A long-planned Wisconsin bikeway connecting Lake Michigan with the Mississippi River is at risk after estimates for a bridge over a highway come in higher than expected.
Singapore went carfree on Sunday, as part of a monthly program to close the streets of the Civic District to motor vehicles on the last Sunday of each month.
A special thanks to Pedego 101 and J Fylling for their generous donations to help replace my late, lamented laptop, which, after two full months in the repair shop, appears destined for that great recycling facility in the sky.
Despite the city’s lip service to Vision Zero, it’s clear, to paraphrase Casablanca, that the deaths of a few innocent people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy town.
Now neighboring Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell has joined him, citing a lack of significant, widespread support for the vital safety project.
If that’s going to be the standard, we might as well toss Vision Zero in the scrapheap of Los Angeles history right now. Because we may never get a majority of Angelenos to believe that saving lives trumps saving a few minutes on their commute.
City officials are elected to do the right thing, not the popular thing. And make the difficult choices that they know will prove correct down the road, even if they initially lack “significant, widespread support.”
Like saving lives, for instance.
Instead, O’Farrell became just the latest LA councilmember to back down in the face of organized opposition from angry motoring activists, settling for a number of incremental improvements to the street that may make it a little safer and slightly more pleasant, but likely do nothing to stop speeding drivers from running down more innocent people.
In part, because of attitudes like this from Rachael Luckey, a member of the Rampart Village Neighborhood Council.
A road diet on Temple, Luckey says, would have been too extreme.
“I hate to use the words ‘acceptable loss,’ but we do live in a metropolitan city, and it’s a dangerous world we live in,” she says. “As far as Temple Street is concerned, I don’t know that it is a crisis per-se. If we were seeing 20, 30, 50 people run over, I would be a lot more alarmed.”
A California Highway Patrol collisions database shows that from 2009 to 2017 on the stretch of Temple Street between Beverly and Beaudry, 34 people have been severely injured and five people have died in traffic crashes.
I wonder if she’d still consider it an acceptable loss if one of those victims was a member of her own family.
And once again, LA Mayor Eric Garcetti was too busy running for president to weigh in on one of his own signature programs, exchanging pledged commitment to Vision Zero for zero involvement.
When Vision Zero was first announced in Los Angeles, I questioned whether the city’s leaders had the courage to made the tough choices necessary to save lives, and help make this a healthier, more vibrant and livable city.
The answer, sadly, is no.
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On a related subject, a new journal article from Chapman University assistant law professor Ernesto Hernandez Lopez examines the legal aspects of the LA Mobility Plan.
And the auto-centric bikelash that threatens to derail it.
Here’s how he summarizes the paper, titled Bike Lanes, Not Cars: Mobility and the Legal Fight for Future Los Angeles:
Examines LA’s Mobility Plan 2035
Summarizes lessons from biking scholarship
Uses these lessons to make sense of the litigation on the Mobility Plan 2035
Suggests how law and politics can help city bike lane policies and advocacy and policy making for these
Relates bike lanes to Vision Zero (safety), “first and last mile” (intermodal), and mobility (de-car)
Correlates the litigation and LA experiences with Vehicular Cycling and Automobility theories
The San Gabriel River trail will be closed at Carson Street in Long Beach today for an emergency repair due to water damage. Riders will be detoured to Town Center Drive.
The path should be reopened on Saturday, unless they run into unexpected problems.
If not, take a few minutes to see if you can reconcile what you see with the local police chief’s insistence that the victim, a homeless woman walking her bicycle across the street, darted out of nowhere into the car’s path.
Right.
Then look closely at the interior view, which shows the clearly distracted emergency human driver looking down the whole time, until just before the moment of impact.
The car should have been able to detect the victim; the fact that it didn’t indicates a major flaw in the system. And the woman behind the wheel definitely should have, if she’d been paying the slighted bit of attention.
Correction: The initial stories identified the driver as a man, Raphael Vasquez. However, it appears that Vasquez has been living as woman, Raphaela Vasquez, since being released from prison in 2005. Thanks to Andy Stow for the correction.
