could probably do a better job building a safer city.

The site also reports that drivers in Los Angeles continue to flee from fatal crashes in ever-rising numbers, with 62 hit-and-run deaths in the the just first six months of this year alone — more than double the total of two last pre-pandemic years, with 28 in 2018, and 29 in 2019.

Meanwhile, Helsinki, Finland, with a population of 675,000, has managed to reduce traffic deaths to a number that can usually be counted on one hand (scroll down), with fingers left over.

Which would equate to roughly 10 to 12 deaths from traffic violence in a city of LA’s size, with nearly four million people.

And that’s a hell of a lot fewer than we’re likely to endure this year.

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This is who we share the road with.

A commenter at a Glendale City Council meeting freely admits that he thinks his time is more important than the life of someone riding a bicycle, and will gladly speed to cut you off.

Maybe someone should have cut him off.

Here’s the guy from the Glendale council meeting who bragged about threatening cyclists with his car. “I will cut you off…and I’m not afraid to say it in front of a police officer…my time is more important to me than you riding your bike.” pic.twitter.com/nCxiRQlvoy

— Kirsten Bladh (@kerstanley) August 1, 2024

Then again, they would have had to do a lot of cutting, because an Instagram page compiled the comments in opposition to Glendale’s proposed bike plan, showing the sheer numbers and ugliness of it.

You can see the full city council discussion below, beginning at item B. You know, in case you want to fast-forward through the other stuff.

Thanks to Erik Griswold for the links.

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This is who we share the road with, part two.

Family members are demanding justice, two months after a road-raging off-duty LAPD cop shot Hugo Cachua to death in a dispute that started with a fender bender.

Forty-five-year old Rigoberto R. Reyes was sentenced to 14 years and four months behind bars for the Temecula, California road rage stabbing that killed another man.

And topping this week’s Tour de Road Rage, two men in Highland, California pulled out guns and shot each other to death — in front of one victim’s kids, no less — after one man clipped the other driver’s car mirror while lane splitting on his motorcycle.

Which is all probably fair warning before you lose your top the next time a driver cuts you off or passes too close, because they may be armed and dangerous.

Then again, they’re already driving a multi-ton lethal weapon, anyway.

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People for Mobility Justice will host a “scenic bike ride highlighting local landmarks and celebrating the new bike/ped path on Slauson” from 6 to 8 pm this evening.

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Gravel Bike California marks this weekend’s Tour de Big Bear with a series of single-track jewels guided by local host and Dirty Bear organizer Robin Brown.

 

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It’s now 225 days since the California ebike incentive program’s latest failure to launch, which was promised no later than fall 2023. And 38 full months since it was approved by the legislature and signed into law — and counting.

Meanwhile, Electrek examines how California “screwed the pooch so badly” in developing its own $30 million ebike incentive program.

A large part of the problem seems to come from issues with the program’s administrator, a program known as Pedal Ahead. It was selected under raised eyebrows by CARB back in 2022 and tasked with managing the program. However, (Streetsblog’s Melanie) Curr) insinuates that personal connections between a former CARB board member and the founder of Pedal Ahead may have led to its application being granted extra weight despite proposing a significantly different incentive program than that envisioned by the state…

But a slew of complicated issues still needed to be solved, ranging from how the vouchers would be distributed to what types of e-bikes would be eligible and whether online retailers would be allowed to participate, just to name a few.

Over a year was spent trying to work out answers to these questions and many more, often complicated by rethinking earlier decisions and creating new project proposals.

All in favor of just scrapping the damn thing and starting over say “aye!”

After a good criminal investigation or two, that is.

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

A Phoenix, Arizona man faces a second-degree murder charge after he was allegedly caught on video beating a homeless man to death and stealing his bicycle.

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

A Bend, Oregon family discovered the hard way that the law isn’t always clear-cut when it comes to ebikes, after a middle school student suffered a fractured collarbone and elbow when she was struck by a 17-year old boy riding one — and the cops said there’s nothing they could do.

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Local 

Streets Are For Everyone, aka SAFE, asks if the new bike lanes mean formerly unsafe Hollywood Blvd is finally ready for its closeup. Which depends a lot on how well LA maintains it going forward. 

Ouch. Jalopnik says LA’s plan for a carfree ’28 Olympics was laughable when it was announced, and sounds even more laughable now after the city’s miserable failure to invest in bike lanes and other clean infrastructure.

KCBS-2 looks forward to the Meet the Hollywoods CicLAvia when it returns to Hollywood and West Hollywood on August 17th

 

State

Good news from behind the Orange Curtain, as the Irvine city council voted to make this year’s inaugural CicloIrvine open streets fest an annual affair.

Researchers from UC Santa Barbara will use a $480,000 Caltrans Sustainable Transportation Planning Grant to train AI to design a bicycle and wayfinding network for Santa Barbara County, while San Jose will get a similar, if considerably smaller,  grant from Toyota to use AI to improve traffic safety. Never mind that we’re talking about the same advanced tech that draws people with three legs, thinks some Nazi soldiers were Black, and suggests shows Netflix couldn’t pay you to watch. Or maybe that’s just me. 

 

National

Speaking of SAFE, as we did above, the LA-based traffic safety organization offers a recap of how the auto industry killed speed governors 101 years ago, as part of their series on Why the Auto Industry Opposes Safety Improvements.

This is how Vision Zero is supposed to work. Chicago has now installed a spacious curb-protected bike lane on a deadly street where drivers killed two teenagers riding bikes in separate crashes recently, and is in the process of building a nearby neighborhood greenway.

Boston’s new CargoB bikeshare represents what is probably the nation’s first on-demand cargo bike system.

Join the nearly 2,000 people who ride their bikes to the iconic Newport Jazz Fest each day.

 

International

A new survey shows that while a third of UK residents now bike to work, up from just 19% last year, nearly half say they can’t afford a bike, and a quarter would have to save up for six months to buy one.

Copenhagen’s new ‘CopenPay’ plan rewards tourists for choosing green activities and transportation options, like bicycling. But the BBC questions whether it actually works.

Makes sense to me. Service workers at the international airport in Frankfurt, Germany get around the massive structure on bicycles. Thanks to Megan Lynch for the link.

Amazon is expanding it’s e-cargo bike delivery program Berlin, which look like cute-little pedal-powered cargo vans.

I want to be like him when I grow up. An 81-year old man from Goa, India could be one of the country’s oldest people to bike 100 kilometers — about 62 miles.

The widow of a fallen Aussie bicyclist has filed suit against the local government, claiming that a bare metal rail blocking access to a parking lot from a shared-use path was virtually invisible and camouflaged; it’s now been covered in yellow safety stickers.

 

Competitive Cycling

A writer for Cycling Weekly rode the cobbled Paris road cycling course on a 44-pound, three-speed bikeshare bike.

 

Finally…

When you’re carrying heroin and meth on your bike, and riding with an outstanding warrant, just put a damn light on it. Inflate your bike tires electronically, without deflating your wallet.

And when you’re a wanted fugitive riding your bike despite being on the lam for the last 30 years after escaping a Wisconsin rape conviction, put a rear reflector on it, already.

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

Oh, and fuck Putin