Tag Archive for bicycle safety

Teen bike rider murdered in deliberate hit-and-run, Canadian bike lane madness, and assess bike/ped safety in your town

November 25, 2024 / / No comments
Just 35 days until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025. 
But so far, no LA city leader has even mentioned the impending deadline. Let alone done anything about it. 

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If you missed it over the weekend — and that was easy to do, given the relatively minimal press coverage — a 16-year old boy was murdered by a driver who deliberately ran down his bike in LA’s Exposition Park on Friday.

The boy was part of a group of around 40 kids who got into some sort of altercation with a road-raging driver while riding south Figueroa Street, just above Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, allegedly breaking the car’s mirror.

The teens rode through a gap in the fence surrounding BMO Stadium in an effort to get away from the driver. But the driver followed them into the parking lot and slammed into the victim, then fled afterwards.

The victim died at the scene.

To make this horrific, needless tragedy even worse — if that is even possible — the boy reportedly had nothing to do with the dispute on the roadway, making him an entirely innocent victim.

So far, teenaged victim has not been publicly named.

There is also no description of the driver or suspect vehicle, other than a four-door sedan, with a broken side mirror and likely front-end damage.

The CHP is investigating the killing, since it took place on state property. Anyone with information is urged to call the their Southern Division Major Crimes Unit at 323/644-9550, or the Los Angeles Communication Center at 323/259-3200.

Let’s hope they find this murderous jerk soon, and get him off the roads.

Permanently.

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No surprise here.

It turns out that ripping out Toronto bike lanes like Ontario Premier Doug Ford — brother of the city’s late crack-smoking mayor — is demanding would actually make the city’s traffic worse, not better.

Meanwhile, a Mastadon user says the hundreds of bicyclists participating in a Toronto protest received a hero’s welcome from both pedestrians and drivers.

And a former Winnipeg city counselor and Canadian cabinet member called for halting new bike lanes, arguing that “Bike lanes have become more symbolic than functional, and symbolism is not enough to justify millions in spending.”

Never mind that bike lanes have repeatedly been shown to boost local businesses and property values while improving safety and livability for everyone.

Which should more than justify the relatively small amount to build new bike lanes, here, there or anywhere.

Thanks to Megan Lynch for the heads-up. 

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Applications are now open for community groups to apply for two programs run by the UC Berkeley Safe Transportation Research and Education Center (SafeTREC) designed to train people how to assess bicycle and pedestrian safety in their communities, and recommend how to improve it.

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Be on the lookout for a stolen trailer full of hot bike gear taken from Culver City’s Walk ‘n Rollers.

Not to mention the lowlife schmuck who made off with it.

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It’s now 341 days since the California ebike incentive program’s latest failure to launch, which was promised no later than fall 2023. And a full 41 months since it was approved by the legislature and signed into law — and counting.

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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.   

Is anyone really surprised that the leader of an Irish political party says he gets more abuse “week in, week out” while riding his bicycle than he does as a politician?

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Local  

Streetsblog talks with sustainability advocate, LA County transportation deputy and newly elected Culver City Councilmember Bubba Fish, who restores the city’s narrow progressive majority; losing that majority two years ago resulted in conservative councilmembers ripping out the successful MOVE Culver City protected bike lanes.

Streets For All is encouraging people to become supporting members for just $12 a month, looking to reach 200 members by their member event next month.

Eastern Ave in El Sereno will get a major makeover this fall to bring better bike paths, safer sidewalks, more trees and traffic calming.

 

State

Streetsblog San Francisco examines Emeryville’s nearly completed sidewalk-level Horton Street bike lane.

Sebastopol is looking into the viability of building a multi-use path bisecting the city.

 

National

Now you, too, can build your own ebike out of PVC pipe.

According to the former head of the Federal Highway Administration, barrier-protected bike lanes are a “proven safety countermeasure” that has been shown to reduce crashes “an average of exactly 49 percent on four-lane, undivided collector and local roads” in an urban area, and they have reams of federally compiled data to back it up.

You can find a lot of things while riding your bike, but no one wants to discover human remains along a Phoenix area bike path.

