There’s no word on why the driver failed to see a grown man on a bicycle directly in front of her, although police said she did not appear to be under the influence.
Anyone with information was urged to call the police or Crime Stoppers at 888-580-8477; apparently, the cops didn’t really want to be bothered by giving own phone number.
This is at least the 55th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the 14th that I’m aware of in San Diego County.
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And my apologies for yesterday’s unexcused absence. I just had nothing left after writing about Saturday’s bicycling death in Oceanside, and couldn’t stay awake long enough to form a decent thought, let alone write it down.
It’s always a race to see if I can make it through the holidays and end-of-the-year doctor’s appointments without collapsing from exhaustion.
So far, it ain’t looking good.
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Sometimes, you just have to laugh at the way Los Angeles city officials are twisting themselves in knots to avoid complying with Measure HLA.
Not to mention a federal requirement to update curbs for compliance with the Americans with Disability Act, or ADA, when a street gets resurfaced.
Because HLA requires the city to build out the elements of the mobility plan anytime a street in it gets resurfaced, and the ADA requires fixing the curbs, Los Angeles has stopped resurfacing streets entirely.
Last year, the city resurfaced 312 lane miles and slurry sealed 761 lane miles. What are they going to do next year with all the money they save from doing way less? StreetsLA is proposing instead to do 1,000 “large asphalt repairs.” StreetsLA defines large asphalt repair as “a pavement maintenance activity that addresses localized but significant damage to asphalt streets, typically larger than a standard pothole repair, but smaller than full resurfacing or reconstruction.” Basically, it involves repaving only part of a street, not the entire width…
The thing about large asphalt repair is that it’s…not a real thing. It appears to be a term made up by the city some time in the last year. Googling “large asphalt repair” pretty much only returns results from LA city government. Googling “slurry seal”, on the other hand, leads to explanatory pages on all kinds of cities’ websites.
Why didn’t they just call it “full-road pothole patching?”
The Future Is LA calls it a “legally dubious decision” on both counts.
Another wretched thing about the #LargeAsphaltRepair scandal (other being anti-ADA & anti-HLA) is that the Bureau of Street Services is leaving heavily damaged areas where people bike, while resurfacing areas where people drive…https://futureis.la/p/la-has-stopped-repaving-our-streets
After leaving the Los Angeles Times, perhaps not entirely of their own accord thanks to the paper’s extensive cost-cutting and rightward shift, former Opinion editors and writers Mariel Garza and Paul Thornton founded the independent news site Golden State Report, which I highly recommend.
Apparently, the arrest of LA safety activist Jonathan Hale for painting a DIY crosswalk on a dangerous Westwood intersection got just a bit under Thornton’s skin.
Yes, what safe streets activist Jonathan Hale is accused of doing — painting a crosswalk on a street in Westwood without official permission — is technically vandalism, a cite-and-release misdemeanor that the arresting officers judged worthy of handcuffs. But consider the optics: L.A. will wrap up its disastrous 10-year Vision Zero run not with ceremonies heralding measurably safer streets (a feat achieved by cities around the world), but with a Jan. 5 court date for Hale.
What’s next, jailing people who feed the hungry because they didn’t pull the right health permits?
He also dismisses — if not demolishes — the standard objection that Los Angeles isn’t Copenhagen, which inevitably gets trotted out anytime the conversation turns to bikes.
Or anything even tangentially related to bicycles.
Copenhagen, a 90-minute flight from the Arctic Circle, has close to zero traffic deaths annually, yet more than half of its daily commuters brave the frigid elements on bike because they have infrastructure that prioritizes cyclists’ safety. When you say “L.A. is not Copenhagen,” I hear, “L.A. is a city with car-brained cavemen as leaders, unlike Copenhagen.”
It’s worth taking a few minutes to read the whole thing, if only to put a smile on your face for the artful way he expresses that anger.
Although the defense attorney for one of the boys says they were the real victims, and that the older man was “heavily intoxicated” and attacked their 14-year old friend first, and they only beat the crap out of him in self-defense.
Sure, let’s go with that.
Even if the allegation is true, self-defense kinda ended once the man was on the ground, and they were repeatedly kicking and punching him.
But kids will be kids, right?
Throughout the entire story, though, there’s not one mention that the boys were riding e-motorbikes and electric dirt bikes.