The head of a European bike industry trade group responds that bike riders will have to wear beacons to identify themselves to autonomous vehicles. Why stop there? Why not implant all newborns with transponders so self-driving cars can see them regardless of how they travel, and choose to kill the one person crossing the street rather than the three people in a car.
A former Los Angeles Times staff writer calls LA streets a contested space where no improvement — such as the Venice Blvd Great Streets project — goes unpunished.
You’ve got to be kidding. Life is cheap in Yolo County, where a garbage truck driver walked in a plea deal in the death of a bike-riding college professor after pleading no contest to vehicular manslaughter. And was rewarded with a deferred judgement and a lousy 80 hours of community service.
Eugene, OR decides to make a six-block test road diet permanent, concluding it was worth the effort despite initial concerns. Sort of what might happen here if more city officials had the guts to actually try it.
Traffic delays caused by highway construction enticed an El Paso, Texas man to sell his truck and buy a motorized bicycle, improving his health and saving at least $800 a month.
Cycling Weekly considers the symptoms, tests and recovery for concussions. Sooner or later, everyone comes off their bike, and chances are, you can’t count on your helmet to protect you from TBIs, because that’s not what most helmets are designed to do.
A new reports says 43% of the Ontario, Canada bike riders killed between 2010 and 2015 were struck from behind. And 25% were under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
The project removed a single lane of traffic in each direction, while implementing parking-protected bike lanes and other safety improvements. And resulted in the expected howls of complaints from the Westside’s entitled drivers and traffic safety deniers.
The results so far show that while it hasn’t been the disaster the opponents have claimed, it hasn’t been a rousing success, either. According to Linton, “Overall crashes, injuries, travel times, and even speeding show very little change.”
However, it’s just halfway through the one-year pilot project, so things may continue to improve as people get used to the changes.
Meanwhile, a video from Los Angeles Forward suggests the project may be succeeding in its original goal of creating a small town downtown atmosphere in the long-neglected community.
He accuses the equestrians who pushed through the ban of being bullies, while insisting there has never been a case of a bike involved in an accident with a horse in the bridge’s 80-year history.
Fort Worth TX bike riders are getting physically protected bike lanes. Those planters prove you can beautify the street and improve safety at the same time.
Caught on video: A bike rider in the UK was seriously injured when a driver fell asleep at the wheel and slammed into him head-on; the dozing driver was sentenced to a year behind bars. Before you click on the link, make sure you really want to see something like that, because you can’t unsee it.
Burbank police offer tips on how to stay safe when walking or biking.
Although they seem to have missed the memo that says it’s now legal to cross the street during the numerical countdown.
But really, the best part of the video is where they tell drivers not to speed, to turn off their cell phones when they get behind the wheel, signal turns and lane changes, come to a full stop for stop signs and red lights, and always watch for vulnerable road users.
They did say that, right?
Meanwhile, velocipedes reminds us of the horrible bike safety video put out by the tone-deaf Santa Monica Police Department a few years back.
A new study from UC San Francisco shows that riding your bike hard could be good for your sex life, at least if you’re a woman. And female bicyclists are no more likely to experience serious sexual or urinary problems than non-riding women.
National
Despite the rapid spread of Vision Zero across the US, traffic deaths continue to soar. Los Angeles deaths declined just 3% in the past two years, far short of the city’s overly ambitious goal of a 20% reduction by last year.
About time. Montreal recognizes that bicycles and motor vehicles are fundamentally different, and proposes changing the law to allow bikes to treat stops as yields, make rights on red lights, and follow pedestrian traffic signals.
This is how Vision Zero is supposed to work, sort of. Edinburgh, Scotland responds to the death of a bike rider by proposing bicycle traffic lights that give riders a head start. But does nothing to address the tram tracks that caught her wheel and caused her death.
