Day 176 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025.
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Streets For All wants your help to stop Metro’s proposal to flush even more millions down the induced-demand toilet by widening the 71 freeway through Pomona.
Even though freeway projects go against California’s ostensible commitment to Complete Streets, as well as the state’s pollution and climate goals.
But if it gives drivers a faster commute for a few months until the corresponding crushing increase in traffic makes it worse for the rest of eternity, it’s worth it.
Right?
Tell the CTC: No More Freeway Widening!
The California Transportation Commission (CTC) on Thursday is considering funding (tab 21) widening the 71 freeway in Pomona (State Route 71 Gap Closure Project – Phase 2), a project being proposed by Metro Los Angeles.
This is Destruction For Nada! The expensive trend of disastrous highway widening projects must stop.
HOW YOU CAN HELP:
Tell the CTC that you DO NOT support freeway widenings! Let’s use that funding on sustainable projects instead.
Photo by MART PRODUCTION from Pexels.
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Once again, someone has invented the “first” bicycle with moving handlebars to give you an upper body workout while you ride.
Something that seems to get “invented” for the first time every few years.
Never mind that they keep running into the recurring problem that handlebars already serve a purpose, which isn’t helped if the damn things keep moving on you.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. A Eugene, Oregon TV station reports on a “vehicle versus bicycle crash,” which apparently had no humans involved in or on either vehicle. Although their primary concern is just warning drivers about the traffic inconvenience, rather than any potential risk to human life or anything.
Apparently, a new bike lane will destroy Gloucestershire, England’s historic city center, but all those “historic” streets and cars are just fine, even though bikes were there first.
No bias here, either. A radio station on the Isle of Man released a petition calling for banning bike riders from a 13-mile roadway, claiming it’s too dangerous for bikes and cars to share — which garnered a whopping 200 signatures, representing less than 0.25% of the island’s population. Something tells me they’d get more signatures if they called for banning cars, instead.
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Local
Santa Clarita was set to consider approving a construction contract for the long-awaited Haskell Canyon Bike Park at last night city council meeting.
State
The good news, Apple Valley approved a new Complete Streets Action Plan, including a number of new bike paths throughout the city; the bad news, it’s funded by a federal grant, so the funds could be on the chopping block.
A Menifee teenager suffered severe, but non-life-threatening, injuries when he was t-boned by a driver while riding his ebike across the street.
National
Streetsblog digs into the recent City Ratings from People For Bikes to uncover the country’s fastest improving bike-friendly cities, led by a small town in Idaho — something else that could be threatened by cuts to federal funding.
Bicycling offers tips on how to survive riding in the heat now enveloping more than half the country. But it doesn’t appear to be available anywhere else, so you may have to bake of the magazine blocks you; my best advise is to ride early or late, drink plenty of water, and stick to shaded routes if you ride midday.
To mark the upcoming 4th of July, a freedom loving Bend, Oregon man says his bicycle set him free.
Good says Seattle’s body-painted naked bike ride offers a lesson in colorful living.
Santa Fe, New Mexico will consider adopting a Vision Zero program this week. But it comes too late to save a 42-year old competitive cyclist, staple of the city’s pickleball scene, and veteran of the famed Little 500, who was killed by a driver while riding his bike last week.
Colorado will celebrate the summer Bike to Work Day today, offering the second part of their twice-yearly Bike Day schedule. Never mind that Los Angeles, with its ideal weather and mostly flat terrain, barely observes one Bike to Work Day anymore, let alone two.
A Boulder, Colorado weekly suggests riding your bike to work, then enjoying a variety of local mountain bike and road bicycle tours later in the day.
Cheyenne, Wyoming is hosting a Bike to Work Day of their own today. Which is only surprising if you ever tried riding the extremely bike-unfriendly, cowboy-centric home of the Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo back in the day, which I was only brave enough to attempt once.
A 54-year old Missouri man has ridden his bike every day since December 29, 2015, averaging 33 miles a day, while surviving two traffic collisions, a dog attack and crashing when he swerved to miss a squirrel. That works out to “just” 11,566 miles, assuming he went out again today.
A New York grand jury indicted a 54-year old man for murder, manslaughter, unlawful fleeing a police officer, leaving the scene of an incident, and assorted other related crimes, for allegedly killing a 36-year-old woman riding a bicycle while he was fleeing from the cops.
He gets it. A New York man writes that NY Mayor Adams is playing a dangerous game by pitting community members against bicyclists in attempting to rip out a bike lane in predominately Jewish neighborhood, apparently forgetting bike riders are part of the community, too. And they vote.
A North Carolina bike columnist recommends riding a 22-mile rail-to-trail conversion from downtown Durham to the next county.
International
If you build it, they will come. Bicyclists now outnumber cars on a major Toronto street — with one of the bike lanes the provincial government wants to rip out.
It takes a real schmuck to steal an ebike from a Liverpool, England crash victim after he was struck by a stoned driver, and whisked away to the hospital.
While everyone else will be stuck in traffic trying to get to the UK’s famed Glastonbury Festival, a Spanish man will only have to lock up his bike after rocking the 1,000 miles from his Madrid home to the music fest.
A British driver complains about an “incredibly dangerous” bike rider, arguing that “you shouldn’t be cycling if you don’t know the rules of the road” — then admits without irony to driving 30 mph in a 20 mph zone.
Ireland’s Cycle to Work Scheme — “scheme” meaning program in this case — allows you to buy a new bike and safety gear tax-free, with the payments deducted from your salary over the next year.
Travel site Lonely Planet recommends some of France’s best bicycling routes that start in Paris. Or end there, depending on your perspective.
The last 12 months have been the deadliest on Australian roads in 15 years, largely because of a 15.7% increase in pedestrian deaths and a 36.7% jump in bicycling fatalities.
Competitive Cycling
Italian cyclist Diego Ulissi won the Giro dell’Appennino with a solo breakaway on the next-to-last climb, marking 16 straight years with at least one win for the 35-year old pro.
Proving it’s never too late, 35-year old former Moto Grand Prix racer Aleix Espargaró will swap his leathers for Lycra, and make his professional cycling debut for the Lidl-Trek developmental squad at the Tour of Austria. Okay, so it’s way too late for me. But still.
USA Cycling is merging with US Paralympic Cycling, bringing all Olympic and Paralympic bike racing under a single roof to create a “more unified, inclusiv, and efficient support system” for American cyclists.
Apparently, bikewear takes on a whole new meaning at the tongue-in-cheek Brompton World Championships held in the UK.
Finally…
LA drivers may be hard to bear, but at least we don’t have to deal with actual bears most days. Apparently, sexy baggage handlers make better bike stewards.
And if you’re going to jump a roadway, at least try to stick the landing.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
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