Not what most of us would consider ebikes, let alone a ped-assist bike.
Maybe one day the press will get it, and stop conflating every two-wheeled electric conveyance under the banner of ebikes, regardless of power or potential speed.
Talk about missing the mark. The California Transportation Commission announced a $1.1 billion investment in zero-emission transit, as well as safer roads and associated infrastructure. But not one dime to restore the California Ebike Incentive Program, which is the most cost-efficient form of zero-emission transportation.
Wired explores the existential question of whether bike riders and self-driving cars can be friends. No, but maybe we can tolerate them if they really are safer than human drivers. At least until their achieve sentience, and kill us all.
A man whose family had been customers of an 85-year old Pennsylvania bike shop since he was a kid in the 80s has swooped in to save it at the last minute, when the shop was on the brink of closure as the owners retired.
His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Sharjah, issued a royal decree creating the Sharjah Cycling Club to enhance “Sharjah’s cycling reputation locally and globally, supporting sports and cultural sectors, and promoting cycling as a healthy lifestyle choice.” And no, I never heard of the place, either.
The driver remained at the scene and cooperated with investigators, who don’t suspect drug or alcohol use played a role in crash.
There’s no information at this time on how the collision occurred, or if the victim was wearing a helmet. This is one of the few times when that might have mattered, since we know he suffered a head injury, although we don’t know if that was his cause of death.
Anyone with information is urged to call Traffic Investigator Gomez of the Oceanside Police Department’s Major Accident Investigation Team at 760/435-4952.
This is at least the 54th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the 13th that I’m aware of in San Diego County.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for the victim and his loved ones.
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Speaking of SAFE, the organization takes Glendale, Los Angeles and Long Beach to task, along with Oakland and San Jose, for failing to implement the state’s speed cam pilot program, over two years after it was signed into law.
Only San Francisco has actually placed speed cams on the streets, getting a 100% A+ grade in SAFE’s scoring system, while seeing a dramatic decrease in speeding where the cameras have been installed.
Los Angeles, on the other hand, gets a D grade, with Long Beach only slightly better at D+.
Although, while I can’t speak to Long Beach, that’s probably being undeservedly kind towards LA.
Malibu, which was added to the plan a year later as residents clamored for speed cams on deadly PCH, has done much better at implementing the program, already achieving a B+ in SAFE’s scoring.
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Thanks to Luc for forwarding a response from LA County on how to request safety signage or other improvements on country roads.
Report a Problem: Bike Path: Hi – Not a problem but a proactive measure to enforce safety for all. Now that the Rockstore section on Mulholland is finally open to all traffic:
Who do I ask for a sign to be placed showing to “share the road with cyclists”?
Thank you!
Answer: Thank you for contacting the website for Los Angeles County Public Works. We provide services to the unincorporated areas of L.A. County. Your concerns have been forwarded to the Traffic Investigator for the subject location, who should be contacting you shortly. You may also contact them at 626-300-4848.
And no, “more protected bike lanes everywhere” is probably not quite what they’re looking for.
But still.
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Gravel Bike California discovers some some hidden trails and camps in the Verdugo Mountains in the inaugural Tour de Dugo.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
Once again, business owners try to shoot themselves in the foot, protesting new curb-protected bike lanes in Chicago while alleging they were losing business after just 45 days, even though studies show protected bike lanes usually result in increased sales if they just give it a little time.
A Fresno driver was on the wrong side of the roadway when he struck and killed a 51-year old anthropology professor three years ago as she was riding with three other bicyclists, according to a woman riding with her; the 50-year old driver faces a vehicular manslaughter charge, as well as a couple misdemeanors for her death.
A 24-year old man pled not guilty to DUI and hit-and-run charges in San Mateo County, after he allegedly hit a 15-year old boy riding an ebike in a bike lane, and dragged the kid several blocks before crashing into a couple parked cars; police found half gram of meth and 14 empty beer cans in his car after the crash. No word on how the boy is doing, but he can’t be good after that.
The New Jersey legislature advanced a bill that would reclassify all ebikes, including ped-assist bikes, as motorized bicycles, and require a drivers license for anyone over 17 to operate one, or a motorized bicycle license for anyone 15 to 16. A perfect example of how lumping all forms of electric bikes, including motorbikes and dirt bike, together as ebikes can result in a crackdown that harms everyone.
