Maybe we’re making progress after all.
Suddenly, there’s news of bike lanes sprouting all across the Los Angeles area, albeit to the apparent chagrin of some.
- LADOT broke ground on the three-mile Chandler Bicycle Connection in North Hollywood, closing the gap between the existing Orange Line Bike Path and Chandler Bike Paths.
- LADOT is moving forward with a plan to install protected bike lanes, new crosswalks and other street improvements along a 3.4-mile stretch of Pico Blvd between Crenshaw Blvd and Figueroa, which should be open in time for the ’28 Olympics.
- The North Westwood Neighborhood Council voted to approve plans for a protected bike lane on Ohio Ave, which offers the only practical east-west route between Westwood and Santa Monica that does not require riding past on-and-off ramps for the 10 Freeway, where at least two bike riders have been killed in recent years.
- Streetsblog’s Joe Linton offers more information on a number of bike projects in Los Angeles, including Crystal Springs Drive and Pershing Drive below, as well as plans for new bike lanes on Terra Bella Street after the East San Fernando light rail project results in ripping out 2.8 miles of bike lanes on Van Nuys Blvd.
- The Santa Monica City Council unanimously rejected a proposed safety plan for Santa Monica Blvd, instructing city staff to come back in 60 days with a plan to prioritize pedestrian and cyclist safety over vehicle throughput.
- Redondo Beach has officially opened an extension of the North Redondo Beach Bike Path, from Felton Lane to Inglewood Ave.
- Crystal Springs Drive in Griffith Park is looking a lot better, too, four years after Andrew Jelmert was killed in a hit-and-run while training for the former AIDS/LifeCycle Ride. Although I remain adamant that cars don’t belong in parks. Period.
But evidently drivers are up in arms over at least some of the changes, as opposition grows from “some residents and local officials who say the plans could worsen traffic congestion, eliminate parking, and create confusing road designs.”
And even the death of a pregnant mom isn’t enough to get protected bike lanes on Pershing Drive.
………
This is why people keep dying on our streets.
Cal Matters reports that the California DMV not only kept a driver on the road, despite at least 16 previous moving violations and four crashes, they fought to keep his driving record a secret.
Even from persecutors after he was charged with vehicular manslaughter for killing a two-year old boy.
And adding insult to grievous injury, the DMV renewed his license just a year later, while the manslaughter charge was still pending.
Surely, the DMV did some sort of review before deciding it was safe to let (Kostas) Linardos stay on the road.
Right?
The DMV spent close to a year fighting to keep the answer to that a secret, refusing to release information on Linardos without a court order and then urging a judge not to issue such a decree. The agency’s lawyer argued in a filing that prosecutors wanted records “for the improper purpose of smearing the DMV for alleged and unfounded wrongdoing.”
Prosecutors said they wanted the DMV records to help show Linardos knew the risks of driving recklessly, which is something they needed to prove to make a felony vehicular manslaughter charge stick.
When the issue finally made it to court this year, the attorney representing the agency made a shocking admission: The DMV had no records of any investigation into a longtime reckless driver who killed a 23-month-old boy. The agency didn’t even appear to have held a hearing before deciding it was fine to let Linardos stay on the road.
Un-effing-believable.
Thanks to Megan for the heads-up.
………
A new study from San Diego’s Rady Children’s Hospital shows a more than 300% increase in ebike injuries in just the last four years.
Although once again, there’s no attempt to differentiate between ped-assist ebikes and electric motorbikes.
According to the study, the hospital recorded 262 ebike-related trauma cases last year, with most of the victims 11 and 14 years old, with a noticeable spike among 13‑year‑olds.
While that likely corresponds to the increase in ebike use, the hospital also reported ebike injuries were likely to be more severe than those caused by regular bicycles.
It’s also questionable how many of those ebikes were actually street legal, or could legally be ridden by children that young, who are limited to Class 1 and 2 bikes with a maximum speed of 20 mph.
