My apologies.
My wife suffered a medical emergency Monday morning. Fortunately, she made it to the hospital on time, and her doctors say she’s going to be okay.
However, I’m exhausted after spending all day at the hospital, and writing about Monday’s bicycling death in Chula Vista after I got home.
So no update for Tuesday. I’ll try to catch up on anything we missed tomorrow.
The deadly toll affecting bike riders on Southern California streets continued in Chula Vista Monday afternoon.
Although this time, the killer wasn’t in a mobile vehicle.
It was a San Diego trolley.
According to multiple sources, the victim was riding an ebike across the Blue Line tracks near Moss Street and Industrial Blvd, when they were struck by the operator of a northbound trolley operated by the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System, or MTS, around 12:44 pm.
According to a witness, the victim was thrown “at least” seven or eight feet into the air by the impact of the crash. Afterwards, investigators focused on what appeared to be a backpack worn by the victim, as well as the shattered pieces of the bike.
There’s no word at this time about the identity of the victim, or whether the crossing gates were working at the time of the crash.
As the witness, Caleb Reyes, told San Diego’s NBC7, always look both ways before crossing any kind of street, pathway or railroad track.
And never, ever ignore railroad warning signals or ride around lowered crossing gates, regardless of whether you think the train has stopped or the danger has passed.
Because there’s a good chance you might be wrong.
This is at least the 30th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the sixth that I’m aware of in San Diego County.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for the victim and their loved ones.
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It’s always the ones who claim to ride a bike.
Or in this case, an adult tricycle, when his knees got too bad for a ‘bent.
A writer for the conservative American Thinker takes issue with a recent Cycling Weekly story, in which a self-identified fat Black woman said “You can’t call yourself a cycling community without fat Black women.”
But he not only takes issue with including fat Black women in the bicycling community, but with the very idea of a bicycling community, period.
By Mike McDaniel’s perspective, unless you’re actively engaged in some form of competition, we’re all just a bunch of individuals riding bikes for our own personal reasons.
Just when you think this kind of manufactured nonsense is on its deathbed, Cycling Weekly resurrects it. We’ve been told “silence is violence,” and so is pretty much everything else. Now we learn unless the cycling “community” “centers” fat black women, that community is “participating in exclusion.” Do we need to buy bikes and other cycling gear for fat black women too? How about old white guys riding old recumbents? And fine, I’ll tell a story: I read about a fat black woman who started riding bikes. Good for her. The end.
That’s a leftist view of reality, where it’s all about one’s identity, which must not only be noticed, but praised. In real reality, one doesn’t join a bicycling “community” by riding a bike. There are people with shared biking interests, largely defined by their machines, abilities and participation in types of competition. Beyond that, no one much cares about anyone not in those particular, narrowly defined interest groups.
Then again, he also has something to say about breasts, which he claims to know something about — and Sydney Sweeney’s in particular.
Oh, and he’s not a Nazi.
Good to know.
Iresha Picot’s point isn’t wasn’t identity politics, though, or some sort of DEI for the bicycling community.
It wasn’t even about fat Black women. Or whether or not there really is some sort of bike community.
It’s that our streets — and our preferred form of recreation and transportation — has to be safe and welcoming for everyone, including those on the margins, who you don’t normally see descending at 30 mph on the club rides.
And if you’re not intentionally including everyone, you are by default excluding some, whether they’re fat and Black, poor and Latino, handicapped, old or just puttering along on an old cruiser bike.
It’s a fair point.
I’ve learned over the years that the biking community includes people of every shape, color and description.
Some who charge up and down hills on carbon racing bikes, and some who ride, well, trikes.
It’s not about politics, identity or otherwise.
And it sure as hell isn’t about Sydney Sweeney. Or her breasts.
Photo: Bikes belonging to the non-existent bike community line the street.
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BikeLA, formerly the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, reminds us that LADOT wants your input on bike safety upgrades on Spring and Alameda streets in DTLA.
https://twitter.com/heybikela/status/1951325962316161423
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Bike Talk talks about the provincial and old-fashioned views that block progress on streets where people are dying from cars.
