BikinginLA

Day 127 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025. 

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As we mentioned yesterday, Long Beach will close a pair of streets to cars, while opening them up to everyone else this Saturday with the return of the city’s popular Beach Streets.

The closures will affect Willow Street from Santa Fe Ave to Long Beach Blvd, and southbound Santa Fe Ave from Willow Street to 20th Street, apparently leaving northbound Santa Fe to the people in the big, dangerous machines.

According to the Press-Telegram,

“The Beach Streets West event will include multiple live performances along the event route, including DJ Otro Patrick Miller on the Willow Street bridge overlooking the I-710 Freeway,” the city said, “DJ Desirable D on the corner of Willow Street and Santa Fe Avenue, and DJ Dennis Owens at Long Beach Beer Lab.”

Various local businesses, community groups, and business districts will also host various activities along the Beach Streets route.

Meanwhile. Glendale will followup with with an open streets event of their own at the end of the month.

Here’s what their press release has to say.

Let’s Go Glendale is Southern California’s newest open streets event which will transform a portion of S. Glendale Ave. into a car-free space on Saturday, May 31 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The community is invited to explore the area on foot, bike, scooter, wheelchair or any other way that moves you. Presented by Metro and produced by Community Arts Resources (CARS), Let’s Go Glendale is a free and open event that welcomes people of all ages to discover local businesses, enjoy delicious food, listen to live music and connect with the city’s vibrant cultures in the open streets.

The event features a full schedule of activities along the vehicle-free route filled with arts and cultural performances, civic booths, interactive activities, food trucks, free water, first aid, bike repair and information on local programs. Glendale’s streets will come alive with music and dance from groups such as the all-female mariachi band, Las Colibrí, Armenian folk group, Lernazang Ensemble and Herbert Hoover High School’s Hoover Tornado Marching Band plus Herbert Hoover Jazz. Students from Cerritos, Marshall and Mann Elementary schools will present poetry readings throughout the day. Attendees can also connect and learn more about the city services with representatives from Community Services & Parks, Verdugo Jobs Center, Glendale Fire Department, Bookmobile, the Glendale General Plan Update, the Garden River Bridge Project and much more.

Let’s Go Glendale will be held on 1.3 miles of streets closed to car traffic through S. Glendale Ave. between Lexington Dr. and Chevy Chase Dr. Street closures begin at 6 a.m. with full route closures in place by 9 a.m. The streets are open to participants from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and the route will be fully returned to cars by approximately 6 p.m.

For more information and a complete route map visit, LetsGoGlendale.com or interact via Facebook and Instagram. #LetsGoGlendale

Photo of Las Colibrí provided by Community Arts Resources, via Let’s Go Glendale press release.

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Momentum highlights the country’s best new bikeways, which show the rest of the country how it’s done.

None of which are in Los Angeles, of course. But San Diego’s Pershing Bikeway made the list.

Winding through Balboa Park and connecting the North Park neighborhood to downtown, the 2.3-mile Pershing Bikeway is a marquee example of how cities can design for safety and comfort. Developed by SANDAG as part of its Regional Bike Plan, the Pershing Bikeway includes one-way and two-way protected lanes, a separate bike path, and dramatically improved intersections. A newly constructed 75-foot bridge, a traffic-calming roundabout, and pedestrian crossing upgrades—including 70 new street lights—underscore the emphasis on accessibility and visibility. The project’s years-long journey from planning to construction involved extensive public input and overcame initial opposition from motorists concerned about traffic flow.

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More on Trump’s tariffs, as a New Jersey bike company and major Walmart supplier is halting imports from China after paying a whopping $3.1 million in tariffs in just one month.

According to former Kent International CEO Arnold Kamler, because of the tariffs, a Chinese-made wheel that would have cost between $10 and $12 now costs about $30.

And making the same parts in the US would be even worse.

“I can’t even calculate that high,” Kramer said about what he thinks a bike would cost to produce here. “I’ll just tell you one quick story. There was a company that came to us a couple years ago. They wanted to make handlebars for us. Now we used to make our own handlebar for about a dollar-and-a-half, and we saved some money by buying it from Asia. And this company took three months to give me the quotation for a simple BMX handlebar. And the price came back at $12. I said, ‘$12? It’s about 80 cents of steel. How could you be?’ ‘Well, there’s a lot of work.’ And I said, ‘OK, thank you, you can lose my number.’ So, you can take that (as) kind of (an) example…I mean, a $100-bicycle here would be a $1,000 if all the parts were made here right now.”

Which would seemingly put it out of reach for the typical Walmart customer.

Meanwhile, Trump’s tariffs don’t seem to be having any negative effect on Chinese bikemakers yet, with the only real pain felt by American companies.

That’s because bicycle imports to the US are down 17% in anticipation of the tariffs, while worldwide exports from Chinese bike manufacturers rose more than 15% thanks to strong demand from Europe and other areas.

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Gravel bike California visits the Sea Otter Classic.