Amsterdam considers a ban on fat-tired ebikes, hoping that restrictions on tire widths will substitute for a ban based on engine power or potential speeds.
A South African appeals court called for a new inquest into the 2016 death of a woman who fell off a cliff while mountain biking with her husband, after a magistrate had ruled that her husband was implicated in her death “on the face of it,” without hearing any testimony; she supposedly fell when he turned his back after stopping to take a photo.
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Because you wouldn’t want to see disappointment on that face, would you?
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We got an unexpected reminder of one of the darker periods in recent Los Angeles bike history.
Somehow, a 2013 story popped up in my daily news search on Saturday, even though the search parameters were confined to the previous 24 hours.
It was a report from Downtown LA News, celebrating what was then the new electric green bike lane on Spring Street in DTLA.
That was before Hollywood claimed Downtown Los Angeles as its own back lot, bike riders and safety be damned.
Film production companies raised hell with city leaders, insisting that the bike lanes would ruin their film shoots using DTLA as a stand-in for Anytown, USA, and New York in particular. Even though New York was getting its own green bike lanes. And even though green is the easiest color to remove in post production.
Let alone that all they had to do was lay a few asphalt-colored mats over them to make the bike lanes disappear entirely.
But evidently, that was just too much effort, minimal though it may be, and just too expensive for their massively bloated budgets.
After all, they need to find some way to pay for those martini lunches at the Ivy.
Not surprisingly, we quickly learned that film producers and production companies have a lot more clout in this city than people who ride bicycles. Before you could say “Cut!”, those electric green lanes were gone forever, eventually replaced by a much darker and less noticeable shade of green — and then only in conflict zones.
It was a fiasco of Hollywood epic proportions, and reminiscent of the initial draft of the 2010 bike plan, when “currently infeasible” entered the city’s bicycle lexicon to denote any “wished for” bike lane that would have required removing a traffic or parking lane, or anything else that might have possibly inconvenienced motorists even a little bit.
And it foreshadowed the disastrous lane removal on Deadly del Mar, when then-mayor Eric Garcetti ordered the road diet and non-existent bike lanes imagined by opponents removed, largely in response to complaints from wealthy pass-through commuters from Manhattan Beach.
I’d like to say things have gotten better, as the city continues to install new bike lanes, albeit at a glacial pace.
But if that was the case, we wouldn’t have needed to pass Measure HLA to force the city to comply with its own mobility plan, including the much-revised second draft of the 2010 bike plan.
Just more reminders of our ongoing status as second-class citizens in the City of Los Angeles.
If that.
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While the city does its best to weasel out of promised safety improvements, an ordinary citizen gets arrested for painting his own DIY crosswalk, because the city didn’t.
Jonathan Hale was arrested by LAPD today for painting a crosswalk, even as the city of Los Angeles funnels more money to LAPD and does gymnastics to avoid implementing HLA.@mayor.lacity.gov, Jonny has made repeated attempts to meet with your office and has been iced out. Angelenos deserve better.
Now give the kids a damn bike lane, so they can safely get to the new safety improvements.
2025 highlight: Streets Safety Win! We completed quick-build upgrades on Serrano Ave near Hobart School, converting it to a one-way northbound street and adding a dedicated pick-up/drop-off lane. These changes help reduce congestion and support safer travel for everyone. pic.twitter.com/GQXjzW2cwK
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
In a reminder of the added dangers women face on the streets, a Florida man was arrested for exposing himself to a woman riding an ebike home from work, following her in his car before pulling next to her and calling to get her attention while visible jerking off. Yet people still wonder why there’s a gender gap in bicycling.
Unbelievable. Life is extremely cheap in Portland, Oregon, where a cop let a driver off the hook, even though she was caught on video running a red light and slamming into a 42-year old woman riding a bicycle, leaving the victim with multiple broken bones, because “The driver felt bad and said sorry.” Oh, well okay, then.
They’ve got a point. Residents of a British Columbia neighborhood want the concrete curbs protecting a bike lane removed, after the city said they won’t be plowing bike lanes this winter, and bike riders will be required to ride in the traffic lane; last year, snow plows broke the curbs and pushed them into the bike lane, blocking them anyway.