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It’s been a long time since we’ve heard from bike writer esteemed Elly Blue, who rebuts the pervasive, and completely untrue, myth that bike riders don’t pay for the roads.
No bias here. A motorist in Killarney, Ireland was “irked” to actually have to slow down for a few moments because a bicyclist was riding in the traffic lane, right next to a new raised bike lane that had been built “at enormous expense.” Even though a photo clearly shows several bike riders were already using it, and the only way to get around them was to take to the street — never mind that he was hugging the curb, and would have been easy to pass.
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Streetsblog editor Joe Linton says the new Metro Bike bikeshare contract remains up in the air and operating on a month-to-month basis, following a “twice-botched process.”
Laguna Beach is looking for a location to build a proposed pump track.
A New York website remembers the 28-year old former Central New York man and current San Francisco bike mechanic who gave his life to protect a group of women and children from an attacker at a transit station.
Cycling West says the Trump administration’s efforts to slash environmental rules could make it easier and faster to build bike lanes, but could wreak havoc on the natural world, all while GOP budget cuts are hurting bicycling.
This is the cost of traffic violence. A 19-year old Albuquerque, New Mexico woman became the third employee of the city’s bicycle safety center to be killed by drivers in the last two years — two years to the day after a 64-year old man was killed riding his bike home from working at the center.
Now you, too, can star in a commercial for an ebike brand. But you have to live in Idaho.
Speaking of Cycling West, a writer for the website travels to Austin, Texas to find out how the 900-member Breakfast Club became the world’s largest weekly group ride.
The St. Louis edition of the World Naked Bike Ride brought “bikes, butts and body positivity” to the protest against car culture.
You know they’re doing something right when a Maine neighborhood bike parade and ice cream social returns for the 25th straight year.
A New Hampshire writer says riders of a certain age may be too old for the Tour de France, but can still take part in the “Tour de Pharmacy” to manage their aches and pains. Then again, there are those who say the Tour de France was, and possibly still is, a Tour de Pharmacy.
More than 6,000 people took part in two-day Massachusetts fundraising ride benefitting the Dana-Faber Cancer Institute; despite raising $53 million, the fund drive was still $23 million short of the $76 million goal.
Writing for Cycling Weekly, a male bicyclist says he was praised for “looking like a real athlete” when he was actually suffering from anorexia.
The Royal Canadian Mounties are looking for a 66-year old Manitoba man who disappeared on Friday while riding his bike.
Canada’s CTV looks at where things stand, and what comes next, in the seemingly endless battle over Toronto’s protected bike lanes, which city officials want to keep, and Ontario provincial officials want to rip out.
A Toronto couple who run a custom bicycle painting shop not only got their stolen bikes back after setting up a sting for the thief, but got a “heartfelt apology,” too.
An English man was planning to ride nearly a thousand miles on a fundraising bike ride, just two years after he was nearly killed when he was stuck by a hearse driver.
Life is cheap in Ireland, where an 82-year old woman got off with fine and lost her license for killing a 78-year old man riding a bicycle, once again raising the question of how old is too old to safely drive a car. And no, I don’t want to see an octogenarian go to the gaol, either. But still.
A Vietnamese resort will pedal a bike to your suite and make the country’s celebrated coffee for you in person.
Pauline Ferrand-Prevot cemented her domination of French cycling, as the Paris Olympic champ demolished her competition in the Alps to win the first Tour de France Femmes for the country, as well.
Beyonce’s husband is one of us. That feeling when you get tackled by a cop mid-wheelie.
And when you’re carrying over an ounce-and-a-half of meth on your bike, maybe try riding on the right side of the road.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
Enough, already.
A bad month for bike riders in Southern California got worse today, when word broke that an Oxnard man died two weeks after he was struck by a driver while riding his bicycle last month.
According to the TriCity Sentry, the victim was run down by a woman while riding north on Ventura Road near Devonshire Drive on Friday, July 11th, around 9:22 pm.
First responders found him lying in the entryway to the Grocery Outlet Store, following the apparent right hook collision as the woman turned into the parking lot from northbound Ventura.
The Ventura County Medical Examiner’s Office reported around 2:30 pm last Friday that the man, identified as Oxnard resident Salvador Lopez, had died from his injuries.
