Morning Links: Trinh ghost bike ceremony, Lance settles with the feds, and the golden age of cycling this ain’t

April 20, 2018 / / Comments Off on Morning Links: Trinh ghost bike ceremony, Lance settles with the feds, and the golden age of cycling this ain’t

My apologies again for yesterday’s unexcused absence. 

Let it serve as yet another reminder that on a scale of one to ten, diabetes sucks. If you’re at risk, do everything you can to avoid getting it — ride your bike, stay active, lose weight, eat better. 

Whatever it takes. Because you don’t want this crap. 

Trust me.

………

Let’s start with Wednesday’s ghost bike ceremony for Lenny Trinh, the Burbank postal worker and father killed in a dooring on Monday.

Steve S sent moving photos from the installation ceremony, which appeared to draw over 100 people.

Meanwhile. CiclaValley agonizes over the recent rash of bicycling deaths as he helped organize the ghost bike ceremony for Trinh. 

………

In today’s most surprising news, Lance Armstrong has settled the $100 fraud lawsuit against him for a relatively paltry $5 million.

A quarter of that could go to former teammate and fellow doper Floyd Landis, with the balance going to the federal government.

Meanwhile, Business Insider catches up with where the members of Lance Armstrong’s US Postal Team are now, most of whom have also admitted to doping.

Although Landis appears to be the only one who went from doping while pedaling to pedaling dope.

………

Bike Snob asks if this is the golden age of cycling, before concluding probably not. For reasons that should be obvious.

On the other hand, you’ve got the cars. Some call them “freedom machines,” others call them destroyers of cities and harbingers of impending environmental apocalypse. But no matter how you feel about the automobile, there’s no getting around the fact that cars and bikes have an intensely symbiotic yet ultimately disastrous relationship. They’re like George and Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, or that couple at the party who are always one more cocktail away from either hurling crockery at each other or having hate sex on the dining room table, and you never know which until it happens.

………

Local

In addition to the $91 million in Vision Zero funding announced earlier this week, Mayor Eric Garcetti’s new budget for the City of Los Angeles includes increased funding for street safety, repairing LA’s crumbling streets, and fixing broken sidewalks.

Curbed examines the rash of hit-and-runs in South LA.

Retired UCLA parking meister Donald Shoup has a new book. ‘Nuff said.

KCRW wants to know what it’s like for you to ride a bike in Los Angeles. Go ahead, don’t hold back.

Speaking of KCRW, the station’s Madeleine Brand talks hit-and-run with with Streetsblog’s Sahra Sulaiman in a short seven-minute segment.

If you’re headed to Sunday’s Heart of the Foothills CicLAvia, MetroLink is offering additional bike cars, while Metro is providing free bus and train service for Earth Day.

A columnist for the Daily Bulletin attempts to learn how to ride a bike to before Sunday’s CicLAvia. And fails.

 

State

Sunset ranks the top ten bicycling towns in the west, with Davis coming in fourth and San Francisco tenth; not surprisingly, Portland took the top spot. Needless to say, Los Angeles was not on the list.

Not only did the driver who killed Grossmont College professor Brian Jennings as he rode near El Cajon in East San Diego County tell police she fell asleep at the wheel, she also had four children under the age of ten in her minivan at the time of the crash.

Two bicyclists suffered minor injuries when they apparently were collateral damage in a crash between two cars in Thousand Palms; the wreck occurred on the same road where Mark Kristofferson was killed by an alleged speeding DUI driver during the Tour of Palm Springs. Thanks to Victor Bale for the heads-up.

Bakersfield is in the process of adopting new wider standards for bike lanes, though they won’t apply to existing lanes.

An 18-year old Los Osos woman has been sentenced to seven years behind bars for the drunken hit-and-run death of a Cal Poly San Luis Obispo student as he was riding to class last year.

San Francisco is extending the carfree pilot program for the Twin Peaks road by another two years.

Sad news from Shasta County, where a bicyclist was killed in a head-on crash with a motorcycle rider; the victim was a grad student at UC Davis.

Chico is experimenting with a pilot bike lane project for the next few weeks, using electrical tape to mark off buffered bike lanes instead of paint.

 

National

Bicycling says it has the facts on concussions and what to do if you think you have one. But in talking about helmets, they fail to mention that only MIPS helmets are designed to prevent concussions, and cite the long-discredited study claiming bike helmets reduce the risk of injury by 85%.

Great news, as The Inertia website says cycling only ranks fifth on the list of sports most likely to kill you, behind things like BASE jumping and extreme skiing.

The Wall Street Journal discovers the nationwide bikelash, with motorists fighting for their convenience over everyone’s safety. As Treehugger’s Lloyd Alper put it, anywhere there’s a bike lane, it seems there’s a backlash.

Arizona becomes the ninth state to follow California’s lead in passing regulations for ebikes.

Colorado’s legislature passed a bill allowing local jurisdictions to decide whether to allow bicyclists to treat stop signs as yields and red lights as stop signs, aka the Idaho Stop.

Houston’s mayor continues his efforts to make the auto-centric city safer and friendlier for people on bikes, committing another $10 million to the effort. Anyone who’s spent any time in the Texas city can attest that if they can do it, so can Los Angeles.

An Ohio man has gotten the death sentence for abducting and killing a 20-year old woman as she was riding her bike last year; he had committed an almost identical crime nearly 30 years earlier.

A bicyclist was killed by a hit-and-run driver at New York’s La Guardia Airport back in February. So naturally, they respond by restricting bikes, not cars.

A Charlotte SC writer concludes that dockless bikeshare bikes don’t suck after all.

A New Orleans man faces up to 10 years behind bars after being convicted of the hit-and-run death of a 65-year old bike rider.

A new report says Florida’s 1984 Complete Streets law saved as many as 4,000 lives over a 30-year period, even though the state remains one of the most dangerous for bicyclists and pedestrians. And it didn’t end auto-centric design.

