BikinginLA

Day 336 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025. 

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It’s Giving Tuesday.

I personally recommend donating to Calbike, Streets For All, Streets Are For Everyone, BikeLA, Streetsblog Los Angeles and/or Streetsblog Cal, depending on how deep your pockets are and how generous you’re feeling today.

Aside from the bike world, people are still recovering from the Eaton Fire who could use your help. Not to mention your local public radio station after Trump’s budget rescission.

Or consider donating to the SPCALA, which helps animals right here in the LA area, or Queen’s Best Stumpy Dog Rescue to help SoCal corgis in need of retraining or special care.

If you give to the latter, make the donation in honor of my fallen four-legged friend Kobe, who was murdered by a hit-and-run driver.

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If you’ve got anything left after all that, it’s Day 5 of the 11th Annual BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive.

Thanks to James, Steven, Richard and Mark for their generous donations yesterday to help keep all the best bike news and advocacy coming your way every morning.

It only takes a few moments and a few bucks to help out.

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San Francisco Streets For All is hosting a lunchtime Q&A session with the director of the San Francisco transit agency.

Although I’m sure they won’t mind if you join in, whether or not you live in the Bay Area.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles branch sent out a reminder about their holiday party on the 13th.

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

Life is cheap in the UK, where an English driver walked without a day behind bars for injuring a bike rider, getting off with traffic school after charges were reduced to the equivalent of a close pass.

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

Tampa, Florida bicyclists may have to forego speeding, wheelies, stunts and tricks on local multimodal trails. Geez, take all the fun out of it, why don’t you?

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Local 

The principal of a Manhattan Beach middle school confirmed that the two ebike-riding teens charged in the brutal attack on a man carrying a pizza in Hermosa Beach are students at the school.

 

State

A California Redditor asked for help choosing an ebike, after being stunned to receive a voucher apparently coming from the late, great California state program. Let’s hope they enjoy it, since the rest of us are screwed after the California Air Resources Board, aka CARB, decided it’s more important to keep electric cars on the road, rather than helping to take more cars off them.

This is the cost of traffic violence. Escondido residents are calling for safety changes, after an 11-year-old boy was murdered by a hit-and-run driver last week as he was chasing a soccer ball into the street, on a roadway known for speeding drivers and failing to yield to pedestrians.

Morgan Hill-based Specialized learns the hard way what wheel the cassette goes on, after getting roundly mocked for an apparent AI ad error.

 

National

Bicycle imports from China bounced back in July and August in anticipation of a jump in tariff rates last month.

A 42-year old California man was identified as the bike rider who was killed in a collision outside of Reno, Nevada last week.

An Arkansas city is adding advisory bike lanes, which combine two bike lanes with a single shared lane for motor vehicles, requiring drivers to merge into the bike lanes to pass cars traveling the opposite direction. Let’s just hope they last longer than they did in San Diego. 

Maine is on pace to have its deadliest year for bicyclists and pedestrians since the state began keeping records 22 years ago.

New York is tackling the problem of bicycle storage head on, with plans to launch 500 new secure bicycle parking hubs.

 

International

Road.cc’s EBiketips examines why ebikes are so much heavier than traditional bicycles. Hint: Batteries, engines and transmissions all add weight, as do heavier frames to hold them and wheels to carry them.

Vancouver, British Columbia is fighting the anti-bike lane trend of the rest of the country, as the city’s new budget failed to fund a proposal to rip out a bike lane to make more room for cars.

A Toronto college student got her stolen bike back after finding it for sale online, and riding off with it after meeting with the seller/thief. Even though things ended well this time, we’ve seen far too many stories where it didn’t. Better to register your bike to identify it, and let the police handle it — even though they too often don’t. Thanks to Donna for the heads-up. 

If you build it, they will come. Despite efforts by the provincial government to rip out Toronto’s bike lanes, new stats show the city’s residents are biking at a greater pace than ever before, even in the middle of winter; one bike counter showed a 90% increase in ridership in January of this year over just three years earlier, despite average temperatures of -8 degrees Celsius, equivalent to 17 degrees Fahrenheit.

Despite alarming headlines about increasing London bicycling injuries and deaths, particularly in East London, there doesn’t seem to be any real story there, since the jump in casualties was accompanied by a nearly 50% increase in ridership since 2019, and 12.7% more bicycling trips than last year. The real question is whether the rise in injury rates is outpacing the jump in ridership.

An Irish writer makes the case for why 1.5 meters — roughly 5 feet — isn’t wide enough for a cycle track. Even though it’s more spacious that many American bike lanes. 

An 88-year old Catholic priest marked his 50th year of bicycling through Bangladesh to offer healthcare and faith to the poor and disabled in the Muslim-majority nation.

Australia’s New South Wales state is considering cutting the maximum power and speed of ebikes to 250 watts and 18 mph, after a man riding a Lime Bike was killed in a collision with a garbage truck driver; meanwhile, police urge parents to only buy legal ebikes, rather than faster and more powerful illegal ebikes still found on the market. Although even the strictest restrictions won’t work if legal ebikes can be readily converted to exceed legal limits, or bikes exceeding them can be legally sold.

 

Competitive Cycling

Next year’s Giro will kick off in Bulgaria, of all places, for reasons known only to them.

 

Finally…

When you’re riding a bicycle with an outstanding warrant and over 12 grams of suspected meth, put a damn light on it, already. Let’s hope Santa doesn’t bring you a bike with square wheels.

And your car’s old tires could protect your next bike lane.

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

Oh, and fuck Putin.