January 7, 2021 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on The war on bikes keeps on going, bike riders behaving badly, and that really was Chris Froome riding that bike in SaMo
It’s a light news day in the big, wide, wonderful world of bikes, after yesterday’s DC shit show sucked up all the oxygen.
CityLab looks forward to the incoming Biden administration, saying it could take steps to make motor vehicles a lot safer, especially for bike riders and pedestrians. Let’s start by banning oversized private trucks and SUVs, and redesigning the high, flat grills on SUVs and pickups.
This is why people keep dying on our streets. A Syracuse NY judge undercuts prosecutors by offering a hit-and-run driver a reduced sentence for killing a beloved local street musician as he was riding his bicycle — even though the driver, who was out on parole, was driving without a license.
The question remains why, since motor vehicle traffic has returned to pre-pandemic levels, while bicycle ridership is up.
Maybe it’s safety in numbers. Or maybe there’s something else going on.
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More sad news.
With a heavy heart we learned of the passing of Jay Walljasper, a longtime active transportation advocate. We're thankful for his contributions to the movement, including his 2018 report with @PedalLove, "The Surprising Promise of Bicycling in America". https://t.co/qQrsq7vNH9
— League of American Bicyclists (@BikeLeague) January 5, 2021
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
Once again, someone has sabotaged a British bike trail, planting upright nails in the dirt to puncture the tires of unsuspecting riders, with the potential for serious injuries.
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Local
It looks like Adams Blvd could get a new bike lane on a two-mile stretch between Fairfax and Crenshaw. As always though, what if anything ends up on the streets depends on how loudly the drivers and NIMBYs complain.
Now we’re starting to get somewhere. A new clip-on, throttle controlled motor promises to convert your bicycle to an ebike in just minutes, for around four hundred bucks.
A former mountain biker who competed for the UK says ebikes helped him get his life back, despite a serious heart condition that means never raising his heart rate above sedentary levels.
Cycling Tipstalks with American cycling legend Connie Carpenter-Phinney, road cycling Gold Medal winner in the ’84 Olympics and one of the era’s top women’s pros; she’s also the wife of fellow Olympic cyclist David Phinney, and the mother of recently retired pro Taylor Phinney.
Apparently, British women’s cycling great Beryl Burton doesn’t get any respect these days.
L.A.’s Green New Deal is pursuing four basic pillars, to reduce emissions from energy generation, transportation, and buildings, and to reduce waste to zero. What have been the easiest and most difficult pieces to tackle?
It’s easy to say the goals of our Green New Deal, but they’re all incredible stretch goals. The one that is the most challenging is to create an electricity grid that has no carbon emissions and that in the middle of the night or in the face of an earthquake or disaster can still be dependable. It’s easy to turn on a coal or natural gas plant and have it churn out the electricity we need. Our solar project that we’re building in the high desert is cheaper than a natural gas plant. It can store maybe one to two days of power. If there’s an earthquake, we may need six months of power. We’re proudly moving off coal at our biggest power plant in Utah with a turbine plant that can be hydrogen. We believe we’ll be the first big utility to run partly on hydrogen.
Second is transportation. Everybody in this car culture of L.A. expects to go to a gas station, fill up your car, and keep going. It’s just as easy to have an electric car. You can just charge it at night, and it takes two seconds to plug it in, but that draw on our grid will be immense. We have to double the amount of electricity we generate and make sure that it’s renewable.
Which pretty much confirms suspicions that he’s abandoned once ambitious plans to reshape how we get around the city, from adding a network of safer bike lanes to installing bus-only lanes throughout the city, in the face of the usual opposition to virtually any non-car transportation project.
Because in Los Angeles, when the going gets tough, we just give up and call it an incredible stretch goal.
Today’s photo is by Adrien Olichon from Pexels, depicting the kind of projects that should be built under LA’s Green New Deal, but probably won’t, because it’s hard.
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Every now and then, someone says it exactly right.
Ride your bike as much as you like, as far as you like, but don’t judge yourself or your riding success by volume of miles. Measure all of this by what happened along the way, the stories you can tell, the places you visited, the views you paused in front of, and the people and characters you met.
The couple met as students at the Thousand Oaks university in the ’60s, after he competed for the school as one of the first college bike racers on the West Coast.
Yet he continued to work on his bike collection even after the disease robbed him of his ability to ride in his 70s — including the Pinarello that Alexi Grewal rode to gold in the ’84 Los Angeles Olympics.
Nothing like making little kids dodge parked cars where there used to be a bike lane just a week before.
