Today’s Morning Links have been cancelled in favor of an unbridled rant regarding the sheer recalcitrant idiocy demonstrated by the Culver City Council Tuesday night.
Or make that early Wednesday morning, since treachery usually occurs in the early morning hours, long after most people with any common sense have gone to bed.
Which leaves out three-fifths of Culver City’s elected leadership.
We’ll be back tomorrow with our regularly scheduled programming.
Yet they still voted 3 to 2 to remove the protected bike lanes in favor of a shared bus and bike lane, in order to add another traffic lane so more drivers can go zoom, zoom to their hearts content.
thank you to everyone who showed up and spoke out, and to the advocates who did everything they could. You are heard and appreciated by your community. No matter the temporary setbacks, we know the future is on our side, and we will get there together.
In reality, it’s likely to result in more congestion, as the added lane will just encourage more drivers to clog the city’s downtown area, with the added noise, smog and safety risks they’ll bring with them.
It will also mean reduced bike traffic, as fewer riders will be willing to use the newly shared bus and bike lanes, with the risk of an inattentive or impatient bus driver running up their ass.
Then again, that appears to be purely intentional.
And it means slower bus traffic, as buses will now have to follow behind people on bicycles, making it a less attractive transportation option and resulting reduced ridership.
Because the city is giving a big FU to anyone not safely ensconced in a couple tons of dangerous, polluting glass and steel.
And you can add another lose to that, since the move to rip out the project will inevitably result in a CEQA violation unless the city manages to conduct an environmental impact study that somehow miraculously shows little or no environmental damage from the project’s removal.
Sure, that will happen.
In reality, the city will likely try to rip out the bike lanes without conducting the required study, resulting in a CEQA lawsuit, followed by a likely court judgement requiring them to put them back.
Making the entire effort a performative exercise designed to placate the angry conservative voters who elected the new reactionary councilmembers.
While everyone else who lives, works or moves through the city just gets shafted.
Pitiful.
Needless to say, the condemnation following the vote was fast and furious.
With their vote, they showed they valued a motorist’s ability to speed through a neighborhood more than anyone else’s right to safely enjoy a neighborhood. 2/3
Also thinking a lot today about Culver City families who finally felt safe walking and biking to school — and woke up to the news that their elected officials don't think their lives are worth saving https://t.co/5q2hUULFWR
the vibe from our 3 conservatives all night: if you can’t afford Culver City’s average rent of $3200 a month, buddy we don’t really care about you https://t.co/DHt2r5hg3j
— Bubba for Culver City Council! (@vote4bubba) April 25, 2023
I CANNOT BELIEVE CULVER CITY IS DESTROYING ITS BIKE LANES. this is genuinely madness. i can't tell you how much safer we felt walking our toddler on those sidewalks because the bike&bus lane is MUCH NICER to walk next to than cars https://t.co/pxVk8OapFF
April 4, 2023 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Mitt Romney calls bike lanes “height of stupidity,” it’s Election Day in CD6, and BikeLA is hiring HR and finance manager
According to the magazine, Congressional Republicans are a long way from being convinced to do anything for bikes, especially in the GOP-controlled House.
Consider this from Susan Collins, often considered the party’s relatively moderate voice of reason.
“We’re over-subsidizing electric vehicles as it is now,” Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, told Insider in the Capitol this week. “I don’t want to add to the unfairness of the current system where electric cars are free riders and don’t pay to help maintain our roads and bridges through a gas tax or any kind of surcharge.”
“I’m not going to spend money on buying e-bikes for people like me who have bought them — they’re expensive,” he said. “Removing automobile lanes to put in bike lanes is, in my opinion, the height of stupidity, it means more cars backing up, creating more emissions.”
Never mind that he could afford to buy an electric jet without subsidies, let alone an ebike. And yes, that is a thing.
The real problem, however, has little or nothing to do with bikes, or giving them a safe piece of the roadway.
According to The Insider,
The opposition to pro-bicycle policy has to be understood in the larger context of the culture war and conservative fears of Democrats’ climate-friendly agenda, said Tim Carney, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
“There is a widespread suspicion on the right today that liberals want to take away their way of life,” Carney told Insider. “This idea that the left knows there’s only one right way to live, it’s the way that we want to live and we’re going to force it on you. That is in the background of the mind of every conservative, and so when they hear more bike lanes, they think, ‘Okay, what is that code for?'”
Which makes the bizarre conspiracy theories surrounding the concept of 15-minute cities make more sense. Or at least as much sense as a completely whackadoodle conspiracy can, anyway.
But there may be some slight glimmer of hope, as Carney says to frame the story in terms of building safer and more interconnected communities for children and families.
“What parents need now is the ability to set their kids free and have them be safe,” Carney said. “Better bike safety, and better bike trails and lanes make life easier and more fun for your average suburban parents and for the kids. It also builds resilience and independence among kids, and makes us have fewer snowflake kids when they get to college.”
We are excited to announce our endorsement for the CD6 special election primary — we co-endorse both @MarcoforLA and @AntoinetteForLA and hope to see them as the top two candidates who advance to the general.
Bicycle co-op and community advocacy organization Rich City Rides has started a $6 million capital campaign to raise funds to buy its Richmond location and three other buildings; the owner has given them until the end of June to raise the money. So if you have an extra million or two lying around, they can use the help.
Life is cheap in Australia, where a sleeping driver got a whole two years behind bars for fleeing the scene after dozing off and slamming into a man taking part in a group training ride — but could get out after just nine months.