 

International

The UN’s Share the Road program released their 2017 Annual Report. Although it would help if the link actually worked.

If you’ve questioned whether World Bicycle Relief is worth supporting, consider that they gave out nearly 55,000 bicycles to change lives in nine nations.

Bike Radar considers the all-time worst bike tech.

If the price of that new bike seems too good to be true, it probably is.

A Vancouver bike nonprofit says riding a bike to work may be the key to happiness.

A new study says swapping cars for European bikeshares could save 73 lives a year.

The UK’s largest grocery chain is now experimenting with delivery by e-cargo bike.

If you build it, they will come. Aukland, New Zealand experiences its busiest bike month ever, with 430,000 trips taken on the city’s bikeways.

A Kiwi columnist says people who stir up road rage against bicyclists are dangerous. Someone please tell that to KFI’s John and Ken.

An Australian professor says forcing bicyclists to register to prevent bad behavior would cause more problems than it would solve.

A Korean physician says the dangers of bicycling under the influence is underestimated, but has no figures to back that up.

 

Competitive Cycling

Swiss businessman and BMC cycling team owner Andy Rhis passed away Wednesday at age 75; he was also behind the Phonak team that disbanded after team member Floyd Landis was stripped of his Tour de France title.

Austrian cyclist Marco Haller will miss this year’s Tour de France after suffering multiple fractures in his left knee when he was struck by a driver who ran a stop sign, while on a training ride.

More bad news, as New Zealand cyclist Alexander Ray faces facial reconstruction surgery after he was left crossed by driver, leaving him fighting for his life.

A 25-year old Belgian cyclist died in his sleep, the second rider from that country to die under questionable circumstances, after Michael Goolaerts died of a heart attack during the Paris-Roubaix classic.

Heartbreaking news, as a 21-year old Palestinian cyclist lost his leg to an Israeli bullet after joining what he thought would be a peaceful rally in Gaza, ending his hopes of competing in the Asian Games.

Perhaps overstating the obvious, world champ and Paris-Roubaix winner Peter Sagan says being the pope is much harder than being a cyclist. Although you do get to wear more interesting hats.

 

Finally…

A new study from the University of Duh shows bike crashes happen for exactly the reasons we already thought. We may have to deal with angry drivers, but at least we don’t have to worry about road raging elephants. Or bison, for that matter.

And get those applications in; you have just five more days to become the bicycle mayor of Bengaluru.

 

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , ,

Move along, nothing to see here

April 19, 2018 / / 2 comments

My apologies.

My diabetes picked tonight to kick my ass, knocking me out most of the night.

I’ll try to catch up on everything we’ve missed tomorrow.

Category: General /

Morning Links: $91 million promised for LA Vision Zero, Frazier press event, and impounding bikeshares in San Diego

April 18, 2018 / / Comments Off on Morning Links: $91 million promised for LA Vision Zero, Frazier press event, and impounding bikeshares in San Diego

This could be good news.

Buried in an LA Times report on the rash of recent traffic deaths in South LA — and the well-deserved anger over them — is this bit of unexpected news.

Mayor Eric Garcetti, who created L.A.’s Vision Zero program in 2015, said Tuesday that he is committed to the program, and will recommend $91 million in funding for Vision Zero in next year’s budget, more than triple the amount allotted this fiscal year.

“We’re saying here right now to every activist, we are with you on this,” Garcetti said.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Daily News says Garcetti was responding to complaints, after he failed to mention Vision Zero, hit-and-run or the recent deaths in his state of the city address.

Garcetti revealed the funding figure Tuesday during a City Hall news conference on an unrelated matter, after traffic-safety activists criticized him for failing to highlight the politically touchy subject during his state-of-the-city address Monday.

“To every activist, we are with you on this, we have done over a thousand Vision Zero improvements,” he said. “One or two get all the press, because we don’t always do them perfectly. We always have to look at the impact of them. But we will keep moving forward on them.”

So maybe he heard us after all.

Although someone should ask him why people who don’t want to die on the streets are considered “activists” instead of residents. Or voters.

But it won’t do a damn bit of good as long as councilmembers remain cowed by traffic safety denying drivers.

And have the authority to overrule both Vision Zero and LADOT to keep LA’s streets dangerously auto-centric.

Today’s photo shows the broken bike Frederick Frazier was riding when he was killed by a hit-and-run driver.

………

The Daily News writes about yesterday’s press conference to call for the arrest of the hit-and-run drivers who killed Frederick “Woon” Frazier, and seriously injured another man at a protest over Frazier’s death the next day.

Police formally announced a $50,000 reward in the Frazier case, and released security camera video showing the moments just before the driver of a white Porsche Cayenne slammed into him from behind.

Which raises the question of why the driver couldn’t see a grown man on a bicycle directly in front of him. Or her.

………

Frank Lehnerz forwards a photo of bikeshare bikes impounded by San Diego’s Little Italy district, which evidently hates when customers don’t get there by car.

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Survivors of the Las Vegas mass shooting will hold a 300-mile stationary bike-riding event at the Newport-Mesa Family YMCA in Newport Beach on May 19th to benefit trauma sufferers.

And yes, we don’t normally mention events for bikes that don’t go anywhere. But this one seems to be a good cause.

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Local

A ghost bike will be installed in Burbank tonight to honor Lenny Trinh, the bicyclist who was killed in a dooring on Monday.

NBA Hall of Famer Reggie Miller is one of us, going all in on mountain biking in the hills above Malibu.

 

State

KPCC’s AirTalk program says California has a rentable electric scooter problem.

Bicycling catches up with the death of cyclist Mark Kristofferson during February’s Tour of Palm Springs, which resulted in a murder charge against the — allegedly — speeding and intoxicated driver.

A Santa Cruz paper asks if either side can be trusted in a dispute over a rail-to-trail conversion that has somehow become the county’s most divisive issue.

Streetsblog looks at San Francisco’s shiny new curb and bollard-protected bike lane.

