April 16, 2019 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: Bike the Vote LA endorses in CD12, Watch for Me in NC, and the war on bikes keeps going on
It’s a light news day, after today’s bike news apparently got crowded out by the tragic burning of Notre Dame Cathedral.
The good news is, however, until John Snow learns to ride a bicycle, or Cersei starts driving, this will continue to remain a Game of Thrones spoiler-free zone.
And before we move on, I hope you’ll join me in thanking Josh Cohen and Cohen Law Partners for renewing their sponsorship of this site for a sixth consecutive year.
626 Golden Streets looks forward to nine upcoming open streets events in the LA area. Unfortunately, I’ll have to miss this spring’s events, including the Wilmington CicLAvia at the end of this month, but should be back on my bike in time for the Hollywood/West Hollywood CicLAvia in my own backyard later this year.
State
A Bakersfield letter writer gets as proprietary as any privileged motorist, saying bike trails are for people on bicycles, not people walking or their dogs. Except under California law, any separated pathway without a parallel walkway is considered a multi-use path, regardless of what it’s called.
A new survey from the National Safety Council shows that most Americans support lowering speed limits slightly, installing speed and red light cameras, and conducting more sobriety checkpoints. All of which would save lives. And all of which entitled drivers will undoubtedly fight.
A Missouri man got his bike back after spotting it for sale on Craigslist. Except after arranging a sting, the cops got diverted to a domestic disturbance on the way — which just happened to be at the thief’s home, finding the man’s bike inside after the suspect ran away.
April 15, 2019 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: DUI, murder in H’wood scooter crash; Costa Mesa bike thief busted; and building bike lanes pays
The victim was crossing Sunset Blvd at Vine Street at 3:30 Saturday morning when he was struck by a pickup driven by 26-year old Utah resident Jared Walter Anderson.
He fled the scene, but was chased down by an LAPD sergeant who had witnessed the crime.
Anderson was previously convicted of DUI in Utah, which makes him eligible for a murder charge under California law.
Then again, murder could be warranted even without the previous conviction, considering that he drove over his victim after hitting him the first time.
Which raises the question of whether the crash may have been intentional.
Paul Verdugo Jr, a 42-year old transient, pled not guilty to charges of grand theft, identity theft and receiving stolen property, the latter two for the false ID he handed a shop worker before riding off with the bike while on a test ride.
………
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes keeps picking up speed.
A Maryland woman was charged with first degree assault for making a U-turn after passing a bike rider, then intentionally attempting to run him down, forcing the man to jump off his bike before she crashed into it.
They always tell you to make eye contact with drivers. But fail to mention that the sidewalk-blocking Florida driver you’re trying to get past may get out of his car and punch you repeatedly.
And more importantly, over 700 lives would be saved.
Which makes you wonder just how many lives, and how much money, Los Angeles is needlessly throwing away by leaving its bike plan gathering dust on the shelf.
Like every other LA bike plan that’s come before it.
Life is cheap in El Cajon, where a red light-running hit-and-run driver is expected to be sentenced to just four years behind bars for a crash that left a nine-year old boy with permanent injuries — despite driving without a license, and with drug paraphernalia in her car.
Bike Snob writer and self-described avid driver Eben Weiss says sometimes just driving a car is an act of violence, and wonders why drivers can’t see that they’re the worst. I wouldn’t go that far; a lot of good people drive cars. But it does seem to bring out the worst in people.
Six years after bicyclists were first allowed on Colorado’s Pikes Peak, the guy who runs the roadway says it’s been a pleasant surprise, and even the drivers have been courteous. Although I’d like to hear that last part from the guys on bikes, thank you.
The Boston Globe says ten years from now, bicyclists in Cambridge MA may take the city’s protected bike lane network for granted, after the city passed a first-in-the-nation ordinance requiring protected lanes in any new roadwork in the bike plan.
Surprisingly, after what may be our first-ever news report from the Isle of Wight, we have another, as a bike-riding letter writer suffering from a severe case of windshield bias says bike riders should be forced to use cycle tracks, both for their own safety and so they don’t interrupt the flow of vehicle traffic. And inconvenience people like him.
The Irish Times says rampant bike theft in Dublin is putting people off bicycling. Same could be said of any major city, including Los Angeles; people who have their bikes stolen often decide it’s just not worth it. Which is why fighting bike theft has to be a priority in getting drivers out of their cars.
Horrible story from India, where a young woman on a motor scooter was killed when she passed too close to a shepherd who was riding his bicycle with a scythe on his shoulder, slicing her throat as she rode by.
After years of protests from traffic safety deniers and what turned out to be a relative handful of local residents, LADOT has decided to keep the highly successful road diet on Rowena Ave in place.