The driver, Hannah De La Cruz, remained at the scene and cooperated with investigators. They don’t believe she was speeding or under the influence.
Anyone with information is urged to call Oxnard Police Corporal Manny Perez at 805/385-7749 or 805/200-5668, or email manuel.perez@oxnardpd.org.
This is at least the 29th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the second that I’m aware of in Ventura County.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Salvador Lopez and his loved ones.
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He gets it.
In a WeHo Times op-ed, 23-year old community organizer Nick Renteria argues that the city is one of the most dangerous in the state when it comes to traffic violence.
As evidenced by the recent hit-and-run deaths of Erica Edwards and Blake Ackerman on Sunset Blvd and Fountain Ave, respectively.
But not, he says, because there is something inherently worse about the city’s drivers, but because the streets are “designed facilitate high traffic flow at the cost of our safety.”
And what’s standing in the way of progress isn’t a lack of evidence, it’s inaction.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
As Renteria says,
Imagine a Sunset Boulevard where people stroll safely beneath the billboards. A Santa Monica Boulevard where outdoor dining isn’t drowned out by speeding cars. A Fountain Avenue where no one has to fear crossing the street or riding a bike.
Imagine a city where Erica and Blake’s deaths are the last. Where we finally say: enough.
We’ve imagined it for years. Now let’s do something about it.
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No bias here.
Border Patrol officers arrested a man riding a bicycle and questioned his citizenship because he looked “startled and nervous,” even though they were looking for someone else.
After all, why would anyone look nervous when confronted by armed, masked men who may not have worn anything identifying themselves as officers.
The Mexican national now finds himself facing deportation, and charged with a misdemeanor count of assaulting, resisting or impeding officers, because he tried to run away and tried to break free from them.
I probably would have done exactly the same thing if I was confronted by a bunch of armed men in masks.
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Secret Los Angeles makes it sound like the city is rapidly becoming a carfree paradise.
According to the site, Los Angeles is actively investing in innovations to reduce traffic congestion, ranging from subway expansions to new bikeways, including a new transcontinental high-speed rail expected to ope as soon as next year.
Which really would be a secret.
And speaking of secrets, here’s what they have to say about the state of bicycling in the City of Angeles.
Biking in L.A. is on the rise, with new bike trails and bike-friendly upgrades popping up across the city. From coastal paths to urban corridors like the new Rail-to-Rail route, it’s getting easier, safer, and more fun to explore L.A. on two wheels.
Which is kinda true, depending on just where you look.
Although the impression it gives doesn’t exactly align with the reality most of us experience on the streets.
But, yeah.
Maybe someday it will.
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Police in San Diego are looking for a hit-and-run driver who left a 62-year-old man riding a bicycle lying in the street with serious injuries.
The crash occurred around 7:25 pm Monday in the Golden Hill neighborhood on the 2400 block of F Street.
The suspect was described as a man in his late 20s or early 30s, driving a gray-colored SUV with black rims and possible front end damage, with a woman in the passenger seat.
Anyone with information is urged to call the Traffic Division of the San Diego Police Depart at 858/495-7823 or call anonymously at 888/580-8477.
There’s a $1,000 reward offered by Crime Stoppers.
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A member of the San Francisco bicycling community is being hailed as a hero for sacrificing his life to protect a group of women and children at a Muni stop.
Twenty-eight-year old Colden Kimber was waiting with his girlfriend when he saw a man harassing the group and stepped between them, only to be fatally stabbed in the neck in what was described as a “completely and utterly unprovoked” attack.
Kimber was a member of the city’s Dolce Vita Cycling team and was a skilled mechanic at American Cyclery, while studying kinesiology at San Francisco State University.
The suspect, 29-year old Sean Collins, has been charged with murder; he was already facing charges for vandalism and burglary, as well as resisting an officer.
A crowdfunding campaign has raised over $44,000 of the $50,000 goal to pay for memorials in San Francisco and Kimber’s native Ithaca, New York, and transportation expenses for his family to attend Collins’ trial.
A memorial ride is tentatively planned for Sept. 7 around the Polo Fields in Golden Gate Park.