Bay Area advocacy group Bike East Bay profiles a pair of bicycling librarians.

Caltrans has released its bike plan for District 4, encompassing the Bay Area, the first Caltrans document of it’s kind anywhere in California. Thanks to Neal Henderson for the heads-up.

 

National

Reader’s Digest — yes, it’s still around — offers 13 bike tours throughout the US to add to your bicycling bucket list.

Your next bike helmet could have built-in front and rear cams, even if the front does look like you have it on backwards.

Even in bike friendly Portland, parents aren’t comfortable riding with their kids.

In a long-winded commentary, a Seattle writer insists that allowing ebikes on sidewalks amounts to a war on pedestrians, while Washington state is poised to remove sidewalk restrictions on ebikes statewide.

The Colorado House overwhelmingly approved a bill that would let local cities decide whether to allow bicyclists to treat stop signs as yields.

A Lincoln NE councilmember says bikes should be allowed on the sidewalk, as long as they have bells. The bikes, that is, not the sidewalks.

The Chicago Tribune urges Mayor Emanuel to stop thinking small, and commit to a large riverfront park with bikeways and walking trails.

Justin Theroux is one of us, too, going for a ride through the streets of New York.

 

International

Bike Radar offers advice on how to strengthen your back muscles to avoid back pain caused by riding.

A new kid’s mountain bike is designed to grow with them, rather than having to be replaced as they outgrow it.

A Canadian bus company is investigating an altercation between a bicyclist and one of their drivers resulting from a dangerously close pass, with the driver telling the cyclist to go ride in a bike lane two blocks over.

A British Columbia student wins a $15,000 prize for inventing an e-wheel that can be attached like a trailer behind a bike to give you a boost.

A Calgary driver complains after police gave him a ticket for a bike rack that partially obscured his license plate, since police use the same thing on their cars.

Powerful piece from a Toronto cyclist, who writes that the pickup driver who nearly killed him in an illegal left turn got off with a measly $125 fine.

A Nova Scotia bicyclist says he was wrong to criticize police after receiving $700 in tickets for what began with a simple violation of the province’s mandatory helmet law.

Drone footage shows a new “floating” bikeway under construction around Italy’s Lake Garda, suspended off the side of a cliff next to a narrow roadway. Let’s hope users don’t have a fear of heights. And that the bike path has railings.

A Polish researcher has built a web app that can calculate the benefit to the planet in switching from a car to a bike for your commute. Maybe that will finally have an impact on the supposed environmentalists on the city council, when we can show the actual impact a bike lane could have in reducing greenhouse emissions by getting more people in bikes.

Indian bike makers call on cities in the country to use their bicycles for bikeshare systems, rather than importing them from China.

One of Israel’s leading public relations consultants was killed when he was hit by a bus while riding an ebike. Or maybe it was a truck; the paper doesn’t seem to be clear.

Bicycling is booming in Israel, with a nearly 20% mode share in Tel Aviv spurred in part by bikeshare.

The cycling community in Cape Town, South Africa is in shock as a man was shot and killed by someone who stole his bike as he was riding home from work.

A New Zealand bike advocate calls for a nationwide Vision Zero. Something that would be a huge benefit here in the US, where over 40,000 people died on the streets last year alone.

A Kiwi company is getting around the high cost of ebikes by selling them on a subscription basis for $30 a week.

 

Competitive Cycling

New Zealand cyclist George Bennett says he’s lucky to be alive after he was left-crossed while training at high speed in Italy; fortunately, he doesn’t seem to have been seriously injured.

The head of the Quick-Step Floors cycling team says race motorcycles are having too great an effect on bike races, with too many riders are drafting in the motorcycle slipstreams to make breakaways.

Indiana University’s legendary Little 500 rolls this weekend, with the Cutters team made famous in Breaking Away going for their 13th win.

 

Finally…

A riding tide may lift all boats, but not so much for stranded bicyclists. Apparently, not bike-riding witches are in the Wizard of Oz.

And Barbara Bush was one of us, too.

Category: Morning Links / Tags: ,

Update: Bicyclist killed when driver drifts off the road near El Cajon

April 18, 2018 / / 6 comments

It looks like LA’s recent epidemic of bicycling deaths has moved south.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, a man on a road bike was killed when a driver drifted off the road, and lost control on the soft shoulder of a highway just outside El Cajon.

The crash occurred around 3:15 pm on Olde Highway 80 west of Flinn Crest Street.

The 67-year old driver reportedly sideswiped the victim, identified only as a 58-year old Alpine resident, before continuing to strike a bus stop sign, mailbox and a parked pickup truck.

The victim was taken to San Diego’s Sharp Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Video from the scene posted by San Diego’s KGTV-10 shows a badly mangled bike, and the driver’s minivan with the front end smashed in.

This is at least the 19th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the third in San Diego County.

Update: The victim has been identified as 58-year old Brian Jennings, a professor of comparative politics and U.S. Government at Grossmont College.

Police believe the driver of the minivan fell asleep before drifting off the road and slamming into Jennings.

Update 2: I originally said the victim was riding a mountain bike, based on the initial reports; however, the video above clearly shows a road bike. Thanks to BV for the correction. 

My deepest sympathy and prayers for Brian Jennings and his loved ones.

Category: Injuries and Fatalities / Tags: , , , ,

Bicyclist killed in crash after getting doored in Burbank

April 17, 2018 / / 17 comments

Sadly, last night’s breaking news has been confirmed.

As we noted earlier, KNBC-4 reported last night that a bike rider had been killed after getting doored at Alameda Avenue and Mariposa Street in Burbank.

Unfortunately, however, they failed to post the story online.

Now the Burbank Leader has confirmed that 53-year old Burbank resident Lenny Trinh died after the driver of a parked car opened door as Trinh rode in a bike lane on Alameda, knocking him off his bike and into the path of an oncoming pickup.

Trinh was taken to a nearby hospital where he died of his injuries.