And surprisingly, Councilmember David Ryu, who many feared wanted to unceremoniously rip out the Rowena road diet — myself included — apparently saw the light, and went along with LADOT’s recommendation.
According to the Los Feliz Ledger, the results of a $90,000 traffic safety study demanded by opponents show the effectiveness of the half-mile Complete Streets project.
Among LADOT’s findings are that the road diet has reduced collisions, from an average of 12.4 per year in the five years prior to the road diet’s installation, to an average of 7.8 in the five years after.
The city agency also found that mid-day traffic speeds went from 39 miles-per-hour both east and westbound pre-road diet to 36 miles-per-hour eastbound and remained at 39 miles-per-hour westbound post-road diet.
Traffic volume on the street has remained consistent both before and after the road diet, according to the LADOT’s report.
Additionally, the department found, “Adjacent residential streets Waverly Drive and Angus Street … experienced no discernible increase or decrease in collisions after the implementation of the road reconfiguration.”
Meanwhile, an email forwarded to me from Scott Gamzon notes that the study calls for making the bike lanes on Rowena even safer.
It also includes a recommendation for protected bike lanes on Rowena: Enhanced Bikewav: Installation of the Rowena reconfiguration was intended to improve safety for all road users. Based on the growth in bicycle use along Rowena, upgrading the existing striped bike lane to accommodate a wider Class II buffered bike lane, or Class IV separated bikeway may provide additional safety to people bicycling. The street width can accommodate this facility without additional changes.
Adding: Implementing bike lanes was not a primary motivating factor for the road diet. Nonetheless, LADOT also reviewed bicycle counts along Rowena Avenue and found an increase in bicycle use during peak periods from a high of 14 to an average of 71 bike trips after the reconfiguration.
And Terence Heuston, aka LA Bike Dad, offered some good stats and insights on the subject.
Twitter post
Twitter post
Twitter post
It’s worth clicking on one of the tweets to read Heuston’s full Rowena thread. Because he lays out an effective roadmap to victory in the seemingly endless battles with traffic safety deniers that have cropped up throughout the LA area.
And allowed an angry, vocal minority to put a stop to too many desperately needed safety improvements.
But fortunately, not this one.
Thanks to Sean Meredith for the heads-up.
………
In honor of the Sea Otter Classic, a Monterey County weekly took an in-depth look at bicycling in the area, with a series of articles in this week’s edition.
A 42-year old salmon cyclist suffered serious injuries when he was struck by the driver of a commercial truck while riding in a Kearny Mesa bike lane Thursday morning. Which is just one more reminder to never ride against traffic if you can avoid it. It may seem safer to see the cars and trucks coming, but it actually increases your risk.
A writer for Bicyclingpraises the health benefits of eating nuts. But fails to mention that eating too many is one of the best ways to get kidney stones, as I learned the hard way.
A Microsoft employee in Redmond WA credits riding his bike to work for saving a toddler’s life, after the 20-month old boy survived falling six stories through an open window, when he landed on the roof of the car the Microsoft worker had left behind.
Am I the only one who sees a problem here? The owner of a Cleveland blue-collar bar fears the arrival of a bike path in front of his business because it will mean the loss of 12 to 15 parking spaces that people use to stop in and down a few drinks on their way home from work.
Atlanta bicyclists plan to slow roll a major street during today’s morning rush hour to protest traffic danger and call for Complete Streets. As tempting as it is sometimes, we don’t win any friends by making people late to work, or keeping them from getting home at night.
Wednesday was Bike to Work Day in the Big Easy. LA’s version will take place next month, though the city has seen declining interest in recent years.
That’s more like it. Bogotá police are responding to a series of violent muggings of bike riders by assigning 170 officers to patrol the city’s bike lanes, along with 800 security cameras and a roving helicopter during the evening commute.
Although that news is tempered by the LAPD’s conclusion that the driver wasn’t at fault, after security video showed that Vega was crossing against the light.
Now if we could just get fast action like that before someone gets killed.
Which will undoubtedly come as a huge blessing to his desperately poor family, after losing Woon’s income that helped pay for half their rent and expenses.
This is who we share the roads with too. An Orange County man got 15 years behind bars for killing two road workers in a drunken crash when he slammed into their truck as it was stopped in a bike lane; he was arraigned on a previous DUI in 2014, but never bothered to show up to court.
So much for U-locks. A pair of Denver bike thieves are caught on video using a grinder to cut through a Kryptonite U-lock and steal the bike in just 12 seconds, start to finish. And when the owner opened the app for his Tile tracking device, he found two years worth of weak battery notices and no clue where his bike was.