Small children cycling in Kensington this morning — now in greater danger since the protected cycle lane was ripped out. The space is now blocked by parked cars. pic.twitter.com/uHQU2i49ts
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. It turns out the incident where a group of teenaged bike riders attacked a pair of New York drivers began when a BMW driver brake-checked one of the kids — intentionally or otherwise. But naturally, it was the kid on the bike who got the blame for crashing into it. On the other hand, violence is never the answer, regardless of the reason.
Life is cheap in the UK, where a 20-year old British man walked with a suspended sentence for reaching out of a car and pulling a man off his bicycle, leaving the victim lying in agony on the side of the road with a broken elbow and fractured hands.
An Ohio city is looking to improve pedestrian safety, but only after a seven-year old was killed by a driver while riding his bike. As usual, city leaders were only spurred to action after it was too late for an innocent victim.
We made it. Not just through the holidays, which is always a challenge. But through the most difficult year in recent memory.
So pat yourself on the back, and take a celebratory bike ride to mark your achievement. And if you already did, go out for another one.
Thanks to John M, Eric B, James V, Steven F, Grace P, John H and everyone else who donated their hard-earned money to the 6th Annual BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive to help keep SoCal’s best source for bike news and advocacy coming your way every day.
This year’s donations ranged from $5 to $250. I appreciate the smallest donations every bit as much as the largest ones, because I know all too well how hard it can be to give when money is tight.
I am also incredibly humbled and grateful for the kind words that accompanied so many of the donations. It was a struggle just to get through the past year while keeping up with the demands of this site, for a number of reasons.
It means more than I could begin to say to know those efforts are appreciated. And I’ll do my best to live up to all you had to say.
Beginning January 1, a new law that makes misdemeanor DUI eligible for diversion changes that. Once diversion is completed, it’s as if the crime never happened – and those prior convictions wash out, despite the fact that state law allows prior DUIs to be pled and proven for up to 10 years. They can’t be used as a prior – and the families whose lives were shattered by an impaired driver will not get the justice they deserve.
Assembly Bill 3234 does not impose a limit on how many times someone can be given diversion. How many times are we going to give someone a break before they kill someone? And now if they do, we won’t be able to prosecute them as more serious crimes.
Seriously, this could be a disaster.
Our legal system will now be actively working to keep dangerous drivers on the road. And free from consequences for actions that could lead to more deaths on the state’s roadways.
Looks like a new sort-of protected bike lane has popped up in Culver City. Although I’d call something with flimsy plastic bendy posts a separated lane, instead.
This is why LA-based former pro Phil Gaiman should be second in line for cycling sainthood behind Gino Batali. Even if he’s not dead yet.
LAST PUSH FOR THIS YEAR! If 100 people give $100 each, you'll each be responsible for 1000 meals for folks who didn't have a good year and didn't have a good Christmas, I'll chip in the last $2000, and it'll put my campaign at 2 million meals for 2020. https://t.co/A8JveuvQ3t
This is who we share the road with. Rebecca Grossman, co-founder of the prestigious Grossman Burn Foundation, has been charged with two counts each of murder and vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence for the hit-and-run deaths of two young brothers who were walking with their parents in a Westlake Village crosswalk. She was released on $2 million bail, pending the results of toxicology tests.
London’s tony Kensington neighborhood ripped out a new bidirectional bike lane, after accusing it of causing traffic congestion. So now it’s blocked by parked cars 80% of the time, instead. Let’s be honest — the real cause of traffic congestion is all those cars, not the bike lane.
One of the first casualties of the UK’s ill-advised separation from the European Union turns out to be handmade Brooks saddles, which are now owned and distributed by Italian saddle maker Selle Royal, and as a result, won’t be sold in the UK for the foreseeable future because of Brexit.
Peloton Magazinetells the groundbreaking story of Shelley Verses, who shattered the gender barrier in pro cycling by becoming the first female team trainer in European cycling, with the late great 7-Eleven team in 1985.
Today is JRR Tolkien's birthday. Did you know the writer was a lifelong cyclist, and deplored how Oxford was becoming dominated by motoring in his letters? Read this fascinating blog that shares a little more https://t.co/q2QyoU5YTLpic.twitter.com/qnSSnHJ3d2
And a very merry Christmas and a healthy, happy and prosperous new year to you and all your loved ones.
As usual, I’ll take a much needed break between the holidays to shake off the dust of this awful year. But we’ll be around if there’s any breaking news, and see you bright and early on January 4th.
Just be careful out there.
I don’t want to have to write about you, unless maybe you ran into a burning building to rescue a bunch of puppies or something.
