BikinginLA

Day 226 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025. 

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She gets it.

A writer for the Washington Post says dangerous streets make it hard to give kids the freedom they need to roam and explore.

In recent decades, many of America’s roads have indeed become more chaotic: Speed limits are higher; vehicles are (much) bigger; drivers are more aggressive and more likely to be distracted by smartphones. When parents see massive SUVs speeding down neighborhood streets or blowing through stop signs, they might feel less inclined to allow their kids to roam freely on foot or bicycle. And though the number of children injured or killed by cars while walking or riding a bike has fallen steadily since the 1970s, research by the CDC notes that this decline is not because streets are safer, but because fewer kids are out and about in the first place.

This pattern, some parents say, can create a self-perpetuating cycle: If drivers are less accustomed to encountering kids on roads, they might be less likely to drive safely around them, which in turn makes parents more anxious and restrictive of their child’s movements.

It’s worth giving the whole story a read.

Because one of the most common refrains from parents is that they would never allow their kids to ride on city streets, in Los Angeles or elsewhere, whether or not they ride themselves.

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He gets it, too.

In a piece that starts out very tongue-in-cheek before evolving — devolving? — into legalese, a Canadian columnist takes conservatives to task for complaining about a recent court ruling ordering the government not to remove Toronto’s protected bike lanes.

It was judicial activism run amok, they agreed. Canada’s ever-inventive courts had discovered a “right to bicycle lanes.” What next: a right to volleyball courts? Time to invoke the notwithstanding clause, said some.

Well, that was then. When, one week ago, the Conservative government of Nova Scotia, with the province’s forests tinder-dry and fearing a repeat of the devastating wildfires of two years ago, issued a ban on hiking and camping in forested areas, conservatives were again apoplectic.

But the real issue, he says, is whether the government has the right to kill you.

The issue at stake in the bicycle lanes case is disarmingly simple: does the government have the right to kill you? It is not hyperbole but demonstrable, probabilistic fact that banning bike lanes will sentence a certain number of randomly selected Torontonians to death, and cause serious injuries to still more…

That’s also reflected in our Constitution. Section 7 of the Charter does not assert an absolute right to “life, liberty or security of the person” but the right not to be deprived thereof “except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.”

Because removing bike lanes could predictably deprive some people of their “life, liberty or security of the person.”

And likely would.

Which does not mean the government has to build bike lanes. But it does mean the court had a reasonable basis to prohibit the government from removing them.

Nothing in the decision obliges the government to build new bicycle lanes. As such it involves no “positive rights,” which conservatives are right to oppose. It simply requires that before a government takes the extraordinary step of ordering the removal of lanes that have already been built – an action guaranteed to cost some lives and put many more in peril – it ought at least to have some basis in evidence or logic for doing so.

Maybe we should try that same argument on this side of the border the next time someone wants to rip out an existing bike lane here.

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CicLAvia marks its 61st open streets event this Sunday with the 6.75-mile Culver City meets Venice CicLAvia, connecting Culver City, Mar Vista and Venice.

Hard to believe it’s been 15 years since the first one on 10-10-2010. And even harder to believe now that we thought it would never happen when CicLAvia’s founders came to the LACBC, now BikeLA, board to ask for our support.

Meanwhile, KNBC-4 suggests honoring the Venice lifestyle by skating the whole route.

Thousand, a woman-owned Boyle Heights bike helmet-maker, will celebrate their tenth anniversary by giving away 1,000 helmets at their booth at the Mar Vista Hub.

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The Spring Street bike lanes in DTLA are getting new safety barriers, with enough separation to hopefully prevent the kind of injuries San Diego bicyclists have complained about.

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

No bias here. Middlesborough, England is going to spend the equivalent of nearly $3 million to rip out a bike lane derided as “an absolute nightmare” and “exploited by drug dealers,” despite spending just $100,000 to settle injury claims after it went in — and spending $2.3 million to install it just three years ago.