Taiwanese bikemaker Giant is issuing refunds to migrant workers in that country after the Trump administration briefly blocked imports of the brand over allegations of their mistreatment. Proof that our government really does care about migrants, as long as they’re in another country.
The opposition party in Australia’s New South Wales is promising to require license plates for all ebike riders under the age of 18 if they come into power, calling it a “sensible solution” for common community issues — once again conflating ebikes with electric motorbikes, to the detriment of everyone.
Competitive Cycling
Apparently, the Tour de France wasn’t always so darn serious.
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And deadly Vista del Mar, aka Deadly del Mar, in particular.
And I do mean heartbreaking.
LOS ANGELES — As the sun set over the Pacific Ocean one Sunday this past spring, Cecilia Milbourne returned from a walk on the beach with her dog, Gucci. To reach her parked Tesla, she had to cross a road that city officials have known for years poses a danger to people on foot.
Eight years ago,as part of a nationalinitiative to stemtraffic deaths called Vision Zero, the city shrank the number of lanes on the road, Vista Del Mar, and several connecting streets in the shoreside community just south of Venice. But they restoredit to four lanes after an uproar by drivers— among them Octavio Girbau, who railed against a city official in a 2017 Facebook post stating he wasstuck on one of those intersecting roads“in the traffic hell you created.”
On March 16, Girbau was driving south on Vista Del Mar as Milbourne was about to cross in a spot with no crosswalk and no sidewalk — just a concrete curb separating her from the moving cars. Girbau bumped another car, lost control and struck Milbourne on the side of the road, sending her flying as his Mercedes flipped onto the beach, according to a police report. Milbourne, 29, a hairdresser and actor who had moved to Los Angeles from Atlanta, was pronounced dead at the scene. Her dog died with her.
In addition to pushback from outraged, or even slightly peeved, motorists, WaPo cites too little funding for the death of Vision Zero.
Like the $80 million called for initially in Los Angeles to even put a dent in traffic deaths, which never materialized.
And that has led to endless delays in making the safety improvements the city already knows we needed. Like in Koreatown, for instance.
In some cases, Angelenos have died as planned safety upgrades stalled.
It has been over a decade since the city decided to put a roundabout at the corner of 4th Street and New Hampshire Avenue in Koreatown, a neighborhood where 34 people have been hit by cars and trucks and killed between 2015 and 2023. But there was a dispute between the city and the stateover funding, and some objected to the plan to include bike lanes. The roundabout was delayed.
On July 31, Nadir Gavarrete, a 9-year-old, was killed at the intersection while crossing the street on his scooter by a driver in a motor home.
LA guerrilla activists responded by painting their own DIY crosswalk at the intersection days later, working in broad daylight.
After all, she’s only had three years to come up with something.
Anything.
But back to Deadly del Mar, which Los Angeles is considering for one of the speed cams authorized by a state pilot program passed and signed two years ago.
None of which have yet been installed in the City of Angels, as city leaders continue their usual dithering and obfuscation.
One of the first locationsbeing considered is the spot where Milbourne was killed on Vista Del Mar. This fall, Kevitt and some of his colleagues did their own radar testing on the road. They found that about half of drivers are going above the speed limit during rush hour. In the morning, more than a quarter of cars are going over 50 miles per hour.
Milbourne died near two sets of stairs that lead from the wide expanse of Dockweiler Beach to Vista Del Mar. At the top, there is barely space to stand between the sandy bluff and the road. Cars whip by fast enough to be heard over the sound of planes taking off at Los Angeles International Airport, which sits just east of the beach.
Inevitably, the first response to complaints about speeding drivers is to call for greater enforcement. Except, of course, from the speeding drivers themselves, who fear getting ticketed because they’re unwilling to actually slow down.
But there aren’t enough cops in California, let alone Los Angeles, to patrol every street in LA 24/7. Or even enough to make a difference.
The equation is simple. Lane reductions, aka road diets, slow drivers, sometimes by causing greater congestion at peak hours. But drivers don’t want to slow down, and definitely don’t want to get stuck behind other drivers, blissfully unaware that they themselves are the cause of that congestion.
When a teenager crashes an “e-bike” at dangerous speeds, communities call for sweeping bans. When batteries ignite and cause a fire in apartment buildings, local governments restrict where electric bikes can be charged. And when pedestrians are struck by riders on sidewalks, cities work swiftly to cut riding speeds or discuss implementing licenses.
