Every donation is being matched dollar for dollar this week, so that $7,000 really represents $14,000 to help keep bike riders safe on a dangerous corridor that’s way down on the city’s priority list.
Even Las Cruces, New Mexico has installed popup bike lanes in an effort to get people safely outside while they study how to improve bike and pedestrian safety throughout the city. Unlike a certain megalopolis to the west, with roughly 40 times the population.
An Evansville, Indiana community college partnered with a local school district to give away 280 bicycles, along with locks and helmets; the annual program has given away over 3,500 bikes over the last 15 years.
However, advocates are split on the benefits of installing a protected bike lane on the busy roadway, with some fearing it could do more harm than good on the steep downhill grade.
It’s been too long since I’ve ridden that area to recall specific details of the roadway. However, in many cases, it’s safer to have a separated lane with a wide buffer to give riders room to maneuver if need be, rather than trapping riders in a protected bike lane.
Which is exactly the opposite of what’s called for on the uphill side, or virtually any other situation.
It also doesn’t help that bicyclists haven’t even been consulted about planned improvements to the street.
(La Jolla Traffic & Transportation Board) Chairman Dave Abrams asked (bicyclist Kurt) Hoffman and others to confer with a La Jolla Community Planning Association subcommittee, which LJCPA President Diane Kane said was looking into pedestrian and car access in and out of The Village, including via Torrey Pines Road.
On June 24, Kane told the La Jolla Light that the subcommittee, called the Village Visioning Committee, has “been working diligently on streetscapes in The Village and on entrances into La Jolla,” such as Pearl and Nautilus streets.
She said she hasn’t seen anything yet for Torrey Pines Road. “So far, bicyclists haven’t been part of the committee’s conversation on traffic calming and streetscape enhancements but will be welcome once the initial concepts are melded into a coherent whole,” Kane said.
Unfortunately, that’s how planning too often works.
Coming up later this hour… we tried to speak to GOP House members about their bogus January 6th conspiracy theories. Congressman Mo Brooks would not comment and rode off on his bicycle… pic.twitter.com/LMSedEhUDi
Apparently, in Hamilton, Ontario, you’re supposed to wait patiently at a stop sign until drivers in each direction wave you through the intersection.
Which will never, ever happen in real life.
And never wear headphones on a bike, even though you can usually still hear traffic noise, unless you’ve got the volume cranked up to ridiculous levels.
Unlike, say, drivers in their hermetically sealed vehicles, with the sound up so high they can’t even hear a fire truck bearing down on them.
A Florida man has just 1,500 miles to go on an 11,500-mile ride crisscrossing the US to raise funds to fight cancer; he’s raised nearly $93,000 of his $100,000 goal for cancer nonprofit Chemo Noir.
The husband of a bike-riding Florida woman who was run down by a hit-and-run driver is worried that the 89-year old woman is still driving while out on bail, even though she somehow couldn’t see two adult people on bicycles directly in front of her. Or cared enough to stick around after getting out of her car to look at the crumpled riders she’d nearly killed. Yet another example of authorities not taking the keys from an elderly driver until it’s too late.
June 25, 2021 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Donation match for LA’s 1st private/public bike lane partnership, and unconfirmed bicycling death in Solano Beach
Back in my blissfully misspent youth, there was a popular cartoon that showed a couple buzzards sitting on a fence.
One turns to the other, and says “Patience my ass. I’m going to kill something.”
It seemed funny at the time.
But that’s kind of where some LA bike advocates are right now.
Rather than wait endlessly for the city to finally get around to improving safety for bike riders and pedestrians on Sunset and Santa Monica Blvds, they’re trying to speed things up by helping pay for it through a private/public sponsorship.
And they need your help.
Here’s how Terence Heuston, the former author of LA Bike Dad, describes it.
Sunset4All, in partnership with the LACBC, is launching a crowdfunding “match” campaign to fund the initial engineering plans for protected bike lanes and pedestrian improvements on Sunset and Santa Monica Boulevards through East Hollywood, Silver Lake, and Echo Park.
If the community reaches our $25,000 goal, angel donors will MATCH THEIR DONATION. Every dollar of their tax-deductible donation will be DOUBLED if we reach our goal! Declare your independence from traffic by donating before 4th of July!
