Today’s Morning Links have been cancelled in favor of an unbridled rant regarding the sheer recalcitrant idiocy demonstrated by the Culver City Council Tuesday night.
Or make that early Wednesday morning, since treachery usually occurs in the early morning hours, long after most people with any common sense have gone to bed.
Which leaves out three-fifths of Culver City’s elected leadership.
We’ll be back tomorrow with our regularly scheduled programming.
Yet they still voted 3 to 2 to remove the protected bike lanes in favor of a shared bus and bike lane, in order to add another traffic lane so more drivers can go zoom, zoom to their hearts content.
Twitter post
At least that’s the theory.
In reality, it’s likely to result in more congestion, as the added lane will just encourage more drivers to clog the city’s downtown area, with the added noise, smog and safety risks they’ll bring with them.
It will also mean reduced bike traffic, as fewer riders will be willing to use the newly shared bus and bike lanes, with the risk of an inattentive or impatient bus driver running up their ass.
Then again, that appears to be purely intentional.
And it means slower bus traffic, as buses will now have to follow behind people on bicycles, making it a less attractive transportation option and resulting reduced ridership.
Because the city is giving a big FU to anyone not safely ensconced in a couple tons of dangerous, polluting glass and steel.
And you can add another lose to that, since the move to rip out the project will inevitably result in a CEQA violation unless the city manages to conduct an environmental impact study that somehow miraculously shows little or no environmental damage from the project’s removal.
Sure, that will happen.
In reality, the city will likely try to rip out the bike lanes without conducting the required study, resulting in a CEQA lawsuit, followed by a likely court judgement requiring them to put them back.
Making the entire effort a performative exercise designed to placate the angry conservative voters who elected the new reactionary councilmembers.
While everyone else who lives, works or moves through the city just gets shafted.
Pitiful.
Needless to say, the condemnation following the vote was fast and furious.
The man, identified as 73-year old Marietta resident Josef Pinter, slammed into the back of the stopped SUV. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
According to the local police, it wasn’t clear if the driver’s brake lights were on or if she had turned on her flashers, and Pinter may not have seen her stopped in front of him.
There’s also no word on whether she even had her lights on in the growing evening darkness, or if Pinter had a light on his bike that could have illuminated the vehicle.
April 25, 2023 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Stop as yield passes Assembly committee, MOVE Culver City debate goes late, and bike-riding teens shot in Florence drive-by
The state Assembly’s Transportation Committee has once again passed a version of the Idaho Stop Law.
San Diego Assemblymember Tasha Boerner tweets that AB 73 would allow bike riders 18 and over to treat stop signs as yields, but only when it’s safe to do so.
She also notes that “9 other states already allow policies like these because the data shows it’s safer for cyclists & other drivers.”
The city council meeting discussing a proposal to rip out the successful MOVE Culver City mobility project is still ongoing as I write this; delaying discussion of controversial issues like this is a time-tested method of waiting out the opposition in hopes they’ll leave before the proposal comes up.
However, as the following tweet suggests, opposition to the project is firmly entrenched, wrong though it may be.
Seriously, why the hell isn’t this bigger news when a pair of teenagers get shot riding a bike in LA’s Florence neighborhood?
Accordingto the Daily Breeze, a 16-year-old boy and 18-year-old girl apparently sharing a bicycle when they were critically injured in a drive-by shooting.
So is the problem that we just take shootings for granted now? Or just shootings “down there”?
Or do bike riders — or communities of color — just not matter anymore?
Or maybe all of the above.
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Tragic news from Newport Beach, where bike shop owner Don Feuer was struck by a driver while riding a scooter.
The page has raised just over $8,600 of the $50,000 goal in five days, though word of his injuries is just getting out.
Given the extent of his injuries, however, even the full $50,000 is likely to be just a drop in the bucket for his future medical expenses.
Thanks to Psmith for the heads-up.
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Guerrilla DIY infrastructure group Crosswalk Collective demonstrates LA’s firm commitment to whatever is the opposite of Vision Zero, in which the death of a pedestrian results in a memorial sign and the removal of the group’s DIY crosswalks.