Bike helmets — they’re not just for surviving Oklahoma tornadoes anymore.

New York Magazine considers the best holiday gifts for bicyclists, chosen by bicyclists.

A lifelong Jersey City, New Jersey resident  says a recent op-ed saying plans for a new bike lane are hated by locals relied on cherry-picking opinions while “ignoring both data and the realities of traffic safety.”

The good news is the Pennsylvania legislature didn’t reject a bill legalizing protected bike lanes, but the bad news is they didn’t pass it, either.

Congratulations to workers at DC’s Washington Area Bicyclist Association, who are now officially unionized.

If you’re riding your bike from Delaware to Key West, it only makes sense to honor the late Jimmy Buffet along the way.

 

International

Cycling Weekly asks why cars, trucks and SUVs keep getting bigger, questioning whether it will ever end. And they say modern bikes are so good, they take the worry out of riding.

Bicycling offers advice on how to safely do an Idaho Stop. But you’ll need a subscription to read the story, because this one doesn’t appear to be available anywhere else. 

Momentum considers the “world’s coolest and most unique” bicycling infrastructure innovations. None of which can be found in Los Angeles. Or the US, even.

A British Columbia judge denied bail to a man accused of trying to use a stolen dump truck to break into an ebike store, after he failed to bust through the security gates despite multiple attempts, just four months after he was arrested for using a forklift to break into a different ebike dealer.

Strange case from Cornwall, England, where a man in his 60s died crashing his bicycle into a parked car, just hours after going missing from a local hospital.

Bike lane opponents in Coventry, England are upset that trees are being cut down to make room for one, but only because they chose saving parking over saving trees.

A writer for the Guardian goes ebiking through Britain’s New Forest National Park.

That’s more like it. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo called for banning SUVs from the city, warning that they could become weapons against other citizens. Even if the conservative London Telegraph takes great pains to point out that she’s a Socialist — capital S — which has nothing to do with banning SUVs 

A French soccer website criticizes Lionel Messi for his “overpriced bicycle scandal,” after the Argentine superstar introduced his own very high-end bicycle selling for more than $15,000.

New Zealand officials found a 78-year old man safe and well after he failed to return home from a mountain bike ride.

An Aussie program is teaching older women the joys of riding a bicycle. Thanks again to Megan Lynch.

 

Competitive Cycling

Costa Rican pro Andrey Amador called it a career at 38 years old, after he’s been unable to compete since a truck driver ran over his foot and bike while training in Spain last May.

Cycling Up To Date considers five “magical” cycling records Tadej Pogačar could set this year.

American cyclist Neilson Powless, the first Native American to compete in the Tour de France, wants to inspire more Indigenous Americans to get on their bikes.

 

Finally…

Why wait for officials to do something about distracted drivers, when you can just post your own traffic signs saying “Get off your damn phone.” When you’re under house arrest, maybe don’t show up to vote riding a bicycle.

And no, you don’t have to send a thank you note to the driver who gave your kid a new bike after crashing into him and destroying his old one.

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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.

Oh, and fuck Putin

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Happy National Bike & Roll to School Day, and the LA Times calls for genuine action on city’s moribund Green New Deal

May 8, 2024 / / 2 comments
Just 237 days until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025.
So stop what you’re doing and sign this petition to demand Mayor Bass hold a public meeting to listen to the dangers we all face on the mean streets of LA.

Then share it — and keep sharing it — with everyone you know, on every platform you can.

We’re up to 1,131 signatures, so keep it going! Urge everyone you know to sign the petition, until she meets with us! 

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Happy National Bike & Roll to School Day!

Or as it’s known here in Los Angeles, Wednesday.

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They get it.

The Los Angeles Times writes that Los Angeles needs to take genuine action on the city’s moribund Green New Deal — there’s that word again — to reach its climate goals, not more excuses.

According to the paper, former mayor and current ambassador Eric Garcetti had the easy job of setting ambitious goals for the city, leaving it to his successor to actually carry them out.

You can guess how that worked out.

