BikinginLA

If today’s post seems a little jazzier than usual, it was written under the influence of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, which is way better than any drug.

Today’s photo of LA City Hall looking like a big dick to represent all the little ones, male and female, inside. 

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More on today’s call for the City of Los Angeles to declare a Traffic Violence State of Emergency, as I’ve mashed an email notification and press release together.

And yes, there’s still time to get to City Hall if you can make it this morning.

DEMAND A STATE OF EMERGENCY ON TRAFFIC VIOLENCE!

More than 1,300 people and 40 coalition partners have signed SAFE’s open letter calling on the Mayor and City Council to declare a State of Emergency on Traffic Violence and take immediate action.

Now, we’re bringing that demand to City Hall. We need you to show up, give public comment, and make your voice heard.

Tuesday, September 15, 2026
9:30 a.m. Meet at City Hall
10:00 a.m. City Council meeting begins
Press conference following public comment
200 N. Spring St., Los Angeles, CA 90012
Entrance on Main St.

Our goal is to have at least 50 people give public comment. If you can speak during public comment or at our press conference, please confirm with me and review the instructions and talking points for public comment.

We hope to see you at City Hall Tuesday.

WHAT: Streets Are For Everyone (SAFE), People’s Vision Zero, and community members will present an open letter to Los Angeles City Council signed by more than 1,300 Angelenos and 43 Coalition Partners to Los Angeles City Hall, calling on Mayor Karen Bass and the Los Angeles City Council to immediately declare a State of Emergency on traffic violence and implement 5 broad strategies to immediately address and reduce serious injuries and fatalities due to traffic violence.

The stats speak for themselves:

• The City of Los Angeles has had more traffic fatalities than homicides for the past 3 years.
• In 2025, Los Angeles had 324 traffic fatalities and 16,160 people injured; that’s 3.5% higher than in 2024 (313). (Source: TIMS)
• So far this year, traffic fatalities are already well over 200 and are currently running 8% higher than the same time last year. (Source: LAPD as of 22 Aug 2026)

In 2015, Los Angeles started Vision Zero, LA’s plan to eliminate traffic fatalities by 2025. That plan failed, and traffic fatalities are now 34% higher than they were in 2015 (241 compared to 324). (Source: TIMS) Since then, LA has failed to produce a comprehensive plan to reduce traffic violence.

In April 2025, an independent analysis of Vision Zero found 13 key points of failure. All of these boil down to poor coordination and prioritization within and across city departments as well as a lack of political will. None of this has been fixed.

On 11 May 2026, in an email, Ms Tina Backstrom from the LA Mayor’s office stated that Mayor Karen Bass had an Executive Directive on her desk to re-launch Vision Zero and that it would be reviewed and signed within three weeks. This was never done.

Los Angeles has spent more than a decade promising to eliminate traffic deaths. Not only did Vision Zero fail, but things have gotten worse, and now, instead of fixing what continues to fail, the city has chosen to ignore the problem.

I admit, I was unaware of that email stating that Bass would re-launch Vision Zero, which just seems to add to her failings when it comes to traffic safety.

And makes her recent stepped-up support of safety projects — other than Forest Lawn Drive, of course — seem more like the flailing actions of someone desperately running for re-election, than any real change of heart.

But maybe that’s just me.

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No bias here.

A former Los Angeles city planner writes that Los Angeles needs to stop the mythical “war on cars,” spewing a lengthy word salad to say that Los Angeles isn’t Amsterdam, which should come as no surprise to anyone.

For one thing, the people in Amsterdam live in one of the world’s happiest countries, which can hardly be said about Angelenos.

Thomas Glick implicitly criticizes CD 4 Councilmember and LA mayoral challenger Nithya Raman for saying people should drive less, while also driving herself.

Oh, the shame!

That will surely make her hang her head and slink away.

Glick also says that bicycling, and bike lanes, are good things. But, you know, bike lanes can get cluttered with palm fronds and other debris after it rains, making them virtually unusable.

Which seems like a far better argument for bike lane-sized street sweepers, than it is for whatever point Glick is trying to make.

Then there’s this.