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

No surprise here, as British bike riders complain about harsher penalties directed their way, arguing that it’s about getting populist votes and not safety — especially since drivers get away with the same things “on a daily basis.”

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Local 

Streetsblog reports on last week’s successful die-in on the steps of City Hall to protest the failure of Vision Zero — and the third straight year that traffic deaths have exceeded murders in Los Angeles.

Walk ‘n Rollers founder Jim Shanman will host a free workshop on bike commuting for adults on Friday morning at the Helms Building in Culver City, just in time for next week’s Bike to Work Day

 

State

The Orange County Register posts their favorite photos from the past month, including an adorable shot of toddlers testing out their balance bikes on the opening day of the San Clemente Pump Track.

The Times of San Diego says it’s great that the city approved an ambitious mobility plan, but there’s currently no money to fund most of it.

Rescuers are searching for a missing 27-year old black woman who disappeared on a bikepacking tour in the Huntington Lake area, and was last seen at last seen at a general store in Shaver Lake on April 24th; Tiffany Slaton was headed for Mono Hot Springs on a blue Lectric ebike puling a red and yellow trailer.

Sad news from San Joaquin County, where a 56-year old man was killed in a hit-and run while riding his bike, after the driver left him in a ditch to die.

SF Gate suggests the best bike bags for commuting and adventure bicycling, each and every one “tested across rain, dust, potholes and city traffic.”

 

National

A man raised over $700,000 for the Ronald McDonald Charities by riding 4,600 miles across the US, a decade after the organization helped his family after his daughter fell into a four-month coma from a rare brain disease.

A Reno website explains and endorses a new Stop as Yield bill in the state legislature, which would allow bicyclists to treat stop signs as yields, but would not apply to riders on ebikes.

Here’s one for your more casual bike bucket list, with Colorado’s 21-mile Clear Creek Trail offering an urban refuge from the home of Coors Beer to the Denver suburbs.

A Nebraska county commission is standing in the way of a long-planned bikeway connecting the 60 miles between Lincoln and Omaha, after rejecting all the proposed routes through the county.

Streetsblog says the NYPD’s new crackdown on bicyclists has unleashed the worst instincts of individual cops, who shamelessly ticket riders for the slightest infraction — including one rider cited for disorderly conduct and failing to yield to a pedestrian when a cop stepped directly in front of him, forcing him to swerve around him, then stopping to yell at the cop for risking his safety.

An electronic dance music website remembers influential EDM synthwave  producer Starcadian, aka George Smaragdis, after he was killed in a dooring in New York last week.

A kindhearted Virginia cop bought a new bike for a young boy he met while responding to a call, after the boy told him he wasn’t riding bikes with his friends because his bike had been thrown away when he left it outside.

Former pro football and baseball star Bo Jackson held his final Bo Bikes Bama fundraising bike tour to benefit Alabama’s Emergency Relief Fund, calling it a day after 14 years.

 

International

A cycling coach and an expert bike fitter decry the lack of improvements in women’s bike seats, 30 years after research studies highlighted the medical issues women bike riders still face.

Bicycle advocates in Winnipeg, Manitoba turned out to protest the delay of a city report on safety improvements on a road where a bike rider was killed by a driver doing 100 mph nearly a year ago. Something Los Angeles seldom, if ever, does.

A British bicycle insurance company examines the understated details that make bicycling in the Netherlands so convenient.

More on the horrific solo bike crash that injured a Welsh woman riding on a beachfront bike path, as firefighter had to cut her free from her mangled bicycle after a handlebar penetrated her thigh.

Dublin, Ireland is experiencing the same problem as virtually every other city that builds bike lanes, but doesn’t provide the funding to keep them clean.

 

Competitive Cycling

USA Cycling explains when and how to watch the Professional Road National Championships later this month, with the elite men’s and women’s crit and road races live-streamed on FloBikes.

Australia’s Caleb Ewan shocked the cycling community by unexpectedly calling it a career after 11 years, with a record that includes five stage wins at the Tour de France, another five at the Giro and nine stages at the Tour Down Under, as well as two second-place finished at Milan Sanremo.

Six years after Colorado’s last pro cycling race, a British company is attempting to bring the pro peloton back to the state with a five-stage race beginning in 2026; the challenge is overcoming declining sponsorship revenue and increasing costs, as well as finding space in the crowded pro racing calendar.

A Utah website asks “Who are the top American pro cyclists.” Which is a question a lot of us have been asking lately. 

An Escape Collective podcast goes back in time to examine the shotgun shooting of America’s last remaining Tour de France winner, before Greg LeMond’s near miraculous comeback to win the race two more times.

The London Times introduces 28-year old British cyclist Paul Double as he prepares to make his Grand Tour debut in the Giro, after coming up the hard way competing in Italy.

 

Finally…

Now you, too, can get paid to take potentially performance-enhancing painkillers, while doing your part for science.

And why wait for the city to finally get around to installing speed bumps when you can just buy the damn thing yourself?

Thanks to Tim Rutt for the heads-up.

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

Oh, and fuck Putin.