Plans for more than $40 billion in rail, highway and mobility projects that were supposed to be finished in time for the 2028 Olympics have been scaled back dramatically after Metro was unable to line up even half of the funds needed. A City Controller’s report last fall found that Garcetti’s Green New Deal plan has not accomplished much, lacks meaningful metrics of progress and doesn’t amount to a “comprehensive and actionable set of steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

It’s disappointing that these lofty efforts to make Los Angeles an environmental and transit model have yielded so little.

In the latest instance of lowered expectations, Metro’s staff has for the second time in a year tried to delay the transit agency’s 2030 deadline to convert its entire 2,000-bus fleet to emissions-free electric models, without so much as a vote. In the seven years since Metro adopted the zero-emission policy, it has managed to order only 145 battery-electric buses and get just 50 of them delivered.

A big part of what’s been forgotten in the brief 3+ years since Garcetti breathed the program into life has been any commitment to expanding the city’s bicycle network.

After Garcetti initially left bicycles out of his first draft of the Green New Deal, he followed up a month later by signing a new executive order calling for a “comprehensive citywide network of active transportation corridors, including protected bike lanes, paths along regional waterways and low-stress neighborhood bike improvements,” along with a host of other transportation and energy goals.

In fact, the city committed to expanding the percentage of all trips made by walking, biking and micro-mobility to at least 35% by next year, climbing up to 50% by 2035.

But Los Angeles won’t come close to meeting that goal, after failing to build more than a tiny fraction of the city’s ambitious mobility plan. And it’s not likely to meet the goal for 2035 unless someone lights a fire under city leaders, who so far have shown more interest in delaying, if not halting, any action on building out the plan.

Which is exactly what led to Measure HLA, committing them to building out the mobility plan as streets get resurfaced.

Yet Mayor Bass and the city council have responded to HLA by proposing a cut in transportation funding and a hiring freeze for the already understaffed LADOT and LA Street Services. And slow walking the street resurfacing program to delay implementing the measure.

Ensuring that the city will fail to meet its Vision Zero and Green New Deal commitments for next year, and likely for years, if not decades, to come.

So if you ask me why I’m angry, and why we need to meet with the mayor, there’s your answer.

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A hard-hitting Scottish traffic safety PSA tells drivers to give bike riders a 1.5 meter passing distance — the equivalent of nearly five feet —  “Because it’s not just a bike. It’s a person.”

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It’s now 140 days since the California ebike incentive program’s latest failure to launch, which was promised no later than fall 2023. And 35 months since it was approved by the legislature and signed into law — and counting.

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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.

No bias here. After a man riding in a London bike lane was filmed being cut off by a driver turning into a No Entry roadway to make a U-turn, UK pro-driving traffic lawyer Mr. Loophole blamed the victim, insisting the bike rider should be prosecuted for the crash, while bike-riding BBC presenter Jeremy Vine said anyone who thinks the bike rider was at fault “should have their driving license rescinded” — a comment that got Vine labelled as “arrogant.”

No bias here, either. Local residents say the UK’s biggest bike lane is a waste of money because not enough bicyclists use it, and the space should be given back to motorists because “they’re the majority.” Meanwhile, bike riders say they don’t use it because it’s covered in twigs and stones, making it too dangerous to ride.

Welsh drivers claim that a new bike lane and walkway that gives more space for bicyclists and pedestrians than to drivers is “an attack on your right to drive a car,” and part of an “anti-car agenda.”

But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.

Police in Singapore busted a group of 20 bicyclists for violating the country’s draconian limit of no more than five people riding single file, or groups up to 10 riding two abreast; they were also charged with using “non-compliant active mobility devices,” whatever that means.

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Local 

A Next City podcast discusses LA’s “mobility wallet,” which it describes as the biggest Universal Basic Mobility experiment ever attempted in the US; the program provides 1,000 South LA residents with $150 per month to spend on any form of transportation, from transit and micro-transit to bikeshare and ebikes.

West Hollywood will hold an informational open house in Plummer Park on Tuesday, May 21st, to discuss the planned bike-friendly Complete Streets makeover of Willoughby Ave, and Vista/Gardner and Kings streets.