The paper places the time of the crash at around 5 pm Monday, between Mariposa Street and Griffith Park Drive.

For a change, both drivers remained at the scene.

According to California law, the driver is always at fault in a dooring, as long as the victim is riding legally in the direction of traffic.

CVC 22517 clearly requires drivers to check for traffic before opening a car door and ensure that it does not interfere with traffic.

And yes, bike riders are considered traffic, in or out of a bike lane.

While dooring is one of the most common types of bicycle crashes, deaths are rare, averaging less than one per year in the entire SoCal region.

And they can be eliminated entirely if drivers are trained to use the Dutch Reach, opening the car door with their right hand so it forces them to look left over their shoulder.

This is at least the 18th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the 10th in LA County; it’s also the fifth bicycling fatality in the LA area in just the past two weeks.

My deepest sympathy and prayers for Lenny Trinh and all his family and loved ones.

Category: Bicycle Safety, Injuries and Fatalities / Tags: , , , , , ,

Morning Links: Recent South LA deaths all on Vision Zero Priority Corridors, and more on Friday’s Frazier memorial ride

April 17, 2018 / / 2 comments

Breaking news: KNBC-4 reported last night that a bike rider was killed in a dooring at Alameda and Mariposa in Burbank yesterday; however, there’s no confirmation online yet. More information when it becomes available.

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After reading yesterday’s story about the latest bike rider killed in a South LA hit-and-run, Michael MacDonald wrote to remind us that each of the three recent fatalities were on streets the city already knew were dangerous.

And did nothing to fix.

Which isn’t just morally reprehensible, but will undoubtedly leave the city on the hook for massive liability awards, as well.

Not only were these 3 intersections part of Vision Zero’s High Injury Network, they were set in early 2017 as “Priority Corridors,” a 90.3 mile subset of the overall 450 mile HIN “that will have the greatest effect toward overall fatality reduction.”

The City’s own analysis dictated that it needed to improve safety on these streets and it hasn’t. And this grim prediction is now coming true for the failure of the mayor and city council to act on Vision Zero’s analysis.

And as noted yesterday, all three deaths occurred in CD8 Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson’s district.

Just in case you want to know who to contact to demand the city stop talking about traffic safety, and actually do something.

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Streetsblog’s Sahra Sulaiman has written another hard-hitting piece about the death of Frederick “Woon” Frazier in a South LA hit-and-run last week, and the pain expressed on Friday’s memorial ride.

“I think we all have a voice,” (Edin Barrientos) continued, gesturing towards the cyclists gathered around the ghost bike. “And nothing’s going to happen until you step up. If we’re not stepping up to city hall, to city officials, to the police, to the media, to the public about these issues, nothing is going to happen and someone else is going to die. Someone closer to you guys is gonna pass away. Someone is going to get killed. They don’t care about us. The laws that are in effect are not about keeping cyclists safe on the streets.”

Barrientos was referring to the recent crashes that the group had also mourned – 54-year-old Elisa Gomez, run over by a FedEx truck in a hit-and-run at Long Beach and Washington, and 15-year-old Sebastian Montero killed two weeks ago in Woodland Hills. What he didn’t know was that just as cyclists began gathering at Hoover Park for Frazier’s memorial ride, a pedestrian was killed at Figueroa and Imperial Highway. Or that later that night, a man in a wheelchair would be killed at Century and Main. Or that yet another cyclist would be run down at Century and Avalon the following night.

Meanwhile, the LACBC calls on you to write LA Mayor Eric Garcetti to demand that he act for safer streets now.

CiclaValley rides with the Frederick Frazier Memorial Ride, and contemplates the emotional pain that comes from such needless loss.

………

The LAPD has released a photo of the woman who appeared to intentionally slam into Quatrell Stallings as he was helping people cross the street at Wednesday’s protest over Frazier’s death.

Anyone who recognizes her or has other information is urged to call Detective Farish at 323/786-5447; anonymous tips can be left at 800/222-8477.

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Local

The upper Griffith Park section of the LA River bike path will be closed north of Los Feliz Blvd through mid-October for construction of the new Atwater Bridge.

Long Beach has postponed the Beach Streets open streets event scheduled for May as part of the opening weekend for the Amgen Tour of California after restaurant owners questioned the wisdom of closing Shoreline Drive and Shoreline Village on Mother’s Day.

 

State

A retired CHP officer was knocked cold as he passed an SUV on the side of the road in Fresno County, and woke up in an ambulance with his bike and wallet missing.

San Francisco’s Upper Market Street gets an “awesome” new protected bike lane.

Diablo residents are going to court to try to have a roadway leading to Mount Diablo State Park declared private to cut off access to “loud packs” of bicyclists “careening through the streets” and wreaking havoc on the quiet community. I’m sure they’ll also try to ban cars, which are even more annoying.

Chico will try out a temporary buffered bike lane through the end of May to see what people think.

 

National

Five cyclists are on a 23-day, 1,300-mile ride linking all three 9/11 sites.

A county commissioner has pledged $10 million to jumpstart efforts to make Houston more bike friendly.

A pair of Arkansas residents are gearing up to ride June’s 545-mile AIDS/LifeCycle Ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

Listen my children and you may hear, of the midnight ride before the Boston marathon.

Brooklyn residents complain about plans for a new bike lane on every block except in front of the local police precinct, saying it will dangerously force riders back into traffic.

Touring DC in the springtime by dockless bikeshare.

A Virginia letter writer complains about bicyclists dressed in black and riding without reflectors in broad daylight, even though she doesn’t seem to have had any problem seeing them. And insists bikes should be banned from any roads with a speed limit over 40 mph, apparently because people like her can’t drive safely around them.

Atlanta’s annual bicycling report reflects a major shift in attitude regarding transportation in the city.

 

International

Mark your calendar. The UN has officially declared June 3rd World Bicycle Day.

Bogota, Columbia proves it’s possible to actually reduce road deaths and homicides at the same time.