A writer for the Catholic Herald — a publication which, unto now, I have been blissfully unaware, despite a conservative Catholic upbringing — professes to make “the Catholic argument against 15-minute cities.”
Never mind that Jesus was a pedestrian who likely lived in one.
The thesis of a 15-minute city is that everything you need for daily life should be found within a 15-minutes walk, bike or transit ride of your home.
That’s it.
And as much as I strain my memory, I can’t recall any teachings of Jesus or the disciples that so much as mention it, let alone condemn it.
But that doesn’t stop the author, who will remain unnamed here to protect the guilty.
At face value, the idea seems desirable and has much to commend it. But I can’t help smell a rat, especially following Covid lockdowns and the increasingly “nudgy” and authoritarian-lite sheen to public policies these days. I suspect the great Catholic writer Hilaire Belloc would have agreed, given what he had to say about the intractable struggle between Catholicism and socialism.
“The Catholic Church, acutely conscious as she is of the abominations of the modern industrial and capitalistic system…refuses to cure it at the expense of denying a fundamental principle of morality, the principle of private ownership, which applies quite as much to the means of production as to any other class of material objects,” Belloc wrote in his 1908 essay The Church and Socialism.
Currently the “material object” most in the crosshairs that bureaucrats and activists are obsessing over – in terms of reducing your use of it or simply taking it away altogether- is your car.
Huh?
I don’t know of any version of the 15-minute city philosophy that involves taking away anyone’s car.
Nor is there a damn thing socialistic about the concept. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
If anything, the 15-minute city is about enabling personal freedom to move about as you choose, without forcing you into a motor vehicle just to get groceries, get to work or get healthcare.
Or even get to church, temple, mosque or wherever you choose to worship, or not.
You can walk. You can bike. You can take a bus or train. Or — tres shock! — you can even drive, if you so choose.
But wait, as they say in informercials, there’s more.
The “fundamental thesis of Socialism”, as Belloc highlights, is “that man would be better and happier were the means of production in human society, that is, land and machinery and all transport [my italics], controlled by government rather than by private persons or corporations.”
I’ve experienced transport being excessively controlled by the Taliban, and I can assure you it sucks. Their IED campaign in Afghanistan’s Helmand province was so deadly effective that the British Army lost its freedom of movement. Admittedly the use of IEDs is an extreme form of traffic fines—but the principle is the same: someone else interdicting your movement. It changes everything.
Can you say, “non sequitur?”
Sure you can.
Again, socialism has nothing to do with the 15-minute city. If anything, it enables capitalism in its purest and simplest sense, since it enables you to do business with local merchants, right where you live.
But it does nothing to prevent you from doing business across town, across the country or across the globe.
And no, it has nothing to do with IEDs or any other kind of explosives.
Yet he goes on.
Of course he does.
Thanks to the vagaries of freelancing, I’ve also experienced various prolonged periods of not owning a car and I can confirm that it is tedious, limiting and exhausting, as you set off, once again, peddling like a maniac to make it on time. Not having a car is even harder if you are coordinating a family (once again, public policy seems set on disincentivising the family unit, while punishing those who have children).
Somehow, he turns that into an argument against being able to live without a car.
Go figure.
Where, pray tell, is freedom represented in forcing people to pay hundreds, if not thousands of dollars every month to own and use motor vehicles, just to access the things and services they need?
And just where is the love and forgiveness of God in his supposed Catholic essay?
Because there is absolutely nothing Catholic about his arguments. Rather, what he penned was an essay about the dangers of socialism, under the mistaken belief it has anything to do with the 15-minute city, and tried to shoehorn Catholicism in.
Not faith. Not religion. Not even Christianity, because what he writes has nothing to do with it in any shape or form.
It is ironic that his essay appeared on Palm Sunday, which marks the pre-Passover entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem on the back of a lowly donkey.
Because, as we noted earlier, there is no reason to believe that the biblical city was anything other than a 15-minute city, because even though it held over half a million people, most local residents were unlikely to walk outside of their own neighborhoods to meet most of their needs.
Because most would likely have to walk, especially the poor.
It was the Romans and the wealthy who used horses, chariots and wagons, the motor vehicles of their day, to go beyond their own communities.
Which means there’s a far greater Catholic argument for a 15-minute city than against it.
Photo of the inside of the Vatican by Photo by Luis Núñez from Pexels.
………
A Chicago letter writer alleges that bike riders don’t belong in traffic, and that the city is in the throes of an overly powerful bike lobby that gets everything it wants.
Am I the only one who has noticed that building bike lanes to make cycling in city traffic safe is a lot like putting filter tips on cigarettes to make smoking tobacco safe? A cosmetic change isn’t going to change the fact that for traffic, the bicycle is a fatally flawed product from the start…
Instead of spending the taxpayers’ money to force more bike lanes down the public’s throats, perhaps the politicians could learn to ask us first if this is what we want, rather than just giving an overly powerful lobby everything they want.
Funny how only people who don’t ride bikes think there’s a powerful bicycle lobby. And those of us who ride bikes think we can’t get anyone to actually listen to us.
Never mind that the best way to get bikes out of city traffic is to build bike lanes, which most surveys tend to show are overwhelmingly popular.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on rolling.
San Luis Obispo’s curmudgeonly anti-bike columnist blames bike lanes for destroying the livability of the city’s neighborhoods, even though most people would likely say they do just the opposite. And he objects to rising bike path construction costs, somehow forgetting that construction costs are going up virtually everywhere, for everything.