LA County has approved a nearly $3.4 million settlement in the killing of Dijon Kizzee, who was shot by sheriff’s deputies as he tried to flee from a traffic stop for riding his bike on the wrong side of the road, in the Westmont neighborhood of South LA in 2020.

 

State

Calbike reports on what they hope is the last workgroup meeting for the California E-Bike Incentive Project before it finally launches. They hope.

Twenty-six-year old Christian Joshua Howard pled not guilty to a felony count of hit-and-run causing death for the St. Patrick’s Day death of 51-year old Oceanside postal worker Tracey Gross as she rode her bike home from work.

Sad news from San Jose, where a male bike rider was killed in front of a local high school when a speeding driver ran a red light, and slammed into the victim. But sure, tell me again about that bike rider you saw roll a stop sign.

 

National

Bicycling considers how long it takes to ride a century. Read it on AOL this time if the magazine blocks you. 

Electrify News says ebikes are the greatest form of green transportation, and now is the best time ever to buy one. Thanks to Malcomb Watson for the links.

Outside recommends the best bike accessories and tools for road and gravel riding.

A writer for Streetsblog says ebikes are the key for creating financially sustainable bikeshare programs.

Strong Towns considers five ways the National Bike to Work Day can miss the mark.

The White Line Foundation, which was founded in response to 17-year old US National Team cyclist Magnus White’s tragic death, will host the memorial “Ride for Magnus: Ride for Your Life” this August along the same Colorado road where he was killed last July.

California isn’t the only state considering requiring speed limiting devices; a New York state bill would require the devices on vehicles belonging to serial speeders, limiting them to no more than 5 mph over the limit, unlike the California bill, which would require the devices on all new vehicles while allowing a maximum of 10 mph over the posted speed limit. The New York approach sounds like a great complement to the California bill, which will take decades to replace every car now on the road. 

New York plans to permanently reroute the city’s First Avenue protected bike lane through an existing underground tunnel in time for September’s meeting of the UN General Assembly.

A Baltimore woman started selling ice cream from her bicycle ten years ago, founding a company that now brings in a quarter-million dollars a year.

 

International

Cycling News lists the best Giro d’Italia inspired bicycling bargains in both the US and the UK.

Momentum says bicyclists will have an unprecedented opportunity to ride through the iconic streets of Paris to the giant Grand Picnic des Champs on the Champs-Elysées at the end of this month.

An ex-pro paracycling champ has made the unusual transition from the New Zealand national team to owning the leading fence painting firm in Waikato, a district of half a million people.

An Australian study shows replacing parking spaces with bike lanes could improve city accessibility and livability without affecting business revenue, calling it a Robin Hood planning tactic

 

Competitive Cycling

Twenty-two-year old New York native Magnus Sheffield is making his Grand Tour debut in the Giro, as the youngest rider on the Ineos Grenadiers, he’s already won the 2022 De Brabantse Pijl, as well as finishing second overall in the Tours of Norway and Denmark.

Italian sprinter Jonathan Milan claimed stage four of the Giro with a “monstrous” effort in the final 200 yards; there was no change among the top three riders in the general classification.

Jonas Vingegaard took his first ride in over a month following a horrific mass crash in the Tour of the Basque Country, and said he’s aiming to make the start line for this summers Tour de France to compete for a third straight yellow jersey.

This year’s edition of America’s top international bike race, the Maryland Cycling Classic, has been sunk by complications from the Baltimore bridge collapse, after the city’s Francis Scott Key Bridge fell when it was struck by a massive freighter.

 

Finally…

That feeling when a triple Tour de France stage winner stops to fix your flat. Or when a four-year old girl pedals the bike while her dad rides in the basket.

And we may have to worry about a near miss with LA drivers, but at least we don’t often brake for a “deer miss.”

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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.

Oh, and fuck Putin

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Aussie prof killed in Marina bike crash, protected bike lane mandate pays off, and CA has to walk the walk on emissions

December 12, 2023 / / 2 comments

Just 12 days left in the 9th Annual BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive!

Thanks to Erik B, Lisa G, Samer S, Erik G and Gold Leaf Films for their generous support to help keep SoCal’s best source for bike news and advocacy coming your way every day.

