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.
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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.
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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.
