BikinginLA

It’s the last three days of the BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive. Give today to keep SoCal’s best source for bike news coming your way every day!

‘Tis the season.

A Santa Clarita landfill company donates 70 bicycles to local non-profits for distribution to children.

A SoCal-based charity gives 80 San Jose elementary school students new bikes; the Bikes For Kids Foundation has given away 40,000 bicycles over the last 14 years.

Firefighters team with members of a Mill Valley church to distribute 100 bicycles and 1,000 toys to local children.

Teachers in the appropriately named Hollidaysbugh PA use a $2,000 grant to buy a specially adapted bicycle for a girl with cerebral palsy and severe epilepsy.

An anonymous Shreveport LA donor provided 100 bicycles to be distributed to underprivileged students.

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Local

The LA Times mentions Josef Bray-Ali’s record of bike advocacy in Northeast LA as he takes on incumbent Councilmember Gil Cedillo in CD1.

CiclaValley takes his bike in to have the carbon frame repaired.

The LACBC offers advice on choosing a bike so your family can ride together.

The Santa Monica Police Department has joined the LAPD in recommending free bicycle registration with Bike Index, and checking the database to recover stolen bikes. You can register your bike with Bike Index right here, as well as report a stolen bike to add it to the database and automatically tweet a BOLO alert.

Next time you’re in SaMo, swing by city hall on Main Street so you can be counted on their new real-time bike counter.

State

A Victorville bike rider complained of back and leg pain after he was rear-ended by a driver who had just made a right turn; the woman behind the wheel played the universal Get Out of Jail Free card by claiming she just didn’t see him.

A San Luis Obispo letter writer suggests imposing a 2% surcharge on all bicycles, parts, accessories and service to fund more and better bikeways. Evidently, because bike riders don’t already pay sales, income, property and or any other assorted taxes, like normal people do.

Berkeley saves money and improves safety by improving existing infrastructure to create a protected intersection.

More sad news from Northern California, as yet another bike rider has been killed in a hit-and-run in Sacramento County.

National

Adventure cyclists now have a voice on the US Travel and Tourism Committee, which will try to get Mr. Trump’s ear on travel matters — if the incoming administration doesn’t disband it.

Bike lawyer Bob Mionske examines what happens when bike riders and drivers are blinded by the sun, saying if you can’t see or have the sun to your back, drivers probably can’t see you.

People for Bikes offers a Best Of recap of their 2016 tales.

Red Kite Prayer is giving away three “dream” road bikes to help raise funds for World Bicycle Relief.

Apropos the time of year, Bicycling offers a primer on how to gift wrap a bicycle.

Seattle will pay an injured bike rider $1.6 million after his lawyer successfully argues that a truck driver’s vision was blocked by bridge support columns

A St. Louis bike rider was stabbed by a homeless man who claimed he thought he was going to be attacked.

A writer in New York’s Newsday calls for a “draconian” prohibition on using mobile devices while driving. However, he tosses out the stat that about 54% of bike riders killed in crashed in 2015 weren’t wearing helmets, without considering how many of those suffered head injuries or if their injuries were survivable, with or without one.

International

Volvo’s reflective spray-on LifePaint is back, and available online for the first time. Because you just can’t expect drivers to actually see you if you only have lights, reflectors, and hi-viz.

Bike Radar offers five reasons roadies should get adventurous and get offroad.

Calgary votes to make a downtown network of protected bike lanes permanent, even winning over two councilors who voted against the original pilot project; the network’s unlikely success could offer lessons for other cities.

Caught on video: A Montreal snow-clearing driver faces a fine for crushing a bicycle that had been locked to a parking sign on the sidewalk.

London’s mayor taps a Nike executive as the city’s first walking and cycling commissioner.

Caught on video too: Manchester, England bike thieves ram through a steel bike shop gate to steal $21,000 worth of bicycles.

British ministers order mobile phone makers to develop and install software to keep drivers from using their phones behind the wheel. The question is how to keep drivers from using their phones without blocking their passengers, as well.

A Glasgow nonprofit has taught 7,000 children how to ride a bicycle before they start school.

A New Zealand cyclist hopes to set a new record by riding across the country in four days to raise money for charity. Meanwhile, three women riding across New Zealand to raise funds for a three-year old boy suffering from cerebral palsy meet him for the first time.

Australian police are still trying to identify a man who was found dead next to a pink bicycle in a Melbourne park 55 years ago. If there’s even been a better argument for always carrying ID when you ride, I don’t know what it would be.

Caught on video: A road raging Aussie driver threatens to run over a bicyclist, then grabs his bike cam and throws it across the road — bravely running away when the rider stands up to him, and offering to pay for any damages on the spot. Note to Daily Mail: It’s not a dashcam without a dashboard.

Finally…

Have a Clif Bar while you ride, Clif wine when you’re done. Making bike thieves do the walk of shame.

And no, widening the 405 wasn’t worth it.

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Thanks to David Rindlaub for his generous support of the BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive to help bring the area’s best bike news your way every morning.

