Day 118 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025.
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By the time you read this, I should be home recovering from an early morning outpatient surgery.
It’s nothing serious. But I’ve been told to expect a lot of pain for the first 24 hours, and will probably be pretty out of it for awhile.
I wanted to try and write something for tomorrow. But I think I need to take the night off and give myself time to recover.
So I’m going to let my pain meds wrap me in the arms of Morpheus, and see you again on Wednesday, instead.
And no, I’m not worried. Scared shitless, maybe, but not nervous. But at least writing this should help keep my mind off it for a few hours.
Meanwhile, the surgery will be performed robotically. So I plan to take a good look at that machine when they wheel me in.
And if it says Waymo anywhere, I’m going to run like hell.
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Last week, I commented on the mayor’s slash and burn budget for the coming fiscal year, which comes after years of warnings that the city’s spending and pay raises were unsustainable.
Not to mention a seemingly endless series of legal settlements for everything from sexual harassment to injuries and deaths caused by poorly designed and maintained streets, resulting in half a billion in payments in just the last two years.
Most of which could have been avoided if the city spent the money fixing the problems, instead of paying later for not fixing them.
Now Mayor Bass has responded by pulling an Elon Musk-style DOGE act, calling for laying off 1,600 city staffers, something that could have a devastating effect on already understaffed departments responsible for street safety, like LADOT and Street Services.
And that’s in addition to proposing a delay in capital expenditures, like bike lanes and other safety improvements.
Now, I’m the first to admit I’m no financial wizard, and have no idea how to best balance the city’s books.
But I do know we shouldn’t be making cuts that will cost lives and lead to millions more in legal settlements.
If you’re as mad as I am, you can comment on the mayor’s proposed budget at City Hall this afternoon.
APRIL 28, 2025 at 4pm
City Hall Council Chamber, Room 340
200 North Spring Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Then turn out on Wednesday evening, preferably wearing red, for a die-in on the steps of City Hall.
Dying-In Los Angeles – A Protest for Safer Streets: Don’t “DOGE” LA Safety
A coalition of non-profits and road safety advocates will be hosting a protest on the steps of LA City Hall to raise awareness of LA’s dystopian-level budget cuts.
If these cuts go through, there will be no funding for new safety improvements next year — no speed reduction measures, no protected bike lanes, no pedestrian upgrades. Nothing.
Join us at 6pm, April 30th – LA City Hall.
I won’t be able to make it because of my surgery, which will lay me up for a couple weeks. But I hope you’ll go and demand safer streets for me.
And maybe do a little yelling.
Because I sure as hell would.
Meanwhile, Damian Kevitt, the founder of Streets Are For Everyone and Finish The Ride — and the bike rider who barely survived being dragged onto the 5 Freeway by a fleeing hit-and-run driver, who was never caught — has started a petition to tell the Mayor not to DOGE LA safety.
Yes, I’ve signed it myself. And I hope you will, and share it with everyone you know.
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Another day, another mass casualty crash on North American roads.
By now, you’ve probably heard that at least 11 people were killed, and dozens more injured, when a man slammed his SUV into the crowd of people celebrating a Philippine holiday in Vancouver, British Columbia.
The driver was taken into custody after being stopped by people attending the festival.
However, police concluded that this was not a terrorist attack, as it first appeared, but rather, the driver was someone well known to police with a history of mental health issues.
Which raises the obvious question of why someone with a history of mental health problems was still allowed to pilot a multi-ton potential weapon of mass destruction.
As Tom Vanderbilt, author of
Driving is treated as if it’s a right, rather than a privilege. And until we change that, horrific disasters like this will keep happening, intentionally or otherwise.
Even the conservative Los Angeles Daily News agrees, calling for removing the license of drivers who have proven they don’t belong on the road.
Yet the state continues to ignore the most obvious way to improve road safety: remove the licenses of those drivers who have a history of driving dangerously. A shocking investigative report by CalMatters called “License to Kill” highlighted California’s inexplicable willingness to allow the deadliest drivers to keep driving.
