Somehow, I managed to get through today’s post, after spending all day yesterday flat on my back with my eyes closed to keep the world from spinning around me.
Good times.
As for today’s photo, scroll down lower to see what I missed out on over the weekend, dammit.
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It’s not just you.
Crosstown says Los Angeles is spending more and getting less, in a town that’s “not designed to work.” And getting a new mayor won’t fix things.
From street sweeping to tree trimming, Los Angeles residents are seeing less of the basic services they rely on.
With the mayoral race heating up, candidates are promising to fix the problem. But Los Angeles is spending more and getting less — and whoever wins will inherit a system that limits how much they can actually change.
In five years, Los Angeles’s budget grew 34%. The number of sidewalks it repaired fell 33%.
Residents are feeling the effects in their neighborhoods. In 2021, Los Angeles cut street sweeping from weekly to every other week. In Westlake, a group of volunteers responded by picking up trash the Bureau of Sanitation left behind, said Elaine Alaniz, president of the Westlake North Neighborhood Council.
Never mind that the city went eight full months without repaving a single stretch of roadway last year.
Then there’s this.
Rick Cole, an advisor to Nithya Raman’s mayoral campaign, has spent 40 years working in city governments across Southern California. For Cole, the decline in services is the symptom of a deeper problem. In June, during a farewell speech at City Hall as he stepped down from his role as deputy controller, he told the crowd, “LA is not designed to work.” Decades of ignoring “mind-numbing bureaucracy” have made the city ungovernable, he said. “Beneath the broken sidewalks is a broken system.”
On the other hand, Karen Bass has had nearly four years to fix things, and hasn’t shown up for anything but homelessness and rebuilding after the Palisades fire until she was faced with a fight for reelection. And hasn’t made a lot of progress on the former, and complaints from literally burned-out residents on the latter.
So if you like the job she’s done, and the city we have today, vote for her.
If not, don’t.
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A new German study has found that transforming even a busy street into an “advanced bicycle street” can change the character of the entire neighborhood.
Momentum did a good job of translating the dense study results into something a little easier to understand.
Researchers examined Oeder Weg, a 1.4-kilometre (0.87 mile) street in central Frankfurt transformed into what they call an advanced bicycle street. The project went beyond adding signs. It combined traffic restrictions with physical changes intended to make the street safer, more comfortable and more useful to the surrounding neighbourhood.
Before the changes, Oeder Weg carried as many as 9,183 motor vehicles a day, well above the recommended volume for a bicycle street under German guidelines.
The city began by designating it a bicycle street in August 2021. The following April, it introduced bollards, planters and barriers to restrict car access at key entrances and discourage through-traffic. Other changes included red-painted intersections, marked dooring zones, additional bicycle parking and the removal of some on-street parking. Those spaces were repurposed for restaurant patios, greenery, street furniture and delivery zones.
While cars were still allowed on the street, diverters prevented drivers from using it as a shortcut, cutting daily traffic rates nearly in half while increasing bicycle traffic by 25%.
And contrary to common fears, traffic did not increase on the surrounding streets, but actually decreased throughout the entire neighborhood. In addition, traffic collisions fell by nearly half, while bicycling collisions dropped 27%, despite the increase in bicycling rates.
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Caltrans is hosting a virtual public meeting next month to discuss safety improvements on LA’s killer highway.
Caltrans District 7 invites you to the second virtual public workshop for the PCH Segment A Safety Improvement Project – Project Initiation.
Whether you attended a previous workshop or are joining us for the first time, we welcome your participation. This second virtual workshop provides another opportunity to learn about the project, ask questions, and share your input.
Workshop Details
Date: Wednesday, November 18, 2026
Time: 6:00–7:00 p.m.
Platform: Microsoft Teams
Register here: PCH Segment A (meeting link will be sent upon registration)The project is in the early Project Initiation Document (PID) phase. The workshop will cover the proposed safety improvements and alternatives being considered. Your feedback will help inform the evaluation and refinement of these concepts.