Long Beach is once again allowing bikes, skaters and pedestrians to experience the Long Beach Grand Prix route in a carfree mini-ciclovía, but only for an hour and a half.
Although it might be more exciting with the cars zooming by at breakneck speeds with just inches to spare.
Good piece from Bike Snob’s Eben Weiss, as he tackles the topic of presumed liability and the disparity between bikes and motor vehicles.
To be fair, we do acknowledge this disparity in responsibility by requiring motorists to obtain licenses and to register and insure (at least in most states) their vehicles. We don’t acknowledge it, however, once a motorist collides with a cyclist. Indeed, in practice, cyclists often bear more responsibility than drivers in these instances, due in part to the common misconceptions that bikes don’t belong on the roads in the first place and that people out riding are just thrill-seeking fitness freaks who get what’s coming to them. On top of that, cyclists must then deal with all the ensuing legal and medical issues that come with being hit, and generally speaking, people aren’t exactly at their sharpest after they’ve been clobbered by an SUV. Forget standing up for your rights; you’re lucky if you can stand up at all.
It’s worth taking a few minutes out of your day to read the rest.
And hats off to Weiss, who’s finding his voice as an advocate for safer streets.
A new bill would authorize congestion pricing demonstration projects in two cities in Northern California, and two in the southern part of the state, offering the potential to get more people out of cars and onto bikes, foot and transit.
A 71-year old bike rider suffered life-threatening injuries when he was struck by the driver of an SUV in San Marcos on Monday; witnesses reported he veered out of a bike lane and into the path of the SUV. As always, the question is whether any of those witnesses were outside the car that hit him.
Projected costs have more than doubled for San Diego’s planned downtown protected bike lane network, in part because the mayor has decided to use planters as dividers instead of plastic bollards; completion has been delayed until at least 2021.
A Redding letter writer says the requirement to ride with traffic is a stupid, stupid law and needs to be changed. Never mind that riding salmon is one of the best ways to get into a serious crash; drivers don’t expect to see you riding upstream.
National
The Kentucky senate unanimously passed a three-foot passing law, including provisions allowing bicyclists to ride two abreast, and allowing drivers to briefly cross a double yellow line to pass people on bicycles; now the bill goes back to the state house for reconciliation.
Actor and Jennifer Anniston-ex Justin Theroux is one of us, captured by the paparazzi riding incognito in New York.
An American bike helmet “expert” weighs in on New Zealand’s helmet law, saying a helmet will protect you if you’re hit by a car traveling under the speed limit. Which is probably true, if the speed limit is 15 mph, since bike helmets are only designed to protect against impacts up to 12.5 mph.
Competitive Cycling
World Champion Peter Sagan says it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s all about putting on a good show. Something tells me his sponsors would beg to differ.
There’s no sugar-coating it: We can only make our streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists when road space is taken away from cars… Transformative infrastructure disrupts the dominance of the car while enabling people to safely switch from driving their cars to using bikes, transit or walking…
When cars slow down, not only are streets safer, but they become more enjoyable places to be. When good cycling infrastructure is present, people stop being “cyclists” and instead are just normal people going about ordinary, mundane activities. We need to stop thinking that bike lanes are only for “cyclists” and better sidewalks or more crossings are only for “pedestrians.” They are for everyone and they give people choices as to how they get around.
Curiously, there is little attempt by the GHSA to grapple with the very obvious and long-term problem—the conflict that occurs when one attempts to combine pedestrian accessibility with roads that support highway speeds. Even with smartphones locked away and all drivers drug free, there are bound to be incidents in which the operator of a two-ton object barrelling down the road does incredible damage to a defenseless human being of one-tenth the weight. The only sure way to protect the vulnerable party in this situation is to slow vehicles to truly safe speeds wherever pedestrians are present. And the only way to guarantee slower speeds is to create streets—not the all-to-common suburban thoroughfares that accomodate highway speeds—that do not allow drivers to travel through neighborhoods at unsafe velocities.