I’m not crying, you’re crying.
No, wait. Yeah, it’s me.
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Gravel Bike California shouts Yreka after riding in NorCal’s Siskiyou County.
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Nope, nothing to see here.
Although the only time you’ll see this many people on bikes in Los Angeles is CicLAvia or Critical Mass.
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But seriously, how many city’s have a river you can drive in?
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Thanks to Megan for forwarding this clip showing that comedian Cheri Oteri is one of us.
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No surprise here, as the Ontario, Canada government will appeal a court ruling that the planned removal of three Toronto bike lanes violates the country’s constitution, while Canada’s conservative National Post calls out the province’s “activist judiciary” for inventing a right to bike lanes.
Bedford, England has lifted its draconian ban on bike riding through the town center, but only after thousands of people were “aggressively” fined for the simple crime of riding a bicycle; new rules target “dangerous” bicycling rather than responsible riding.
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Pasadena police will conduct yet another of the region’s bicycle and pedestrian safety operations today; while the purpose is to improve safety for people walking or biking, police are required to enforce any violation that could put either group at risk, regardless of who commits it. So ride to the letter of the law until cross the city limits to make sure you’re not the one who gets written up.
California kids under the age of 16 can no longer buy a Class 3 ebike, after Governor Newsom signed AB 965 into law.
A San Diego man has declared a Bike Rebellion, with a new podcast and YouTube series profiling people who have chosen bicycling as their primary mode of transportation.
Bakersfield will add new green bike lanes to the city’s California Ave after a repaving project, while assuring drivers it won’t result in the removal of any traffic lanes.
Eight outdoor experts share their favorite bike rides around the Silicon Valley.
There’s not a pit deep enough for a 29-year old woman accused of hitting a nine-year old Novato boy in an effort to steal his bike, until bystanders stepped in to stop her.
A Minnesota woman credited a bicycle with saving her life, after a tree crashed through her roof at the exact moment she went outside to get her son’s bike, the tree landing right where she had been moments earlier.
The mayor of La Crosse, Wisconsin took a bike ride with community members on Thursday to talk about transportation and the state of the city. Something no Los Angeles mayor has done since Richard Riordan, unless you want to count Antonio Villaraigosa riding next to me at the first CicLAvia. Or maybe it was the second one.
Good news from Elmhurst, Illinois, where a nine-year old boy was found safe after going missing while riding his bicycle on a bike path; he was found eight miles away in the nearby town of Glen Ellen.
If you build it, they will come. Bicycling is booming in the Motor City thanks to hundreds of miles of bike paths around Detroit, with cross-border cycling becoming an option later this year.
After the state Department of Transportation put in a new separated bike lane, officials in Tonawanda, New York said they didn’t ask for it and don’t want it, and drivers expressed concern about safety on a street where drivers go ten miles below the 40 mph speed limit.
A writer for Road.cc describes what he’d do to start bicycling on a tight budget.
Of course not. An English man denies he was responsible for killing a 54-year old woman competing in a cycling time trial while he was driving a commercial van, despite allegedly looking a photos of a family barbecue on his cellphone seconds before the crash, then telling police he never saw her because he was too busy looking for his drink bottle.
Cyclist profiles decorated downhill cyclist James Egercz, the man behind Britain’s Craft Bikes.
Apparently, medieval weapons are back in vogue, after a man in the UK was busted for allegedly threatening another man with an axe to steal his bicycle.
A British writer takes a “mad holiday” in France, combing wine and cheese with “near-death experiences” riding down mountainsides on an ebike.
Evidently, France’s Loire Valley is THE bicycling destination for the coming year. Unless maybe you’d rather take a bicycling vacation at Club Med in the Southern French Alps.
Momentum looks at Trondheim, Norway’s pavement-embedded bicycle lift that pushes bike riders uphill at a steady walking pace, and recommends a handful of hills in North America where it would help encourage more people to ride.
Sad news from South Africa, where a 77-year old man was killed while riding his bike through Cape Town, when he was struck with a bottle by a robber trying to steal his cellphone.
