“Cleaning the air we breathe. Protecting our communities from the harmful impacts of the oil industry. Accelerating California’s clean energy future. Each of these actions on their own are monumental steps to tackling the climate crisis – but California isn’t waiting a minute longer to get them done. We’re taking all of these major actions now in the most aggressive push on climate this state has ever seen because later is too late. Together with the Legislature’s leadership, the progress we make on the climate crisis this year will be felt for generations – and the impact will spread far beyond our borders. California will continue blazing a trail for America and the rest of the world on the swift and meaningful actions necessary for cutting carbon pollution, protecting communities and leading the clean energy future.”
All because he doesn’t want to touch the state’s massive $21 billion highway fund, as spokesperson for the governor claims that diverting highway funds could “negatively impact the key work that Caltrans does to maintain the state highway system.”
In other words, appeasing motorists by building and widening highways and fixing freeway potholes is far more important than, say, saving the planet.
The mealy-mouth hypocrisy is astounding.
Or it would be if Newsom hadn’t long ago revealed just how shallow his commitment is when it conflict with political expediency.
This is how Calbike Policy Director Jared Sanchez addressed the issue in an email to supporters.
There is no deficit in California’s transportation budget. Thanks to federal funding streams, there’s no need for transportation cuts.
Yet, Governor Gavin Newsom cut almost $600 million from the Active Transportation Program (ATP) in his draft budget. The ATP funds projects that make biking and walking safer and more appealing, advancing the infrastructure changes needed to combat climate change.
This cut amounts to eliminating an entire ATP funding cycle, significantly reducing funding for infrastructure that will reduce soaring pedestrian deaths and enable more people to get around safely by bicycle.
The Active Transportation Program needs more funding, not less.
The ATP already turned away many worthy biking and walking projects because of a lack of funding, even before this cut.
The governor’s budget doesn’t cut funding for climate-killing highways.
California can afford to fund the ATP. With rising climate chaos, we can’t afford not to spend money on active transportation.
This drastic cut will affect communities across California, forcing local governments to delay planned bikeways — maybe one near you.
A WeHo website continues its recent anti-bike lane screeds, arguing that building protected bike lanes will take a sizable investment in staffer time and money. Even though not building them could prove substantially more expensive in the long run, as the city will be required to pay out lawsuits for any bike riders killed or injured where they would have been built.
The South Bay beach cities are considering even tighter restriction on ebikes, following a confrontation between local residents and a group of ebike-riding hooligans. Even though the type of bikes they were riding had nothing to do with the incident. And never mind that they were riding throttle-controlled fat bikes that should be reclassified as mopeds or electric motor scooters.
State
Outside challenges you to three days of bicycling bliss along Southern California’s epic bike trails, starting with the El Prieto trail in the mountains above Pasadena, followed by nearby Tapia Canyon, and the Connect G-Out, Sidewinder, Dogtag and Karl’s trails in the scrubland east of Santa Clarita. And that’s just Day 1.
A new report ranks which states are most interested in bicycling, based on the volume of internet searches for “different bike types,” “cycling safety,” and “learning to ride,” which may not exactly be the best way to determine it; Washington, Rhode Island and Vermont top the list, with California all the way down at number eight.
Crashes between Massachusetts bike riders and pedestrians are flagged as an emerging threat as bike lanes expand in the state. As if pedestrians don’t have a responsibility to look both ways before stepping into a bike lane, and misbehaving bicyclists would be no less dangerous without them.
Then share it — and keep sharing it — with everyone you know, on every platform you can.
We’re still stuck on 1,131 signatures, so don’t stop now! Urge everyone you know to sign the petition, until she meets with us!
Photo by Darren Graves.
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Seriously?
LA County is apparently planning to zero out funding for Vision Zero. But you’ll have to hurry, because the County Board of Supervisors is meeting at 9:30 today to discuss the proposed budget.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. KTLA-5 examines the stop sign cams operated by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, the public entity overseeing over 75,000 acres of Southern California parklands. But they do if from the perspective of an aggrieved father whose son rolled a stop sign and considers it an unfair money grab, rather than a program designed to save lives by keeping drivers from breaking one of the most basic traffic laws.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Evidently, a headline writer for the Daily Mail has never seen a bicycle — or just can’t shake that windshield perspective — writing that the husband of a woman who was mowed down by ‘anti social’ teen called for harsher sentences for reckless riders, after a “spate of accidents behind the wheel.”
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Local
This is who we share the road with. An alleged speeding drunk driver killed a home in Garden Grove. And the woman who was sleeping in it with her husband. Thanks to How the West Was Saved for the link.
The Santa Monica City Council considers a quintet of bike motions, including what would be LA County’s second bicyclist anti-harassment ordinance, after Los Angeles passed a similar measure in 2011, as well as examining what improvements are necessary to make Neilson Way a “safer and more attractive place to walk or ride a bicycle.”
Tragic news from Hayward, where a student from India’s Telugu region studying for his master’s at Cal State East Bay is in extremely critical condition and not expected to survive after he was struck by a driver while riding his ebike to see his family; family members are trying to raise funds to send his body back to India.