Such a transformation of our built environment will require more than band-aid fixes, such as “pedestrian hybrid beacons” (special button-activated lights and crosswalks placed at midblock) and demeaningly-named “refuge islands” recommended by the GHSA report. Only a dramatic paradigm shift will cause drivers to ease off the pedal when they are off the interstate. Such a new approach would call for narrower streets that are not designed for highway speeds—or even what behind the wheel may seem relatively pokey rates of travel. At even 35 miles per hour, there is a 31 percent chance a vehicle will kill you, rising to 54 percent for seniors over 70 years old. In contrast, at 20 miles per hour, the risk of pedestrian death goes down to an average of 7 percent…
True sharing of the streets between all modes of mobility—including one’s own two feet—demands, as Cortright states so well, that walking and biking are no longer treated as a “second class form of transportation.” This transition will require recovering a rather older form of techne, a craft of building human-centered places, that does not need artificial intelligence or other “smart” devices to save us from the mechanical beasts we have allowed to dominate our streets.
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On the other hand, some people just don’t get it at all.
Because no one who drives a car would ever actually get out and enjoy it themselves, apparently.
Rather than patting themselves on the back for supporting environmentally and socially commendable causes, city councilors should be asking themselves whether they’re using the public’s money effectively. Does it really make sense to spend $22,500 on an alternative-transportation event that preaches to the anti-car choir even as it subtly alienates the very people whose support the city really needs?
Those other people are the ones who drive cars and trucks, and they might think better of cyclists, pedestrians and so on if they weren’t treated as pariahs on their own streets and at their own expense. There’s an in-your-face quality to Open Streets that simply isn’t useful if the city’s goal is to encourage respectful coexistence by motorists, cyclists and others.
Evidently, it’s only coexistence when the roads belongs to cars, period.
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It looks like the Marathon Crash Ride is back next Sunday after all.
Don’t plan on riding the new Arroyo Seco Pedestrian and Bicycle Trail anytime soon unless you enjoy dodging golf balls; the April 22nd opening has been cancelled until they can stop errant shots from escaping from a nearby driving range.
This is how Vision Zero is supposed to work. New York will redesign a street where two small children were killed while walking with their mother after a driver ran a red light. Although I don’t know any design elements that will take a driver’s foot off the gas pedal.
No bias here. A local government in Western Australia responds to the state’s new one-meter passing law by moving to ban bikes from narrow roadways, insisting there’s there’s no room for drivers to obey the law.
According to the LAPD’s Central Traffic Division, a bike rider suffered what was described as severe injuries in a collision at Washington and Grand in DTLA yesterday, and was hospitalized in critical condition.
Personally, I couldn’t care less if you roll a stop sign or two when there’s no one else around. Just be sure to always observe the right-of-way, and stop if there’s conflicting traffic.
But seriously, always stop for red lights — especially if there is cross traffic of any kind.
And never forget that even if there doesn’t appear to be any traffic on the street you’re crossing, that doesn’t mean a speeding driver won’t come out of view and try to make it through the intersection before the light changes.
Which happens far too often. And too often with tragic results.
So just stop and wait a minute or two. Push the beg button if the light doesn’t change. And hesitate for moment before crossing to make sure everyone else stops, as well.
Because it beats the hell out of waking up in the ICU.
Or not waking up at all.
I hope you’ll join me in offering a prayer or best wishes for the victim, and hope for a full and fast recovery.
Photo from LAPD Central Traffic Division.
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He gets it.
Writing for Streetsblog, Mehmet Berker does a great job of slicing and dicing the new Montclair distracted walking ordinance that bans the use of electronic devices, including earpieces, while crossing the street.
Never mind that most drivers have their windows up and sound systems blaring. If they’re not too busy texting.
More to the point, the Montclair ordinance is at best a well-intentioned but misguided attempt at making safer streets – legislated by city leaders who suffer from extreme windshield bias. It’s also one more example of our car-centric society’s tendency to classify city streets as spaces solely for automobiles and place the responsibility for safety on anyone who is not driving.