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It’s been awhile since we’ve heard from our anonymous courtroom correspondent, which she more than makes up for this morning.
Also last Thursday night, a cyclist was knocked unconscious at Manchester & Normandie (near where Woon was killed) and transported by ambulance. This is all I know, and I’m furious that I can’t really find out more. With the current hospital capacity, the old method of walking around talking to the locals just unnerves me too much.
For the vehicular manslaughter count, he received 4 years; the enhancement was dismissed. For the hit and run count, he received one additional year, to be served consecutively.
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Scuzzy Stephen Taylor Scarpa’s jury trial was pushed back to next February, and now the Defense will be filing a Pitchess motion on January 5th. Hmm. A homicidal, hypocritical, repeat impaired driver now wants to question the credibility of an officer involved in the investigation. The defense attorney who argued in the prelim that Scarpa is also a victim in this case is now attempting to portray the investigator as the bad guy. Bold strategy, Cotton.
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Samantha Cunha, who ran over her friend during a bizarre case of road rage last January, has been charged with… a single count of hit and run. She’ll be before Judge Hobbs next month, the same judge who’ll be presiding over Mariah Banks’ prelim the following week.
Christopher Krebs, former CISA dude, is also one of us. Before he deactivated his Twitter account, he made it known that he would be spending his newly gifted free time on his bicycle. Oh, and with his family, of course.
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On my commute Sunday, at an intersection that’s seen at least half a dozen collisions his year (including two crashes into a building and a recent car vs. bike), I was diverted around yet another solo collision that had pushed the guardrail three feet across the sidewalk.
At this location (with a clear line of sight to Mariah Banks’ last known address, btw), I always scootch up onto said sidewalk because the asphalt’s gouged from the frequent crashes and permanently littered with debris. The sidewalk wan’t cordoned off, probably because Johnny Law thinks nobody uses it. I got barked at by an officer (who I feel should’ve secured the damn crime scene better) after I’d hit the brakes ’cause there was about 40 pounds of debris laying on the path, which I repeat was already constricted by the incursion of the guardrail.
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In personal news, Santa baby just slipped a Surly under my tree, early. Time to wrap her with tinsel & lights!
Also. At the end of October, my boyfriend (who had the rona in April) & I spent a night at the Millineum Biltmore. We got confirmation that it was okay to bring our bikes into the room. Everything was cleared. Then, at check-out, they tried to charge us $50 for garage parking!!! We contested this at reception desk while standing there with our bikes. Sigh.
And. Noooo more hotel stays till after this virus gets its ass kicked. The button plate in the elevator and the balcony handrail above the Instagrammer-magnet as-seen-in-movies lobby were filthed up with smudges, full on handprints even. So repulsive, even if there wasn’t a pandemic going on. I’m incredibly disappointed in the Biltmore.
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Until recently, the aforementioned boyfriend had been storing his bikes, a Kilo WT & his beloved carbon fiber, in a Metro locker at the De Soto Orange Line station.
They were stolen. Right out of the locker.
He has elected to keep his new Cinelli in a storage facility a half mile away from his apartment.
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On a personal note, I’ve often complained about FedEx trucks parked in the bike lanes.
But let’s give credit where it’s due.
Last night the corgi puppy somehow slipped her harness, and was running rampant on the streets of Hollywood, ignoring my every command and attempt to entice and corral her.
I’d probably still be chasing her if a FedEx driver hadn’t dropped his packages, and managed to snag her on his fourth attempt, delaying her just long enough for me to slip the harness back on.
Ford is touting their new warning system to help prevent doorings. Instead of warning drivers and bike riders about a potential dooring, maybe they could just keep the damn door locked until the danger is past.
Clean Technica says the new Akhal Shadow from Extans Design, with its bespoke monocoque carbon frame, is just too beautiful to ignore. Although as always with over-designed bikes like this, the question is less how does it look, and more how does it ride.
A crowdfunding campaign has raised over $24,000 to buy a new car for a Hawaii security guard who rode his bike an hour out of his way to return a woman’s wallet after she left it in the store where he works. Maybe he could turn down the car and buy a bunch of new bikes, instead.
Thanks to Kent S and Jose P for their generous donations to keep SoCal’s best bike news and advocacy coming to your favorite screen every morning — and free for everyone!
Rapley was on a layover at LAX, making his way home for the holidays, when he was run down on a Sunday morning by an underage driver still wasted from the night before.
Every one of the nearly 1,000 bicycling deaths I’ve written about haunt me, but some are always with me; Rapley’s death is one of those, because it was just so damned needless.