That is the larger problem. Los Angeles transportation policy increasingly seems designed to satisfy the demands of progressive transportation organizations and advocacy groups such as Streets for All rather than starting with the more basic question: What will actually move the greatest number of Angelenos safely and efficiently?

Mayor Karen Bass, to her credit, has shown that there can be a middle ground. Bass is hardly opposed to public transportation, bike lanes or reducing automobile dependence. But she has also demonstrated a willingness to recognize that transportation policy has to work for the people who actually live here. When faced with significant community opposition to the proposed redesign of Forest Lawn Drive, which would have removed a traffic lane in each direction to create a protected bike lane, Bass ordered the project redesigned rather than simply pushing ahead. Her revised approach calls for protected bike infrastructure while maintaining the existing traffic lanes.

That is the kind of balance Los Angeles needs. The choice shouldn’t be between doing nothing and declaring war on the automobile. We can make streets safer, expand transit and provide better options for bicyclists without pretending that every traffic lane is an obstacle to be eliminated. Bass’s decision on Forest Lawn Drive suggests that even a mayor committed to expanding alternative transportation can recognize that there are limits to how much roadway Los Angeles can take away from the automobile before the cure becomes worse than the disease.

Never mind that the point of the Forest Lawn Drive project wasn’t about building bike lanes, but slowing traffic and saving lives on one of the city’s deadliest corridors.

Which you’d think a former city planner would understand, but apparently not.

And never mind that the project has undergone years of public meetings and revisions to accommodate various competing visions. Or that Bass halted the Forest Lawn project in response to a $300,000 lobbying campaign on behalf of a pair of very wealthy private cemeteries, who are apparently trying to drum up more business at their front step.

So yeah, let’s stop that mythical “war on cars,” and let the people in them keep killing themselves, and others, to the content of their lil ol’ hearts.

And yeah, stop taking away traffic lanes to build those darn bus lanes, too, even though buses move more people far more efficiently than cars can.

So sure, let’s keep Los Angeles deadly. And car and smog choked. And inefficient. And unaccommodating. And progressively less livable.

But whatever you do, don’t do anything to restrict Angelenos God-given right to drive their cars.

Or even suggest that maybe they should do it just a teeny bit less.

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No bias here, either.

In bicycle-adjacent news, the conservative New York Post writes that “A lefty public transport nonprofit that supports socialist Los Angeles mayoral hopeful Nithya Raman is coming for the city’s iconic palm trees.”

Maybe someone should tell them that their own New York mayor is a loud and proud Democratic socialist. And I didn’t know Streets For All was a “lefty” group, unless traffic safety and urban livability are “lefty” issues.

Besides, they’re right. The only good thing about LA’s palm trees, which are actually a form of very big grass, is they look kinda cool and give the city an iconic image.

But they take a lot of water, provide virtually no shade, and do nothing to cool our over-baked city. And they go up like a torch in any kind of fire, as we see every 4th of July and most Christmases.

Apparently, pointing that out — which many others have done before — is enough to get you labeled a “lefty.” And God forbid, a supporter of a (gasp) Nithya Raman.

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That’s tonight!

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A multi-agency Orange County police task force cracked down on traffic violations, writing 102 citations with an emphasis on motorcycle noise violation and illegal electric motorbikes.

According to New Santa Ana, the violations included:

• 18 citations for loud exhaust violations Loudest reading: 111 dBA, well above California’s 95 dBA limit for passenger vehicles and 80 dBA limit for motorcycles.
• 2 citations for emissions violations Referred to the State Referee, where drivers must complete compliance testing and repairs.
• 33 speeding citations Highest recorded speed: 95 MPH in a 50 zone on SR‑1 near El Morro School.
• 6 drivers cited for unlicensed or suspended license operation
• 1 vehicle impounded
• 1 arrest Charges included open container, DUI, and possession of a concealed firearm.

Which leaves 41 violations for…something.

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Sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly acting like total dicks. 

A 51-year old Eugene, Oregon man faces charges for intentionally riding his bike into a 73-year old homeless woman — twice — after she told him to “watch out” when he rode close to her and her dog, leaving her with minor injuries.