The problem? Many of these e-bike injuries and incidents can be avoided if only we defined what makes an electric bicycle.
Several of these incidents involve what cycling advocacy group PeopleForBikes calls an ‘e-moto’: electric motorcycles and mopeds sold as “street legal” e-bikes that don’t need a license or registration.
Many – but not all – of these e-motos sell new following standard e-bike Class 1,2, or 3 speed classifications. But with some modifications, they can reach speeds of 30, 40, or even 50 miles per hour, and are causing growing problems nationwide.
The solution, they say — as does People For Bikes — is federal legislation classifying anything with a built-in capability exceeding ebike specifications to “be classified as a motor vehicle, period.”
That’s just the first step.
They also call for requiring more truthful advertising as to what is actually “street legal,” as well as standardizing state laws regulating ebikes, just like bicycling regulations are virtually identical from one state to another.
It’s worth taking a few minutes to read.
Because as long as anything with an electric motor is considered an ebike, regardless of power or speed capabilities, we risk ill-informed crackdowns on, and condemnation of, all of us.
Sixty-two 3rd graders in Fayetteville NC got new bicycles, after telling the assembled that four kids earned one of the new bikes by winning in an essay contest, then announcing that everyone else would take one home, too.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. Chicago residents complain about new bike lanes causing traffic to overflow onto surrounding streets and alleys — except what’s causing the backup is the construction work to build the bike lanes, not the bike lanes themselves. And a former daily bike commuter says he doesn’t think bike lanes are even necessary, apparently not grasping that bike lanes are for the people who don’t feel comfortable mixing it up with motor vehicles, rather than those who do.
A CicLAvia-style open streets event is coming to East LA next weekend, when about 1.6 miles of City Terrace Drive and Hazard Ave will go carfree for the benefit of pedestrians, bicyclists, joggers and runners. As well as just plain, you know, people.
Life is ludicrously cheap in Montana, where a driver walked with a gentle caress on the wrist for killing a seven-year old boy riding his bicycle in a crosswalk, after prosecutors reduced a negligent homicide charge down to misdemeanor careless driving, and he was sentenced to a lousy $1000 fine — which the judge deferred for a year, meaning it could be dropped entirely if he keeps his nose clean.
In news that is equal parts heartwarming and heartbreaking, the family of a 13-year old Huntsville, Alabama boy who was killed by a driver while riding his bicycle have installed a Christmas tree at the roadside memorial marking where he was killed, and asked the public to come place an ornament on it.
International
Road.cc argues that the bicycle industry is not sustainable by design, and they could do their part to save the environment by returning to steel frames instead of carbon fiber, without sacrificing performance.
A “passionate cyclist” from the UK is suing Lime over a crash that snapped his leg in four places, claiming the rear wheel unexpectedly skidded out when he braked to avoid pedestrians, leaving him with life-changing injuries.
That’s more like it. A British distracted hit-and-run driver got nine years behind bars for killing a bike rider, after swearing he didn’t know he hit anyone and just thought his van’s engine had blown up; he’d avoided a previous driving ban for distracted driving by claiming he needed to drive for his job. Yet another example of keeping a dangerous driver on the road until it’s too late.
Bicycles provided by World Bicycle Relief are giving Kenyan farmers a route out of poverty by providing a safe alternative to paying for dangerous motorbike trips to get their produce to market.
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The measure gives the departments 60 days to return with a “comprehensive analysis of funding, staffing and resources needed to address deteriorating public infrastructure and bring the city up to industry standards,” including “repair, replacement, maintenance and timely inspection of bike lanes, curb cuts, sidewalks, street trees, storm drains and street lights.”
Like the street lights on my street, which were stripped by thieves for copper wire. And the city says they’ll get around to fixing in six months, at best.
You mean, like that.
But if past is prologue, that 60 day deadline will likely slip by weeks, if not months. If they actually respond at all.
Experience tells us that no one is likely hold them to that commitment. And whatever reports are returned are unlikely to move the needle much.
Because one thing Los Angeles does best is study problems. But never actually, you know, do anything about them.
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Good on them.
Streets For All takes Mayor Bass, LADOT and the Board of Public Works to task for trying to weasel out of their obligations under Measure HLA, as we reported yesterday.
Let’s hope someone actually listens this time.