It’s unfathomable—and appalling that the Department of Motor Vehicles had little to say for itself. The DMV “routinely allows drivers … with horrifying histories of dangerous driving, including DUIs, crashes and numerous tickets … to continue to operate on our roadways,” per the report. Too often they go on to kill. Many keep driving even after they kill. Some go on to kill again.”
Clearly, we have to add mental illness to that list.
And as we’ve noted before, simply suspending a driver’s license offers no guarantee they won’t continue to drive anyway. We need to remove the driver’s access to a motor vehicle, whether that means impounding it, or somehow disabling it until they get their license back.
Thanks to someone who prefers to be anonymous for forwarding the Daily News link.
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Okay, so they’re not gone yet.
The logo for San Diego’s Pedal Ahead is still on the website for the California E-bike Incentive Project, as they gear up for tomorrow’s second round of deliberately throttled ebike vouchers.
It turns out the nonprofit agency is only semi-fired, and continuing to work with the California Air Resources Board, aka CARB, as they look for a replacement.
Which doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence things will go better this time, after the disastrous first round.
Thanks to Malcomb Watson for pointing that out.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. A San Diego letter writer says if the city has to make budget cuts, it should start with the bike lanes.
Horrible news from Chicago, where a 55-year old bike advocate was attacked with a crowbar by a road raging car passenger after he called out the driver for parking in the bike lane, as he was riding home from Friday’s Critical Mass.
No bias here, either. The Mayor of Melbourne, Australia’s inner city called out the “white privilege” of “managerial class people,” saying they’re the only supporters of a bike lane he wants to narrow to restore 69 parking spaces removed to build it.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Um, okay. Police in England are trying out a new forensic spray for tagging anti-social bicyclists and motorcyclists, marking their clothes and bikes with a yellow stain that shows up under ultraviolet light, allowing police to identify the miscreants later.
Legislation was re-introduced in the British Parliament to “close a loophole” in the law to allow bicyclists who kill pedestrians to be sentenced to life in prison, just like killer drivers can be, but usually aren’t; meanwhile, The Spectator says “We don’t need a crackdown on killer cyclists;” but you’ll need to subscribe or register if you want to read it.
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Local
UCLA hosted the annual bicycle-powered Coastalong Music and Sustainability Festival on campus this year, because the usual off-campus venue is under construction.
Santa Clarita has removed the white “paddles,” aka bollards, lining the protected bike lane on Orchard Village Road, because people found them aesthetically displeasing.
State
Orange County’s first paved pump track opened in San Clemente on Saturday.
A new 6.7-mile, $31 million bikeway will open this summer, running parallel to the trolley in Imperial Beach to connect the San Ysidro border crossing with the Bayshore Bikeway.
Sad news from Fresno, where a man riding a bicycle was killed by a driver near a freeway onramp; the driver was reportedly cooperating with investigators, even though it sounds like they left the scene.
An op-ed from the communications manager for the Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates questions whether spending state traffic safety grant money to ticket bicyclists and pedestrians will make the city safer. It’s also illegal selective enforcement, because police can’t legally enforce the law against one group without equal enforcement against anyone else who commits the same violations.
Sacramento’s ABC10 offers five things to know about tomorrow’s second round of California ebike incentives.
National
Planetizen provides US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy with a data-based explainer on why bike lanes are good, after said there’s no evidence that bike lanes have benefits.
Author Colum McCann responded to a request from the New York Times to explore a significant moment in his religious or spiritual life by submitting an essay about biking across the US in his early 20s questioning his faith, and finding God in the people he met along the way.
Oregon bikemaker Co-Motion Cycles invited the public in over the weekend to see how tandem bikes are made, as the tandem bike industry is reportedly booming. Which would make it one of the few bright spots in the bike industry these days.
An urgent search is underway to find British Paralympian Sam Ruddock after the paracyclist disappeared on a visit to Las Vegas two weeks ago.
