Nashville is investing in wayfinding signs, complete with distance and estimated riding time to popular destinations. Needless to say, in LA you’re on your own.
It’s life behind bars after all for the Tennessee driver who fled the scene after knocking a man off his bike on the Natchez Trace; he’s on his way to jail after violating his probation by swilling a half pint of vodka every day.
Family members and New York politicians demand justice for a four-year old hit-and-run victim, after police said the driver didn’t know he or she had just run over the girl and her mother was they walked on the sidewalk. Seriously, you have to be pretty damned drunk or distracted to not know you hit two people hard enough to kill one of them.
The former track star who ran down a Florida father as he rode on a bike path with his sons had turned himself in at a police station two weeks earlier, threatening to hurt someone if he was allowed to leave — then attacked his public defender after he was detained on a mental health hold.
A Toronto paper watched a busy intersection for an hour at rush hour, as drivers blocked the intersection or the crosswalk on nearly every red light cycle. An experiment that would probably have exactly the same results here in Los Angeles.
June 28, 2018 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: Lawsuit filed over Venice Blvd road diet, and road raging drivers around the world
Traffic safety deniers Restore Venice Boulevard has become just the latest group to abuse California’s CEQA laws in an effort to keep our streets dangerous and unlivable.
The group is attempting to halt expansion of the Venice Blvd Great Streets project to Lincoln Blvd, as well as what it says are similar projects on Pico Blvd, Motor Ave and Centinela Ave adopted under the Livable Boulevards Streetscapes Plan recently passed by the city council.
The Venice lawsuit, and others like it that were filed in response to the since reversed road diets in Playa del Rey, point out the desperate need for CEQA reform, which was never intended to block non-polluting bikeway projects, or other efforts to cut smog-belching automobile traffic.
They may like Venice Blvd just the way it used to be.
But the city will never survive if we don’t take steps to provide viable alternatives to driving now.
As well as undoing the damage done to our neighborhoods by decades of auto-centric policies on Venice, and countless other streets through LA.
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Today’s common theme is road raging drivers.
Or more precisely, road raging drivers attacking people on bicycles.
In a five-part Twitter story, a Sacramento cyclist records a driver who buzzed him, then pulled over to threaten to cut his throat. Only to discover that the CHP didn’t really care.
Jerry Seinfeld is one of us, as he goes bike shopping with Zach Galifianakisz.
Twitter post
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CicLAvia’s Tafari Bayne demonstrates how to get to the California African American Museum by bike and train.
Twitter post
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Local
A group of Ukrainian military vets set out from Los Angeles last month on a 6,200-mile ride across North America to call attention to the ongoing conflict.
Apparently not grasping the concept, Pasadena residents call for more free parking, fewer e-scooters and moving bike lanes to a side street at a meeting to update the General Plan for the town’s central business district, conflicting with requirements for sustainability and improved carfree circulation.
Sure, tell us again about those entitled cyclists. California voters appear poised to repeal the state’s recent gas tax increase, imperiling plans to repair the states roads and bridges, as well as funding alternative forms of transportation. Seriously, anyone who votes against the gas tax should be permanently prohibited from ever complaining about bad roads or traffic.
San Diego’s mayor, former police chief and a radio host will team together for a 760-mile bike ride down the California coast to raise money for the Challenged Athletes Foundation.
More proof there are still good people in the world. A triathlete competing in the Big Bear Triathlon dropped out of the race to perform CPR on a runner who had stopped breathing, even though he was in second place in the race.
An extreme athlete known as the Bionic Woman stopped in Apple Valley on her attempt to become the first woman with a prosthetic leg to ride unsupported across the US.
Drivers are convinced that plastic bollards along a bike lane in Jackson Hole WY have narrowed the nearly 11-foot traffic lanes and made it impossible to move wide loads, even though officials insist the lanes haven’t been narrowed an inch. A local columnist doesn’t like them one bit.