Please share this invitation with others who may be interested. For additional information, visit the PCH Segment A Safety Improvement Project webpage.
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A new movie screening at Laemmle theaters next month is described as “not just a ‘bike film,’ but a film where the bike is the philosophy.
According to a publicity email I received yesterday, A Simple Machine was inspired by a novel from Evan P. Schneider.
Shot in luminous black and white in Portland, it follows Nick Allander (Richard Blackmon) as a recent grad drowning in debt who chooses radical frugality. His bicycle becomes his tool for economic independence: mobility without debt, technology that enhances human agency, instead of extracting from it. In a city where cycling is cultural currency, Hoffman reframes the simple machine as a deliberate choice toward simplicity, dignity, and embodied presence.
This moving film will be in LA on Nov 16 at Laemmle NoHo 7, and on Nov 17 at Laemmle Monica Film Center. Q&As with director Mark Alan Hoffman and star Richard Blackmon will follow both screenings, and Santa Monica Spoke is doing a “ride to show” event on the 17th.
Meanwhile, a new documentary tells the story of a 51-year old Army vet who rode her bike across the US and became a Paralympian after losing her eyesight while working as an EMT.
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Last weekend I was invited to take part in something I would have jumped at under other circumstances — a ride to San Diego on the Pacific Surfliner, followed by a Brompton ride through the city.
Unfortunately, I had to turn it down, despite the combination of two of my favorites, Bromptons and trains.
I’m tempted to say that sometimes dealing with diabetes and the various associated medical conditions suck.
But it sucks all the time.
75 Riders, One Train, Two Cities: Brompton and Pacific Surfliner Celebrate Partnership With LA-to-San Diego Ride
California, October 27, 2026 – Brompton, the London-based folding bike brand, celebrated its new partnership with the Amtrak Pacific Surfliner by bringing 75 riders and their Bromptons aboard the Surfliner from Los Angeles to San Diego. The ride showed how rail and a folding bike together can replace the car for both the daily commute and the weekend adventure.
A bike turns a train trip into a door-to-door journey, and the Pacific Surfliner makes it easy to bring one, with free bike reservations on every train. A folded Brompton goes one step further, riding as carry-on luggage with no reservation necessary. That flexibility is what lets a group this big travel together on a single train.
On Saturday, October 24, riders boarded the Pacific Surfliner at Los Angeles Union Station, with more joining along the way. In San Diego they unfolded their bikes and explored Balboa Park, Little Italy, the Gaslamp Quarter and the Embarcadero, then took the ferry to Coronado Island to watch the sunset at the Hotel del Coronado. Train, bike, ferry and back: a full car-less day out.
The partnership brings together two leading names in urban mobility: the iconic folding bike brand and the busiest state-supported intercity rail route in the country. Together, Brompton and the Surfliner aim to show how multimodal travel can fit into daily life, and they’re doing it as more Californians choose the train. Preliminary July 2026 figures put the Pacific Surfliner on pace for the highest monthly ridership in its history, with more than 300,000 passengers.
“Southern California is our fastest-growing market in the US, and it’s easy to see why,” said Alex Balansay, Brand Manager at Brompton North America. “The climate, the coastline and a growing rail network make it one of the best places in the country to travel without a car. Saturday showed what that looks like: 75 people, one train, and a whole city to explore at the other end.”
“A great rail journey doesn’t begin or end at the train station,” said Jason Jewell, Managing Director of the LOSSAN Rail Corridor Agency, which manages the Amtrak Pacific Surfliner service. “Making it easier for passengers to connect to their final destinations is an important part of improving the overall travel experience. This event highlights how folding bikes and passenger rail can work together to give travelers more flexibility, convenience and freedom to explore Southern California without relying on a car. We’re excited to showcase how simple first- and last-mile connections can open up new possibilities for our riders.”