Strava responded to calls to remove a popular section of London’s Regent’s Park where a speeding bike rider killed an elderly pedestrian, urging bicyclists to prioritize everyone’s safety, instead.
Then share it — and keep sharing it — with everyone you know, on every platform you can.
We’re still stuck on 1,131 signatures, so don’t stop now! Urge everyone you know to sign the petition, until she meets with us!
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Advocates from Circulate San Diego, Families for Safe Streets San Diego and the San Diego Bicycle Coalition held a press conference yesterday calling for simple, inexpensive fixes to the city’s “Fatal 15” intersections.
Their suggestions are nothing new. They’ve been calling for the same solutions to the city’s deadliest intersections for the past year, but they were left out of the mayor’s budget for the coming year.
However, the mayor is scheduled to release an updated budget today, and they’re asking for the fixes — which would cost $100,000 per intersection, or just $1.5 million total — to be included in the revised budget.
“This is a high-return, low-cost budget item,” said Will Moore, Policy Counsel for Circulate San Diego. “We understand that it is difficult to run a city. There are a lot of hard decisions – so it is even more important to get the easy ones right.”
Even though the city of San Diego “committed to” Vision Zero almost ten years ago, pedestrian deaths remain high; nearly fifty pedestrians and cyclists lose their lives in traffic crashes in San Diego every year.
Katie Gordon’s husband Jason was killed at one of the “Fatal 15″ intersections. Now a member of Families for Safe Streets San Diego, she spoke of her husband and their twin daughters at today’s gathering, and urged the city to budget for these fixes. “Small improvements make a big impact,” she said. “Please don’t let the ‘Fatal 15’ take another life.”
But if it comes down to a question of money, maybe someone could remind the mayor it would cost the city a hell of a lot more than that just to settle with the survivors of the next one.
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LAisttalks with Carlos Moreno, originator of the 15-minute city, about his simple plan to reduce traffic and improve the livability of cities by increasing density and placing everything you need for daily life within 15 minutes of your home.
…Picture living in a bustling neighborhood where all your friends, basic needs, and even your job are reachable by a quick walk or bike or bus ride. (Something many people experience, possibly for the first and last time, on college campuses.) In such a city, parking areas may have been reclaimed as urban greenways, chance encounters with neighbors might be more common, and small local businesses would proliferate and thrive.
This vision is sometimes referred to as “the 15-minute city,” a concept pioneered by Franco-Colombian scientist and mathematician Carlos Moreno. It means basically what it sounds like: Instead of expecting residents to get in their cars and drive long distances to work, run errands, and take part in social activities, cities should instead be designed to provide those kinds of opportunities in close proximity to where people live, reducing overdependence on cars and increasing local social cohesion.
Even if you’re familiar with the concept, it’s worth reading to get a full grasp of the plan, which conspiracy theorists are somehow twisting into unrecognizably bizarre abstractions.
The DA’s office removed the prosecutors who got a conviction against wealthy socialist Rebecca Grossman for the high-speed crash that killed two little kids just crossing the street with their family from the case, over a perceived conflict of interest that really isn’t, which could affect the case as she appeals her conviction. And understandably outraging the victim’s parents.
Caltrans explains how to be a Complete Streets ambassador to help get the legislature to pass SB 960, aka the Complete Streets Bill, which will require Caltrans to add infrastructure for people who bike, walk and take transit whenever it repaves a state roadway.
Cincinnati is relaunching the city’s docked bikeshare program, despite shutting it down due to funding issues earlier in the year, after several organizations contributed nearly half a million dollars to fund it through the end of this year.
May 13, 2024 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on The late Sam Rubin was one of us, state officials just tinker with PCH safety, and drivers want all of WeHo streets
Just 234 days until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025.
Caring for my wife and her broken shoulder 24/7, along with suddenly becoming the sole caretaker for the corgi — never mind dealing with my own ever-growing health problems — leaves me with a very small window to work each day.
And writing about a pair of fallen bicyclists Thursday night, as important as that was, took up all the time I had available to work.
I’d like to say it won’t happen again, but it probably will until we get all this crap sorted out.
Rubin took pride in organizing the station’s team for the annual MS 150 Bay to Bay Bike Tour, which raises funds to find a cure for multiple sclerosis.
The Go Safely PCH initiative calls for increased traffic enforcement, enhanced infrastructure and a public awareness campaign, with California Transportation Secretary Toks Omishakin saying “it signifies a collective effort to ensure the safety of all travelers along this iconic corridor.”
Although that “enhanced infrastructure” is little more than paint, with the state applying $4.2 million worth of lane separators, crosswalk striping, more visible road striping, speed limit markings, more speed limit and curve warning signs, pavement upgrades, bike lanes and pedestrian access, reaching from the McClure Tunnel in Santa Monica to the Ventura County line.
And as we all know, a little bit of paint and road signs urging people to drive safely is all it takes to bring bad driver behavior and traffic violence screeching to a halt.
Right?