A Cleveland site asks if Vision Zero is the answer, saying the city’s bicyclists and pedestrians need more than a little paint on the street. The clear answer is yes — if, and only if, political leaders fully commit to the program, and have the courage to stand up to angry drivers. Unlike a certain SoCal metropolis we could name.
Maybe you should check under your bed. A Boston family did, and discovered a long-lost masterpiece by a Nigerian artist that hadn’t been seen since it was first exhibited in 1961. The painting, worth an estimated $100,000, shows four children on bicycles swerving out of the way of a truck. Something we can all relate to.
No bias here. A New York TV station sounds the alarm about “two-wheeled terrors” racing along a Hudson River path, after a four-year old girl was left bloodied when she was struck by someone on a bike. Somehow, the reporter seemed shocked when other bike riders refused to offer a collective mea culpa for the actions of one person. But we all need to slow down and ride safely around pedestrians, especially kids.
In yet another example of keeping dangerous drivers on the road until it’s too late, a woman in New York state killed a man on a bike in a drunken crash, despite six previous license suspensions. A driver should lose their license for at least a year after their first DUI. And have their driver’s license revoked after a second offense — and the car impounded so they can’t keep driving it anyway.
No bias here, either. A witness told a Louisiana TV station that a bike rider collided with the front of a car, which had the green light. Unless the rider rode head-on into the car, the driver hit the bicyclist. And chances are, the “witness” was inside the car at the time, since they described the victim as coming out of nowhere, which is an unlikely observation from someone on the street.
Apparently taking a clue from Los Angeles, mostly white-haired St. Petersburg residents rise up against “lane loss,” as the city moves forward with its Complete Streets program. Because why would you want a street that safely serves everyone when you can continue to go “vroom, vroom,” instead.
Lance talks doping to Rice University students, saying he started because everyone else was doing it. And would have won even if he hadn’t doped. Which kind of begs an obvious question...
April 10, 2019 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: Tearjerking look at Woon tragic death, Pasadena flirts with e-bikeshare, and fix for Spring St
Seriously, they’re just trying to make us cry now.
Or that, despite the announcement of pending charges against the speeding, uninsured driver who left him to die in the street — then attempted to coverup her crime by repainting her Porsche Cayenne — no charges have actually been filed a full year later.
Even though she turned herself in and confessed to the crime when investigators were closing in on her.
Maybe they’re waiting for today to do it with a big splash.
We can only hope.
Flax describes the day of Woon’s death in painful new detail.
When Woon got to the busy intersection of Normandie and Manchester avenues, less than a mile from home, he arced a slow right turn. Almost instantly, the Porsche was upon him. A nearby security camera caught the moment when a driver in a white Cayenne, who had been speeding in the gutter lane, closed the gap to Woon’s rear wheel and struck him from behind.
The impact was fierce, more than enough to shatter the rear triangle of his carbon-fiber frame. Then the driver took off, leaving Woon to die on Manchester Avenue before an ambulance could take him to the hospital.
Perhaps an hour after her son left the house, Owens (Woon’s mother) heard a knock on her door. On the front step stood three LAPD officers. One detective pushed up his shades—his eyes were red, Owens recalled—and told her that Woon had been in a crash and didn’t make it.
It’s a must read, as Flax delves into the extreme loss, emotionally, physically and financially, for a family that can least afford it, in any sense. Yet refuses to give up on long-delayed justice, even without hope of a civil judgement.
But be sure to have some tissues on hand.
Flax ends his story with a visit to Woon’s ghost bike. And an unexpected encounter, as a monthly South LA group ride came pedaling by.
Everyone was staring and shouting at the ghost bike. Two dudes popped synchronized wheelies.
I later recalled something Owens told me that afternoon. She and her son had been talking about the dangers of riding a bike in South Central, and Woon looked up at his mother and tried to reassure her. “Don’t worry, Momma,” he said. “If something happens to me, they’ll ride for me.” She said she didn’t understand it then, but she understood it now.
A Latino guy on a tricked-out fixie was riding shotgun at the back of the Fixie Goons. As he passed the ghost bike, we made eye contact for a second. Then he titled his head back and shouted to the sky: “Long live Woon!”
Long live Woon, indeed.
Although the best part of Flax’s story isn’t even part of it.
He mentions, almost in passing, the crowdfunding page set up for Woon’s three-month old son.
Sitting in the small and crowded living room in South Central, Beverly Owens spent a few hours talking about her son and her heartbreak, but there was one more bittersweet disclosure to come. On the day of Woon’s funeral, Owens said, his girlfriend found out she was pregnant.