Los Angeles is trying to avoid HLA by claiming that it is “restriping without making other improvements” when, in fact, it’s making many other changes across multiple projects.
Not having stuck his far enough into his mouth, he continued,
“Not your traditional turf war. We could call the e-bikers the Crips, the pedestrians the Bloods, the bicyclists the Gangster Disciples and the motorists Mammoth-13. Name your gang.”
First of all, there is no street gang called Mammoth-13. I can only guess he meant MS-13, short for Mara Salvatrucha. Which tells you how much experience he has with actual gangs.
And while there are inevitable conflicts between various street streets users, particularly in a small beach town with limited road space, I’m not aware of much intentional bloodshed on the roadways.
According to Wikipedia, an estimated 20,000 people have been killed in gang warfare between the Bloods and Crips since their founding in the 1970s, the overwhelming majority of those deaths purely intended.
And that’s just as of 2014.
I have no idea how many people have been killed in that supposed “gang warfare” between pedestrians, bicyclists, ebikers and drivers in Gulf Shores. But I suspect the number may be just a tad lower.
Which is not to minimize the dangers of traffic violence, let alone the incidents of violent road rage.
But comparing people competing for road space to actual gang warfare just doesn’t play in a city like Los Angeles, where far too young lives have been snuffed out over the past five decades just because someone was wearing the wrong colors, or crossed into the wrong neighborhood.
Never mind that the overwhelming majority of killing on our streets — and presumably, his — is done by just one of those so-called “gangs” he’s so worried about.
The one in cars.
And that’s the one gang he doesn’t suggest doing anything about. Unlike bikes, ebikes, scooters and pretty much any other kind of non-motor vehicle conveyance, including feet.
So maybe he needs to just deal with the situation by calling for more bike lanes and crosswalks, and leave metaphors to people who actually know what they’re talking about.
Which is a polite way of saying get your fucking head out of your ass already, chief.
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You’d think all those drivers stuck in traffic would catch on after a while.
UCLA’s bruins4bettertransit teams with LADOT to conduct their own race to determine whether bikes, buses or cars provide the fastest means to get from campus to the E Line station.
My money’s on the bike.
Even without the long-debated bike lanes that would make it even easier, and safer.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. A Silicon Valley news site reports that bicycle advocates in Sunnyvale scored a victory over disgruntled neighbors, after the city council voted to eliminate parking on one street to make room for buffered bike lanes, framing the issue as “us versus them,” rather than a matter of improving safety for everyone.
But sometimes it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Carlsbad became the latest San Diego County beachfront city to crack down on ebikes, banning riders under 12, and asking the state to prohibit anyone under 16 from carrying passengers on the back. Although like the Orange County cities, they don’t seem to distinguish between ped-assist bikes and electric motorbikes and dirt bikes.
No surprise that Florida ranks second, behind only South Carolina, for people searching online for legal help after a bicycling crash. The only real surprise is that California doesn’t even rank in the top ten — maybe because we know to call the BikinginLA sponsors over there on the right first.
A South African woman says she feels energized after she was invited to represent women bike riders a breakfast meeting at Johannesburg business school, after taking up riding to cope with grief following the death of her mother.
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Your support is what keeps this site going through the lean months, and helps ensure the corgi finds a few kibbles in her stocking this holiday season.
Because you don’t want to see a sad corgi on Christmas morning.
Trust me.
In today’s photo, the corgi offers her editorial opinion of both the city’s convoluted rejection of HLA compliance, and the prospect of a kibble-less Christmas.
All of which were filed by Joe Linton in his personal, rather than professional, capacity.
As with the first round, we can expect the board to routinely reject each of these, regardless of merit, as the city insists on taking the bizarre position that any project involving the application of paint on pavement is merely “restriping,” no matter how much additional work was involved.
That includes a project on Melrose near L.A. City College, where the city removed a peak-hour lane and added more parking for cars — yet left out the protected bike lanes called for in the Mobility Plan 2035.
The whole point of Measure HLA was to require the city to build out the mobility plan whenever they did significant roadwork.
And I’d call that significant.
The only thing likely to force the Board of Public Works to actually reconsider these projects is if supporters of bike, pedestrian and traffic safety turn out in force, and in person, to make them listen.
The meeting is scheduled for 10 am this Friday, in the Edward R. Roybal BPW Session Room, Room 350, of LA City Hall at 200 N. Spring Street.