While there may be some modest benefit to the program, it represents a continuation of the state’s policy of just tinkering at the edges, investing as little money and effort as possible to do something to improve safety without inconveniencing all those people cruising down the highway in their hermetically sealed vehicles.
When what’s actually needed is a wholesale re-imagination of the deadly corridor, which is currently engineered to encourage speeding, to turn it into Malibu’s commercial Main Street and beachfront byway, instead of a highway designed to maximize throughput and funnel as many cars through as quickly as possible.
Adding a little more paint, posting more speed limit signs and urging drivers to “Go Safely” is the least they can do.
According the WeHo Online Community News, the city is moving forward with “highly controversial plans to install protected bicycle lanes on Fountain Avenue, Willoughby Avenue, Gardner Avenue and eventually Santa Monica Boulevard, at the cost of increased vehicle congestion and a loss of street parking.”
As if city officials had somehow just rubber stamped the coalition’s “wish list,” without determining whether the changes were actually needed or wanted.
Anyone who has tried to ride in or through the city is undoubtedly aware that cars and the people in them currently dominate the lion’s share of the city streets, with a few relatively minor and mostly unsafe exceptions.
Adding protected bike lanes and other safety improvements simply rebalances the equation to provide safe spaces for people outside of car, while improving safety for everyone on the street. Yet still largely maintaining the current automotive hegemony.
But evidently, they just want all the streets themselves, and the hell with anyone else.
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A new report concludes that 8% of deaths among homeless people in Los Angeles was due to traffic violence.
The only real surprise is that the number is so low.
Connecticut is considering a lottery for their next round of ebike vouchers, anticipating that demand for the vouchers will far outstrip supply. Which makes a hell of a lot more sense than California’s plan to start and stop the voucher program every two months to allow them to better mismanage it.
No bias here. British actor Nigel Havers claimed that “no cars go through a red light,” while “every cyclist does.”A bizarre assertion that’s demonstrably false on both counts, apparently based on the extensive knowledge of traffic safety he gained starring in Chariots of Fire.
Speaking of disgruntled British actors, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz star Simon Pegg posted a video that may or may not have been an attempt at humor, showing himself passing bike riders as he drives, while telling bicyclists to “fuck off,” “get out of the way,” “just because you can ride two-abreast, doesn’t mean you fucking have to”, and to “get out of the middle of the fucking road, dopey”. And to think I used to like that potty mouthed son of a mother.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
A Quebec mother blames bike lanes and scofflaw bicyclists after her four-year old daughter was “assaulted” by a woman riding a bicycle, who apparently ignored the stop signs on a school bus, and slammed head on into the little girl as she crossed the bike lanes to get to her bus.
Then again, Londoners may have some reason for concern after all, after a dog walker in the city’s Regent Park suffered multiple skull fractures to her eye socket, jawbone and cheekbone, as well as musculoskeletal injuries, when she was struck by a speeding bicyclist who strayed onto the wrong side of the road to pass a car, at the same spot where another bike rider had killed an 81-year old woman.
The Daily Mail bizarrely asserts that all drivers observe the 20 mph speed limit, while bicyclists routinely ignore it; one bike rider was clocked doing 32 mph. Maybe British drivers are different, but the idea that all, or even most, drivers in the US routinely observe any speed limit would be laughable.
Meanwhile, a British columnist insists that when he rides a bike, he does everything right, just like he does when he’s driving. But all those other bad, bad bike riders should have to wear numbered plates, and face a new law criminalizing scofflaw bicyclists, who he claims are “even more touchy as a group than almost any other I can think of.”
Santa Monica’s Sundays Cycles bike shop was vandalized because of the Israeli flag the owner hung in the window following the October 7th Hamas attack, as someone wrote “Free Palestine” across the window. Although I’d hesitate to call a little easy-to-remove graffiti “vandalism,” whether or not you disagree with the sentiment.
Calbike condemns the governor’s draconian cuts to the state’s Active Transportation Program, arguing that, despite the state’s massive $40+ billion budget deficit, there is no deficit in the transportation budget. And never mind that Gov. Newsom could maintain programs aimed at reducing climate change, while actually furthering the state’s climate goals, by cutting highway funding, instead.
Bakersfield bicyclists are forming an all-volunteer Kern River Bike Patrol, to “promote safety, offer an informed trail presence, trailside information, bike safety advice, flat tire assistance and simple bike repair, as well as first aid skills and other assistance” along the popular bike path on the river’s banks.
After nine stages, Tadej Pogačar continues to lead the Giro, with a two minute 40 second margin, with Daniel Martinez second and Geraint Thomas a surprising third, after Olav Koolj of the Netherlands took the stage win.
May 10, 2024 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Move along, nothing to see here – Just stop killing us, already edition.
My apologies.
I had every intention of posting a new Morning Links today after yesterday’s unexcused absence.
But after spending my night writing about two fallen bicyclists, in Oceanside and Cathedral City, there’s no time left for anything else — especially since I have to be up in a few hours to care for my wife’s broken shoulder. Not to mention my own banged up ribs and shoulder.
We’ll be back bright and early Monday to catch up on what we missed. And next week should go a little smoother.