Riders can plan the same trip themselves. On the Pacific Surfliner, folding bikes under 34 x 15 x 48 inches ride free as carry-on luggage with no reservation. Full-size bikes need a free bike reservation when booking.
Schedules and tickets are at pacificsurfliner.com, and Brompton models and dealers are at brompton.com.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
Boston is ripping out a newly installed protected bike lane in front of a senior home, after residents complained they weren’t consulted first, it prevents them from crossing the street, and kept an ambulance from pulling up right in front; meanwhile, the head of a local advocacy group offered a perfectly reasonable response promising to work with residents to come up with a solution that works for everyone.
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Local
That’s more like it. Long Beach has secured the funding for a $73 million project to move a spectrum of Shoreline Drive out of César Chávez Park, and convert it to a miles-long network of open space. Because cars don’t belong in parks, period.
LA Times readers take the paper to task for a recent article that basically said “boys will be boys” while using illegal e-motorbikes, not unlike I did yesterday.
Congratulations, Los Angeles, your official slogan for the ’28 Olympics is “Stars Align.” Which could pretty much refer to anything, and therefore means absolutely nothing.
State
Calbike says California could soon have its best chance in years to pass the Bicycle Safety Stop, aka Idaho Stop, aka Stop as Yield, because Governor Gavin Newsom will soon be out of office, after vetoing two separate versions of the bill.
USA Today takes up the sentencing of 33-year old Samuel Matthew Rocha to 27 to life for intentionally killing 16-year old Pedro Valdez as he rode his bike in Port Hueneme, in a traffic crime rampage that began with a confrontation with another man in a case of mistaken identity.
A Bakersfield bike rider suffered major injuries when they were struck by the driver of a white vehicle. Because evidently, the color of the car has a big impact on how bad the crash is, pun intended.
Sad news from Visalia, where a 63-year old woman was killed when she tried to make a left turn on her bicycle, and was struck by an oncoming driver.
San Francisco Streetsblog says a new 0.2-mile quick-build protected bike lane wasn’t quick, it’s not really protected, and it’s not continuous, with gaps for handicapped parking and a bus stop.
National
A woman in an undetermined city posted video of a driver getting stuck in a protected bike lane, as she walked ahead of him — never mind that as a pedestrian, she didn’t belong in the bike lane, either.
The New York Daily News calls for rejecting a ballot measure that would speed approval of street safety projects, including bike lanes, because of “lawless” ebike riders, most of whom are riding e-motorbikes that aren’t legally allowed in bike lanes, anyway. But then they hide the editorial behind a paywall, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of voicing their opinion in the first place.
The NYPD called off a “hastily planned” raid on an ebike parking lot used by hundreds of delivery workers, because a) it’s not illegal for bikes to be parked in spaces which would otherwise be used by motor vehicles, and b) the workers politely moved to the other side of the street. Although a local radio station says the raid was called off after cops spotted reporters waiting for them.
Oddly, New York continues to function as a world-class city, as Mayor Mandami announced plans to redesign a 2.1-mile stretch of one of Brooklyn’s most dangerous streets. Something Los Angeles somehow seems unable to do.
A Florida police captain will ride his bicycle around a four-mile park route for 24 hours to raise funds for a Spanish-language religious mission.
International
Life is cheap in the UK, where a 39-year old road-raging driver walked without a day behind bars for grabbing a bike rider by the neck and throwing him to the ground and causing a serious brain injury, for the crime of being in his way.
Competitive Cycling
The chief of USA Cycling says the one thing missing after Brandon McNulty won the world road championship is an American WorldTour race.
Nineteen-year old ‘cross cyclist Tofik Beshir has a long way to go in his recovery after he was struck by a driver while on a training ride three weeks ago, as his teammates rally around him; a crowdfunding page has raised has raised over $142,000 of a $200,000 goal.
Finally…
You know you’re good when you set a new Strava KOM during a photoshoot. And apparently, bicyclists legally using the roadway are road hogs.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
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