Don’t wait. Give now!

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Days left to launch the California ebike incentive program as promised this fall: 9

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I’m gutted.

Yesterday we shared a photo depicting the aftermath of a Friday bike crash in Marina del Rey, which I later learned was taken by Ian Dutton.

Then last night I came across a story from an Australian news site reporting that a beloved college teacher had been killed riding along an unidentified California beach.

And later still, I saw a comment from Libby Starling, who identified herself as the victim’s sister-in-law, reporting that the victim in the Marina crash, Manhattan Beach resident Leland Dutcher, didn’t make it.

Yet I somehow failed to initially make the connection that it was the same person.

Somehow, posting that photo makes it feel personal to me, perhaps because I inherited my dad’s extra empathy gene.

I keep telling myself that it’s not about me.

What I do is about serving the victims of these crashes, and their families, and the greater bicycling community.

But it hurts, damn it.

It hurts.

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We’ve linked to a number of stories about the bikelash in Cambridge, Massachusetts recently, where some drivers are up in arms over the profusion of new bike lanes on city streets.

But according to Velo, a new report from city officials shows the city’s first-in-the-nation mandate to building protected bike lanes has been an overwhelming success.

According to the report, since the policy was implemented four years ago,

  • 80 percent more protected bike lanes from cars than in 2004.
  • 9 percent of Cambridge residents bike to work, and 37 percent of residents walk or bike.
  • 25 percent of people visiting the business district arrive by bicycle.
  • 34 percent more people commute by bike since 2019, while 15 percent more people commute via sidewalks since 2019.
  • The number of children on bikes, in trailers, or cargo bikes has increased by 3.5 times.
  • Up to 80 percent fewer cyclists ride on sidewalks, resulting in fewer accidents between pedestrians and cyclists.
  • Bike lanes in the area have cut accidents between bikes and cars by 50 percent since 2012.
  • The proportion of crashes that did not result in injury is three times lower now than it was from 2004 to 2012. Incapacitating injuries are down by 84 percent in the same time frame.

All of which sounds like a pretty convincing argument to keep building them there.

And here.

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They get it.

Planetizen says California has to walk the walk when it comes to reducing transportation emissions.

Because while the state is great at setting Complete Streets and climate change policies, it continues to waste billions on traffic and emission inducing highway projects.

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LA in a Minute examines why white plastic bollards are popping up all over Los Angeles.

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The mayor of Escondido has declared war on bike lanes, introducing an ordinance to prohibit future bike and transit improvements in the city.

https://twitter.com/TallDarknJewish/status/1734313400409415951

 

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Well, of course he was one of us.

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Megan Lynch forwards video of George Clooney and Jimmie Kimmel discussing what kids wanted from a bike back in the day.

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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.

No bias here. Bay Area bike advocates were justifiably up in arms over a story from the San Francisco Standard we linked to yesterday, which trotted out the usual bike-hating bile, including “People hate bike lanes, at least in part, because people hate cyclists. And in fairness, many cyclists give non-cyclists more than a few things to hate.” Because we all know all drivers operate their vehicles perfectly, and never, ever do anything that would give bike riders or pedestrians something to hate.

New York’s bike-hating, rightwing councilwoman demonstrates how to say you have no idea what you’re talking about without saying you have no idea what you’re talking about, while somehow assuming we’re all a group of millionaire cultists.

But sometimes it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.

Bakersfield police arrested 12 people riding bicycles, 11 of them juveniles, for an undisclosed incident that happened at the city’s Valley Plaza Mall; a police sergeant said the group, which was organized through social media, was “causing road hazards, and not following the rules of the road.” Except that sounds more like a traffic violation, rather than a crime subject to arrest. And full disclosure, I used to write advertising for that mall. 

A bike-riding Massachusetts man faces an animal cruelty charge for allegedly beating a dog and knocking its 69-year old owner to the ground, after using his bike to separate his two dogs from the victim’s dog when they got into a fight. Using his bike to separate them was smart; beating the other dog afterwards, not so much. Or forgivable. 

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Local 

No news is good news, right? 