An Irish man visits a crash site to call for safe streets, five years after he was nearly killed when a driver hit his bike while riding to work in Cape Cod, leaving him confined to a wheel chair; his father called the police investigation biased after they concluded his son turned in front of the truck. Which is what police investigations usually conclude when they don’t — or can’t — talk to the victim first.
For once, a fallen New York bike rider gets justice, as a drunk driver gets 15 years for slamming into a group of riders participating in a bike tour, killing one and injuring three others; he was fleeing at a high rate of speed after crashing into a car while trying to park.
Unbelievable. An English police chief apologizes to the widow of a fallen bike rider for bungling the investigation into his death; officers never examined the car of the person who claimed to have found him, even though he could be heard over the phone arguing with a woman over whether their car had struck the victim.
A South African official warns bike riders to stay off freeways and toll roads that have seen a “dangerous influx of bicycles.” However, given the country’s high rate of violent crime and reports of bike riders being attacked for their bikes and other belongings, it’s understandable that some might prefer to take their chances with high-speed drivers, legally or otherwise.
Thank you for ten years of reading, and allowing me to do what I love.
And what I can to help make biking in LA just a little safer and more enjoyable for all of us.
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That public meeting to discuss safer streets in South LA has been moved to tomorrow night, rather than tonight as we mentioned yesterday.
The change in date seem suspicious, since it’s now scheduled for the same time as the march and press conference to demand justice for fallen cyclist and hit-and-run victim Frederick “Woon” Frazier.
However, I’ve been assured by Councilmember Marqueece Harris- Dawson’s office that the original date was a typo, and the meeting was always scheduled for Thursday.
But still.
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This is who we share the roads with.
An unidentified Twitter user responded to getting cut off by a bike rider by pulling alongside the rider, and pushing him off his bike from a moving car.
He seems very proud of himself, pinning the tweet even though it’s evidence of a crime.
Heartbreaking story from Iowa, where a 79-year old woman walking on a bike path with her son was killed in a collision with a speeding bicyclist; the police declined to investigate, and the riders didn’t identify themselves. If that happened anywhere else, it would be considered a fatal hit-and-run.
Oops. Ohio police call off a search for a bike rider who was reportedly struck by a truck on a highway, knocked over a guardrail and into a waterway, when the bike’s owner came back and said the bike had merely fallen off his truck.
Police in Edmonton, Canada swarm an intersection to issue warnings when drivers can’t seem to figure out what No Right on Red signs next to bike lanes mean.
Manchester, England begins work on a $661 million plan to install 74 miles of Amsterdam-style segregated cycle lanes crisscrossing the city. Yet the Daily Mail can only envision traffic chaos.
Police in Jerusalem can’t seem to decide if people can or can’t ride their bikes on a street that’s been closed to cars, some telling people they can ride on the sidewalk, and others saying they have to ride in the street. And ticketing riders for both.
In a truly heartbreaking essay, the sister of a fallen LA bike rider calls on all of us to look squarely at the crisis of traffic fatalities.
In 2016 my brother Tom was biking home in Los Angeles. He took a street that I would learn is quiet for LA, but statistically deadly for bicyclists and pedestrians. At about 6 p.m. on this particular Saturday, a drunk driver in a box truck careened down a side street, hitting parked cars before killing my brother at an intersection. He was 26.
That first night after I got the call I was shocked and frightened. My brother was already dead, yet I was scared of what was to come. We had few details that first night, and my recollection is fuzzy. Trauma affects your memory.
An LAPD officer had noticed 22-year old Cruz Tzoc speeding up Burlington Ave just moments before the crash, but was unable to catch up to him before Tzoc smashed into Brewer’s bike.
He was driving at twice the legal alcohol limit.
His sister went on to put her own grief in context, and ask that you look at the problem without looking away.