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Local 

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass manages to get herself photographed center stage at the groundbreaking for the Spring/Alameda Safety and Mobility Project, making the sort of public appearance she could have, and should have, been making for the past three-and-a-half years.

Good news from Culver City, where the Ballona Creek bike path was reopened on Friday after storm damage from the recent hurricane was repaired.

 

State

Apparently, riding a motorcycle on the sidewalk with your unsecured, un-helmeted two-year old kid on your lap is no big deal in Santa Ana.

Nearly 1,000 ebikes, e-motos and electric scooters were turned in during the Orange County DA’s buyback program on Saturday. Although judging by the video clips I saw, many were of the normal, and legal, ped-assist type, which wouldn’t do anything to reduce the number of dangerous and illegal electric vehicles the program was intended to remove from the roadway. 

San Diego is considering suing bikemakers for deceptive ebike ads.

Here’s why — okay, one reason — paywalls don’t make any sense. The San Diego Union-Tribune hid a story about the identity of the 14-year old kid killed riding an ebike in Pacific Beach over the weekend behind their draconian paywall, even though the kid’s name and other details were readily available from at least a half dozen other sources.

 

National

A website lists five Android apps that are “perfect” for bicyclists, even if you do your riding indoors.

Dominos is relaunching the bicycle with a built-in pizza oven, which they seem to do every few years, but this time as an ebike, presumably for even faster and hotter deliveries. Or maybe just a reliable PR stunt. 

A travel lane is being removed from a Eugene, Oregon street to make room for bike lanes and a combination bus/parking lane, in a city where removing a traffic lane doesn’t seem to be the end of the world.

Evidently, the New York Post thinks Seattle is in California, writing that the driver spotted speeding along a Seattle bike lane was driving next to a “major California freeway.” 

Denver Broncos all-pro safety Talanoa Hufanga’s NFL dreams began with a little red bicycle, riding to high school football games with his dad when he was just five or six years old.

More than 200 Loyola of Chicago students, faculty and staff took part in the university’s annual midnight bike ride, a tradition since 1989.

A 41-year old Louisville, Kentucky man was released on his own recognizance and allowed to drive to medical appointments for his Stage IV cancer, despite being charged with the hit-and-run death of a man riding a bicycle. It’s not that he shouldn’t be allowed to get to his medical treatments, it’s that the man he killed didn’t get any say in any of it. 

An Indiana University researcher uses bikes to develop a heat map.

A Maryland bike shop owner explains why he decided “decades ago” not to sell ebikes to minors, or to parents for their minor kids. Because apparently ebikes were a major problem in his shop decades before they became a problem anywhere else. 

Heartbreaking story from Durham, North Carolina, where a nine-year old boy was killed by a driver on Sunday while riding the bicycle he got for his birthday; his mom said “Just hug your babies. Love your babies. And people need to slow down. If you’re in a neighborhood full of kids, slow down.”

 

International

Travel + Leisure lists ten countries that are made for a two-wheeled vacay, only two of which — Slovenia and Vietnam — are even kinda surprising.

A story from British Columbia seems to miss the most important part, after a 47-year old man pled guilty to second-degree murder in the hit-and-run death of a 54-year old man riding a bicycle, after pleading down from first-degree murder — yet somehow, fails to mention why he was charged with murder in the first place.

In shocking news, the BBC reveals that reckless ebike users pose a danger to people on bicycles. Kinda like reckless people in or on anything, including feet. 

European cities show how to pay people to bike to work — and make it work.

Protests took place in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, after a 51-year old suspected bike thief died in police custody.

A man riding 500 miles to raise funds for his seriously ill partner was beaten by his fellow Poles for wearing a yellow and blue hat, accusing him of being a Ukrainian nationalist, even though the hat was clearly labeled to represent a Polish region.

 

Competitive Cycling

Five Americans to watch at this year’s Worlds.

 

Finally…

That feeling when your donut ride across Los Angeles is just a slightly veiled ad for an energy drink. This is who we share the boardwalk with.

And the latest reason for cops to oppose a new bike lane is because it could become “a highway for illegal ebikes on drug runs.”

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

Oh, and fuck Putin.