Bike and safety advocates press the case that San Diego isn’r doing enough to protect bicyclists and pedestrians, demanding increased funding for Vision Zero. Based on the 29 people killed in the county over the past two years, they’re right. Thanks to Phillip Young for the heads-up.
A writer for the Wall Street Journalmakes a very Shoup-ian case for why the US has too much parking, in a story that for some reason isn’t hidden behind their draconian paywall, at least for now. Unless you’re talking secure bike parking, of course, in which case there isn’t nearly enough.
Last week we mentioned the shameful theft of a three-year old Maine kid’s Spider-Man bicycle while he was shopping with his mom. But there’s good news this time, after an anonymous Good Samaritan — in keeping with today’s Biblical theme — gave him a new one, plus matching helmet and bike lock.
There’s a special place in hell for the man who attacked a Florida boy who was riding his bike to school, and stole his bicycle; fortunately, kindhearted Clearwater cops bought the 5th grader a new bike so he could ride home the same night.
Tragic news from Brazil, where a 43-year old man died after he swallowed a bee while riding his bike, and went into anaphylactic shock when it stung the inside of his throat. I once swallowed something winged and fuzzy, which was when I learned to ride with my mouth closed.
Thanks again to Matthew Robertson for his generous monthly donation to keep all the best bike news and advocacy coming your way every day. As always, donations are always welcome and truly appreciated, whether repeating or otherwise.
………
Ramadan Mubarak to all observing the Islamic holy month.
……….
Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
At least until you reach the bottom of the story, by which time most Times readers have already moved on to Marmaduke.
Instead of reporting objectively, the paper settles for reprinting the long list of complaints from Orange County’s anti-ebike crowd, who seem to consider them the worst tech advance since Elon Musk bought Twitter.
Here’s how the paper frames the story, starting with a longtime Newport Beach resident who compares the local boardwalk to the 405 Freeway.
Three decades ago, Levine moved to what some refer to as the city’s “war zone,” a nickname given not because of crime but for the reputation of summertime rowdiness along the boardwalk, which now includes an abundance of electric bicycles. The strip’s 8 mph speed limit means nothing to some of these people, he said.
He’s watched people get mowed down, dogs hit and too many near misses to count, he said. City leaders for years have studied how to manage the proliferation of e-bikes along the route but have stopped short of banning them.
It’s been a war zone for decades. But ebikes have somehow ruined everything.
Sure, that makes sense.
Then the paper moves on to repeating the same tired and previously discredited stats we’ve been hearing for months from PR staffers at the local hospital trying to fan the flames of an anti-ebike pyre.
During the first 10 months of last year, staffers at Providence Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo documented 198 e-bike injuries. Doctors saw 113 injuries in 2021 and just 34 in 2020, according to data provided by the hospital.
Between January and October of last year, 78 of the 198 people who suffered an injury on an e-bike were not wearing helmets and 99 suffered some type of head injury, data show.
“My feeling about the whole situation with e-bikes is that we got a device a little bit too fast, and the culture is not completely set for it,” said Tetsuya Takeuchi, the trauma medical director at Providence Mission Hospital…
Where to begin.
Evidently, some people who got injured riding ebikes weren’t wearing bike helmets. But most were.
And half of the people who were injured riding an ebike suffered a head injury. Which may or may not have been the 40% who weren’t wearing helmets.
It may come as a shock to the kind and caring people at Providence that some people who ride regular bikes don’t wear helmets, either. And some of them get hurt, too, though not always with head injuries.
Which is just one of the great, inexplicable mysteries of bicycling, that some people who don’t wear bike helmets don’t suffer head injuries, and some who do, do.
Then there’s the exponential increase in ebike injuries. Which just happens to coincide with the exponential increase in ebikes.
That doesn’t mean ebikes are dangerous. Just that a lot of people are using them now.
In fact, I’d consider 198 injuries a relatively small amount, given the untold thousands of Orange County residents who’ve adopted them.
Lastly, let’s consider the question of speed, which has apparently gotten “a little bit too fast.”
Under California law, which has been copied in most states, Class 1 and 2 ebikes, whether ped-assist or throttle-driven, are limited to 20 mph.
Which virtually anyone could top with a decent effort on a decent road bike. Never mind today’s lightweight, technological marvels engineered for every higher speeds.
The bikes, I mean, not the riders. Though some of them have been engineered for speed, too.
Yet somehow, those bikes aren’t considered too fast. And no one has banned 27 speed carbon-fiber bikes or their spandex-clad riders from the boardwalk.
And just wait until the good doctors at Providence learn how fast cars can go, and the damage they cause.
In fact, my stats show 12 people were killed by drivers while riding bikes in Orange County last year, a drop from the obscene 17 killed in 2021.
Ebike riders killed somewhere around zero in Orange County over that same time period, to the best of my knowledge.
So which of these is actually dangerous?
Then there’s the way the paper takes about halfway through the story, after fanning the flames of ebike haters, to even mention that there are different categories of ebikes, and dozens of different types.
And even then, fails to mention that the faster Class 3 ebikes are banned from bike trails that aren’t attached to roadways, beachfront or otherwise.
Or that even people on regular bikes struggle to meet those ridiculously low 8 mph speed limits without falling over.
But once again, no one is seriously suggesting that regular should be banned.
The key, as they finally get around to mentioning just before the end of the story, is behavior.
Someone who is a jerk in a car — or on a skateboard, or with a shopping cart — is just as likely to be a jerk on an ebike.