And shamefully, no other action in the seven years since.
Twitter post
Thanks to Tim Rutt for the tip.
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Gravel Bike California takes in the superbloom while riding the century old Ridge Route through the Angeles National Forest.
Instagram post
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on rolling.
No bias here, either. A Minnesota letter writer says it’s time to stop giving carte blanche to bike path developers, accusing proponents of being divided between absolutists and “rational people.” As if developers of any bike path, anywhere, have ever been given carte blanche.
An Indiana man was sentenced to up to forty years behind bars — or as little as three — for the hit-and-run crash that killed a man riding a bicycle four years ago; he also got a whole eight-day sentence for driving without a license — suspended, of course.
That’s more like it. An Israeli driver will spend the next ten years behind bars for the drunken Yom Kippur death of a 12-year old boy riding his bike in Jerusalem two years ago, as well as being banned from driving for 20 years.
April 25, 2023 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Man killed crossing street on bicycle in City of Orange crash Saturday; first OC bicycling death in nearly three months
Nothing lasts forever.
Remarkably, Orange County went nearly three months without a bicycling death, ever since Dr. Michael Mammone was murdered by a man reportedly suffering from mental illness February 1st.
Sadly, that ended on Saturday night, when a man was killed riding his bike in Orange.
The driver, identified only as a man from Yorba Linda, remained after the collision. Police don’t believe drugs or alcohol played a role in the crash.
Raw video from the scene shows a flat handlebar bike next to the victim’s tarp-covered body, with a baseball cap and a carton of milk lying in the street nearby.
However, I can’t recommend watching it, but I am including the link so you can use your own judgement.
Anyone with information is urged to call Orange Police Det. Rocha at 714/744-7342.
This is at least the 14th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the third that I’m aware of in Orange County.
Hopefully we can go at least another two months before we have another one.
Let’s start with news of yet another bike rider injured by a heartless hit-and-run driver.
Steve Messer forwards news that a friend of his was the victim of a hit-and-run while riding in San Diego’s Point Loma neighborhood.
It’s hard to read the small type, but the victim, a former cop and board member with the high school mountain biking league, was riding on Catalina Blvd when he was run down by the driver around 4:50 pm.
The suspect, described as a white male 35-45 years old, wearing a lighter colored baseball cap, was driving a smaller white pickup truck with a regular cab and non-tinted windows.
If you live or ride in San Diego, try to get the word out to get more eyes out on the street looking for the suspect. And if you know anyone who works in the news media, give them a push to cover this story.
A review of the project after a year found an 18% increase in people walking and 32% more people biking through the area. At the intersection of Culver Boulevard and Main Street, the number of bikes counted nearly doubled. Bus travel became faster and ridership increased more on the corridor compared with citywide.People said they were biking, walking and taking transit more often in the area, according to the review. They felt safer, more comfortable and noticed fewer speeding cars.
As for traffic? It moved faster in the morning hours, and in the evening it took drivers about two minutes longer to pass through the area. Two minutes. That’s a minor inconvenience. It certainly seems like a fair trade-off to make the corridor safer and more convenient for alternative modes of transportation — which was the purpose of the project.
Yet remarkably, but perhaps unsurprisingly, MOVE Culver City is in danger of being unceremoniously ripped out by the new conservative majority on the council in response to the windshield bias of some motorists, many of whom may only pass through the city without stopping, on their way to somewhere else.
Yet somehow demand that the city cater to their needs, rather than that of people walking shopping, dining and biking in the downtown area, as well as those riding buses.
According to the paper,
Yet even the modest encroachment of Move Culver City may be too much for opponents of the project, who seem particularly offended by the bus lane. There is a proposal to add back a car lane and make buses and bicyclists share a lane, which would dissuade all but the most confident cyclists and slow the buses, thus making alternative modes of transportation a lot less appealing. And for what? So some drivers can get to their destination two minutes faster…
Like most communities across California, Culver City has plenty of plans detailing its commitment to bike lanes, public transit and sustainable city design as strategies to reduce greenhouse gases from vehicle pollution to help fight climate change. But those plans are meaningless if elected leaders don’t have the political backbone to see them through.