We keep learning more about the vicious attack on a 57-year old man carrying a pizza in Hermosa Beach, allegedly committed by an ebike-riding gang of kids in their early teens.
Although in this case, ebike appears to mean electric motorbikes and non-street legal dirt bikes.
The bold and seemingly unprompted attack has outraged the coastal community and stoked simmering frustrations around alleged teen e-bike gangs organizing under names such as the Goons and the Redondo Beach Killers.
Now it appears that some of the alleged attackers came from the neighboring city of Manhattan Beach. In a Sunday email to parents, Manhattan Beach Middle School Principal Matthew Horvath said that students at the school were involved in the incident, the Manhattan Beach News reported. Representatives for the district did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In this case, however, the Goons and RB Killers may not be what you normally think of when you see the term “gang.”
I’m told by someone who lives in the area that the gangs accused of “assaulting and terrorizing” beachside residents are the products of privileged homes and indulgent parents, who too often stand in the way of accountability for their kids until it’s too late.
The project, which has been batted around in one form or another since for at least the past two decades, is intended to improve safety for bike riders and pedestrians along the dangerous corridor between Westwood Village and the Metro E (nee Expo) Line.
The department says the project is being developed in line with Healthy Streets LA and Mobility Plan 2035, which identify Westwood Boulevard as a priority for transit, bicycle and pedestrian upgrades. LADOT is gathering feedback on “transportation safety concerns, access challenges and ideas for how the street could function better for everyone,” and says staff will review all comments before drafting recommended infrastructure changes.
It’s nice to see the city actually working with Measure HLA, rather than fighting it, as they’ve done with virtually every other project up to this point.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
A British Colombia letter writer almost gets it, asking if bicyclists should be treated more like pedestrians than motorists. But then goes on to say we’d be better off sharing sidewalks with pedestrians like “many places in Europe,” and wouldn’t mind wearing “highly visible license plates” if it finally allows us to get off the streets. Um, that’s a hard no.
But sometimes it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Cycling Weekly recommends 15 Christmas present ideas for bicyclists, picked by “people who ride thousands of miles a year.” Or maybe 12 Chanukah gifts, plus an extra three for birthdays, anniversaries and such.
We touched on this yesterday, but it’s worth mentioning in more detail that Seattle is testing out the nation’s first protected bike lane barriers made of recycled car and truck tires, which not only offer a lower price, but are easier to repair and cause less damaged to cars that hit them. Thanks to Mike for the heads-up.
The American Criterium Cup returns for a fifth year, with a series of six races starting with June’s Tulsa Tough, although the $140,000 purse is up for grabs as last year’s men’s champ Maurice Ballerstedt returns to racing in Europe.
Now you, too, can own four “ultra rare” Colnagos, including the bike Sothebys says Tadej Pogačar rode in Toulouse, when he was actually busy riding up Mont Ventoux.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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After all, what other bike sites offer all the best news and a cute little corgi spokesdog?
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At last, we get a little context for the rise in ebike injuries — although, as usual, there’s no distinction between injury rates for ped-assist ebikes and e-motorbikes.
According to the New York Times, Marin County worked to get California law changed after a 15-year old girl barely survived a fall while riding on the back of a friend’s ebike, prompting a local surgeon to look into rising injury rates.
As the pandemic continued, the number of e-bike accidents increased. “You would expect that,” Alfrey says, “because sales were skyrocketing.” Indeed, in 2022, over a million e-bikes were sold in the United States, up from 287,000 in 2019, according to the Light Electric Vehicle Association. But what really struck Alfrey and Maa was that e-bike injuries were far more serious than those sustained on conventional bikes. Maa says they were more like what’s seen in motorcycle crashes. A pelvic fracture, for example, was uncommon on a pedal bicycle — only about 6 percent of conventional cycling injuries. For e-bike crashes, though, it was 25 percent.
The most alarming difference was the fatality rate. “On a pedal bike, the chance of dying from an injury is about three-tenths of 1 percent,” Alfrey says. On an e-bike, the data indicated, it was 11 percent.
These findings signaled what was unfolding around the country. During the same four-year period when nationwide sales quadrupled, e-bike injuries increased by a factor of 10, to 23,493 from 2,215, according to the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System. A study by the University of California, San Francisco, found that from 2017 to 2022, head injuries from e-bike accidents increased 49-fold.