A Dublin, Ireland city counselor accused civic leaders of “pure gaslighting” and treating bicycles “like a child’s toy” by shutting down a popular bicycle route, forcing riders into an “anti-cycling death trap.”

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

British motoring lawyer Mr. Loophole accuses bike cam vigilant Cycling Mikey of using his bicycle as a weapon by pushing it into the path of a driver attempting to illegally drive down a closed roadway, resulting in his bike getting run over and shattered into pieces. So he’s saying it wasn’t a very good weapon?

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Local 

Streets For All released their August newsletter, including calls for protected bike lanes on Pico Blvd and Alameda Street.

 

State

California is hitting pause on a requirement to install bike parking in new commercial and residential buildings, after the legislature passed a bill delaying the requirement until 2027.

A Monterey County woman says there’s no law against kids under 16 riding an e-scooter or a Class 1 or 2 ebike, but maybe there should be. Actually, there is a law against riding e-scooters without a driver’s license. 

Sad news from Yuba County, where a 60-year old man was killed by a driver while towing a trailer behind his bicycle.

 

National

An op-ed writer in USA Today argues that ebikes are driving him crazy, so we need to make them obey the same rules as drivers. Even though most drivers don’t.

Singletracks offers a guide to the ten best downhill mountain bike trails in Idaho.

Portland’s mayor has called a pause on plans to remove diverters and change the traffic flow on two neighborhood greenways, after the bicycle advisory committee increased pressure on the city.

Police in Houston arrested a 40-year old man in the fatal stabbing of a 77-year old man as he was riding his bike to work; the victim somehow made it to his job site before collapsing, and died at the hospital.

This is the cost of traffic violence. A 70-year old cancer treatment specialist in the Indiana University medical system was killed by a driver while riding his bike on Monday.

A Boston writer explains how she fell in love with her ebike after moving here from France, saying biking every day makes her life better.

Princeton, New Jersey banned right turns on red lights as part of the city’s Vision Zero program. Meanwhile, Los Angeles just tells drivers to carry on. 

Arlington, Virginia is joining the ebike rebate movement, offering vouchers for up to $1650 on the purchase of an ebike. Although those ebikes are about to get a lot more expensive, thanks to Trump’s 30% tariff on goods imported from Asian manufacturers. 

An Atlanta photo exhibition documents one man’s journey to bike every single street inside the city’s I-285 perimeter.

A TV station in Lake Charles, Louisiana unmasks a mysterious man on a Mardi Gras-festooned ebike, who says he rides through the community because “he loves to see people smile.” Although something tells me Adorian Hollywood Flavor probably isn’t his real name. 

A Florida teenager was lucky to survive his first day of school when he was struck by a driver while riding his ebike in a crosswalk, after witnesses teamed together to lift the car off him.

 

International

A recent study ranks Victoria, British Columbia as Canada’s most bicycle-friendly city, edging out Winnipeg and Quebec City.

The 134-year old Cycling Weekly introduces the British nonprofits working to transform the lives of refugees and asylum-seekers by providing them with bicycles.

A clueless Conservative city counselor in the UK questioned why disabled bicyclists can’t simply get off their bikes and push them across a footbridge. Um, maybe because they’re disabled?

 

Competitive Cycling

The Cyclists’ Alliance, the union for women’s cycling, is calling for mandatory, annual screening in the wake of Pauline Ferrand-Prévot’s victory at the Tour de France Femmes, amid comments about her drastic weight loss.

Cyclist offers a preview of the three-stage Tour de Romandie Féminin, which kicks off tomorrow.

 

Finally…

What it’s like to suffer for the sake of science on a ten-mile time trial. That feeling when you stop riding in the year’s hottest month because your cleats are haunted.

And we may have to deal with stampeding LA drivers, but at least we don’t have to worry about getting trampled to death by elephants.

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

Oh, and fuck Putin.