A new Canadian study shows that bike paths around Montreal don’t benefit children because they go through areas with older populations, and kids under 14 are seldom involved in the planning process.

Montreal will spend $1.2 billion dollars on roadwork, including installing a bicycle-priority street and making improvements to existing bikeways.

A new poll shows Ontario residents want the province to invest in bicycling.

London’s Mirror says one bike is stolen every six minutes in the UK. And yes, they really should lock it up better.

The Finnish Supreme Court has affirmed a 32-month prison sentence for a road raging driver who fled the scene after brake-checking a bike rider; the victim died the next day.

Prague prepares to ban bikes from pedestrian areas in the city center, even though collisions between bicyclists and pedestrians are rare.

A writer for Yahoo takes in Isreal’s booming cycling scene, starting with a fondo in the Negev desert.

A new Australian study suggests that taking the lane on roads with a single clear lane actually increases your risk, while taking the lane next to parked cars decreases it.

No disconnect here. A writer for Japan’s Asahi Shimbun says bikes don’t belong on the sidewalk and it’s not safe to ride on the road, so make bicyclists wear helmets.

 

Competitive Cycling

VeloNews goes riding with the annual Belgian Waffle Ride gravel race in San Diego County, which ends as all great races should, at a craft brewery. Then again, Cycling Tips says it’s not really a gravel race, it’s a road race with dirt.

 

Finally…

Celebrating suffrage Lady Godiva style. If you want to know how many bicyclists will use a roadway in summer, don’t study it in the middle of winter.

And Los Angeles celebrates a more sustainable city. Although apparently one without bicycles.

 

Category: Morning Links, Vision Zero / Tags: , , , , , ,

Update: Yet another bike rider killed in South LA hit-and-run; third death in last week on LA’s High Injury Network

April 16, 2018 / / 3 comments

It’s happened yet again.

Another bike rider has been killed in a South LA hit-and-run, the third person murdered by heartless, cowardly drivers in the last week.

All on streets identified as part of the city’s High Injury Network.

And all in CD8 Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson’s district.

According to the Los Angeles Daily News, the victim was struck by one driver and run over by at least one other motorist at the intersection of South Avalon and East Century Boulevards — all of whom left the scene.

KNBC-4 adds more detail, saying the victim, identified only as a man who appeared to be in his 60s, was crossing Century headed south in the crosswalk on Avalon when he was struck around 12:15 pm.

Both drivers fled the scene, before a second driver in a Lexus SUV, eventually returned and talked with police.

Which means the first driver should face a murder charge for leaving his victim lying in the street to be run over at least one other time.

We’ll never know if the victim might have survived if the first driver had stopped. What we do know is that after leaving him sprawled and bleeding in the road, he probably never had a chance.

We’ll also never know if he would had survived if the city had moved forward with the safety improvements called for as part of the LA Vision Zero’s High Injury Network.

But we do know that the failure to take any action after identifying the problem could leave the city with a greater legal liability for this death, as well as the two previous deaths in the district this past week.

Not to mention the bicyclist seriously injured in a deliberate hit-and-run assault while participating in a protest Wednesday afternoon.

And never mind that the City of Los Angeles is well aware of the hit-and-run epidemic, but done little to address it other than passing a standing reward program.

This is at least the 17th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the ninth in Los Angeles County; it’s also the seventh in the City of Los Angeles.

There is an automatic $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the suspect in this case.

Update: The victim has been identified as 60-year old Christopher White, no town of residence given.

While the story mentions the $50,000 reward for the hit-and-run death of Frederick Frazier, there should also be a similar reward in this case under the city’s hit-and-run reward program. 

My deepest sympathy and prayers for Christopher White and his loved ones.

Thanks to Michael MacDonald for the heads-up.

 

Category: Bicycle Safety, Injuries and Fatalities / Tags: , , , , , ,

Morning Links: Two hundred bike riders protest Frazier hit-and-run, and fundraiser for Bikes 4 Orphans

April 16, 2018 / / 3 comments

In a city where apathy is too often the norm, a group of angry and saddened bicyclists rode to LA city hall Friday night to call for safer streets.

And protest the hit-and-run death of Frederick “Woon” Franzier.

KABC-7 said several dozen bike riders turned out to honor Frazier, while KNBC-4 estimated the crowd of riders at around 200.

Writing for Curbed Los Angeles, Matt Tinoco captured the spirit of the ride.

We have to… make the roads safer for cyclists and pedestrians,” Edin Barrientos, who leads a popular Monday night group ride called Chief Lunes, told mourners. “The culture we have in LA, our car culture, it’s not promoting life. It’s not safe for anyone to be on the streets…”

“I’ve been doing this eight years, and not any of those years have I felt fear for my life as I do at this moment,” says Barrientos. “It’s becoming a norm, you know, losing people on the bike. We lost a teenager in Woodland Hills less than two weeks ago.

A crowdfunding campaign to help pay funeral expenses for Frazier has raised a little over $2,500 out of a $4,000 goal.

Meanwhile, another crowdfunding campaign to help pay the medical expenses of Quatrell Stallings, the bicyclist intentionally struck by a hit-and-run driver as he was helping people cross the street at Wednesday’s protest over Frazier’s death, has raised less than $300 of the $20,000 goal.

Let’s hope this is just the start of a grassroots effort to reclaim streets. And honor Frederick Frazier by ensuring no one else will ever have to suffer the same fate.

And don’t get me started on what the hell is wrong with a country where you have to raise funds online to bury one victim of a hit-and-run, and help the victim of another get the medical care he needs.

Photo by Matt Tinoco from Curbed LA website.

………

On a related subject, Reddit has been going wild responding to a since deleted question asking why car culture is increasingly violent toward cyclists in Los Angeles?

Thanks to Evan Burbridge for the link.

………

Nonprofit group Bikes 4 Orphans — which does exactly what the name implies — will be hosting a fundraising concert on May 3rd.