Let alone on the freeway.
https://twitter.com/Sandiegohumor/status/2030712819264737671
Thanks to Ellectrek for the link.
Meanwhile, Newport Beach is considering banning ebikes from all schools except for high school students, and 7th graders if they have written parental permission. And once again, without differentiating between ped-assist bikes and e-motos.
………
San Francisco Streetsblog’s Roger Rudick doesn’t pull his punches after Caltrans ripped out a painted Oakland bike lane, replacing them with, yes, sharrows.
And as studies have shown, sharrows are worse than nothing when it comes to preventing injuries to bicyclists, and shouldn’t be used on streets with speeds above 35 mph.
Actions speak louder than words, Lucy pulls the football away again; whatever aphorism or metaphor one wants to use, Caltrans proves once again that it’s run by bad actors who betray the public in their relentless pursuit of auto-über alles policies.
Then there’s this.
With the removal of the painted bike lanes, which were woefully inadequate on a multi-lane street such as Oak Street to start with, Caltrans now expects cyclists to share a lane with traffic. Keep in mind that this is also a major route to I-880 and is plagued with non-stop speeding traffic and red-light running. The removed bike lanes are on a major bike commuter routes that connect the Oakland ferry terminal, Lake Merritt BART, and thousands of residential units…
Nobody, really, should be surprised. Caltrans, Alameda County, and the consultants who work for them have acted in bad faith throughout this project.
Never mind that Caltran’s ostensible Complete Streets policy requires the state transportation agency to “provide comfortable, convenient, and connected complete streets facilities on all projects and in all project phases, including construction and maintenance,” according to Jeanie Ward-Waller, Director of Transportation Advocacy at Fearless.
She should know, since Ward-Waller was the whistleblower who was “reassigned” from her position as Deputy Director of Planning and Multimodal Programs at Caltrans after warning that a Sacramento highway project violated that same policy.
Just one more reminder, if we needed it, that the agency’s Complete Streets requirement needs to be codified into law, since they only seem to follow it when it’s convenient for them or the public demands it.
………
I had the time to rip into this piece from a rightwing Irish site, as a writer complains about the “fetishization” and “relentless promotion” of the government’s “obsession” with bicycling.
Instead, we’ll have to let Road.cc handle this one.
According to Vincent, from the “perception of the average person”, the number of cyclists in Dublin using the city’s bike lanes “is so small that it is set completely off balance with the amount of space they take up”.
“Hardly anyone uses these lanes, and yet we are forced to swallow it when an entire lane from a road is sacrificed – often with the result of creating an infuriating one-way system in the area – to make space for more bikes; the same bikes that seem never to fill the lanes they are currently provided with,” he continues, failing to grasp the point of cycling infrastructure entirely.
Never mind that those “empty” bike lanes have resulted in a 50% increase in bicycle trips.
But that inconvenient fact probably wouldn’t fit his narrative.
………
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. Residents in Devon, England are getting out the torches and pitchforks over construction work for a new protected bikeway, which will force a three-mile detour that will add “minutes” to their commute.
No bias here, either. After a woman in Singapore was struck by a driver while riding her bicycle in a crosswalk connecting two sides of a bike path, commenters online wrongly assumed she was required to get off her bike and walk it across the street.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
The LAPD is looking for a suspect in a bike-by shooting in Historic South Central Los Angeles, after a 36-year old man was shot by someone on a bicycle while sitting in his car at Washington Blvd and Santee Street.
The French bike rider who was caught on video shoving a five-year old girl out of his way on a snowy bike path says he didn’t do anything wrong, and the whole thing was blown out of proportion.
………
Local
If you left your bicycle, cellphone, blowtorch or prosthetic leg on a Metro bus or train, they may be holding it for you to reclaim. Although it makes sense that someone would leave their bike behind after losing their leg on the bus, which would make it kinda hard to pedal.
Momentum hails Santa Monica resident Caro Vilain, aka mobilityforwho on Instagram, for her “viral videos steering a fun-fueled cycling revolution.” I would have embedded some of her videos, but Insta was being uncooperative tonight.
