My apologies.
My diabetes picked tonight to kick my ass, knocking me out most of the night.
I’ll try to catch up on everything we’ve missed tomorrow.
Morning Links: $91 million promised for LA Vision Zero, Frazier press event, and impounding bikeshares in San Diego
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.
Update: Bicyclist killed when driver drifts off the road near El Cajon
It looks like LA’s recent epidemic of bicycling deaths has moved south.
According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, a man on a road bike was killed when a driver drifted off the road, and lost control on the soft shoulder of a highway just outside El Cajon.
The crash occurred around 3:15 pm on Olde Highway 80 west of Flinn Crest Street.
The 67-year old driver reportedly sideswiped the victim, identified only as a 58-year old Alpine resident, before continuing to strike a bus stop sign, mailbox and a parked pickup truck.
The victim was taken to San Diego’s Sharp Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Video from the scene posted by San Diego’s KGTV-10 shows a badly mangled bike, and the driver’s minivan with the front end smashed in.
This is at least the 19th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the third in San Diego County.
Update: The victim has been identified as 58-year old Brian Jennings, a professor of comparative politics and U.S. Government at Grossmont College.
Police believe the driver of the minivan fell asleep before drifting off the road and slamming into Jennings.
Update 2: I originally said the victim was riding a mountain bike, based on the initial reports; however, the video above clearly shows a road bike. Thanks to BV for the correction.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Brian Jennings and his loved ones.
Category: Injuries and Fatalities / Tags: bicycling fatality, Brian Jennings, El Cajon, Grossmont College, San Diego County
Bicyclist killed in crash after getting doored in Burbank
Sadly, last night’s breaking news has been confirmed.
As we noted earlier, KNBC-4 reported last night that a bike rider had been killed after getting doored at Alameda Avenue and Mariposa Street in Burbank.
Unfortunately, however, they failed to post the story online.
Now the Burbank Leader has confirmed that 53-year old Burbank resident Lenny Trinh died after the driver of a parked car opened door as Trinh rode in a bike lane on Alameda, knocking him off his bike and into the path of an oncoming pickup.
Trinh was taken to a nearby hospital where he died of his injuries.
The paper places the time of the crash at around 5 pm Monday, between Mariposa Street and Griffith Park Drive.
For a change, both drivers remained at the scene.
According to California law, the driver is always at fault in a dooring, as long as the victim is riding legally in the direction of traffic.
CVC 22517 clearly requires drivers to check for traffic before opening a car door and ensure that it does not interfere with traffic.
And yes, bike riders are considered traffic, in or out of a bike lane.
While dooring is one of the most common types of bicycle crashes, deaths are rare, averaging less than one per year in the entire SoCal region.
And they can be eliminated entirely if drivers are trained to use the Dutch Reach, opening the car door with their right hand so it forces them to look left over their shoulder.
This is at least the 18th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the 10th in LA County; it’s also the fifth bicycling fatality in the LA area in just the past two weeks.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Lenny Trinh and all his family and loved ones.
Category: Bicycle Safety, Injuries and Fatalities / Tags: bicycling fatality, Burbank, car vs. bike, CVC 22517, dooring, Lenny Trinh, Los Angeles County
Morning Links: Recent South LA deaths all on Vision Zero Priority Corridors, and more on Friday’s Frazier memorial ride
Breaking news: KNBC-4 reported last night that a bike rider was killed in a dooring at Alameda and Mariposa in Burbank yesterday; however, there’s no confirmation online yet. More information when it becomes available.
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After reading yesterday’s story about the latest bike rider killed in a South LA hit-and-run, Michael MacDonald wrote to remind us that each of the three recent fatalities were on streets the city already knew were dangerous.
And did nothing to fix.
Which isn’t just morally reprehensible, but will undoubtedly leave the city on the hook for massive liability awards, as well.
Not only were these 3 intersections part of Vision Zero’s High Injury Network, they were set in early 2017 as “Priority Corridors,” a 90.3 mile subset of the overall 450 mile HIN “that will have the greatest effect toward overall fatality reduction.”