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Local
Pasadena plans to extend its biking and walking networks — although the latter is usually known as sidewalks — as well as increasing the density of the Metro Bike bikeshare to 800 bikes at three docks per square mile, to help met climate goals.
The latest SGV Connect podcast discusses the proposed Orange Grove Blvd lane reconfiguration, as well as attempts to halt the popular Rose Bowl rides.
The LACBC is holding their March RideSELA community bike ride this Sunday through the Willowbrook and Florence-Firestone neighborhoods. Check to make sure it’s still on with this weekend’s predicted rain, however.
San Francisco plans to replace its fleet of firetrucks with smaller trucks that can fit on narrower streets. Although the purpose of the change is not to reduce conflicts with bike advocates, as the headline suggests, but to save lives.
Officials will now spend $100,000 to study backing out of a promised bike lane across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, and converting it to car use instead. Which should tell you how bicyclists rank in their priorities, when drivers get 100% of the bridge, and everyone else gets zip.
A new study suggests the obsession cities have with bike helmets could actually be undermining more effective ways to improve safety, noting that the real problem is people getting hit by cars.
A Jewish letter writer concludes that the reason his brother died in a 1971 bicycling wreck while his son survived another New York bike crash 44 years later is that his brother wasn’t wearing a helmet, while his son was. Or it could have something to do with his brother getting hit by a bus.
The father of a fallen Florida bicyclist calls for more sidewalks to protect riders. A better solution would be more bike lanes — especially protected bike lanes — since sidewalk riding actually increases the risk of a wreck.
Unbelievable. After a Florida driver gets arrested for the drunken, hit-and-run death of a man on a bicycle — at over 2.5 times the legal alcohol limit — he calls the victim a dumbass for riding in the lane, and says the police should go arrest the victim’s family instead.
Donors have raised the equivalent of over $33,000 for South African triathlete Mhlengi Gwala, who was attacked by three men who tried to cut his legs off with a chainsaw. There’s still no explanation for the bizarre attack.
But the reality is that despite all the shit weighing me down, I already had shed quite a bit of ballast. I had just spent an hour in a place where I could grapple with my demons, where I could turn the pedals and truly think. I felt this very real sense of peace to be on a bike, suffering a little bit and tending to myself in the best way I know how.
It’s a feeling I know well.
I remember waking up to the news that a plane had struck New York’s World Trade Center on 9/11, just in time to watch as the second one hit. And sat there transfixed before my TV until I couldn’t take another word.
I finally grabbed my helmet, got on my bike, and just started riding, ending up in Santa Monica where someone had tied ribbons around every tree in sight.
Nothing had changed when I got back. Yet somehow, the grief and despair of that day seemed a little easier to take.
According to the LA Times, Mhlengi Gwala was riding to a morning training session when the men attacked, refusing offers of his bicycle, cellphone and wallet.
Several attackers pulled Gwala off his bicycle as he cycled up a steep hill and sawed into his right calf, damaging muscle, nerves and bone, according to Jackson, who spoke by phone to the triathlete about the ordeal. They missed a main artery and surgeons are confident they can save the leg, Jackson said.
The attackers also started sawing into Gwala’s left leg before fleeing, enabling the athlete to crawl to a road and flag down a passing car to take him to a hospital
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Local
A Pasadena columnist gets to experience a punishment pass, as well as angry drivers, in the debate over whether to make Orange Grove Blvd safer for everyone.
Swiss politicians call for higher fines for “renegade” cyclists. They want the penalties for people on bikes to match the fines for driving infractions, even though lawbreaking bike riders pose far less danger to others.
Mumbai bicyclists are demanding safer storm grates that won’t trap bike wheels and send their riders tumbling. LA only addressed that problem in the last decade, though there still may be a few dangerous grates left behind in the streets.
A new Aussie study confirms once again that women are less likely to commute by bike if they consider it unsafe.
Competitive Cycling
The head of cycling’s governing body calls for an investigation into whether Britain’s Team Sky broke any doping rules. Which at this point, seems about like asking if the Russians interfered in the last election or if sea levels are rising.