I do, however, judge the facts and the broader context of the loss imposed by traffic collisions. We made tremendous progress in the 1960s and 1970s reducing traffic fatalities and cutting drunk driving deaths. Policy changes, automobile safety features, and awareness building through advocacy have helped to save, many, many lives. But now that progress has petered out and started to reverse. Impaired drivers and speeding drivers are still killing us. There are new threats, like distracted driving. Meanwhile, cars are still designed to go very fast, development is sprawling and demands a car-centric lifestyle, bike infrastructure is an afterthought, bars are built in the middle of parking lots, and people protest against changes intended to save human lives.
It is frightening, but please try to look squarely at this crisis. Respect and be gentle with us, the surviving family members. We may be on the edge, or somewhere in the pit of grief. Please allow yourself to feel those ripples of impact, and let them move you to do something, anything to start saving lives.
As for the photo, maybe if we had more signs like this, we’d have fewer stories like these.
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There will be a meeting tomorrow night to discuss safety solutions for the long-neglected streets of South LA, where Frederick “Woon” Frazier was killed by a hit-and-run driver last April.
And the LACBC has announced a public march and press conference will be held this Thursday to demand justice for Frazier.
The rights of bicyclists to ride in LA’s Bus and Bike Only Lanes remains under assault by misinformed police officers, who seem incapable of reading the posted signs saying bikes are allowed in the lanes.
An open house will be held at 6 pm tonight at the Palms-Rancho Park Branch Library to discuss closing the ridiculous Northvale Gap in the Expo Line Bike Path. Local homeowners successfully fought the bike path through the area when the Expo Line was built, claiming thieves would use it to burglarize their homes; now it will cost exponentially more to build what could and should have already been finished.
Monterey is about to break ground on an $8.5 million project to install separated bike lanes along the median on a major roadway. However, without improved signalization, a bike lane in the center of a roadway is likely to result in increased conflict points at intersections, which is why the one on Culver Blvd in Culver City has never been successful.
Authorities in New Mexico believe they’re closing in on a suspect in the cold case death of an 19-year old woman who disappeared while riding her bike in 1988; a Polaroid photo found lying on the ground the next year 1,600 miles away may show her and a young boy lying on a bed bound and gagged.
A Chicago writer says the most direct routes aren’t always the safest or most enjoyable, suggesting that side streets are better for low-stress riding with kids. That’s something that too often gets lost in the debate over bike lanes — different riders have different needs. Some may want a low stress route, while others need to ride busier streets for their commute. That was the beauty of the 2010 Los Angeles Bike Plan, which contained three separate but connected networks ranging from quiet bikeways to protected bike lanes on busy streets. Maybe we can still get LA leaders to pull it off the shelf. Or out of the trash bin.
In a very brief letter to the editor, a Pennsylvania bike rider reminds drivers that honking their horns accomplishes nothing but startling someone on a bike.
Caught on video: A bike rider was spotted riding in the middle of a major Virginia highway at rush hour, even though state law bans bikes from limited access highways. Don’t let LA drivers see what rush hour traffic looks like in Virginia, though, or they’ll all want to move to there. Or better yet, show them. Please.
A 70-year old British man says he just got out of the hospital with broken ribs and a fractured skull after he was hit by a speeding bicyclist riding illegally on the sidewalk. Seriously, don’t do that. Whether or not riding on the sidewalk is legal where you live, pedestrians should always receive the right-of-way there or in a crosswalk.
Belgian rider Victor Campenaerts was knocked off his bike after colliding with a drunken fan at the country’s national championships; he managed to finish the race despite a mild concussion.
Los Angeles’ hit-and-run car culture and deadly streets takes their bow in the national spotlight.
And the picture isn’t pretty.
The New York Times, in an article by LA-based reporter Jose A. Del Real, examines the problems on our streets and the rising toll among bike riders, through the tragic death of Frederick “Woon” Frazier in South LA.
Cyclists have long risked danger in Los Angeles, where a loose and lackluster network of bike lanes means they often ride alongside speeding cars. Today, cyclists draw a special kind of vitriol from drivers in America’s car capital, where traffic congestion is increasingly intolerable as the region’s population grows by an estimated 50,000 people a year.