His death almost resulted in a parking protected bike lane on Temescal, too late to help Repley, but which might have kept the next driver from taking a life by drifting into the painted bike lane on the curving climb.
But despite my best efforts, and those of others, the proposal died amid the fierce backlash over road diets in Playa del Rey.
It would have been a fitting memorial to a life needlessly lost, to go with the white bicycle-shaped bike rack installed by Rapley’s family in the park next to where he died.
Instead, his spirit will continue to haunt me until we finally take steps to ensure not one more bike rider will die there.
Court documents allege Grace Elizabeth Coleman had a blood alcohol content of more than .20, over one and a half times the legal limit. And she had no reason to be on the road after she had already been driven home from a local brewery.
This is apparently her third DUI in just two years, including a June 2019 hit-and-run for which she assumed financial responsibility without being charged, as well as a pending DUI from this past August.
She’s currently being held without bail.
Just one more example of authorities keeping a dangerous driver on the streets until it’s too late.
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Livestrong is alive and well, even without He Who Must Not Be Named, who we’re all expected to pretend never won the Tour de France once, let alone seven times.
The cancer charity slash website offers an extensive and useful compendium of 95 bike stats, ranging from global cycling to crashes — not accident, please — and broken down by sex, race and ethnicity.
Yep! If you live somewhere that distributes them, such as in Edmonton ^ they'll get you a QR sticker that adds your bike to their organization and allows them to easily scan and get in touch with you. You can also email lily@bikeindex.org to get a Bike Index one 🙂
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes keeps going on.
Italian pro Andrea Vendrame was the victim of a road raging driver, who got out of his car and punched him following a punishment pass on a training ride, all for no apparent reason other than Vendrame was riding on the roadway.
A Detroit father of five was surprised with a new car after his fellow Carvana employees took pity on him for riding his bike 30 miles to work in frigid weather. Which might be warmer, but may or may not be a improvement.
This is the cost of traffic violence. A South Carolina band director suffered major injuries when he was struck by a cowardly driver while on a half-century ride; the driver was apprehended shortly after fleeing the scene.
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And help keep it free for everyone, while keeping you informed — and hopefully, entertained a little.
Thirty-two-year old Lake Forest resident Rogelio Martinez-Cuin was sentenced after pleading guilty to felony counts of gross vehicular manslaughter and hit-and-run with permanent and serious injury, as well as driving with a suspended license.
Martinez-Cuin was reportedly speeding and ran a red light before slamming into Tomlinson’s bike.
He was arrested after abandoning his car about a mile away.
In a heart-rending coda to the tragedy, Tomlinson’s wife learned about the crash when she drove up on the scene in his final moments.
Hit-and-run carries a maximum penalty of four years in California, while vehicular manslaughter is punishable by a max of six years in state prison.
That suggests that Martinez-Cuin may have accepted a plea, or else lucked out with a lenient judge.
The first episode of the Chasing History series was released this week, as they become the first cycling team from a Historically Black College or University, aka HBCU, to take to the streets.
Another day, another Amazon driver blocking the bike lane.
Unmarked van in Sunset Boulevard bike lanes with a dashboard full of Amazon packages. And there was a parking space two car lengths ahead. pic.twitter.com/PgIfyAK3RO
You may finally be able to rent a scooter or dockless ebike in WeHo, leaving Beverly Hills as the Westside’s lone e-scooter desert.
BREAKING – West Hollywood City Council voted 5-0 to overturn the scooter ban! Three pilot operators should be able to operate very soon in the city. This also impacts dockless e-bikes. Thanks to all that took the time to make public comment! https://t.co/q3apHJgBmA
Sixty-three Denver 2nd graders got new bicycles, courtesy of carbon belt-drive maker Gates Corp.’s fourth annual bicycle giveaway. And yes, they all got belt-drive bikes.
Now you can finally predict how likely a driver is to be drunk based solely on what they drive.
Funny not funny: New study analyzes which owners of various car and truck models are most likely to get DUIs. Not surprisingly truck and luxury-car owners top the list. (h/t @mattposh). One in 22 Ram 2500 owners has had a DUI.https://t.co/VwlHIz0lJgpic.twitter.com/5oI8mQYofR
In parliament, Dec 18, former Tory chief whip Lord Blencathra asked roads minister Baroness Vere — @CharlotteV — when DfT would introduce £5k fines & 6 months imprisonment for those who ride on pavements or block same with “heavyweight” e-bikes. Motorists? Carry on as before. pic.twitter.com/14eISP4iA7
December 21, 2020 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on ‘Tis the season to give bikes to kids, LA delivery drivers turn bike lanes into parking, and dangerous PCH rumble strips
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Something to smile about in this plague-infected year is the outpouring of bike love we’re seeing, with groups all over the country giving their time, skills and money to make sure countless kids will have a bike under the tree this year.