And a kid who has never been taught to ride a bike safely — electric or otherwise — is going to ride a bike or bike like a, well, kid.
Just what they’re riding doesn’t have a damn thing to do with it.
So let’s put away the torches and pitchforks, and learn to live with all those scary ebike monsters. Because really, they’re not bad, just new and different.
If you’re a pedestrian or cyclist in Los Angeles, you’re probably used to hearing about traffic fatalities in our community. But 2022 was a record-breaking year — in the worst way. Last year, there were 309 traffic fatalities in LA, breaking the 300 mark for the first time in more than twenty years. This is a staggering increase of almost 30% from 2020.
These statistics are tragedies in and of themselves, but they’re made even worse by the fact that pedestrians and cyclists are impacted the most by every measure. Cyclist fatalities alone went up 40% between 2020 and 2022.
We can’t keep living like this. Join us on the steps of City Hall on Saturday, January 21st at 9:30am for a die-in protest. It’s time for our electeds to start paying attention.
They make the same argument I’ve been making for years — bike helmets are designed to protect against relatively low speed falls, not high impact crashes with motor vehicles.
Which is not to say you shouldn’t wear one.
The overwhelming majority of bicycling injuries result from falls, not crashes. Which is exactly what they’re made for.
I still credit my helmet with saving my grey matter, and possibly my life, during the Infamous Beachfront Bee Incident, and never ride without one.
But they should always be considered the last line of defense when everything else fails.
You’re a lot better off not getting hit by a car and its driver in the first place, rather than count on your helmet to save your life if you do.
An alleged drunk driver in LA’s Silver Lake neighborhood backs through a crowd of people trying to stop him from getting behind the wheel, then takes off, leaving injured bystanders strewn in his wake.
Drunk driver in Tesla nearly runs over crowd of people and takes off in Silver Lake pic.twitter.com/DZbw54h50E
An South LA man apparently angry about his pending divorce decided to take it out on his wife’s house, and all the cars in the neighborhood.
But sure, tell us again about those OC ebikes.
1/2 Violent video shows when a man in South LA crashes a dump truck into his wife's home. Patricia Dunn said the driver was her husband and they are going through a divorce. The story today at 4 p.m. @ABC7pic.twitter.com/4XRaP1T6L0
@roadcc Here's a longer version, nothing happened between us before, overtake was good, I was just a bit disappointed in the MGIF before the junction. Did think about not telling him about the rolling car but not fair to involve anyone else. pic.twitter.com/h0sU65NMGk
Apparently, not even Congresspeople are safe from traffic violence, as Oregon Representative Suzanne Bonamici and her husband were struck by a driver as they were crossing a Portland street Friday evening. Although CNN somehow manages to get through the entire story without mentioning that there was someone behind the wheel.
This is who we share the country with. Wyoming, the state where even Liz Cheney wasn’t considered conservative enough, continued its race to the bottom when state legislators proposed banning electric vehicles in a childish tantrum to protect the gas and oil industries.
Young Miami bike riders conducted their annual MLK Day Wheels Up Guns Down ride. But somehow, all the local press could focus on was the usual heavy-handed police response, and the 58 felony and 11 misdemeanor arrests — not the hundreds, if not thousands, of peaceful riders and their message of hope.
Sad news from the Netherlands, where 40-year old retired Dutch pro Lieuwe Westra was found dead, after suffering from depression for several years; nicknamed The Beast, Westra won stages at Paris-Nice, the Tour of California and Critérium du Dauphiné, as well as winning the Tour of Denmark and Driedaagse De Panne.
UCI is telling team cars to back off, instead of giving their riders an extra boost during time trials by changing the airflow behind the rider.
Former Team Sky and British Cycling doctor Richard Freeman has formally lost his medical license as a result of his involvement in a doping scandal, when he was caught ordering testosterone gel for an unnamed male cyclist.
October 4, 2022 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on WeHo merchant calls for licensing cyclists, racist Palo Alto road rage attack, and Hugo calls for carfree Hollywood Blvd
Fast forward to 2022, a debate about removing the parking lanes on Fountain and to install bike lanes in their place, eliminating two for cars to drive. Those bike lane people are ferocious in their arguments. If you had to drive a bike and cars whipped past you it might cause a sense of anger that you deserve a safe space too. But perhaps bike riders who choose to use the road should also be licensed. Maybe they should pass a written test to travel 40 miles down the road. Perhaps they can pay a license fee to help offset the cost of these installations. As a partially sighted part-time driver I can say that it is difficult to drive past the bikes who often show little respect for the road weaving in lanes. But that is another story.
Because apparently, our tax money doesn’t count — even though it pays for the roads he drives, whether we use them or not.
Never mind that studies have repeatedly shown that a licensing program for bicyclists would cost more than it would bring in, while dramatically reducing ridership exactly when we need more people on bikes. Or that bike riders pose a lot less risk to others than people in cars do.
Especially people with bad eyesight.
Besides, are you really going to tell a six-year old she can’t ride her bike because her license expired?
So maybe the next time you’re in WeHo, stop in and tell him why you’ll be spending your money somewhere else.
Besides, not many of us can really pull off the spangled banana hammock look.
Not that our significant others would actually want us to try.
In other words, exactly where he should have been.
The victim had moved into the lane to pass a driver who was attempting to park. Yet when he stopped at the next stop light, he was accosted by a white pickup driver for “riding in the middle of the road.”
The two men began arguing, at which point the truck driver called the cyclist, who is Black, a racial epithet. The victim reported to police that the driver spat on him, reached out to grab his arm, and then drove the truck into the side of the bicycle. The cyclist fell to the ground.