State
Streetsblog offers a first look at transportation bills advancing in the state legislature.
Streets For All is out with their annual California Mobility Report Card grading individual legislators for their support of mobility legislation, or the lack thereof.
Evidently, complaining works. The Bay Area’s Caltrain is backing off new restrictions on taking cargo bikes, panniers or child seats onto their bike cars.
Police in Redwood City used license plate readers to snare a pair of bikewear thieves, who somehow walked out of a bike store with more than four grand worth of bicycle clothing.
That’s more like it. Palo Alto is using an app to reward people for riding a bicycle, ebike, e-scooter or electric skateboard, providing them with money that can be spent at local businesses.
A 27-year old man was found safe when he was reported missing after setting out for Big Sur from Monterey on his bicycle.
Say what? Sad news from Sacramento, where a man died in the hospital after he was struck by a driver while riding a bicycle — yet the police bizarrely said they suspected the death was a suicide, without offering any explanation.
National
Um, okay. Ebike imports to the US either a) set a new record last year, or b) declined significantly from 2024 levels, and c) may have exceeded the total value of regular bicycles for the first time. Or not.
On the other hand, bicycling contributed $3.67 billion to the American economy last year, an increase of 3.4% over the previous year.
Clean Technica recommends escaping the “Trump pump” on a ebike.
That’s more like it, too. The governor of New Mexico has signed a bill requiring driving students to take at least three hours of training on how to operate their vehicles around vulnerable road users, including bicyclists, pedestrians and emergency service workers.
Bicyclists in Omaha, Nebraska are calling for safety changes after a bike rider was killed by the driver of a semi-truck, following the removal of one of the city’s most-used bicycling routes for a streetcar project.
Heartbreaking news from Pennsylvania, where a 15-year old girl was killed while on a brief bike ride with her twin sister, at an intersection that had received more that 100 complaints from local residents.
A North Carolina newspaper offers an in-depth report on last month’s 950-mile Remember the Removal bike ride to help members of the Cherokee Nation reconnect with their heritage, while retracing the northern route of the horrific Trail of Tears; an estimated quarter of the 16,000 tribal members died along the way when the Cherokee people were forced to walk to Oklahoma from their Southern Appalachian homelands.
Florida lawmakers unanimously approved a draconian new ebike law that requires ebike riders to slow down to 10 mph within 50 feet of pedestrians on sidewalks or shared pathways.
International
What took so long? A man in the Isle of Wight faces charges seven months after he pushed a woman in her 60s off a seawall, resulting in injuries to her head, legs and face.
Custom lowrider bikes crafted by a Los Cruces, New Mexico artist made an appearance at the Paris Fashion Week.
Police in Soweto, South Africa have yet to make an arrest in an apparent hit-and-run that killed a popular security guard as he rode his bike to work in January, though they have brought in a suspect vehicle for testing.
Competitive Cycling
California’s Luke Lamperti claimed his first win on the season, sprinting to victory in stage 1 of Paris-Nice on Sunday.
Velo says the 2026 road cycling world championships in Montréal “will be an old-school rainbow jersey brawl.”
Twenty-two-year old Belgian pro Leander Van Hautegem was the subject of a “miracle rescue” when a passing forest ranger found him lying in a ditch with a severe concussion, collapsed lung, and broken rib after he crashed on a training ride.
Indiana University is expecting a record crowd for next month’s 75th annual running of the school’s iconic Little 500, made famous in Breaking Away. Which remains the all-time best bike movie, in my not-so-humble opinion.
A DC area public radio station reports on the annual Garage Racing National Championships, which was held last month in a multilevel Virginia parking garage.
Finally…
That feeling when a major consumer magazine suggests that a 14 buck ebike cover will somehow protect it from thieves. Now drivers aren’t even waiting for real bicycles to crash into.
And throwing your bicycle at the cops to make an escape is not one of the many recommended uses for it. And if they your bike, just hand over your backpack full of illegal weed.
………
Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