In poor areas of the city, where people are more likely to depend on walking and cycling as the sole means of transportation, residents complain of a disregard for their well-being by drivers who treat their neighborhood streets like highways. City data shows that the dangers to pedestrians and cyclists are particularly acute in South Los Angeles — where Mr. Frazier was killed — which lags the rest of the city in safety infrastructure.
He note that the mayor has promised to ramp up advertising to fight the carnage on our streets.
That’s right, advertising.
“I am confident that without our efforts, things would be even worse,” Mr. Garcetti said earlier this year. He said the city’s transportation department would ramp up advertising related to road safety.
The purpose of Vision Zero is to remake our streets so that human mistakes don’t result in fatal crashes.
It’s hard to see how even the most hard-hitting ad can equal the life-saving effectiveness of a single road diet.
It’s an important read.
One that even quotes me couple times, along with the newfound advocates who’ve risen in the wake of Woon’s death.
And Del Real did me the favor of not quoting most of the things I said, as he caught me in one of my more pissed off moods at the inaction of city officials in the face of the rising bike and pedestrian deaths and lawlessness on our streets.
Then again, I don’t think they could print most of that in the Times, anyway.
Maybe that national spotlight will embarrass our mayor as he angles for higher office.
And make him realize he has a lot more work to do right here in the City of Angels first. Along with a few city council butts to kick.
The LA Times travel section offers tips on how to choose a car bike rack for your next road trip. Best advice: Whatever rack you choose, make sure your can lock it to your car, then lock the bikes to the rack. And take them inside when you stop for the night or leave your car for any length of time.
San Juan Capistrano police give a six-year old boy a new bicycle to replace the one he managed to jump off of, saving his own life just before it was crunched by a red light-running driver. However, it’s strange that the driver was booked on a felony hit-and-run charge, which requires serious injuries under California law; otherwise, it should be a misdemeanor.
Taking distracted driving to a new extreme, the backup driver responsible for overseeing the self-driving Uber car — and preventing the crash that took the life of Elaine Herzberg as she walked her bike across a Tempe AZ street — was watching The Voice on Hulu, instead of the road. Police had initially blamed Herzberg, calling the crash unavoidable before realizing it was anything but.
While the rest of the country is just discovering protected bike lanes, Boise ID had them in the ’70s, but let them fade away.
This is why you should always question police investigations following a crash. Colorado police reversed themselves after initially blaming the victim for a serious crash after they were finally able to talk to her in the hospital; she refuted the driver’s claim that she was riding her bike on the shoulder and illegally turned in front of him.
Emotions run high as 18 bike riders return home to Oklahoma after a three-week ride through seven states, retracing the steps of the Cherokee tribe during the infamous Trail of Tears.
An op-ed in the New York Times says if we want to build a sustainable future, cities and people must take priority over cars.
Sad news from Pennsylvania, where a woman was killed riding her bike home from her new job because she didn’t want to bother anyone by asking for a ride; her relatives didn’t even know she owned a bike. Naturally, police blamed her for the rear-end crash for riding in the traffic lane on a 45 mph road, rather than on the shoulder.
Caught on video: A Toronto bike rider catches a crash on a bike cam when he’s hit head-on by a driver making an illegal U-turn, who drove off after giving him a fake name and phone number. Amazingly, police don’t consider it hit-and-run since he didn’t need immediate medical attention.
A commentator on a conservative website says a call for banning right turns on red lights in Toronto is based on junk science, saying that stats showing 13% of crashes occurred when drivers were turning right just means that 87% didn’t, and that drivers aren’t always at fault. By that measure, running red lights should be legal too, since it doesn’t always result in a wreck, either.
A London writer says putting signs on the back of large trucks isn’t enough to protect bike riders and pedestrians from getting killed in their drivers’ blind spots. But ads will stop deadly crashes in Los Angeles, right?
A English minister says he understands the benefits of bicycling, but may get rid of the bikes in his garage because of the dangers posed by motorists. Although he says “militant cyclists” don’t help the cause of bicycling by trying to impose their rights. Which is another way of saying people who want to legally ride their bikes without getting run off the road.