The City’s own analysis dictated that it needed to improve safety on these streets and it hasn’t. And this grim prediction is now coming true for the failure of the mayor and city council to act on Vision Zero’s analysis.
And as noted yesterday, all three deaths occurred in CD8 Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson’s district.
Just in case you want to know who to contact to demand the city stop talking about traffic safety, and actually do something.
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Streetsblog’s Sahra Sulaiman has written another hard-hitting piece about the death of Frederick “Woon” Frazier in a South LA hit-and-run last week, and the pain expressed on Friday’s memorial ride.
“I think we all have a voice,” (Edin Barrientos) continued, gesturing towards the cyclists gathered around the ghost bike. “And nothing’s going to happen until you step up. If we’re not stepping up to city hall, to city officials, to the police, to the media, to the public about these issues, nothing is going to happen and someone else is going to die. Someone closer to you guys is gonna pass away. Someone is going to get killed. They don’t care about us. The laws that are in effect are not about keeping cyclists safe on the streets.”
Barrientos was referring to the recent crashes that the group had also mourned – 54-year-old Elisa Gomez, run over by a FedEx truck in a hit-and-run at Long Beach and Washington, and 15-year-old Sebastian Montero killed two weeks ago in Woodland Hills. What he didn’t know was that just as cyclists began gathering at Hoover Park for Frazier’s memorial ride, a pedestrian was killed at Figueroa and Imperial Highway. Or that later that night, a man in a wheelchair would be killed at Century and Main. Or that yet another cyclist would be run down at Century and Avalon the following night.
Meanwhile, the LACBC calls on you to write LA Mayor Eric Garcetti to demand that he act for safer streets now.
CiclaValley rides with the Frederick Frazier Memorial Ride, and contemplates the emotional pain that comes from such needless loss.
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The LAPD has released a photo of the woman who appeared to intentionally slam into Quatrell Stallings as he was helping people cross the street at Wednesday’s protest over Frazier’s death.
Anyone who recognizes her or has other information is urged to call Detective Farish at 323/786-5447; anonymous tips can be left at 800/222-8477.
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Local
The upper Griffith Park section of the LA River bike path will be closed north of Los Feliz Blvd through mid-October for construction of the new Atwater Bridge.
Long Beach has postponed the Beach Streets open streets event scheduled for May as part of the opening weekend for the Amgen Tour of California after restaurant owners questioned the wisdom of closing Shoreline Drive and Shoreline Village on Mother’s Day.
State
A retired CHP officer was knocked cold as he passed an SUV on the side of the road in Fresno County, and woke up in an ambulance with his bike and wallet missing.
San Francisco’s Upper Market Street gets an “awesome” new protected bike lane.
Diablo residents are going to court to try to have a roadway leading to Mount Diablo State Park declared private to cut off access to “loud packs” of bicyclists “careening through the streets” and wreaking havoc on the quiet community. I’m sure they’ll also try to ban cars, which are even more annoying.
Chico will try out a temporary buffered bike lane through the end of May to see what people think.
National
Five cyclists are on a 23-day, 1,300-mile ride linking all three 9/11 sites.
A county commissioner has pledged $10 million to jumpstart efforts to make Houston more bike friendly.
A pair of Arkansas residents are gearing up to ride June’s 545-mile AIDS/LifeCycle Ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
Listen my children and you may hear, of the midnight ride before the Boston marathon.
Brooklyn residents complain about plans for a new bike lane on every block except in front of the local police precinct, saying it will dangerously force riders back into traffic.
Touring DC in the springtime by dockless bikeshare.
A Virginia letter writer complains about bicyclists dressed in black and riding without reflectors in broad daylight, even though she doesn’t seem to have had any problem seeing them. And insists bikes should be banned from any roads with a speed limit over 40 mph, apparently because people like her can’t drive safely around them.
Atlanta’s annual bicycling report reflects a major shift in attitude regarding transportation in the city.