The NUMBER of donors is as important as the number of dollars. The city of LA installs safe street projects where there is broad community support. Every individual donor is an individual VOTE for this project. Even a small donation is tangible PROOF that Angelenos support safer streets and protected bike lanes.
The private/public partnership model has been used successfully in other regions to accelerate the installation of the Arapahoe bike lanes in Denver and the Indianapolis Cultural Trail. We want to transfer this innovative model to Los Angeles and release a flood of protected bike lanes region wide. It all starts with Sunset4All reaching its fundraising goal.
And yes, I just opened my wallet and put my money where my mouth is. If every else gives the same amount, we just need another 999 people to follow suit.
Assuming the victim’s death is confirmed, that will mean nine people have been killed riding their bikes on the suddenly mean streets of San Diego County in just the first six months of this year.
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Calbike calls on everyone to write your California state senator to urge their support — or in one case, opposition — for a trio of bills.
AB 371: This measure will place a large and unprecedented insurance requirement on shared mobility systems. It won’t make our streets safer but it will put every bike-share system in California, public and private, out of business. Email your senator to vote NO on AB 371 to save bike-share.
AB 1238 (Ting): The Freedom to Walk Act puts an end to unjust jaywalking laws advanced by the auto industry a century ago. these laws prevent people from enjoying their streets on foot safely, in the interest of making them the exclusive domain of cars. Today, jaywalking laws serve as a sometimes tragic pretext for biased policing, as a hugely disproportionate share of jaywalking tickets are issued to Black Californians. Tell your senator to support the Freedom to Walk Act, AB 1238.
Over the years, Nelson developed an encyclopedic knowledge of Los Angeles transportation issues, and her insights and in-depth reporting will be missed.
On the other hand, that means that her old job is now available.
— T.W.U. Local 320 – L.A. Metro Bike Share (@union_bike) June 24, 2021
As the son of a union man, I only wish my slowly healing hands would let me join in on the ride.
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We’ll have to see how it ends up when they flesh out the details. But right now, it looks like active transportation may have lost out in the bipartisan compromise on the transportation bill.
Pink Bike wants to teach you how to actually learn new bike skills.
Evidently, there’s a lot to learn, since this is just episode one of a ten part series.
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This is who we share the road with.
ROAD RAGE INCIDENT: Police say a Hemet man discharged bear spray during a road rage incident in Seal Beach. A child was among those injured, and police say he may have done this before. https://t.co/8QoN6IM0Dcpic.twitter.com/171AzsUaJA
Authorities near my Colorado hometown are looking for a man who apparently took offense when a woman nearly backed over his fellow bike rider, and punched her in the face. Seriously, don’t do that. It’s only natural to feel anger and fear when someone nearly hits you or a riding companion, but violence is never the answer.
After an Oklahoma group gave a young man a new bike when they learned he had to walk 17 miles roundtrip to work and back, a crowdfunding campaign raised nearly $50,000 to buy him a new car. Which just goes to show that kind gestures can take an unexpected bad turn.
News is just breaking that a woman was killed in a collision while riding in La Jolla yesterday afternoon, continuing the county’s unusual rash of bicycling deaths.
The victim, identified only as a 34-year old woman, was reportedly riding in the right lane of the roadway when she merged into the left lane, and was struck by a 74-year old driver.
She died at the scene.
The driver remained following the crash — which should not need to be said, but sadly, does — and was not suspected of being under the influence.
However, the report raises a few questions, since there is a bike lane on Torrey Pines Road where she would have presumably been riding, unless she had shifted into the right lane in preparation for merging into the left lane.
In which case, why didn’t she see the large oncoming Mercedes to her left — and why didn’t the driver see her?
There is also the question of why she was merging into the left lane, since there is no street to the left on the three-way intersection. It’s possible she was attempting to make a U-turn, or may have been turning onto a pathway that appears to lead to the UCSD campus on the north side of the roadway.
And as always, the question is whether there were any independent witnesses, other than the driver, who actually saw her move in front of the car that killed her. Although there should have been several people around the busy intersection at that hour who may have seen the crash.
The story reports that the collision is still under investigation, so hopefully we’ll learn more soon.
This is at least the 29th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the eighth that I’m aware of in San Diego County already this year, in what is turning out to be an exceptionally bloody year.