The cyclist said the truck drove over his bicycle, and the driver turned north on Webster Street and then east on Lytton Avenue. The cyclist later saw the truck turn back onto University Avenue heading east and continue driving. The cyclist’s leg had a small laceration, which paramedics treated at the scene. His bicycle was damaged but remained rideable, police stated.
It’s possible that the victim could have moved into the lane suddenly, without signaling or checking behind him, and cut off the driver. Or not.
None of which justifies violence, let alone racism.
The local police are investigating it as a hate crime, as well as an assault with a deadly weapon and injury hit-and-run.
Which is good, because there’s just no excuse for this. Ever.
Period.
And no pit deep enough for someone who could do something like this.
………
Things could finally be looking up in Hollywood.
While CD13 Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell has called for a much needed Complete Streets makeover of Hollywood Blvd, challenger Hugo Soto-Martinez has raised the ante with a call for pedestrianizing sections of the iconic tourist attraction.
Meanwhile, Los Angelenoexamines the race between O’Farrell and Soto-Martinez; while O’Farrell has been justly criticized for blocking bike and traffic safety plans until recently, Soto-Martinez is calling for more bike lanes in the district.
………
Finish the Ride and the LACBC hosted a Clean Air Ride over the weekend.
We had a great 1st Annual #cleanairca Bike Ride last Saturday! Thank you to all who joined us and to our partners @lacbc for collaborating, and to @laurafriedman43 for joining us.
Someone did an impressive job trolling St. Louis officials by installing old bike helmets and an official looking public notice calling on pedestrians to use them crossing the street.
All to call attention to the city’s unacceptably high death rate.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
Horrible story from the UK, where police are looking for four men who chased down a 21-year old bike rider with their car, then got out and stabbed him to death, apparently because the driver had crashed into the victim.
Your next bike could have a “Los Angeles” frame with a camo finish. Although that color choice may not be the best option if you actually want drivers to see you.
LAisttakes a deep dive into California’s new Freedom to Walk Act, which doesn’t actually legalize jaywalking after all; it’s still technically illegal to cross the street in the middle of a block, but police are now directed not to cite it unless crossing poses an imminent danger. However, California’s restriction against jaywalking only applies to blocks with a traffic signal on each end, so it’s already completely legal anywhere else.
The CHP has received a $1.2 million federal grant to “promote the importance of drivers, bicyclists, and pedestrians looking out for one another so that everyone can safely share the road.” Maybe they could put the money to better use by giving their officers more training in bike law and bicycle crash investigations.
Streetsblog talks with Elizabeth Creely, of the San Francisco-based grassroots advocacy organization Safe Street Rebel, on how to start a grassroots safe streets movement in your city. Or you could ask Streets For All founder Michael Schneider, who’s done a helluva job in just a few short years.
Here’s another one for your bike bucket list, as two riders explore archeological relics and forested parks — and the local hospitality — by biking Jordan’s ancient trade route.
And few people realize that sharrow is a portmanteau of arrow and sheep.
During our study tour on Friday I learned something new. The beautiful cycling bridge across the Waal River in Nijmegen is actually a shared use path. I feel like a new type of sharrow would be in order. "Sheep may take the full lane" pic.twitter.com/ltR9fgOHb8
G’mar chatima tova to all observing Yom Kippur tonight.
Thanks to Matthew Robertson for his latest monthly donation to help keep all the best bike news coming your way every day. Any donation, no matter how large or small, is always deeply appreciated.
………
Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
August 16, 2022 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on City Watch writer gets Healthy Streets LA all wrong, NACTO says change unfair bike laws, and CNN calls bike boom bust
He also missed the part where it said the ballot initiative would require building out the Mobility Plan 2035 — including bus only lanes — instead assuming that it’s all about bike lanes and pedestrian improvements.
The initiatives backer, software entrepreneur Michael Schneider leads the organization “Streets for All.” Schneider seems impatient with the the City of Los Angeles’ execution of the city’s current plans on mobility and bicycles, and City Council President Nury Martinez’s own counterproposal for bicycles and pedestrians.
The Times only mentions bike lanes in the initiative with no mention of bus only lanes. Schneider calls his initiative a “nuclear option.” Playing with weapons is never to be taken lightly, particularly nuclear ones, and his initiative will not lead the city, and the region, in the fight to reduce carbon gases needed to mitigate the climate emergency we now live in. The initiative seems more for the bicycle riders for ride for recreation, and does not take into account transportation for getting to work, shopping, eating, entertainment and other activities of urban dwellers…
If vehicle lanes are to be removed and replaced when the roads are repaved, as in the initiative, the replacements must be bus only lanes, not bicycle lanes, or both.
Oddly, that’s exactly what the initiative calls for. Which he would know if he had actually looked into it, rather than firing off a knee-jerk reaction to a single news article.
He goes on to make a case for why bike lanes aren’t practical to combat climate change in Southern California — including that he is now a “Medicare approved senior citizen,” as if his particular status extends to the entire populace at large. Or that there aren’t other older people who ride on a daily basis.
Then there’s this.
Reasons for riding a bicycle. It would seem riding a bicycle in Los Angeles is mainly recreational. From the United States Census Bureau: “Los Angeles had 1.0 percent of commuters bike to work, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today in a new brief focused on biking and walking to work. Nationally, 0.6 percent of workers commute by bike.” LINK.