As the paper’s editorial bard makes clear, we will never have safe streets and more livable communities if elected leaders lack the backbone to stand up to opposition from motorists, which is virtually inevitable with any project.
Meanwhile, local elected leaders, both current and former, are adding their voices in support of the project.
Streets For All is asking you to call for more funding for LADOT at tomorrow’s LA City Council Budget Committee, and support bike and walk-friendly motions at Wednesday’s Transportation Committee.
Budget Committee (6:00pm, Tuesday 4/25)
The committee will take up the Mayor’s proposed budget for next fiscal year. We are asking you to:
– Advocate for 18 more positions for LADOT’s activate transportation team which is sorely under resourced and stymying our efforts
– Advocate for 4 litigation support positions for LADOT so they can focus on getting bus and bike lanes in the ground and not on lawsuits – Public comment can be made virtually in real time or in advance
Transportation Committee (2pm, Wednesday 4/26)
– Advocate that the committee approve LADOT’s plan to revisit peak hour lanes
– Support new protected bike lanes on Lincoln over Ballona Creek
– Support a new dedicated speed hump program around schools – Public comment can be made in advance or in person (no virtual option)We’ve put together a toolkit to help you make public comment in the easiest way possible:
British police used deadly force to bust a fleeing ebike rider, intentionally hitting the suspect head-on to end a “high-speed” chase before swarming him as he lay writhing in pain; he was charged with possessing a fake weapon and a “bladed article,” as well as weed. Although it’s questionable how high speed the chase could have been on an ebike.
A California appeals court concluded that drivers don’t have a first amendment right to honk their horns, ruling that the law “prohibits all driver-initiated horn use except when such use is ‘reasonably necessary to [e]nsure safe operation’ of the vehicle.” Now if we can just find someone to enforce that.
Accused killer Kaitlin Armstrong appeared in an Austin, Texas courtroom, charged with the murder of gravel cycling star Moriah “Mo” Wilson, as the press focused on her new face after undergoing plastic surgery in a failed effort to hide her identity before her arrest.
Surprisingly, a sizable majority of New Yorkers want the city to make streets safer for kids to bike and walk, even if it means removing parking or making it harder to drive; a new poll shows two-thirds of New Yorkers think the city should prioritize pedestrian safety over driver convenience, while nearly six in 10 support doing it even if it means removing parking, adding to traffic congestion or closing down streets.
If only there was some sort of sustainable, non-polluting form of transportation that could improve the health of the planet, as well as those who use it.
Better yet, something that had been successfully proven to work for more than a century.
And was safe and simple enough it could even kids could use it. Or nearly anyone else, for that matter.
The new bikeway will finally provide a seamless connection from San Pedro to Downtown Long Beach, while offering sweeping views of the harbor from both the Gateway and Vincent Thomas bridges.
Correction: While the article promises a seamless connection, commenters below clarify that there is no safe bikeway over the Vincent Thomas bridge, and not likely to be anytime soon.
Eco-Village is talking with the Southern California Association of Governments, aka SCAG, tonight about their plans to improve transportation and livability in the region.
The Argonautprofiles Santa Monica’s Thömus USA, the only location outside of Switzerland to sell the ebike brand, which is built by hand on site at the Santa Monica location.
Good news from Maine, where a community organization is working to house a homeless woman living out her car, after she spent the last of her money to buy a new bike and helmet for a three-year old boy when his bike was stolen; meanwhile, community members have raised over $9,000 to pay off the loan on her car.
A stoned, wrong way driver will spend the next six years behind bars for the head-on crash that killed a man riding a bicycle, and will be prohibited from driving for 12 years; he had five drugs in his system at the time of the crash, including morphine and “street valium,” as well as several previous traffic convictions, including two for drugged driving. Just one more example of officials keeping a dangerous driver on the road until it’s too late.
Bicycling journalist Caley Fretz remembers reporter Chris Baldwin, the former press officer for all-diabetic cycling team Team Type 1, followed by a stint with Astana before returning to Team Type 1 successor Novo Nordisk; Baldwin passed away in his sleep from a heart attack last week. He was just 52.