According to the group’s Twitter account,

The proceeds of the concert will help a orphanage with 110 girls between ages 8-18 who must walk 2 hours to get to school each day! During their commute, they are at risk for sexual harassments! Most girls stop going school because it’s NOT safe walking!

………

As we noted awhile back, traffic in central London has decreased 44% since 1999, while bicycles have become the leading form of transportation.

Which benefits everyone through better public health, less traffic and reduced air pollution levels.

And if they can do that with London’s bad weather and narrow streets, imagine what we could do on the wide boulevards of sunny Los Angeles.

………

Local

Rides on Metro buses and trains, as well as the Metro Bike bikeshare, will be free on Earth Day. Which just happens to be the same day as this Sunday’s Heart of the Foothills CicLAvia.

Eagle Rock school kids wrote city officials to demand Dutch-style bike paths 44 years ago. Needless to say, they still haven’t gotten them.

Santa Monica Spoke is hosting a ride with the mayor of Santa Monica and a handlebar happy hour on April 26th.

 

State

A 40-year old man was shot while riding in San Diego’s Logan Heights neighborhood early Saturday morning when he rode past a parked car, and the passenger jumped out and fired. If there’s still any question about how tough bike riders are, the victim rode to a nearby fast food stand for help after being shot twice in the butt and once in the leg. Thanks to Phillip Young for the heads-up.

A Bakersfield bike rider was clipped by a flying dog after it darted out from a nearby house and got hit by a truck; both the dog and rider seemed to be okay afterwards.

A new BMX park has opened in San Jose.

 

National

The Atlantic describes how advances in women’s clothing had as much to do with their newfound freedoms in the 1890s as advances in bicycle design.

It’s an Atlantic doubleheader, as the magazine takes on the absurd primacy of the automobile in American life.

A Seattle writer says despite what opponents claim, a planned lane reduction in the city has undergone an extensive public process, while opponents have no stats or facts to back up their dubious claims against it. If that sounds familiar, it may be because one of LA’s leading traffic safety deniers has been advising the Seattle group fighting the plans.

Four years and hundreds of deaths after Phoenix adopted a complete streets policy, the city still doesn’t have a plan to make the streets safer.

Life is cheap in Colorado, where a distracted driver gets just 30 days for killing a man on a bike. And will probably serve that on work release.

J. Partick Lynch forwards news of a Detroit ATV rider who was killed when he was tased by police and crashed as a result. Which is the same thing that happens when they do it to someone on a bicycle.

A 17-year old Florida bike rider was killed when he was stuck by a state trooper while trying to cross the street after getting off a bus.

 

International

Cycling Weekly says after testing both, you should always choose an aero bike over a lightweight bike.

Caught on video: A Montreal man is justifiably pissed off after a city bus passes him with just inches to spare.

A Halifax, Canada bicyclist says police made him feel like a criminal when he rode without a helmet, despite Nova Scotia’s mandatory bike helmet law. He also got tickets for failing to ride to the right, and riding on the sidewalk when he stopped for the cops.

An attack on a British bicyclist raises fears of a serial killer in Manchester, after a stranger pushed him into a canal, then pushed him back in a second time as he tried to climb out; 17 people have died in the city’s waterways under unexplained circumstances in the past 10 years.

The war on bikes continues, as London’s former cycling commissioner was rammed off his bike by a road raging driver. And police are looking for whoever sabotaged a Welsh bike trail with nail traps.

A writer for Road.cc says Britain’s proposed dangerous cycling law is just a dangerous distraction from more important safety matters.

Clearly, hit-and-run is not just an American problem. An Irish florist rebuilds her life after her husband was killed in a hit-and-run while riding his bike.

Ireland adopts a new one-meter passing law — the equivalent of our three-foot laws — as an Irish newspaper can’t seem to figure out how the law will work. As for their question about a cyclist splitting lanes at a red light, most similar laws require drivers to pass bicyclists with a minimum three-foot distance, not stay three feet away at all times.

Dutch casual cyclists are being forced off the bike paths by racing cyclists and high-speed ebikes.

Life is cheap in Spain, where an American tourist walks with a one-year suspended sentence for killing a British bike rider after drinking and using amphetamines.

Cape Town, South Africa is getting its first bike mayor.

An Australian doctor speaks out against what he calls a “reckless” campaign to repeal the country’s mandatory bike helmet law after surviving a bike crash himself.

You’ve got to be kidding. After an Aussie triathlete crashed into his riding partner while being threatened by a road raging driver, the driver wasn’t charged — but the rider was charged with reckless riding. Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed, and the charge was dropped.

An Aussie bike mechanic finished his third Iditarod Trail Invitational, a 1000-mile frozen fat tire race through the Alaska wilderness, finishing eight days after the winner; the race follows the course of the famed Iditarod Sled Dog Race.

 

Competitive Cycling

Spoiler alert: If you’re still planning to watch Sunday’s Amstel Gold classic, skip this section.

Danish cyclist Michael Valgren won Sunday’s Amstel Gold in a final sprint, while Dutch world champion Chantal Blaak won the women’s race. Proof that women and men can compete on equal terms when they’re allowed to.

After a competitor in the Commonwealth Games wrecked his bike in a crash, a fan loans him his own bike to finish the race.

Sri Lankan police threaten to file charges if anyone gets killed by a race moto during bike races in the country.

 

Finally…

You know you’re screwed when you get hit by a car, then the ambulance you’re riding in gets hit by another one. You know you’re in a bike-friendly community when even the ambulances have bike racks.

And the oldest person to ride around the world is a relatively young 56.

 

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , ,

Morning Links: Upcoming bike events, Phil Gaimon’s Worst Retirement Ever, and flipping the script on commuting

April 13, 2018 / / Comments Off on Morning Links: Upcoming bike events, Phil Gaimon’s Worst Retirement Ever, and flipping the script on commuting

Let’s catch up with a few events.

A memorial ride will be held tonight to remember Frederick “Woon” Frazier, who was killed in a hit-and-run in South LA’s Manchester Square on Tuesday.