French cyclist Maeva Squiban won Stage 6 of the Tour de France Femmes in a 20-mile solo breakaway. Even if Velo wrote yesterday that it happened today, opening up a whole new can of quantum theory.
Apparently, nose strips were the hot performance-enhancing accessory at this year’s Tour de France.
That feeling when you just happen to get stopped by cops while carrying a section of the US-Mexico border wall on your bike. If you’re going to steal a pro cyclist’s bike, maybe don’t take the one with a Danish flag and his name painted on it.
And apparently, we need to credit Streetsblog’s Joe Linton as the founder and editor of this site, at least according to Google AI.
I mean, who knew?
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
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A 24-year old man will spend the next 13 years behind bars for killing a Santa Ana man to steal his bicycle five years ago.
Jose Luis Salgado was sentenced after pleading guilty to felony voluntary manslaughter and misdemeanor street terrorism, along with sentencing enhancements for being a gang member.
He was convicted for being primarily responsible for the killing 31-year-old Pedro Morale Chocoj, as part of a gang attempting to take the victim’s bike.
Co-defendant Jesus Gonzalo Ibarra was sentenced to just a year behind bars after pleading guilty to multiple felonies for the same attack.
I don’t know how many times we have to say it — no bicycle is ever worth a human life.
Period.
Photo by Suzy Hazelwood from Pexels.
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Fullerton police have made an arrest in an alleged intentional crash that left a man riding a bicycle hospitalized.
Twenty-two-year West Covina resident Christian Diaz is charged with attempted murder for making a U-turn to slam head-on into the 31-year old victim on the afternoon of July 20th.
Even if KTLA-5 somehow portrays it as a simple wrong-way hit-run, burying the apparently insignificant detail that police believe Diaz acted deliberately deep in the story.
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LADOT has finally closed the long-missing link on Imperial Highway in what passes for a protected bike lane here in Los Angeles, even though it would be called a separated bike lane in any more rational locale.
Because those flimsy little plastic bollards ain’t gonna protect anyone.
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They get it.
Santa Monica police are joining other cities in cracking down on ebikes.
But thankfully, they know enough to distinguish between legal ped-assist ebikes, and illegal e-motorbikes designed for off-road use, impounding a dozen Sur-Ron style bikes at a beach charging station.
Thanks to David and Ellectrek for the heads-up.
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Ukrainian soldiers used a drone to deliver an ebike to a wounded soldier trapped behind enemy lines.
Then used another one, which finally allowed him to escape, after first one was blown up by a landmine when he tried to ride to safety.
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That feeling when your downhill ride is interrupted by a cattle crash.
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There may be justice after all. An Ontario judge blocked the removal of a trio of Toronto bike lanes, ruling it was unconstitutional because “removal of the target bike lanes will put people at increased risk of harm and death, which engages the right to life and security of the person.”
A Malaysian website says recent headlines have given the impression that bike riders are a nuisance on the roads — if not outright enemies.
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A Hollywood cinematographer is planning to make a full-length documentary about Jose Yanez, inventor of the bicycle backflip, who spread the move across the country with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus, before ending up homeless in Phoenix.
WeHo residents voiced their anger and concern over deadly Fountain Ave at the West Hollywood Public Safety Commission meeting, demanding action as the Sheriff’s Department offered an update on traffic safety on Fountain. Or rather, the lack thereof.
Mark your calendar for the Culver City meets Venice CicLAvia on Sunday, August 17th, connecting the two cities by way of Mar Vista. Meanwhile, Streets Are For Everyone is looking for volunteers to help work the event.
Long Beach’s dangerous Pacific Avenue is getting a major makeover, including a road diet and protected bike lanes — some of them curb-level — to fix the street LAist calls long “blighted by speeding and deadly crashes.”
Calbike will host an online summit session on August 20th to discuss bicycle highways, as a bill to make it easier to build them awaits the return of the state legislature from its summer recess.
A sleek new ebike from Fremont, California startup Morelle claims to recharge in just 15 minutes, rather than hours like other ebikes.
Momentum offers a look at ten “amazing” urban bicycling trails in the US they say are perfect for exploring cities. None of which are in Los Angeles, of course, although San Francisco’s Wiggle and Sacramento’s American River Parkway made the cut.