Which means ebike injuries rose 2.5 times faster than ebike sales.
Now we finally know.
The paper goes on to note that Class 2 throttle-controlled ebikes have claimed the overwhelming majority of the market.
By “throttle devices,” he is referring to Class 2 machines, which have captured an estimated two-thirds of the e-bike market. According to PeopleForBikes, the rationale in 2015 for creating a class for bikes with throttles — which can eliminate even the modest exercise benefits of pedal assistance — was that many e-bikes already had them, and the trade organization didn’t want to exclude those products and companies.
But to Mittelstaedt and others, it’s inappropriate to consider these vehicles to be “bikes” at all. “The essence of bicycling is pedaling,” Mittelstaedt says. “A machine propelled by a motorcycle throttle just shouldn’t be considered a bicycle. It can go from zero to 20 faster than a regular bike without any exertion at all.”
As we’ve repeatedly stressed, anything that can travel faster than 28 mph isn’t legally an ebike. And anything without pedals isn’t a bicycle.
Some manufacturers — but not governments — have taken it upon themselves to call such machines “Class 4” e-bikes. Others refer to them as “out-of-class electric vehicles”; bicycle-advocacy groups, which want to avoid being associated with these machines, prefer “e-motos.” In any case, they aren’t bicycles, nor are they street legal without registration and a license, yet they still show up regularly on roads and bike paths. One online influencer called Sur Ronster, who also has a retail business called Ronster Rides, posts videos of bands of teenagers, dozens strong, outdoing one another’s daredevil feats at breakneck speed on city streets and highways.
The boys were part of a group of five kids aged 13-15 identified by police as the attackers, who only broke off the assault when one of the boys mistakenly yelled that the victim, who has not been publicly identified, was dead.
Great Interview Steve Gruber Show on Evil on the Roof of the World The story of two millenials who quit their jobs to bike around the world @mbukmagazine@bikinginla@TheBikingLawyer William Elliott Hazelgrove | Inside New Book: Evil on the Roof of the World…
A Freemont CA rancher has installed a gate across a formerly open roadway, blocking a path used by bicyclists and hikers for years.
Thanks to Megan for forwarding the video.
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A YouTube video considers how Victoria, British Columbia, population 92,000, tripled its bicycling rate in just 11 years.
Thanks to Norm for the video.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. A Sunnyvale website says residents feel their voice is being “drowned out by a vocal cyclist lobby,” because they value their God-given right to park their cars on the curbs over the safety of people on two wheels. There’s that mythical bike lobby raising its ugly head again, and Hulk-smashing all who don’t bow down before it.
A man and woman face charges in Lafayette, Louisiana after allegedly yelling at another woman, beating her and threatening her with a gun before yet another beatdown in front of her kid, all because her husband committed the crime of yelling at the woman to slow her car down while he was riding bikes with the couple’s young son.
But sometimes it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
A British reporter launches a “bold social experiment” to see if he can get his phone stolen by ebike-riding — actually, e-motorbike — thieves, then track it to reveal their location. Thanks again to Megan for the video.
Police in Anaheim have arrested the alleged hit-and-run driver accused of hitting a 12-year old boy riding an ebike last week, leaving the kid with a concussion, broken leg and multiple bruises; 29-year old Fullerton resident Jonathan Diaz reportedly took off on foot after crashing his car a few blocks after he struck the boy’s bike, leaving behind evidence he was under the influence.
A writer for Strongtownsmakes the case that Complete Streets has run its course, leaving cities with “expensive, over-engineered corridors that win awards but fail the people they claim to serve.” Although I’d question whether the study the story is based on cherry-picked cities where Complet Streets failed, rather than where they have succeeded.
This is why people keep dying on the streets. Colombian Tour de France sprinter Fernando Gaviria was given a suspended sentence for drunk driving in Monaco — despite being more than five times over the legal limit. Seriously, there’s no excuse for driving under the influence, no matter who you are.
Twenty-one-year old cycling rookie Isaac del Toro was named Mexico’s sportsman of the year with the country’s highest sports honor, the 2025 National Sports Award, after winning winning 16 pro races, nearly winning the Giro and climbing to third in the world rankings in just his first year on the WorldTour.