It’s the last four days of the BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive. Give today to keep SoCal’s best source for bike news coming your way every day!

Unlike yesterday, there’s no shortage of local news today.

Or anywhere else, for that matter.

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‘Tis the season.

Kindhearted neighbors of a 90-year old retired doctor in Ocean Beach team up to buy him a new bike after the three-wheeler he’d ridden every day for the past ten years was stolen from his yard.

Fontana police donate a total of 100 bicycles to local kids.

A Petaluma bike mechanic is refurbishing 50 adult and children’s bicycles to donate to a local homeless charity for their private bikeshare program.

A Pennsylvania auto dealer invites 60 kids for milk and cookies and a new bicycle.

Bighearted North Carolina kids pitch in to buy a new adult tricycle for an 82-year old woman after getting to know her during last fall’s Hurricane Matthew.

A New Zealand program to help get people on bicycles who couldn’t otherwise afford them has refurbished 75 out of 200 donated bikes, with 48 ready to give away.

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After weeks of speculation about a mysterious package delivered to Bradley Wiggins’ Team Sky in 2011, they tell Parliament that it was an innocent shipment of flu medication. Which seems like a perfectly reasonably explanation now that it’s five years too late to verify.

Good news from the UK, as track cyclist Victoria Williamson is back to training after suffering a broken neck while racing in Rotterdam.

Former pro cyclist Chris Stockburger, now an orthopedic surgeon, is conducting a research study of injuries and safety problems common to competitive cyclists.

Two thousand Kiwi cyclists turn out to ride with Lance Armstrong, yet the first word of the story is still “Disgraced.” On the other hand, a former New Zealand cycling great says don’t scapegoat Lance for making the best of a rotten system and era.

Two competitors in the Tour of Costa Rica get the boot after one gave the other a boot following a high-speed crash.

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Local

Metro wants to know where you’d put bikeshare docks in Venice and Pasadena.

NELA’s Fletcher Drive gets new pavement, a road diet and nearly one mile of bike lanes. Funny how much progress is being made building bike lanes just outside, but not in, Gil Cedillo’s 1st Council District.

LA Curbed takes a look at the new protected bike lane on one side of Van Nuys Blvd in Pacoima, part of the mayor’s Great Streets program.

Three Santa Monica elementary schools are among the most dangerous in the state for kids getting to and from school, whether by car, bike or on foot.

Good piece from SoCal Bicyclist reporting on last week’s die-in in Palos Verdes Estates, and the less-than-friendly reception the protesters got from city hall.

State

BikeSD asks if San Diego is ready to make the switch from auto-centric Level of Service to the multi-modal Vehicle Miles Traveled. And answers probably not.

Santa Barbara teens form a bike co-op at the local high school.

Hollister receives a $1 million grant to improve bike and pedestrian access. The city was made famous by the 1947 motorcycle riot depicted by Marlon Brando in The Wild One.

Uber admits its self-driving cars have a nasty habit of right-hooking bicyclists riding in San Francisco bike lanes, and promise to fix it.

National

People for Bikes reports on the nation’s best new bike lanes. Exactly none of which are in Los Angeles. Or anywhere else in Southern California, for that matter.

Bicycling suggests rad-itizing your bike with custom paint.

The Seattle Times asks if the city’s mandatory bike helmet law will kill its $5 million attempt to reboot its bikeshare program. Short answer, probably.

A Wisconsin town is allowing fat bikes on skate trails on a trial basis.

An Ohio man faces charges for knocking a man off his bike, then getting back in his car and deliberately running over him in a dispute over a lousy $15. Imagine what he would have done for $20.

The debate over Philadelphia bike lanes is targeted by fake news, as NIMBY opponents create excuses with no bearing in fact. Which sounds like every public bike lane meeting I’ve ever attended.

A Baltimore bike advocate discusses how bike infrastructure can address inequality in the city, where most of the existing bike lanes have gone into wealthy, white neighborhoods.

This is why you always carry identification. North Carolina authorities are trying to identify a man who died after falling off his bicycle. If you or someone you know rides without ID, do something about it now.

International

An Alberta, Canada writer says he’s riding for hope after losing his wife to cancer.

Police in the UK are looking for the bike-riding jerk who responded to a crash with a 72-year man on a shared pathway by pushing him up against a fence and spitting in the man’s face. I always try to see the other side of the story. But in this case, let’s hope the stocks are still legal over there.

The war on cars may be mythical, but the war on bikes is real. A Brit cyclist was lucky to avoid a tripwire strung across a promenade by a group of kids.

An Edinburgh columnist concedes that drivers who kill deserve punishment, but those darn cyclists need to need to obey the law, too. So why doesn’t anyone ever complain about all those scofflaw drivers who put far more people at risk?

Celebrate the 200th birthday of the bicycle with a special German 20 Euro coin.

A bike advocacy group in The Netherlands calls a proposed ban on smartphone use while riding senseless and unenforceable.

A pair of Indian cyclists are riding across the subcontinent to call attention to organ donation.