CICLE is co-hosting the family friendly BEST Ride: Pacific Electric Donuts to Daisies Ride this Saturday in conjunction with Bike Metro, SoCal Cross and ELP Advisors.

Third District Councilmember Bob Blumenfield is holding his rescheduled 5th Annual Blumenfield Bike Ride through Warner Center and Woodland Hills on April 21st; the original March date was postponed due to rain. This is your chance to meet the councilmember and discuss issues regarding bike safety and Vision Zero.

Also on the 21st, Orange County residents can explore a temporary pop-up bike lane and other safety and livability improvements on Merrimac Way in Costa Mesa.

CicLAvia returns from its winter hiatus with The Heart of the Foothills, a special Earth Day edition stretching from San Dimas to Claremont on April 22nd.

Bike SGV is hosting a ride through the Eaton Wash on April 29th, part of their series of SGVgreenways Exploratory Rides.

………

Former LA pro cyclist Phil Gaimon continues his Worst Retirement Ever series with the Taiwan KOM Challenge, Part 2: THE RACE.

………

Local

News of South LA’s two hit-and-runs, including the fatal crash that killed Frederick “Woon” Frazier, has gone international.

The NRDC has teamed with LADOT to issue a set of recommendations to flip the script on commuting, and “help L.A. use shared mobility as a tool to address climate change and make transportation more accessible for all.” Los Angeles has never had a problem setting goals; it’s in turning those goals into action where the city traditionally fails.

 

State

BikeSD announces Judi Tentor as just their second Executive Director, replacing irreplaceable founder Sam Ollinger.

Santa Barbara police conduct a bicycle and pedestrian safety enforcement day tomorrow. So ride to the letter of the law if you’re riding through the city.

A YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard) San Francisco supervisor and mayoral candidate goes full on NIMBY in having a bikeshare dock removed from her block.

NorCal’s Caltrain will attempt to improve efficiency by allowing bicyclists to board first.

 

National

An architecture website says placing room for bicyclists and pedestrians next to autonomous cars will allow neighborhoods to reclaim even the busiest streets.

LimeBike claims their dockless bikeshare bikes and scooters have saved 540,000 pounds of CO2 from being emitted into the atmosphere, the equivalent of 28,000 gallons of unburned gas, in just the first three months of this year.

This is why people keep dying on our streets. A Wyoming man gets five years for his tenth DUI conviction after he was stopped leaving an Oregon strip club; his other nine convictions were in Wyoming. At least this time they managed to get him off the road before he killed someone, for a change.

Seattle considers a plan that would allow ebikes on five multi-use trails.

No logical disconnect here. A Colorado TV station says bicyclists run stop signs all the time, but allowing them to treat stops as yields would result in a big increase in collisions. Uh, sure. Let’s go with that.

Utah students will get a visit from competitors in the upcoming Tour of the Gila.

Kansas City residents have responded positively to road diets, as the city moves forward with plans for bikeways, including a 10-mile long bike lane. And without the near riots seen and threats to tar and feather elected officials like we’ve seen in the City of Angels.

A local TV station profiles the founder of a weekly San Antonio bike parade.

Lance Armstrong talks cycling, including the failure to build bike infrastructure in Texas and former Governor Rick Perry’s veto of a three-foot passing law. And what it feels like to have the feds closing in.

A New York nonprofit starts a weekly bike train from Brooklyn to Manhattan to ease the pain for commuters when a subway line shuts down for repairs next year.

Here’s your chance to cover New York and national transportation issues for Streetsblog as their new editor-in-chief. The only downside is you’d have to move to the Big Apple.

In one of the most wrong-headed commentaries in recent memory, a Staten Island writer says they should declare themselves a traffic sanctuary, and refuse to obey any traffic laws that inconvenience them in the slightest, from the new 25 mph speed limit to speed and red light enforcement, and parking in bike lanes whenever they damn well feel like it.

A Florida bicyclist gets a $113 ticket just for taking the lane.

 

International

A Canadian letter writer fails to grasp that not everyone has to ride a bike to see major traffic and community benefits, and those who do don’t have to do it all the time, or on every trip.

Momentum Magazine profiles Canada’s nationwide bike advocacy organization.

Cardiff, Wales is proposing a network of five fully separated cycle superhighways.

You’ve got to be kidding. Life is cheap in New Zealand, where a careless truck careless truck driver gets off with just 80 hours of community service for running down two bicyclists, killing a man visiting from Japan and injuring another from the UK.

A New Zealand writer wonders if ebikes could solve Auckland’s traffic problems, although lower prices and more sizing options would help.

An Aussie radio station apparently believes that bike helmets prevent nose, mouth and jaw injuries.

City Metric considers how China fell in love with dockless bikeshare. Although considering the number of abandoned and vandalized bikes blocking city sidewalks, I’m not sure love is the right word.

 

Competitive Cycling

Just a week after winning Paris-Roubaix, Peter Sagan will be back in action at Sunday’s Amstel Gold Race.

Peloton talks with Silvan Diller, the unsung Swiss cyclist who became the hero of Paris-Roubaix by finishing an unexpected second to Sagan.

Big step forward for Saudi Arabia, which held its first women’s bike race, even if some people felt women sweating on bikes were just too seductive.

Hopefully Dutch cyclist Tom Dumoulin won’t have to take another dump on the side of the road at this year’s Tour of Italy, after being diagnosed with problems tolerating lactose and fructose.

You can watch this year’s Giro in the US and Canada, as well as the Amstel Gold, as long as you’re willing to fork over $30 a month, or $150 a year.

 

Finally…

Here’s the real cause of traffic — no dogs on trains. Sometimes Last is first.

And yes, it’s still illegal to pay kids to steal bikes for you, even if you don’t steal them yourself.

 

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Morning Links: Bike rider injured in hit-and-run protest; driver charged with murder in Tour de Palm Springs death

April 12, 2018 / / 6 comments

Just one day after Frederick Frazier was killed in a brutal hit-and-run in South LA, another rider was struck in the same intersection.