Update: The victim has not been publicly identified. However, comments below indicate she was from India with her husband, and the mother of a one-year old child.
Meanwhile, Douglas Alden left the following comment.
I passed by the crash on my bike commute home shortly after it happened. It occurred in the southbound lanes of North Torrey Pines Road just north of the intersection with Revelle College Drive. The police had closed the road in both directions and several cars were pulled over. The body of the woman that was killed was covered by a yellow sheet and was still lying in the street in front of the car. It is possible that the cyclist was crossing lanes to make a left from southbound North Torrey Pines onto Revelle College Drive. There is a protected left turn lane at the intersection. It is hard to speculate without knowing all the facts.
There are a number of other comments below that add insight to this tragedy.
Which raises the tragic question of what scientific breakthroughs in the field could be lost or delayed because of her needless death.
Tyagi leaves behind her husband of six years, a scientist at The Scripps Research Institute, and their 11-month old son, who is just shy of his first birthday.
Meanwhile, her parents and other family members have been unable to enter the US due to Covid restrictions in India, or to get her body sent back to the country of her birth, compounding the tragedy.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Swati Tyagi and all her loved ones.
Phillip Young writes today with a brilliant DIY workaround for the problem of carbon wheels not being recognized by traffic signal sensors.
Would you please pass this traffic light safety tip along to your readers with carbon rim wheels?
Carbon rim bicycle wheels usually do not trigger traffic signal light sensor coils buried in the pavement and can be a safety issue. The non-conducting carbon rims do not change the magnet field around sensor coils, so the traffic light doesn’t change for you.
If the traffic signal light doesn’t trip in your travel direction and you have waited for 2 or 3 minutes, you may be inclined to run the red traffic signal light dodging traffic at your peril.
My carbon rim bicycle wheels would not trigger traffic light sensor coils buried in the pavement until aluminum foil tape was applied to the rim circumference with some foil tape overlap.
I added 3M adhesive backed aluminum foil tape cut about the width of rim tape where the normal cloth rim tape goes. The adhesive backed aluminum foil tape sticks well to the carbon rim material and weighs almost nothing. This should work on all carbon rims using inner tubes.
Push the aluminum foil tape down against the rim to get full contact and adhesion. Install the normal cloth rim tape on top of the aluminum foil tape. The foil tape also offers additional support to the rim tape over the rim spoke holes.
The rim with aluminum foil tape now reliably triggers traffic light sensor coils. The bicycle wheel rim with aluminum foil should be positioned parallel to and directly over the sensor coils buried in the pavement rewarding you with a green light.
May your travels be safe and green lights will always be with you,
Phil
PS: Aluminum rim bicycle wheels usually work triggering traffic signal lights if the wheel is positioned parallel to and directly over the pavement sensor coils.
For those looking for a more detailed explanation of why this works, Young followed up with this post from Cyclelicious.
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Nextdoor users have been reporting a possible bicycling fatality Monday morning on Dover Drive near PCH in Newport Beach.
So far, though, I’ve been unable to find any confirmation. So let’s hope that Nextdoor, which is not exactly known for its veracity, is wrong this time.
Thanks to David Huntsman and Lois for the heads-up.
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Downey has a new painted bike lane on Old River School Road.
Los Angeles received an $18 million grant for safety improvements to the Broadway corridor in South Los Angeles, rather than the $64 million the city asked for, on the condition that they limit the project to the safe street infrastructure component of the application for the deadly street, and guarantee completion; the street is one of LA’s most dangerous streets for bike riders and pedestrians.
An Ontario, Canada man begged a judge for mercy after he was convicted of the hit-and-run death of a bike-riding woman, insisting he just “panicked and made a mistake.” Never mind that the prosecutor is only asking for a “stiff sentence” of only two years behind bars. Then again, how much mercy did he show his victim, who was sentenced to death at his hands?
The AP reports Chock has a long criminal record, dating back to a 2007, when he pled guilty to a reduced charge after being indicted for aggravated assault, followed by disorderly conduct with a weapon a few months later.
Three years later, Chock was allowed to walk with probation after prosecutors dropped three DUI charges, allowing him to plead to a single count of felony aggravated DUI, as well as shoplifting and another aggravated assault.
He ended up serving 19 months behind bars anyway, after violating his probation.
