Day 252 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025.
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Streets For All is calling for action to support a trio of programs at tomorrow’s meeting of the Los Angeles City Council Transportation Committee.
Take action this Wednesday:
The Transportation Committee is hearing three items this Wednesday. One would support wider bike lanes, another would create a pilot program pedestrianizing 6th St in Koreatown, and a third is an update on implementing speed cameras.
HOW YOU CAN HELP:
Make public comment in person:
Wednesday, September 10, 2025 at 8:30 AM
Room 401, City Hall
200 North Spring Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012If you can’t attend, please comment publicly on the council file, provided in our toolkit here.
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A Santa Monica man is called a hero for removing rental ebikes — actually scooters with seats — from the beachfront Marvin Braude Bike Trail, building “the great wall of shitty rental bikes.”
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Seriously?
A Baltimore, Maryland man is facing $2,000 in fines and hundreds more to get his bike back, after a couple misguided cops who apparently have never heard of an ebike slapped him with ten traffic tickets and impounded his bike, insisting it was an unregistered motor vehicle.
Because it has an electric motor.
One that makes it a Class 2 ebike under Maryland law.
And yes, he was literally laughed out of the DMV when he went to register it.
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If you missed this weekend’s Maryland Cycling Classic — and who didn’t? — Velo offers video of the full race broadcast, although you have have to click through to see it.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
An English county councilor was left fuming after the council leaders dropped bicycling safety improvements from plans to remake a dangerous intersection because of “rising costs and limited funding” — apparently without consulting her or the rest of the council.
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Local
Spectrum News 1 talks with the general manager of Bikes and Hikes LA about calls for better bike safety in West Hollywood, while a Sheriff’s spokesman says bicyclists and pedestrians have the same rights as drivers, but far fewer protections. To which virtually anyone who has ever ridden a bicycle would respond, “Tell me about it.”
State
Patch says cops in Laguna Beach issued “60+ citations” during a recent multi-agency crackdown on speeding, loud and modified exhausted systems, and ebike violations — which is technically true, since 184 is more than 60. A lot more.
Police in San Diego are starting to get it, warning about a dramatic rise in ebike injuries among kids, while noting that many of the bikes aren’t true ebikes but off-road motorbikes that aren’t street legal.
National
The Try Hard podcast talks with Defector writer Diana Moskovitz about learning to ride a bike as an adult, after her over-protective parents forbade her from riding as a child. You can read a full transcript here, if you’d rather read it than listen to it.
Portland, Oregon has hosted an official City Bike Bus each month since June, concluding next month. If I held up one finger, that would be one more time than Los Angeles has hosted one. And you can probably guess which finger I’d hold up.
A Salem, Oregon bike shop became the latest victim of the contraction in the bicycle market, citing competition from big box stores and online marketplaces.
A man in Oregon’s Rogue Valley became an unlikely hero in 2020 by livestreaming damage caused by the Alameda Fire from the seat of his bicycle.
There’s a special place in hell for the Fort Worth, Texas hit-and-run driver who left an eight-year old bike-riding kid lying in the street, after stopping briefly to get out of his car and look at the kid covered in his own blood. Or any other coward who drives off after hitting a kid, for that matter.
That’s more like it. Bipartisan legislation moving forward in the Michigan legislature would allow judges to sentence drivers to up to 15 years behind bars if they kill a pedestrian or bicyclist after violating a traffic law, as biking booms in the Motor City.
Riverside Drive in Downtown Memphis reopened after a major redesign with nifty new protected bike lanes.
International
Momentum recommends 16 “incredible” fall destinations around the world that are best experienced by bicycle, including California’s Sonoma Valley.
Bike Radar examines five tech trends that will define road and gravel bikes over the near future.
Puerto Vallarta, Mexico is in planning for a free bikeshare system, along with an improved bike lane network that would make it safer to use.
Nearly 100 Montreal bike riders held a die-in on Monday to call for safer streets after a second person was killed on the city’s busy Parc Ave in less than a year, while eight bicyclists and pedestrians have been killed on the corridor since 2013; meanwhile, the city renamed a bike path for a late bike activist who was pivotal in making it “the bike-friendly city it is today.”
Montreal YouTubers examine initiatives intended to lower the barriers to using cargo bikes, including Canada’s first cargo bikeshare system, run by a local nonprofit.
British Olympic bike hero Sir Chris Hoy’s inaugural fundraising ride raised more than £2 million — the equivalent of over $2.7 million — for cancer charities, as he said it’s possible to “live well and lead a happy life” with the disease, despite his devastating diagnosis with stage four prostate cancer.
Former Wimbledon champ Andy Murray may be one of us, but he doesn’t seem too damn happy about it.
As London prepares for yet another Tube — aka subway — workers strike, a London website wonders if the effects will be muted by bikeshare; meanwhile, Cycling Weekly responded to the strike threat by recommending foldies and commuter bikes.
Competitive Cycling
Tragic news from France, where yet another U-23 cyclist has died, this time a 16-year old kid who suffered a heart attack during a race.
A human rights group has asked Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante to ban the Israel-Premier Tech cycling team from Sunday’s Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal because of the war in Gaza, after the team’s owner referred to team members as ambassadors for Israel.
Seriously? Not only did a 2012 Sonoma Press Democrat article about fan activities for the late, great Amgen Tour of California inexplicably pop up on a Google search for today’s bike news, most of the story was hidden by the paper’s paywall. Because evidently, they still want you to pay to read 13-year old stories.
Finally…
That feeling when drivers park in the bike lane so often, you carry crude pre-printed crude stickers. Why postpone having beers until after Critical Mass, when you can find a bike with a keg of home-brew riding next to you?
And this is what happens when a confirmed roadie experiences his first black diamond downhill ride.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
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