BikinginLA

Day 345 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025. 

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It’s Day 14 of the 11th Annual BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive!

Thanks to Carter, Stephen, Cleaveran and Grace for their generous support for SoCal’s best source for bike news and advocacy!

After just two weeks, we’ve already had 37 donations from people kind enough to dig into their own pockets to help support this site, and ensure our spokescorgi has a happy holiday.  

So what are you waiting for? There’s just 13 days left to donate via PayPal, Zelle or Venmo. 

Don’t wait. Give now!

And my apologies for yesterday’s unexcused absence. I just had nothing left after writing about Saturday’s bicycling death in Oceanside, and couldn’t stay awake long enough to form a decent thought, let alone write it down. 

It’s always a race to see if I can make it through the holidays and end-of-the-year doctor’s appointments without collapsing from exhaustion.

So far, it ain’t looking good. 

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Sometimes, you just have to laugh at the way Los Angeles city officials are twisting themselves in knots to avoid complying with Measure HLA.

Not to mention a federal requirement to update curbs for compliance with the Americans with Disability Act, or ADA, when a street gets resurfaced.

Because HLA requires the city to build out the elements of the mobility plan anytime a street in it gets resurfaced, and the ADA requires fixing the curbs, Los Angeles has stopped resurfacing streets entirely.

Instead, as The Future Is LA explains,

Last year, the city resurfaced 312 lane miles and slurry sealed 761 lane miles. What are they going to do next year with all the money they save from doing way less? StreetsLA is proposing instead to do 1,000 “large asphalt repairs.” StreetsLA defines large asphalt repair as “a pavement maintenance activity that addresses localized but significant damage to asphalt streets, typically larger than a standard pothole repair, but smaller than full resurfacing or reconstruction.” Basically, it involves repaving only part of a street, not the entire width…

The thing about large asphalt repair is that it’s…not a real thing. It appears to be a term made up by the city some time in the last year. Googling “large asphalt repair” pretty much only returns results from LA city government. Googling “slurry seal”, on the other hand, leads to explanatory pages on all kinds of cities’ websites.

Why didn’t they just call it “full-road pothole patching?”

The Future Is LA calls it a “legally dubious decision” on both counts.

No shit.

Meanwhile, Joe Linton — he of the Vermont Ave HLA lawsuit fame — discusses the matter in a Bluesky thread.

And in a not-unrelated matter, Streetsblog reports Los Angeles rejected the latest slate of HLA appeals filed by Linton in his personal capacity — some after the deadline to respond had already passed.

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He gets it. 

After leaving the Los Angeles Times, perhaps not entirely of their own accord thanks to the paper’s extensive cost-cutting and rightward shift, former Opinion editors and writers Mariel Garza and Paul Thornton founded the independent news site Golden State Report, which I highly recommend.

Apparently, the arrest of LA safety activist Jonathan Hale for painting a DIY crosswalk on a dangerous Westwood intersection got just a bit under Thornton’s skin.

Yes, what safe streets activist Jonathan Hale is accused of doing — painting a crosswalk on a street in Westwood without official permission — is technically vandalism, a cite-and-release misdemeanor that the arresting officers judged worthy of handcuffs. But consider the optics: L.A. will wrap up its disastrous 10-year Vision Zero run not with ceremonies heralding measurably safer streets (a feat achieved by cities around the world), but with a Jan. 5 court date for Hale.

What’s next, jailing people who feed the hungry because they didn’t pull the right health permits?

He also dismisses — if not demolishes — the standard objection that Los Angeles isn’t Copenhagen, which inevitably gets trotted out anytime the conversation turns to bikes.

Or anything even tangentially related to bicycles.

Copenhagen, a 90-minute flight from the Arctic Circle, has close to zero traffic deaths annually, yet more than half of its daily commuters brave the frigid elements on bike because they have infrastructure that prioritizes cyclists’ safety. When you say “L.A. is not Copenhagen,” I hear, “L.A. is a city with car-brained cavemen as leaders, unlike Copenhagen.”

It’s worth taking a few minutes to read the whole thing, if only to put a smile on your face for the artful way he expresses that anger.

And it’s worth subscribing to the site — and maybe even paying for it, even though that’s not required.

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Give us a break, already.

The Los Angeles Times reports that two of the five “e-bike” riding teens involved in an attack on a 57-year old man in Hermosa Beach last month have been charged with felony assault.

Although the defense attorney for one of the boys says they were the real victims, and that the older man was “heavily intoxicated” and attacked their 14-year old friend first, and they only beat the crap out of him in self-defense.

Sure, let’s go with that.

Even if the allegation is true, self-defense kinda ended once the man was on the ground, and they were repeatedly kicking and punching him.

But kids will be kids, right?

Throughout the entire story, though, there’s not one mention that the boys were riding e-motorbikes and electric dirt bikes.

Not what most of us would consider ebikes, let alone a ped-assist bike.

Maybe one day the press will get it, and stop conflating every two-wheeled electric conveyance under the banner of ebikes, regardless of power or potential speed.

But today is not that day, my friends.

Speaking of which, longtime bike advocate Carter Rubin explains the difference between an ebike and an unlicensed motorcycle.

Maybe someone could send the article to the Times.

Please.