Chock himself is in critical condition after he was shot by police during a standoff following the crash.
Maybe someday our courts will take driving under the influence seriously, and put the public’s right to safety on the roads above the privilege — not right — of driving.
Lentz was just below the entrance to the Daley Ranch Recreation Area when Connor rounded a blind curve at a high rate of speed, slamming into him head-on.
Yet despite a well-deserved sentence of 29 years and ten months, Connor could be out in just six years due to a quirk in California law, Prop 57, passed by voters in 2016, allows a prisoner to be considered for parole after completing the sentence for the primary offense if it was a nonviolent crime
Remarkably, Connor’s primary sentence of vehicular homicide is not considered a violent crime.
Although I’m sure Lentz and his loved ones would disagree.
The Transport Workers Union of America reports that Metro Bike workers are trying to unionize.
Workers always deserve a strong voice on the job. Glad to see that @BikeMetro workers are exercising their right to form a union with @transportworker. Together, we will grow the LA Metro Bike Share system and make sure that bike share jobs are good-paying, long-term career jobs. pic.twitter.com/AstPCcshej
Apparently this was done by the construction crew so they could lay the new concrete without disturbing the bicycle.
They seem to have wired the bike to the rack—see the highlights in these two pictures—to suspend it above nominal ground level, without disturbing the lock. pic.twitter.com/ZaWzTabEie
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. Oklahoma residents are fighting plans for a bike path through their neighborhood, trotting out the trope that bicycles and pedestrians don’t mix — even though they’d be on separate pathways — and fears that people on motorcycles or small cars would use the pathway. Which says a lot more about the mentality of Oklahoma residents and drivers than it does about bicycles.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
The San Diego Reader accuses scooter companies of bullying, and says the tragic death of actress Lisa Banes raises safety concerns for the San Diego area, after she was killed by a hit-and-run e-scooter rider in New York. If they’re that worried about a single death caused by a scooter rider, just wait until they learn about cars and the people who drive them.
I want to be like him when I grow up. An 83-year old British man is back on his bike, just two weeks after a major endo left him a “bloody mess.” I mean, aside from the endo and bloody mess, that is.
June 21, 2021 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Six bicyclists critically injured in attack by pick driver in Arizona bike race, and LGBTQ+ hate from Florida pickup driver
Once again, a driver has used a motor vehicle as a weapon, leaving broken bodies in his wake.
This time during a bike race in Show Low, Arizona Saturday morning.
But just minutes after the men’s 55 and older masters race began, the driver of a Ford F-150 pickup traveling in the opposite direction deliberately crossed over three lanes of traffic to slam into a group of bicyclists, critically injuring six people, with a seventh rider hospitalized in stable condition.
Two other people suffered less serious injuries.
A witness describes the horrors of the crash, which came just six minutes after the start, with bodies flying in every direction. Be forewarned before you click on the link, though, because the story features disturbing photos of the victims lying on the ground after the crash, as well as their mangled bikes and helmets.
You’ll find most of those same photos here, without the graphic photos of the victims. But even then, there’s a photo of a bike wheel and busted fork stuck in the truck’s grill that will haunt me forever.
Helmets, shoes and crumpled and broken bicycles were strewn across the street after the crash, and a tire was wedged into the grill of the truck, which had damage to its top and sides and a bullet hole in a window.
Instead, he backed out and drove down the road, before making a U-turn and heading back toward the bicyclists, who feared a second attack that thankfully never came.
It should be at least six counts of attempted murder. And hopefully, with a sentence to be served consecutively so he’ll be locked up for a very long time.
The Eastside Riders want your support to win an LA 2050 grant.
Save the date 6.21.21 we need all of your votes, shares and telling a friend to help us win 1k. We’re in the @LA2050 grant finals and we need you to help us #win!! We’re a finalist in the play category hope to get your vote starting on Monday 9:00 am pst.https://t.co/XP2U50Rb7gpic.twitter.com/FyWceSBJGM
A Kenyon rider offers a fascinating view of bicycling conditions in east central Africa, with a challenging soda-fueled, 102-mile ride to the Tanzanian border and back on torturous tuk tuk filled roads.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. Opponents of a bike path through a Florida seniors community insist that “bicycles and people do not mix.”Apparently forgetting that people ride bicycles, including many older people. And those who do are usually healthier and happier than those who don’t, regardless of age.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Now that’s more like it. Responding to complaints of anti-social behavior from groups of bike riders and skateboarders, London police welcome them to ride in the city center, where its relatively safe compared to other areas.