Momentum also lists six reasons businesses want bike-riding customers. Or rather, why they should, since merchants too often oppose the very bikeways that could boost their business.
Bloomberg’s CityLab says we should all be biking along the beach, questioning why beachfront bike paths are so rare in the US when they help relieve beach traffic and mitigate the ill effects of over-tourism.
A woman writing for Cycling Weekly says you can’t call yourself a bicycling community without fat Black women on bikes.
Life is cheap in Seattle, where a cop with an extensive history of preventable traffic collisions walked with a lousy written reprimand and additional training after lying about crashing into someone riding a bicycle, initially saying he came to a full stop before admitting he ran the stop while looking at his onboard computer.
This is the cost of traffic violence. Hundreds of people turned out for a memorial to remember a 37-year old mother of two who was killed by a Denver dump truck driver while riding in an unprotected bike lane six years ago; a protected was built there afterwards, too late to save her life.
A $5,000 reward is being offered for the hit-and-run driver who killed a couple downed in the roadway, after another driver had knocked them off their bikes.
A Great Lakes website takes a deep dive into why Americans don’t bike like the Dutch yet. Short answer, if more people felt safe riding a bike, we would. Longer answer, speeding, drunk and/or distracted drivers need to stop killing us, and traffic engineers need to stop loading the damn metaphorical gun for them, already.
A crowdfunding campaign is intended to help a Memphis restaurant owner, who was left lying in the street with broken ribs and a punctured lung when a heartless coward fled the scene after crashing into his bicycle.
No surprise here, as New York cops ticketed far fewer drivers in the second quarter of this year, as they shifted their focus to far less dangerous bikes and ebikes; The Sun says the crackdown on bike riders is really a “war on people.”
They get it, too. A Greensboro, North Carolina newsletter says cars are king in the city and they’re killing people, as local groups lead efforts to be more bike and pedestrian friendly.
That’s more like it. A Florida woman will spend the next 15 years behind bars for fleeing the scene after injuring a teenager riding a bicycle, and running from police — all with her kids in the car. Although it’s disconcerting that the state can only take her license away for a maximum of five years.
Finally, a list of relatively snappy retorss to all the common complaints against bike lanes.
A new study in Nature compares the relative severity of ebike and e-scooter injuries, concluding that e-scooter crashes result in more and worse head injuries, particularly because so many riders are intoxicated.
Singer Lilly Allen is one of us, riding her bike through London’s Notting Hill neighborhood, even if all the press cared about was the new ring on her finger.
If you want to be named the UK’s cop of the year, just borrow a bicycle from a bystander to chase down a jewel thief.
A writer for a travel website takes a bicycle tour of Copenhagen.
Helsinki, Finland proves that Vision Zero is achievable, as the city of over 650,000 people goes a full year without a traffic death.
Bicycling is up 14% in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, over just two years.
Mauritian cyclist Kim Le Court reclaimed the yellow jersey by winning stage 5 of the Tour de France Femmes by mere inches, after a premature celebration nearly cost her the race.
Some of the favorites are already out or the women’s Tour.
A pair of team managers may resort to pistols at 20 paces, with a war of words continuing in the wake of a crash that injured Dutch pro Demi Vollering, even though she was able to continue.
Six-time world champ Ellen van Dijk will call it a career at the end of this season; the 38-year old Dutch cyclist has 70 win in all categories so far.
Newly crowned four-time Tour de France champ Tadej Pogačar says he doesn’t see himself continuing in the sport “much longer,” and may start considering retirement in 2028. Which would give him a chance to equal Lance’s non-record for ex-wins.
Former Guernsey pro cyclist James McLaughlin has filed a lawsuit asking for the equivalent of over $1.3 million, arguing his attempt at a comeback was derailed when a 2020 London dooring left him suffering from depression, memory loss, fatigue and PTSD, and he now requires an emotional support dog.
Tour de Big Bear starts tomorrow and continues through Sunday, including the national mountain biking championships.
You know ebikes are making a splash when even Fox News gets on board. It’s not a bike lane, it’s an open air ice cream market.
And this may just be the best DIY traffic sign yet.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.