The baby is three months old now. The boy’s mother is trying to raise him on her own, but it’s tough. An ongoing GoFundMe campaign helped buy a crib and car seat, but diapers are expensive. A settlement in civil court would have really make a difference for the people Woon left behind.
When I last checked the GoFundMe site on Sunday night, it had been languishing at just over $1,000 for four full months.
But within hours of Flax’s story appearing online, it had jumped to over $3,000. And now sits at $3,555 as of this writing.
A happy ending to a very sad story.
Photo of Woon’s mom looking at his photo from GoFundMe page.
………
In a surprise announcement, Pasadena may be getting back into the bikeshare business.
The program will roll out 1,000 bikes which can be ridden in ped-assist or fully electric mode, across ten SGV cities.
Just don’t plan on riding an e-scooter in the Rose City anytime soon.
………
It looks like LADOT heard the complaints about the notorious Spring Street parking lane protected bike lane, and will be making some much needed improvements soon.
At least, we can hope they’ll be improvements.
Twitter post
Twitter post
………
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps going on.
Yet somehow, police inexplicably failed to make an arrest.
Something tells me they wouldn’t let the suspect go if he’d pistol whipped the victim, which is no different in any real sense than using a motor vehicle as a weapon.
………
Usually I’m loathe to share a commercial TV spot on here, especially for an insurance company. And especially without getting paid for it.
But this gecko-less Geico semi-PSA is worth a small exception.
Not everyone likes LA’s demand that dockless bikeshare and e-scooter companies share their usage data with the city; the Electronic Frontier Foundationsays the ride tracking pilot program is out of control. Thanks to Steve S for the link.
The Laemmle theater chain — run by bike-riding former LACBC board member Greg Laemmle — will screen The Bikes of Wrath, a documentary following five Australians as they ride from Oklahoma to California, following the westward Okie migration described in Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Thanks to Keith Johnson for the heads-up.
State
San Diego gives the boot to DecoBike, operator of the city’s docked bikeshare, alleging an unspecified breach of contract.
Once again, a bicyclist visiting this country has been killed, this time in New Mexico, where an Australian man was run down from behind by an “inattentive” driver. There’s something terribly wrong when someone can’t ride a bike while visiting this country without getting shipped back home in a coffin.
A bike-riding Maine letter writer freaks out at the sight of a group of bicyclists riding two abreast, which appears to be perfectly legal in the state. Besides, anyone who uses the too-tired phrase that bicycling is a two-way street belongs in cliche jail.
Montreal tried to close a popular park to motor vehicles after a bike rider was killed — then reopened it after motorists rose up in anger. Which might sound familiar to anyone who remembers LA’s Playa del Rey fiasco.
Unfortunately, we have to start with bad news today.
I’ve received an unconfirmed report from a credible source that a bike rider was killed in a collision with the driver of a big rig truck in Gardena yesterday.
Update: I’ve been informed that the crash actually occurred on the other side of the 110 Freeway at South Broadway near 157th in unincorporated West Rancho Dominguez.
However, there’s still no official confirmation, and nothing in the news.
Curbed catches up with LA’s new plan to create permanent memorials for people killed on bikes. But fails to mention that the city will only post 20 year. So unless Vision Zero succeeds in lowering the city’s rate of bicycling fatalities, someone will be left out.
E-scooters finally invade DTLA. It will be interesting to see what effect, if any, they have on Downtown’s docked Metro Bike bikeshare.
A Nogales AZ man has gone from being a bike skeptic to a bicycling evangelist in just a few years, founding a weekly ride that started with three people and building to over 100. And they don’t take excuses from prospective riders, providing bikes, helmets and lights to anyone without them.
Ouch. A Pittsburgh woman is suing REI, alleging that they failed to properly install or adjust the stem on her bike, causing her handlebars to drop while she was riding and throwing her into a concrete barrier.
I want to be like them when I grow up. A bike club composed of riders ranging from 68 to 94 is taking to the streets around their North Carolina retirement community. Not to mention these bike-born AARP badasses call themselves the Cyclepaths.
No bias here. After a Baton Rouge LA bike rider was found lying dead in a ditch just a block from his home, police concluded that he was the victim of a traffic collision. But insisted there was no foul play, even though the driver who apparently killed him was nowhere to be found. Evidently, leaving someone to die alone in a ditch just isn’t considered foul in the Pelican State.
We need this here. A German app not only names and shames drivers by posting photos of their vehicles blocking bike lanes, it automatically notifies the appropriate authorities to — hopefully — do something about it.
This is the cost of traffic violence. Five members of the Bahrain National Cycle Team were seriously injured by a distracted driver while on a training ride, with three suffering what was described as severe injuries, when the texting driver swerved into the peloton — even though the team’s coach was following the group with a danger sign.