International
Mark your calendar. The UN has officially declared June 3rd World Bicycle Day.
Bogota, Columbia proves it’s possible to actually reduce road deaths and homicides at the same time.
A new Canadian study shows that bike paths around Montreal don’t benefit children because they go through areas with older populations, and kids under 14 are seldom involved in the planning process.
Montreal will spend $1.2 billion dollars on roadwork, including installing a bicycle-priority street and making improvements to existing bikeways.
A new poll shows Ontario residents want the province to invest in bicycling.
London’s Mirror says one bike is stolen every six minutes in the UK. And yes, they really should lock it up better.
The Finnish Supreme Court has affirmed a 32-month prison sentence for a road raging driver who fled the scene after brake-checking a bike rider; the victim died the next day.
Prague prepares to ban bikes from pedestrian areas in the city center, even though collisions between bicyclists and pedestrians are rare.
A writer for Yahoo takes in Isreal’s booming cycling scene, starting with a fondo in the Negev desert.
A new Australian study suggests that taking the lane on roads with a single clear lane actually increases your risk, while taking the lane next to parked cars decreases it.
No disconnect here. A writer for Japan’s Asahi Shimbun says bikes don’t belong on the sidewalk and it’s not safe to ride on the road, so make bicyclists wear helmets.
Competitive Cycling
VeloNews goes riding with the annual Belgian Waffle Ride gravel race in San Diego County, which ends as all great races should, at a craft brewery. Then again, Cycling Tips says it’s not really a gravel race, it’s a road race with dirt.
Finally…
Celebrating suffrage Lady Godiva style. If you want to know how many bicyclists will use a roadway in summer, don’t study it in the middle of winter.
And Los Angeles celebrates a more sustainable city. Although apparently one without bicycles.
Category: Morning Links, Vision Zero / Tags: bicycling, Frederick Frazier, High Injury Network, Los Angeles, South LA, Vision Zero, Vision Zero Priority Corridors
Update: Yet another bike rider killed in South LA hit-and-run; third death in last week on LA’s High Injury Network
It’s happened yet again.
Another bike rider has been killed in a South LA hit-and-run, the third person murdered by heartless, cowardly drivers in the last week.
All on streets identified as part of the city’s High Injury Network.
And all in CD8 Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson’s district.
According to the Los Angeles Daily News, the victim was struck by one driver and run over by at least one other motorist at the intersection of South Avalon and East Century Boulevards — all of whom left the scene.
KNBC-4 adds more detail, saying the victim, identified only as a man who appeared to be in his 60s, was crossing Century headed south in the crosswalk on Avalon when he was struck around 12:15 pm.
Both drivers fled the scene, before a second driver in a Lexus SUV, eventually returned and talked with police.
Which means the first driver should face a murder charge for leaving his victim lying in the street to be run over at least one other time.
We’ll never know if the victim might have survived if the first driver had stopped. What we do know is that after leaving him sprawled and bleeding in the road, he probably never had a chance.
We’ll also never know if he would had survived if the city had moved forward with the safety improvements called for as part of the LA Vision Zero’s High Injury Network.
But we do know that the failure to take any action after identifying the problem could leave the city with a greater legal liability for this death, as well as the two previous deaths in the district this past week.
Not to mention the bicyclist seriously injured in a deliberate hit-and-run assault while participating in a protest Wednesday afternoon.
And never mind that the City of Los Angeles is well aware of the hit-and-run epidemic, but done little to address it other than passing a standing reward program.
This is at least the 17th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the ninth in Los Angeles County; it’s also the seventh in the City of Los Angeles.
There is an automatic $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the suspect in this case.
Update: The victim has been identified as 60-year old Christopher White, no town of residence given.
While the story mentions the $50,000 reward for the hit-and-run death of Frederick Frazier, there should also be a similar reward in this case under the city’s hit-and-run reward program.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Christopher White and his loved ones.
Thanks to Michael MacDonald for the heads-up.