Organizers of the Tour of Britain have lived up to their promise to give women riders equal prize money to the male cyclists. About damn time. Now let’s see the other races not only match the money, but the competitive opportunities provided to men, as well.
Thanks to Margaret W for her generous donation to help keep SoCal’s best bike news and advocacy coming your way every day. Contributions of any size, for any reason, are always appreciated.
And thanks to the cyclists at CBS2/KCAL9 for their efforts to give back to the community.
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Evidently, not everyone likes Santa Monica’s Bird scooters.
Thanks to David Drexler for the video.
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Local
Great letter to the editor from Jonathan Weiss saying if CD5 Councilmember Paul Koretz really wants to understand how to save lives while keeping traffic moving, he should stop killing traffic safety studies.
Santa Barbara gets its first protected bike lane, the first completed project from the city’s new Bike Master Plan. Although I have a hard time calling something separated from traffic by flimsy plastic bollards “protected.”
The road-raging Sante Fe NM driver who allegedly backed into a group of bicycling senior citizens says he just stopped in the middle of the road to confront the cyclists he claims flipped him off, and didn’t do anything wrong. Because apparently, he thinks slamming on his brakes in front of other road users and stopping in the middle of a highway is perfectly acceptable. Not that his story strains credibility or anything.
No surprise here. Aspen CO business owners are up in arms over plans to remove just 15 parking spaces to make room for a bike lane. Just like business people almost everywhere, they seem to like cars more than customers.
This is why people keep dying on our streets. An Ohio driver who spent four years in prison for killing a bike rider while driving drunk is headed back to jail for once again driving drunk, despite a lifetime driving ban.
On the other hand, our streets might be safer if LADOT’s parking enforcement officers stopped for people in crosswalks, too.
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The latest edition of Bike Talk feature’s Bryan Hance of Bike Index talking bike theft and prevention with yours truly and Carlos Morales of Stan’s Bike Shop.
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My favorite event of the annual LA Bike Week is set for May 15th, with the nondenominational Blessing of the Bicycles at Good Sam Hospital.
This year they’ll be honoring Metro with the Golden Spoke Award.
The Netherlands became safer when they got tired of burying children killed by cars. But you have to wonder if America’s kindermord moment will ever come, if it hasn’t already.
Then again, we don’t seem to place much value on kids killed by guns, either.
A new ranking of America’s best fondos rates Phil Gaimon’s Phil’s Cookie Fondo #8 in the US in just its 3rd year; last weekend’s Malibu GRANFONDO was ranked 13th, and the Campagnolo GranFondo San Diego was 3rd.
An Oakland letter writer says putting in a road diet is an “experiment by the traffic calming industry that is using social engineering and behavior modification” to force people onto bikeshare bikes. They’re onto us, comrades.
A road-raging Santa Fe NM driver admits to slamming on his brakes and backing into a senior citizens bike club, sending one rider to the hospital. Of course, in his telling, he’s the innocent victim of the rude and offensive riders who slammed into his car, then wanted to fight him; fortunately, he fled the scene before granny could kick his ass. And needless to say, he got off with a just a traffic ticket.
A North Carolina man gets 28 years behind bars for beating a bike rider to death after the victim complained about a too-close pass — and possibly used racial slurs. The driver’s son, who was 16-years old at the time of the attack, faces charges for joining in the road rage attack.
Carlton Reid of Bike Biz says bike mechanics are worth their weight in gold. Seriously, when you find a good wrench, you should treat him or her like your bike’s best friend. Because they are.
Britain’s proposed law banning dangerous cycling could carry a life sentence for fatal crashes; drivers currently face a maximum of 14 years, though that may be raised to match the bike bill.
Britain’s Daily Mail says an “activist” cycling group in Melbourne, Australia, is fighting to remove fines for not wearing a bike helmet. Which seems like a perfectly reasonable thing for “activists” to advocate for.