Metro will vote this Thursday on whether to modernize their Highway Program to open up spending for bus lanes, bike lanes, pedestrian infrastructure and other projects that work to reduce Vehicle Mile Traveled, instead of adding lanes to already overcrowded freeway.
In yet another example of keeping dangerous drivers on the road until it’s too late, a Massachusetts man was arrested for his fifth DUI after hitting a bike rider(scroll down), following four previous convictions; he was also arrested for possession of a powdery substance believe to be coke. Let’s hope they finally take it seriously this time, and he never drives again.
An op-ed writer in the New York Post insists that the city has to reign in ebikes after the death of Gone Girl actress Lisa Banes, and the ebike hit-and-run that left her seriously injured. Except Banes was struck by a rider on an e-scooter, not an ebike. And in her case, the problem wasn’t the ebike, it was a salmon delivery bicyclist going the wrong way in a bike lane on the wrong side of the street.
A writer for Cycling Weeklytakes a ride through the UK’s equivalent of Top Gun on Northern Wales’ Mach Loop, one of just two places on earth where you can look down and see ground-hugging fighter pilots roaring beneath you.
Never have heroes unless you can accept that they’re just as screwed up as the rest of us.
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They didn’t waste any time observing Juneteenth this week.
Just a day after Joe Biden signed a rare bipartisan bill making the day Texas slaves belatedly learned they had been freed two years earlier a national holiday, federal government offices will close today, since the 19th falls on a Saturday.
Highlights include the original home of the groundbreaking gay magazine The Advocate, and the Black Cat Tavern, home to what may have been the nation’s first gay rights protest, two years before Stonewall.
I drove by on Firestone and Downey Avenue today and saw a crushed pink bicycle next to a white Jeep. Also looked like they had someone on a gurney covered in a white sheet. I’m wondering what exactly happened? I walk on Firestone often to go to the gym and it really shook me to my core. Especially the pink bike. How scary and extremely sad.
Thanks to Joe Linton for the heads-up.
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You may not want to walk your bike in the coming autonomous future.
Or bend over, for that matter.
Sam Schwartz, 2nd keynote speaker at #ICTH on warnings by #AV manufacturers. Be afraid! Be very afraid! This is what Toyota says: pic.twitter.com/63Za3zx9ri
Correction: A series of comments from Eban points out that these warnings come from the current Toyota owner’s manual. So despite what the tweet says, it doesn’t refer to future autonomous vehicles, but rather, current automotive safety systems.
However, as near as I can tell, the only practical difference that makes is that you might get run down by car that can’t detect you and its inattentive and/or distracted driver now, as opposed to getting run down by the car alone at some point in the future.
LAist wants to know how the pandemic affected your personal experience on the streets, as bicycling and walking were up 22% last year, but too many people who couldn’t work from home fell through the cracks. A 22% jump is nice, but ridership doubled in a number of cities that implemented popup bike lanes during the pandemic. And many of those were made permanent after proving their worth.
Hats off to the Mammoth Lakes Police Department, who mostly get it right with their Rules of the Road for bicyclists, thankfully not starting with the usual recommendation to wear a helmet. The only place they miss the mark is on the many exceptions to the requirement to ride to the right, which few cops don’t seem to get. Before anyone comments, yes, I always wear a helmet when I ride. But they’re not magic hats that somehow ward off Mack trucks. Or keep you safe if they don’t. Your best protection is to avoid the need for one in the first place.
A writer for Bicycling says the real problem with “wheelie kids” is that too many people see Black and Brown kids on bikes as a threat. Although to be fair, the weaving in and out of traffic, popping wheelies and playing chicken with oncoming drivers typical of Bike Life rides could have something to do with it. Once again, read it on Yahoo if Bicycling blocks you.
A retired Connecticut bike cop offers reasonable advice on how to stay safe riding your bike. Although the newspaper’s editor should go to journalist jail for trotting out the tired “safety is a two-way street” cliche.