Bike advocates have argued for years that the Census Bureau’s figure is a dramatic undercount that misses people who use multi-modal commutes and part-time bike commuters, as well as many immigrants and homeless people who use bicycles as their sole form of transportation.
It also doesn’t count people who ride their bikes to school or shopping, or any other utilitarian uses that doesn’t involve riding to work five days a week.
And of course, he has to trot out the tired bromide that this is not Amsterdam, failing to recognize that Amsterdam was every bit as auto-centric as Los Angeles just a few short decades ago.
Not to mention arguing that it’s too hot to ride a bike in Los Angeles, and no one wants to get sweaty on the way to work. Even though LA has one of the nation’s most temperate climates much of the year, making it far more ideal for bike riding than many other cities with higher riderships, Amsterdam included.
And forgetting that it’s possible to ride without breaking a sweat, especially on an ebike, or to freshen up once you get to work.
Although give him credit for noting that automotive exhaust isn’t healthy for people on bicycles. Even though that’s a better argument for demanding non-polluting cars than discouraging bike use.
Despite his assertions, no one is arguing that bikes should take precedent over transit systems.
That’s not what the mobility plan calls for, and not what the Healthy Streets LA ballot measure is about.
It doesn’t help anyone to go off half-cocked, and misrepresent what this ballot measure is about, and what it does, without taking the simple step of clicking on the damn link find out what it really is.
The group argues that red light and stop sign laws, and equipment laws like bike bell or helmet requirements, are too often used to target people of color, including in New York and Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, they argue that ticketing bicyclists for sidewalk riding or riding salmon is more an indication of inadequate infrastructure than bad bike behavior.
………
On the other hand, CNN doesn’t get it.
The cable network reports that the bicycling boom has gone bust, as indoor cycling firms like Peloton and Soul Cycle are facing layoffs, while bike shops are burdened with too much inventory.
Yet bicycling rates remain at near-historic highs in many cities, which suggests bike sales may have slowed simply because a) some bike shops may have over-ordered during the recent inventory shortages, b) many people already have the bikes they need.
Although whether they have all the bikes the want is another matter.
………
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. After a 70-year old Massachusetts man was killed in a dooring, the local press blames him for crashing into the open car door. Just to be clear, dooring is almost always the driver’s or passenger’s fault, because the law requires that a car door can only be opened when it’s safe to do so.
Sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
The NYPD is looking for three drivers and a bike rider responsible for a weekend hit-and-run rampage that killed one pedestrian and injured five other people, including a 44-year old man who suffered a critical head injury when he was struck by a man on a bicycle, who fled the scene. Just a reminder that bicyclists have the same obligation to stop following a crash that drivers do.
More heartbreaking news, this time from Pennsylvania, where an off-duty Montgomery County cop was killed when he allegedly swerved his bicycle into the path of an oncoming driver. Norristown Police Cpl. Brian R. Kozera had overcome a rare form of Hodgkin’s lymphoma to compete in six Ironman triathlons, and was scheduled to compete in Kona in October. Thanks to Mike Bike for the heads-up.
Thanks to Anne F for her generous donation to help keep all the best bike news and advocacy coming your way every day.
Right now, we’re running a full week ahead of last year’s record pace! So let’s keep it going!
Any amount, no matter how large or small, is truly and deeply appreciated. And very needed after a difficult couple years.
So give now via PayPal, or with Zelle to ted @ bikinginla.com.
Go ahead. We’ll wait.
………
You’ve got to hand it to Warner Bros, who couldn’t have done a better job of discouraging people from riding their bikes to work, let alone on the studio lot, if they tried.
Being the friendly sort, she waved at her otherworldly visitors, causing some to instantly vanish, while others came right up to her.
She says they examined her with lasers, before vanishing with a burst of infrared light. Which is a little odd, since infrared isn’t usually visible to the human eye.
A cast member on The Real World Homecoming: Los Angeles opened up about his recent collision when he was struck by a truck driver while riding his bike in DTLA just before filming started, leaving him with a serious head injury, a broken clavicle, wrist and possibly broken ribs; on a possibly related subject, other cast members had to remove all the alcohol from the set because of his excessive drinking.
The Bike League has teamed with autonomous vehicle artificial intelligence provider Argo AI to develop a detailed set of guidelines for makers of self-driving cars to protect bike riders on the roadways, including mapping local infrastructure and laws, and expecting typical bicyclist behavior while being prepared for uncertain situations.
Denver residents want some temporary roundabouts removed after several bike riders have been injured by drivers; they were installed as part of the Slow Streets program, but never removed when roads were reopened to cars.
A Texas man will spend the next five years behind bars after repeatedly violating his probation for the hit-and-run death of a bike rider in 2008; the judge said she only wished she could sentence him to more.
Thanks to Dongyi L, Alan C, Gregory S and Todd T for their generous donations to keep all the best bike news and advocacy coming your way every day.
So take a moment to give now via PayPal, or with Zelle to ted @ bikinginla.com.
Any amount, no matter how large or small, is truly and deeply appreciated.
Seriously, go ahead and do it right now. We’ll wait.
………
San Diego is about to show California how its done.
San Diego Forward, a new 30-year plan presented by the San Diego Association of Governments, better known as SANDAG, offers a transformational vision of what the city can, and should, be.
It is unlike any previous regional plan in San Diego, or in California. That’s in part because SANDAG got into a bit of trouble over its last, very inadequate draft plan, which pretended to be forward-looking but, like many regional transportation plans, was mostly a warmed-over rehash of previous plans that prioritize freeways. The previous SANDAG plan included some transit and bike improvements, but those investments were all put on the back burner, and highway expansions came first.