This is the cost of traffic violence, as a promising young doctor was killed riding her bike before she could start her new job with an Australian hospital.

Finally…

Keep sweating in that virtual cycling class, and maybe you too can win a spot on a pro team. Run a red light on your bike in Switzerland, and lose your driver’s license, which you may or may not have.

And something is seriously wrong when a five-year old girl isn’t safe riding in the cul-de-sac in front of her house.

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Thanks to Bryan Jones and Todd Munson for their generous support of the BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive to help bring the area’s best bike news your way every morning.

It’s the last week of the 2nd Annual BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive. Give today to keep Southern CAlifornia’s leading source for bike news coming your way every day!

The holiday season made for a light news weekend in the bike world.

With the exception of over a dozen bike giveaways totaling over 7,400 bicycles, that is. Including two from a generous cop, and a bighearted boy giving away his own bike to someone who needs it more.

Oddly though, not a single non-giveaway story made the radar on the local front.

But that’s good, right?

And if you missed it, you’ll find a lot more news, local and otherwise, on Saturday’s Weekend Links.

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‘Tis the season.

The charity foundation started by Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner donated 2,000 bicycles, which were given away through an LA church.

Santa Barbara County inmates refurbished 25 bicycles collected by the sheriff’s department to distribute through local charities.

Forty-eight Adelanto elementary school students get new bikes, along with an adult bike for the mother of two of the children, whose husband died earlier this year.

A program founded by a Redding man 13 years ago gave away 275 bicycles last year; this year they have 125 bikes to donate, but are hoping for more.

Two Oregon boys will have bicycles this Christmas thanks to a bighearted cop who bought them new bikes after theirs were stolen.

Over 300 people pitched in to build 1,400 bicycles, which will be given as surprise gifts to residents of an unsuspecting Michigan neighborhood.

A New Jersey bike shop has repaired over 250 bicycles and donated them to local organizations.

Fayetteville NC’s Bicycle Man gave 1,500 bikes and helmets to local children, along with clothes and school supplies; the charity program has continued under his wife’s leadership after Bicycle Man Moses Mathis passed away in 2013.

The Charleston SC transportation authority gives away 16 unclaimed bikes that had been left on buses.

More than 1,000 Columbus GA children got new bicycles thanks to a program started by a local man.

A Georgia church gives away 26 bikes and 40 coats to struggling families.

Florida’s Jack the Bike Man gave away over 900 refurbished bikes on Sunday.

A bighearted Aussie six-year old boy offers to give his own bike to another child who needs it.

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Former pro Marijn de Vries has raised allegations of sexual abuse and harassment in the Dutch cycling program.

A Bloomington IL ultra-distance cyclist is preparing to compete in next year’s 5,700 mile Red Bull Trans-Siberian Extreme race across Russia.

A 12-time Kiwi triathlon champ ignores Lance Armstrong’s past, and screaming headlines about drug cheating, to go for bike ride with the ex-Tour de France champ who’s in the country to film a commercial. Meanwhile, one writer calls him a sociopath and says no one should care if he’s in the country.

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Local

No news is good news. Right?

State

A Santa Ana bike rider was the victim of a suspected gang shooting; he was hospitalized in critical condition.

Golden State Warriors Guard Shaun Livingston is a fan of Oakland’s Original Scraper Bike Team.

A Marin County town is putting bike lanes on a nearby connector road to ease congestion on a multi-use pathway, which has been the scene of a number of collisions between bicyclists and pedestrians.

National

After an Everett WA cyclist is hit by a car, several Good Samaritans help a police officer lift the car off him; thanks in part to their swift action, he’s expected to survive.

A Seattle bike columnist points out the need to be seen at night.

A Colorado man donates 40 acres of his own property to the public through a conservation easement that will protect the singletrack bike and hiking park he built.

The Omaha NE bikeshare program is set to double in size by 2019.

The Charleston SC newspaper says it’s time to stop stalling and build a bike lane on a key bridge over the Ashley River.

International

A 22-year old Irish man completes a 3,000 mile journey across the southern US from California to Florida.

British truckers fight for their right to continue cutting off bike riders.

In search of adventure, a British cyclist rides the entire 6,000 mile Iron Curtain Trail on a vintage East German shopping bike, deliberately unprepared to trace the route marking the former border between capitalist west and communist east.

Two advocacy groups merge to avoid working at cross purposes and holding back progress in a Pakistani state.

Twenty-three Indian bicyclists are riding over 900 miles from Delhi to Mumbai to call attention to human trafficking and child labor.

China’s app-based bikeshare systems are facing a problem with theft and sabotage.

The 82-year old founder of the world’s largest bike maker is stepping down after 44 years, passing the reigns of Taiwan’s Giant Manufacturing to his son and niece.

Finally…

It’s not a bike, it’s a born again billboard hogging the bike rack.

And if you’re going to break into a bike shop, don’t get run over by your own getaway van. And don’t drive on the damn bike path.

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Special thanks to Mark Ganzer, Tai Wan Kim, and Michael Young for their generous donations to support this site and help bring the area’s best bike news your way every morning.