And Planetizen notes that the alarming rise in ebike injuries is due to “unregulated electric motorcycles posing as e-bikes.”

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This is who we share the road with.

An alleged drunk driver slammed into a running team from Anaheim High School yesterday, injuring eight people, in what was described as a “nightmare scenario.”

There’s no word yet on how serious their injuries are.

The 27-year old driver is under investigation for DUI, but no arrest has been made yet.

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Yeah, that kinda makes the point.

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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.

In perhaps the best example yet proving it’s drivers, not bicyclists, who possess an overly developed sense of entitlement, a British driver pisses and moans about a group of bike riders taking over the entire road while chatting among themselves. Except this time, it’s a bunch of little kids riding their bikes to school.

In what could be the most bizarre threat yet to bicyclists, a group of people performed the Hindu last rites on a 14-mile solar-roofed bike path in Hyderabad, India — although it’s not clear if they were calling for the death of the bikeway, or the people using it.

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Local 

More safety improvements are coming to the streets in Griffith Park. But there’s still no plan to ban cars entirely, which never belonged in a public park to begin with. 

LA Public Press investigates Metro’s ill-advised decision to tie upcoming open streets events to the World Cup and Olympics, which could mean the death of CicLAvia as we’ve come to know it.

LA Lakers star LeBron James is teasing a collab with Canyon on what appears to be a new gravel bike.

 

State

Talk about missing the mark. The California Transportation Commission announced a $1.1 billion investment in zero-emission transit, as well as safer roads and associated infrastructure. But not one dime to restore the California Ebike Incentive Program, which is the most cost-efficient form of zero-emission transportation. 

Fullerton is making safety improvements to Associated Road, including adding a one-foot buffer to the existing bike lane, but no physical protection, after a Cal State Fullerton soccer player was killed in a collision while riding a scooter, and her teammate seriously injured.

A man riding a bicycle was injured when he was struck by a driver in Hesperia Monday night, although his condition is unknown; the car reportedly suffered “moderate” damage, although considering it knocked the whole damn left fender off the car, it seems like it hit the victim pretty damn hard.

 

National

Wired explores the existential question of whether bike riders and self-driving cars can be friends. No, but maybe we can tolerate them if they really are safer than human drivers. At least until their achieve sentience, and kill us all.

Mountain Bike Action list five under-the-radar mountain bike destinations they say are worth exploring. Anything near the Grand Tetons definitely gets my vote. 

The US division of Giant, the world’s largest bike maker, is moving their giant operation from Newbury Park, California to Boulder, Colorado, to get “into the heart of America’s cycling culture.”

A man whose family had been customers of an 85-year old Pennsylvania bike shop since he was a kid in the 80s has swooped in to save it at the last minute, when the shop was on the brink of closure as the owners retired.

The Washington Post examines and explains how Trump’s tariffs hit the brakes on America’s booming ebike industry, with Rad Power as the prime example.

There’s a special place in hell for whoever spray painted a Florida bike trail with swastikas, curse words and other “white power” symbols, leaving their hate for a ten-year old kid to find.

 

International

A young Cuban couple is setting internet hearts aflame with their videos of biking across the island, which they estimate will take four months. If their relationship can survive that much time on the road together, they’re destined to be together forever. 

A Welshman is on the verge of completing an epic 28,000-mile bicycle trip around the world after traveling through 43 countries and six continents, while raising the equivalent of over $13,000 for charity — and keeping a promise to his mom that he’d be home for Christmas.

Two hundred Brits kitted out as Santas helped to raise the equivalent of $20,000 for a British hospice.

His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Sharjah, issued a royal decree creating the Sharjah Cycling Club to enhance “Sharjah’s cycling reputation locally and globally, supporting sports and cultural sectors, and promoting cycling as a healthy lifestyle choice.” And no, I never heard of the place, either.

Nearly 900 Japanese bike riders lost their driver’s licenses for being drunk on a bicycle.

 

 

Competitive Cycling

UCI confirmed the official men’s and women’s WolrdTour teams for the coming year. Not so fast, Cofidis.

Australian cyclist Michael Matthews feels reinvigorated and ready to tackle the spring classics, after the 35-year old pro briefly considered retiring following a pulmonary embolism just days before the Tour de France.

Italian cyclist and former world champ Elisa Balsamo says despite the growth of women’s cycling, she still has to deal with questions of “why would a woman race a bike” to begin with.

The US ‘Cross Championships are underway in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

 

Finally…

Face it, you can’t out-crazy Portland, particularly when it comes to bikes. How many professional cyclists does it take to launch a piloted glider?

And the best way to beat Yosemite traffic is to use the bike path.

But not if you’re in a car.

https://www.tiktok.com/@tent.and.lantern/video/7544160810629614878?embed_source=121374463%2C121468991%2C121439635%2C121749182%2C121433650%2C121404359%2C121497414%2C121477481%2C121351166%2C121811500%2C121960941%2C121860360%2C121487028%2C121679410%2C121331973%2C120811592%2C120810756%2C121885509%3Bnull%3Bembed_blank&refer=embed&referer_url=www.activenorcal.com%2Fdriver-caught-cruising-down-yosemite-bike-lane-in-viral-tiktok%2F&referer_video_id=7544160810629614878

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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.

Oh, and fuck Putin.