The truck driver who plowed into a group ride in Goodyear, Arizona, killing two people and injuring 17 others, lost his bid to get the charges against him dismissed; investigators concluded driver fatigue was the cause of the crash, despite the driver’s claim his steering locked up. Never mind that he had gotten high the night before and still had THC in his system hours after the crash.
In an argument reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s questioning what the meaning of “is” is, voters in my bike-friendly Colorado hometown may have to return to the ballot box to determine the meaning of “recreation,” as opponents of a proposed bike park argue that rules limiting the area to recreational uses mean it can’t be used for a bike park, because riding a bicycle in a bike park somehow isn’t recreation.
Kiwi pop star Lorde is one of us, as the video for her latest song shows her riding a vintage bike through the carfree streets of New York City, grinning from ear to ear. Because who wouldn’t smile if there wasn’t a car in sight on your next ride?
Orlando, Florida turned bikeways into a year-long outdoor art gallery.
International
PinkBike offers random highlights from Europe’s largest handmade bike show, ranging from an antique bike horn to a frame-mounted liquor flask.
A new London bicycling festival promises to bring bike markets, BMX events, obstacle courses, live music and a bicycle ballet performance, along with over 30 family-friendly bike rides through nearly half of the city’s 32 boroughs.
A website from the UK introduces readers to a 56-year old woman they call the Iron Empress, who went directly from finishing the London marathon to the British Black Unty Bike Ride through South Africa.
A British man is taking one last bike ride to raise funds for four charities before he has both legs amputated due to a rare genetic condition.
Life is cheap in the UK, where a woman walked without a day behind bars for running a stop sign, crashing into another car and killing a 79-year old man riding a bicycle as collateral damage; she had just gotten the news that her father was dying while using her handsfree phone, and instead of pulling over to deal with her shock and grief, just kept driving until she killed someone.
Sad news from Spain, where a 39-year-old British man died in a fall during the grueling Mallorca 312 amateur bike race, as tributes poured in for the popular rider.
You can now find new bike lanes on the Dvořák Embankment in front of the Ministry of Industry and Trade in Prague, Czech Republic.
China’s Xinhua offers photos from Saturday’s I Bike Budapest ride, as hundreds of people turned out to demonstrate the importance of bicycles as daily transportation in the city.
Competitive Cycling
An Indiana University student newspaper posted photos and results from the university’s iconic Little 500, including one of the gnarliest crash photos I’ve ever seen; Kappa Alpha Theta sorority won the women’s race, while Black Key Bulls won the men’s race for the second year in a row.
World Champ Tadej Pogacar continued his dominance of the early racing season with a solo breakaway win at Liege-Bastogne-Liege on Sunday, his third win at the 133-year old Monument.
Mauritian cyclist Kim Le Court became the first African rider to win a Monument, out-sprinting Demi Vollering, Puck Pieterse and Cédrine Kerbaol at the finish.
In the latest incident of race fans behaving badly, a spectator was called an “absolute moron” for riding his bike on the Liège-Bastogne-Liège course as the women’s race was ongoing, then latching on to the back wheel of race leader Pauliena Rooijakkers before eventually being ejected by a race marshal.
The Uno-X Mobility cycling team brought back the “unmistakable” green, red and white jerseys of the legendary 7-Eleven team in a homage at Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
Road.cc examines the most obscure and peculiar sponsors of the pro peloton.
It was repeat news at the California edition of the popular Belgian Waffle Ride, with both the men’s and women’s races won by defending champs Matt Beers and Sofia Gomez Villafañe.
Cycling News looks at the huge crowds, party atmosphere and tough competition of the 45-year old Athens, Georgia Twilight Criterium.
Finally…
Everyone has fair-weather friends, so invite them to join you on a fair-weather ride. The late Pope Francis probably had more and better bikes than you have.
And your next bike ride could put you in the spotlight.
Or your legs, anyway.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