Not this time. The new draft plan – written under new SANDAG leadership – presents a utopian vision of what a connected, equitable, easy-to-navigate transportation system could be, focusing on new technologies for managing vehicle traffic, improving transit, and building streetscapes that work for people on foot and on bike.
Although the 3o-year timeline is about 20 years too late for the planet, which needs to see drastic shifts in how we get around in the next ten years to avoid catastrophic climate changes.
The other challenge is the cost, with an unfunded $160 billion price tag — yes, with a b — to build out.
And as we’ve learned the hard way here in Los Angeles, the key to its success is actually building it, rather than letting it turn into dust sitting on the shelf, like LA’s mobility plan.
Which so far hasn’t been worth the silicon it’s printed on.
However, San Diego leaders have actually shown a willingness to live up to their commitments, such as the city’s climate action plan.
So maybe there’s hope of real change down there, even if it may take too long.
Now if they could just show the rest of us how it’s done.
We were walking towards the intersection where I took pictures of the detour at the intersection. This time we tried to cross the bridge. The bridge is undergoing major construction and is down to two lanes from four. No sidewalk use either. However, on both sides there are temporary bike ped bridges. Four in total because there is a small island in the river.
Here is a picture of one of the temporary bridges. Yes that is snow.
Interesting that the male voice in your video says that what they’re doing is “completely illegal” – hopefully you can point us in the direction of where that piece of legislation is…
Also, the MAXIMUM speed for that road would be 60. It’s wet and narrow, so would expect less.
— Roads Policing – Surrey Police – UK (@SurreyRoadCops) December 1, 2021
Although the police use a painful analogy to correct him on another one.
No they shouldn’t Nick. Drivers should drive their one tonne vehicle more carefully and stop killing 5 people every day.
To use your opinion in a different analogy, should kids in American schools wear bullet proof jackets in case of a mass shooting?
— Roads Policing – Surrey Police – UK (@SurreyRoadCops) December 1, 2021
Unfortunately, we can only imagine what it would be like to have police back us up like that in this country.
………
Sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Tragic news from Arkansas, where a bike-riding paramedic was killed during the Little Rock Marathon when he grabbed onto a utility vehicle to respond to an injured runner and was pulled under the vehicle’s wheels; the state governor ordered flags flown at half-staff for two days in his honor.
A Michigan man faces up to 30 years behind bars after admitting to using meth and weed, and using Facebook Messenger while driving at highway speeds when he fatally ran down a woman riding her bike earlier this year.
If you’re not doing anything tonight, here’s your chance to dip a toe into track cycling.
We’ve got another Friday Night Scrimmage scheduled for tomorrow (12/3), 7:30-9pm @ the @velosportsctr. This is a chance to work on racing skills and nuance designed to make freshman riders comfortable in a competition setting. No pre-reg necessary…walk-ups welcome & encouraged! pic.twitter.com/UA65aJeBwZ
In a truly awful piece, a writer in San Diego’s Ocean Beach neighborhood complains that bike advocates are lying about this years rash of bicycling deaths to foist an anti-car agenda on the car-driving public.
He has the shameless audacity to go through each death one by one, pointing out how the victims were, or could have been, at fault, but from his windshield-biased perspective.
Never mind that he’s relying on newspaper accounts for his information, which as we’ve seen, too often don’t contain the salient facts and leave far too many blanks to fill.
And all too often, are based on police reports, which can, and usually do, reflect the officer’s windshield bias, and a basic lack of training when it comes to bike laws.
I had intended to open today’s post with a lengthy rant dissecting his arguments. But soon discovered that Peter Flax had beaten me to the punch.
The central premise of Page’s story is that bike advocates and city leader in San Diego have dishonestly tried to leverage the spate of riders being killed there to get more bike lanes built — “to further the cycling agenda” as he puts it. In his argument, the connection between people dying and the need for better riding infrastructure is mostly fictious and totally overblown. And then to prove his hypothesis, Page does some light googling and sets out to demonstrate that nearly all the cycling deaths that have occurred in San Diego were likely the riders’ own fault. It’s an eye-opening exercise in victim blaming.
Above all, the story is inhumane and recklessly presumptive. Imagine thinking that you could spend an hour on Google, read a handful of day-one news stories, and then feel equipped to pronounce that strangers in your community have been killed because of their own errors or bad judgment. Imagine being an editor or publisher and thinking you want to publish that kind of a hot take on your site.
Then Flax did something remarkable.
He reached out to the man who penned that awful piece, and held a non-judgmental online discussion — nonjudgmental on his side, anyway — on why he wrote it.
In your story, you state quite firmly that five of these deaths were the fault of the cyclists, and that several made “poor choices” and several more died in circumstances where blame cannot be assigned. This adds up to nearly all the deaths in San Diego. Can you see how many people felt like you were engaged in victim blaming?
I did not blame any victims. I recounted that the news stories on five of these clearly showed the cyclist was at fault, that was not me making a decision based on the facts. The facts in five more do not say who was at fault, not a conclusion I came to. I have responded to several comments asking for a specific instance of victim blaming in my article. Nothing.
It’s not victim blaming these folks are upset about. They are upset because I had the temerity to challenge the cycling narrative to the public by debunking their claim about what these 12 deaths meant. My target was dishonesty.
Unfortunately, the conversation accomplished exactly what you’d expect, with the author unbudging in his unbridled victim blaming, and accusations of some subversive cyclist agenda.
But you have to give Flax credit.