VeloNewslooks at the “lionesses of L39ion,” after Skylar Schneider and Kendall Ryan finished 1st and 2nd in last weekend’s Tulsa Tough while riding for Cory and Justin Williams’ L39ion of Los Angeles cycling team.
Earlier this week, we mentioned a story with tips on how to ride a bike with your dog.
Something I hope to do with our corgi, once I find a decent e-cargo bike I can mange to ride without her killing me.
And something Adam Ginsberg is already doing with his.
Well now…..it’s just so happens I started riding with our rescued Boston Terrier, Bailey, last July. During one of our daily walks, my wife and I saw a man riding with his dog…but the dog was in a backpack!! I had a good hunch Bailey would enjoy doing the same. So, I employed my mAd Google sKiLlz, and found…..www.k9sportsack.com.
They have all manner of pooch backpack goodness so us 2 legged humans can take our 4 legged family members on adventures. Within a few days, a pack arrived, and I immediately set about training Bailey to ride. My hunch proved correct, and she fell in love with riding.
To help protect her vulnerable eyes, I added a pair of Rex-Specs, too.
Now, we go on rides 2-3 times a week, down to the beach, and thru downtown Ventura, where the city closed off Main Street to cars and opened it up to restaurants, shops, people and bikes (yay!!!).
We get so many great reactions – people from 1 to 100 love seeing us riding around town. We regularly are asked if they can take a picture, and Bailey never says no.
I already have the backpack Ginsberg mentioned, a gift from a fellow corgi aficionado. And a pair of pink corgi-sized goggles that our last corgi never took to.
So maybe I’ll have to give it a try once my hands heal enough to get back on a bike.
An outstanding emergency response/preparedness project award for its COVID-19 pandemic response programs, including the al fresco dining program, slow streets program, automated touchless traffic signals, and support for COVID-19 testing and vaccination sites.
An outstanding bikeways and trails project award for the new protected bike lanes on Fifth and Sixth streets from Spring Street to Central Avenue.
An outstanding applied mapping technology project award for its GIS strategic plan, which uses all available department and city data to create a network to identify priority projects for Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Green New Deal.
An outstanding big data project award for its pandemic travel behavior study, which analyzed travel trends during the pandemic, affirming long-standing racial inequities created by decades of policies oppressing people of color.
What’s not on the list, of course, is any mention of popup bike lanes created during the pandemic. Because there weren’t any, unlike most other major cities.
Nor was there any attempt to speed up implementation of the city’s mobility plan or traffic elements of the Green New Deal while traffic was lighter during the pandemic, squandering a once-in-a-generation opportunity.
There was also no mention of an award for implementing LA’s Vision Zero program, apparently acknowledging that nibbling around the edges with easy to implement, non-controversial projects will never make a significant dent in the city’s traffic fatality rate.
A rate that’s measured in broken human lives and shattered families.
So let’s all give LADOT a warm and well-deserved round of applause for what they accomplished last year.
While recognizing that it’s nowhere near enough. And that we’ll be paying for a generation for what wasn’t done when they had the chance.
Evidently, I’m not the only one who thinks so.
Yesterday, we asked @LADOTofficial what it would take to double their pace of active transportation implementation as part of LA’s Green New Deal. LADOT built a lot of bike lanes during the pandemic, but it’s not enough and not fast enough to meet our climate and mobility goals. https://t.co/MOIuMhs4pt
And yes, it can be done, if we have the will to do it.
In 2012, #Ghent Belgium’s bike trip mode share was 22%.
They wanted to get it to 35% by 2030.
Thru creative, decisive action, they reached 35% by 2019, in 7 years, 11 YEARS EARLY!@Streetfilms tells the #Ghent story that I learned working there in 2019.pic.twitter.com/pEVhCUh65z
Or rather, he was run over by the police officer responding to the call, who was too busy reading street address numbers to pay attention to the roadway ahead of her.
Never mind the actual crime scene.
And never mind that the initial police report didn’t even mention the collision, which the police chief later wrote off as just an oopsie.
No word on whether it was the oopsie or the gun actually killed the poor guy.
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LA County wants your input on how we’ll all get around in the eastern San Gabriel Valley in the years to come.