During a protest over Frazier’s death.

And yes, that driver fled the scene, too.

A group of Frazier’s friends gathered to block the intersection at Manchester and Normandie with their bicycles to call attention to the death and demand justice for their fallen friend.

The protest got out of hand after several people attacked an LAPD SUV when police arrived to break it up, smashing its windows with their bikes.

According to Streetsblog’s Sahra Sulaiman, the young men were angered after graphic photos of the man they knew as Woon were posted online overnight, showing their friend splayed out on the street as another rider attempted to comfort him in his final moments.

A woman in a tan car, who had previously gotten out to argue with one of the protesters, forced her way through the intersection, running a red light in the process, and deliberately slammed into a rider identified as Quatrell Stallings, throwing him into the air.

She then gunned her engine and fled the scene as Stallings stumbled to the curbed.

He was taken to a local hospital; reports are he was not seriously injured.

Now police are looking for two hit-and-run drivers.

One with a $50,000 bounty on his or her head for leaving Frazier to die in the street; another who could — and should — be facing a charge of assault with a deadly weapon.

A memorial ride will be held for Frazier this Friday.

Thanks to Evan Burbridge for the heads-up.

………

A Desert Hot Springs man has received a well-deserved murder charge in the death of Washington man participating in this year’s Tour de Palm Springs.

Twenty-one-year old Ronnie Ramon Huerta Jr. is accused of driving up to 100 mph while stoned before slamming into 49-year old Mark Kristofferson, killing him almost instantly. He was taken into custody after the arraignment hearing, and held on a $1 million bond.

He’s also charged with driving on a suspended license and driving under the influence of drugs.

Thanks to Victor Bale for the link.

………

The LAPD’s Van Nuys Division misses the mark with a bike safety awareness flier.

The piece tells bicyclists to “Always ride in single file,” even though there’s nothing in state law that prohibits riding two or more abreast. And riding abreast is often safer in lanes that are too narrow to share with a motor vehicle by increasing visibility and preventing unsafe passes.

The piece also says riders should walk their bikes across busy intersections, which increases the risk by decreasing mobility and exposing riders to careless and distracted drivers for a longer period of time.

And never mind that a bike helmet may be a good idea, but it’s not required for anyone 18 or older.

But if the point is to increase awareness of bike safety, where is the companion piece telling drivers to always watch for bikes, pass with at least a three foot distance, and open doors with your right hand to prevent dooring?

………

Local

Metro released their draft strategic plan for the next ten years, as they transition from a transit provider to focusing on the entire mobility ecosystem.

CiclaValley explains what it’s like getting cut off in the bike lane by a Metro bus driver in DTLA.

A writer in Azusa encounters a 43-year old gang member at his local bike shop, realizing that bikes bring everyone together.

 

State

A pair of UC Santa Barbara graduates are nearing the completion of their self-supported bike tour from California to Columbia.

The bizarre anti-bike hysteria continues in San Luis Obispo, where the city council is accused of dirty tricks after re-affirming plans for a bike boulevard. Meanwhile, older SLO residents are up in arms over plans for an e-bikeshare system with a hub on the coast, worrying about whether they’ll be run off the sidewalk.

The San Francisco Chronicle shares the five best bike rides around Santa Cruz.

Testimony in a preliminary hearing fills in some of the blanks in the death of a San Francisco woman run down in Golden Gate Park last year, one of two people killed in the city by hit-and-run drivers just hours apart.

 

National

Another good piece from Bike Snob’s Eben Weiss, who considers the ethics of breaking traffic laws, noting that obeying the letter of the law isn’t always the safest way to ride.

Wired says Uber’s acquisition of dockless ebike provider Jump means they want to control every way you move, while Bicycling examines dockless bikeshare in the wake of Uber’s entry into the field.

Curbed says cities need to step up to the challenge of controlling streets and sidewalks as bikeshare and shared scooters begin to take over.

Don’t count on glowing infrastructure lighting the streets anytime soon.

A local news site says Honolulu drivers are complaining about the loss of a few hundred parking spaces to make room for bike lanes, somehow blaming that for the traffic congestion in the city.

No bias here. Police in Portland OR ignored a road rage assault on a bike rider that left him with a broken jaw, refusing to even file a report on the case.

A local weekly says Portland’s bike renaissance begins now.

A Lincoln, Nebraska man gets three years behind bars for the drunken hit-and-run that left a city councilmember from a nearby town lying badly injured in the street.

The Catholic bishop of Davenport, Iowa is one of us; he’ll be riding across the state in this year’s RAGBRAI.

Three Illinois priests are riding across their Diocese to promote religious vocations.

Seriously? A road raging North Carolina man gets a gentle caress on the wrist for punching a bicyclist in an attack caught on video, as he’s sentenced to just three days behind bars. That will certainly send a message — one that says go ahead and attack other people on the roads.

 

International

A British man has been charged in the death of a 91-year old cyclist, who was killed while trying to set a national age record.

A transportation technology project from the University of Melbourne says to improve safety and performance on our streets, we’ll all have to be connected in a single network including cars, buses, pedestrians and bicyclists.

An Aussie ultracyclist set a new record by riding 555 miles in 24 hours.

 

Competitive Cycling

The head of cycling’s governing body says women cyclists deserve more than they’ve been getting, and he dreams of a Paris-Roubaix Feminine.

An autopsy concludes that Michael Goolaerts suffered a heart attack while riding in Paris-Roubaix last Sunday; there had been speculation that his heart stopped as a result of the fall.

Writing for Cycling Tips, Jonathan Vaughters reminds us that bike racing is a dangerous sport, where tragedy can happen any day.

 

Finally…

Hit a pothole on your bike, and get a bill for breaking it. Your next wheel could weigh ten pounds and make riding easier.

And no, dockless bikes don’t belong in trees.

 

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