That could not have been an easy conversation to have. And he went out of his way to understand the other man, and to be fair.
But this kind of attitude is, sadly, all too common.
One where we are seen, not as ordinary people simply trying to stay safe on the streets, but as wild-eyed activists pushing a radical anti-car agenda to force the unwilling car-driving public onto bicycles.
When the truth is, we’re just trying to get from here to there in one piece.
And too often, failing.
Photo from the bike path in Santa Monica, which will have to stand in for Ocean Beach.
………
Malibu’s continually rescheduled discussion of a plan to widen the shoulder on a two-mile section of PCH, instead of building bike lanes, which will presumably put bike riders in the door zone — unless maybe they won’t — is back on the agenda for tomorrow night.
Ask the City of Malibu to add safe, protected bike lanes to PCH
There is a special Planning Commission Meeting (RESCHEDULED) in Malibu this Wednesday at 630pm where they are going to discuss approving a plan to widen the shoulder on 2 miles of Pacific Coast Highway between Webb Way and Puerto Canyon Road to add MORE parking.
Their proposal really only benefits cars and puts people on bikes in the “door zone.” We need them to do better – it’s time for Caltrans and Malibu to add protected bike lanes to PCH.
To be honest, it’s hard for me to get too worked up about this simply because it’s been going on for so long.
Whether’s it’s RVs, illegally parked semis and construction trucks, or some other obstacle, the Venice bike lanes are frequently blocked in one place or another from one end to another, and have been for years.
Enforcement doesn’t seem to do any good. Ticketing or towing drivers for parking illegally only seems to work in the moment, until they come back a day or two later.
If not the same day.
The only solution I can see is to install protected bike lanes from Downtown to the coast. And preferably designed so drivers won’t just park in it anyway, like the LAPD and delivery drivers already do in DTLA.
Which should have been done already.
………
Sunset4All held a successful celebration of LA’s first public/private partnership to transform one of the city’s most dangerous streets.
Big community turnout to celebrate @SunsetForAll reaching their fundraising goal thanks to your donations, our partners @lacbc, & a generous gift from @LINK_Scooters that got us over the top! pic.twitter.com/A8U6rbz4Vh
This is who we share the road with. A 22-year old Los Angeles man is dead following a road rage confrontation after a minor fender bender. He chased the other driver when she left the scene, then was thrown to the street after somehow ending up on her hood during a second confrontation.
Streets For All is hosting another virtual happy hour a week from tomorrow, with special guest LADOT General Manager Seleta Reynolds. Which makes it the perfect opportunity to ask why the bike plan is still just “aspirational,” and why Vision Zero and the city’s Green New Deal seem to have been pushed so far onto the back burner they’re in danger of falling off entirely.
Reno bike advocates are up in arms after the city calls for a $100,000 study to reroute a planned bike lane, because the casinos complained that they don’t want one in front of their businesses. Apparently failing to grasp that bike riders are used to gambling, since we have to do it on a daily basis.
Kansas police insist they’ve got the right man now, after arresting a motorist for shooting and killing a man, apparently to steal his bicycle, after they’d both visited the same business; another man was cleared of the crime after being arrested earlier, but was still being held on outstanding warrants.
Speaking of Singapore, a woman had a far too close call when she fell off her bike and nearly landed in the path of a large truck. Although all the commenters seemed to care about is that the group of bicyclists she was with wasn’t supposed to be on that highway to begin with.
Colombian Miguel Angel Lopez apologized for giving up and quitting in the middle of the penultimate Vuelta stage, after falling off a possible podium finish when he was dropped in an attack, slipping from third to sixth before abandoning.
According to NBC7, some people have complained on Nextdoor — as if everyone on Nextdoor doesn’t complain about something — and circulated a petition demanding that ebikes be banned from Moonlight Beach.
But the station widely misses the mark when they try to make the case that ebikes are somehow dangerous, by lumping them together with e-scooters and hoverboards to argue that 41 Americans were killed due to the devices over a three-year period.
Not that ebikes have anything in common with the other two, aside from having a battery.
And never mind that an average of 13.6 deaths a year pales in comparison to the 42,000 people killed in traffic collisions last year alone.
Yes, some people on ebikes may ride in a rude or unsafe manner. Just like some people do on regular bikes, on foot or in motor vehicles.
However, many of those scofflaw ebikers likely stem from their popularity with new riders, and people who haven’t ridden in years, if not decades, and haven’t learned decent bicycle etiquette yet.
So just use a little common courtesy and common sense, however you get around.
But don’t try to ban ebikes just because you don’t get it.
And someone please tell North County residents to get their collective ebike-hating heads out from whence the sun don’t shine.
The new and improve Golden Gate Bridge railing isn’t exactly working out that way for people on bicycles.
Yes. I biked on the GG bridge on a windy, howling day and thought I was going to die. The wind blew my helmet off—almost choking me—and my bike rammed into the railing. I'm absolutely terrified of biking on the bridge, but it's the only route out of SF. ☠️ https://t.co/fBAedfSFq1
Streetsblog’s Joe Linton rides the Expo Bike Path, and complains that Culver City abandons bike riders on a short gap in the bikeway near the Culver City Metro station, forcing people to take a poorly marked half-mile detour along city streets. And offers a long list of recommended fixes.
Speaking of the SDMBA, the group is partnering with Canyon Bikes and the founders of the popular Canyon Belgian Waffle Ride for a new fundraising campaign to support local trails, with a grand prize of $4,000 towards any Canyon bike.