More details on yesterday’s tragic news about the fatal driveby shooting of a 22-year old man in South LA, which also wounded an eight-year old girl; the victim was Marcelis Gude, son of the man behind the Twitter account @FilmThePoliceLA, who was apparently mistaken for a gang member as he stood speaking with a woman. The girl, who is in stable condition, was just collateral damage, caught up in the gunfire as she was riding by on her bike.
Thirty-one people have suffered broken bones at the hands and batons of Bakersfield cops over the last four years, including a 37-year old man who was beaten for the crime of not having a light on his bicycle, ending up with a compound fracture and charges for assaulting an officer and resisting arrest by allowing them to beat him.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitutionprofiles the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition, and their efforts to make bicycling safer and more comfortable in the Big Peach.
An Ottawa, Canada man was overjoyed to get his stolen bike back, newly repaired by a local bike shop; he had initially gone viral for wishing the thief well when it was stolen back in January, saying he hoped they treated it with respect and enjoyed the ride.
A British man learns the hard way that just because you’ve safely left your vintage bike outside for the last decade doesn’t mean someone won’t steal it.
Despite Bonin’s overwhelming popularity, winning 71% of the vote in the 11th Council District in 2017, he has been repeatedly targeted by conservatives who hate his policies, but haven’t been able to beat him at the ballot box.
Whether this latest recall attempt is a genuine effort to get him out of office, or just an attempt to harass and distract him, it seems like a remarkable waste of time and money for someone who will be up for re-election in less than a year.
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No hypocrisy here.
Speaking at yesterday’s meeting of the Los Angeles City Council’s Transportation Committee, outgoing CD5 Councilmember Paul Koretz says hardly anyone uses the bike lanes in his Westside district.
@PaulKoretzCD5 says that bike lanes in his district “you hardly ever see anyone using them” though calls #DTLA bike lanes “heavily used” “smashing success” a “triumph” and says they should be expanded
That couldn’t possibly have anything to do with Koretz repeatedly blocking bike lanes on Westwood Blvd and other major streets in his district, though.
Could it?
People might be more likely to use them if they were safer and provided more separation from the Westside’s high speed traffic, legal and otherwise.
And if they connected with other safe bike lane in an actual network that could be used to travel throughout the district, rather than a handful of disconnected bike lanes that unexpectedly end, forcing riders to fight their way through heavy traffic.
A failure of planning that can be laid directly at Koretz’s feet, who is clearly all in favor of building bike lanes.
In someone else’s district.
Correction: Call it a poor word choice on my part. The failure was not one of planning, as former LADOT Bicycle Coordinator Michelle Mowery pointed out in the comments yesterday.
I’d like to take issue with your use of the word “planning” in respect to the lack of bikeways on the Westside. It is not “a failure of planning” that the Westside does not have a sufficient bikeway network. What the Westside does not have is enough political will. The planning was done, the funding was available for implementation, and the projects were all blocked by the NIMBYs and sitting elected officials.
She’s right.
I should have known better, because I remember those losing battles all too well. My apologies for unintentionally placing the blame where it doesn’t belong.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. An op-ed in the New York Daily News says “ebike blood” is on the hands of New York’s progressive city council for the crime of finally making it legal to ride an ebike or e-scooter in the city. Then goes on to lump both together, without noting that the injuries and deaths he cites could just as easily have happened with regular bikes or skateboards.
Cell phone video taken inside a #SanFrancisco Walgreens shows a man packing a garbage bag full of items while multiple people, including security filmed from feet away. Video shows him riding right past them on his bike down the aisle and out the door. https://t.co/llBFeD1cjppic.twitter.com/9BwSHuTVII
Once again, the bike rider gets the blame, after a 69-year old Sonoma woman suffered major injuries when she allegedly rode her bicycle into the path of a motorist. Which is hard to imagine, since she was riding west and was struck by a driver headed east on the same road; as always, a lot depends on whether there were any independent witnesses to corroborate the driver’s story.
Once again, a driver is somehow unable to avoid crashing into a group of bike riders, as one person was killed and another wounded when the driver smashed into a group of four people riding bicycles in Syracuse NY. And once again, fled the scene, leaving his or her victims bleeding in the street.
No pun here, as a Miami paper says the city is driving to become more bicycle friendly, when it’s all that driving that made and keeps it unfriendly. But it’s interesting that they included Santa Monica, along with Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Stockholm, as their examples of bike and pedestrian friendly cities.