This is the cost of traffic violence. A South African driver’s mother suffered a heart attack and his father has suffered from depression after he was sentenced to ten years for killing two bike riders. Then again, if you think that’s bad, imagine the suffering of his victims’ families.
Touching story as a Japanese man flew to Taiwan to thank the man who cared for his son when he was fatally injured by falling rocks while mountain biking.
Bicycling explains how to watch the Tour de France this year. And no, streaming it live on your handlebars while you ride probably isn’t the best idea.
Seriously? Team Sky’s coach says Chris Froome’s safety is at risk after five-time Tour de France winner Bernard Hinault calls Froome a cheat over his failed drug test.
June 22, 2018 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: CicLAvia rolls through the Valley, Whittier bicyclist threatened, and never lock your bike to a tree
CicLAvia is here.
The LA Daily Newslooks forward to Sunday’s Valley CicLAvia, which will roll, walk skate and scoot along Van Nuys Blvd through Pacoima, Panorama City and Arleta from 9 am to 4 pm.
This is the 25th CicLAvia, which began in Downtown Los Angeles on 10-10-10.
And yes, I still have the shirt.
It’s also the second CicLAvia in the North San Fernando Valley, following the first in 2016.
Less than 15% of walkers using crosswalks in New York and Flagstaff AZ were walking distracted.
And distracted or not, only a relative handful committed dangerous infractions while crossing the street.
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Local
Nice piece from Los Angeles Magazine offering mostly good advice for drivers on how to share the with bicyclists. Although if you roll down the window to talk to me at a red light, you’d better be asking for directions or complimenting my bike.
In an incredibly short-sighted decision for such a progressive city, West Hollywood has voted to ban e-scooters entirely, encouraging users of the devices which have exploded in popularity to get back in their cars and make the city’s chronic traffic and parking problems worse.
San Luis Obispo backs down on plans for a protected bike lane in the face of angry residents, after transportation officials say the post road diet layout isn’t wide enough for it. Although it is wide enough for wide buffered bike lanes, which take up more space.
San Francisco has approved plans for the city’s first neighborway, which are streets designed to improved pedestrian access and bike safety. Which sounds like yet another way of not offending anyone by saying bike boulevard.
The Wall Street Journal says group bike rides are the new boardroom where deals are made. And they still couldn’t manage to get through the piece without saying cycling is the new golf.
Unbelievable. A 26-year old Arkansas woman has been charged with intentionally running down a bike rider, then trying to hit him again with her car — even as she was already facing capital murder charges in the death of her own grandmother.
A bike-riding doctor with the famed Cleveland Clinic offers advice on how to stay safe while riding at night — and for a change, does not even mention bike helmets. Although his first recommendation is just don’t do it.
No bias here. A Queens community paper blames bicycle zealots for unreasonably demanding safer streets, suggesting that it’s their own damn fault if they get doored or run over. Someone should tell them that protected bikeways improve safety for everyone, as well as encouraging better behavior from bike riders.
A Queens councilmember says she’s being harassed by bike riders who might possibly have planned to sabotage a rally in opposition to a bike lane if she had actually bothered to hold it. Never mind that the bike lane has eliminated fatalities on what was formerly known as the Boulevard of Death.
According to the local business journal, Tampa, Florida business owners want fewer bike lanes on a roadway scheduled for a road diet. Which begs the question of just how much fewer they want. A single lane in just direction? Or more likely, none at all?
International
The Economist says ebikes and e-scooters are “flummoxing regulators while exciting consumers and venture capitalists,” as they weave their way into urban transport. Except, apparently, in West Hollywood.
Caught on video: A Toronto man has pled guilty to jumping out of a car, running up to a bicyclist and pushing him off his bike; no word on what led up to the attack.
According to the Korea Herald, bike deaths are up 11.5% in South Korea. Remarkably, the paper blames it on elderly riders and a lack of protective gear, rather than on a dramatic increase in distracted driving, like pretty much everywhere else.