On the other hand, Fayetteville, Arkansas’ annual Bicycle Man giveaway, which normally hands out up to 1,200 bikes each year, was cancelled due to the pandemic.
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What do you call a Los Angeles-area bike lane filled with delivery vehicles?
Because even the best bike lock can be defeated by a determined thief with the right tools.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes keeps going on.
A London man with a potentially life-threatening condition is suing to remove a bike lane in front of a hospital, claiming that potential congestion could delay his arrival at the hospital, and the removal of parking spaces means that his friend couldn’t park to bring him in. Never mind that his friend could always drop him off, and the bike lane could help countless others improve their health. For that matter, I have a potentially life-threatening condition too, as do countless other people who ride bicycles.
But sometimes it’s the people on to wheels behaving badly.
A 32-year old man was stabbed by someone on a bicycle in an apparent random attack while he was standing with friends on a bridge in San Diego’s Hillcrest neighborhood; fortunately, he’s expected to survive.
More than a thousand people took part in a virtual bike ride to honor the victims of the Las Vegas bicycle massacre that killed five experienced riders; the Zwift ride raised $15,000 for the victims.
Boston removed the concrete barriers protecting a bike lane, blaming them for causing drivers to crash. Evidently, the barriers must have jumped out in front of people in cars without warning; otherwise, the blame should go to all those people who couldn’t manage to drive safely next to them.
Six people are suing New York’s Citi Bike bikeshare, alleging they were injured when the brakes locked on the ped-assist bikes they were renting, throwing them off their bikes.
Roy Wallack wrote that bicycling would help you live to be 100.
Sadly, he didn’t make it.
The Irvine resident, author of Bike for Life: How to Ride to 100, was just 64 year old when he died following a crash on the Guadalasca Trail in Pt. Magu State Park Saturday morning.
According to the Ventura County Star, Wallack was riding with friends on the difficult trail when he fell around 9:20 am, although he had not been publicly identified yet in the original story.
The crash took place on the Guadalasca Trail, he said, which cuts through steep, technical terrain near the Backbone Trail. The cyclist, a man in his 60s, had reportedly been riding with friends when he crashed his bike and lost consciousness, Worthy said. The cyclist’s city of residence was not immediately known Saturday.
The man’s friends called for emergency medical assistance and performed CPR until the sheriff’s helicopter arrived with paramedics and a flight nurse. The crew continued life-saving measures but the cyclist did not survive and was pronounced dead at the scene, Worthy said.
And yes, he was wearing a helmet.
A former columnist for the LA Times, Wallack was a prolific writer, according to the Star.
A Google search shows he’s the author of at least eight other fitness books.
The Times describes Wallack as a avid hiker, runner and bicyclist who took part in the Badwater Ultramarathon in Death Valley, as well as the 750-mile Paris-Brest-Paris bike tour.
Wallack’s work for The Times spanned barre classes, triathlons, kayaking, the L.A. Marathon and more. He penned a gear column for many years, keeping fitness fans in the loop about the hottest must-haves.
He began a 2016 piece: “Hiking the Grand Canyon was not on my bucket list. A marathon, yes. Bike 200 miles in a day, yes. Ironman triathlon, absolutely. But for some reason, a mere day hike, even in one of the world’s most spectacular natural wonders, was never on my radar.”
Wallack ended up being won over by the 15-mile trek, describing it as “an otherworldly journey into a land before time” and “a true bucket-list adventure.”
The paper also describes his efforts to keep his 84-year old father active, despite being housebound by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The paper reports that he recently finished one last book, about Richard Long, the founder of GT Bicycles, who was killed in a collision with a truck while riding his motorcycle to a bike race in Big Bear in 1994.
Tributes were beginning to pour in as word of his death began to spread Sunday evening.
RIP Roy Wallack. You were always so fun to work with, your copy a joy to read, your passion for all things endurance and outdoor adventure inspiring. https://t.co/JsUrGnuTW0
RIP journo Roy Wallack who died earlier today after crashing his MTB in the Santa Monica mountains. We rode together each year at Press Camp in Utah. One year he gave me his book, “Bike for Life: How to Ride to 100 and Beyond.” He was 64. pic.twitter.com/5zkqM8nZhf