 

State

Encinitas is responding to the death of a 15-year old ebike rider in June by considering a slate of bike and pedestrian safety improvements on city streets, including left turn bike boxes.

San Diego adopted a new Complete Streets policy aimed at making local streets safer and more equitable. But as we’ve seen in Los Angeles, a policy without an enforcement mechanism can be pretty useless.

A Santa Barbara writer tries to explain what’s going on with the traffic diverters on Sola Street, as the city attempts to create a crosstown bikeway without removing parking spaces to install a bike lane.

Kindhearted Clovis, California cops bought a new bike for a local teenager after someone stole his locked bike while he was at school.

A nearly $125,000 bequest from the man known as the Legend of Mt. Diablo for his daily rides up the Bay Area climb is helping to fund a campaign to build safety turnouts on his favorite ride, two years after he was killed by a driver while riding his bike.

 

National

The New York Times examines the rise in pedestrian deaths, blaming distracted drivers and a lack of safe sidewalks, while too easily discounting the deadly design of SUVs.

Bike Snob’s Eben Weiss says most bike reviews are useless, so just get out there and ride them yourself.

Clean Technica says ebikes are radically more efficient than electric cars, while a writer for Electrek relates the lessons his wife learned from her first 100 miles commuting to work by ebike.

Oregon will now allow drivers to pass bike riding “obstructions” in No Passing Zones, as long as the person on the bicycle is riding at less than half the posted speed limit.

Great idea. The Iowa Bicycle Coalition is visiting nearly 100 bike shops across the state to kick off their “support your local bike shop week.” Because if we don’t support them, they may not be there when you need them.

Kindhearted cops in Boston replaced a nine-year old boy’s bicycle after someone stole his bike from his backyard.

Sad news from Syracuse NY, where a man riding a bikeshare ebike was killed when a cop somehow turned his patrol car into him; the officer is now on administrative leave while the crash is investigated.

Tragic news from North Carolina, where a man was killed by a drunk driver while riding his bicycle, just hours after his father was killed in a collision, leaving their family to plan two funerals.

‘Tis the Season. Nearly 100 volunteer “elves” refurbished nearly 530 donated bicycles for a Georgia charity to give to local kids in need.

 

International

Momentum says the Dutch Reach is the simple solution to help stop dooring incidents. The only problem is actually getting drivers and passengers to use it. 

A British motorcyclist got three and a half years behind bars for crashing into a bike-riding woman while riding stoned, without a license or insurance, and with fake plates on his motorcycle; the victim ended up having her leg amputated.

The UK’s largest chain of bike shops is ridiculed for building bikes wrong, putting on all the right parts, “but not necessarily in the right places.”

The Jerusalem Post recommends the best helmets for your bicycle or motorbike riding dog — including a hard shell propeller beanie.

 

Competitive Cycling

Fox News continues its war on trans cyclists, quoting commentator Riley Gaines condemning a third place finisher as a “traitor to women” after she came to the defense of the trans women who finished ahead of her.

 

Finally…

Now you, too, can build your very own wireless bike brakes. Your next ebike could be a…Cervélo?

And nothing like finding a useless bike rack at the end of your ride.

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Chag sameach!

Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.

Oh, and fuck Putin

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Better bike lanes beat hi-viz for safety, commuting 46 miles — each way — by ebike, and Sunset4All gaslit by O’Farrell

December 5, 2023 / / Comments Off on Better bike lanes beat hi-viz for safety, commuting 46 miles — each way — by ebike, and Sunset4All gaslit by O’Farrell

It’s Day 12 of the of the 9th Annual BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive!

Which means you have just 19 days left to support SoCal’s best source for bike news and advocacy.

It was a slow weekend while I was out of town for my sister’s birthday, but the fund drive is still ahead of last year at this time.

Please join me in thanking Bonnie W, Patt M, Plurabelle Books and Damian K, who says he’s only here for the corgis, for their generous donations to keep all the freshest bike news and corgi pics coming your way every day. 

So take a moment and give now!

It’s okay, we’ll wait. 

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He gets it.

A writer for Velo says better bike lanes will stop bicyclists from getting hit by drivers — not lighting yourself up like a Christmas tree.

There is one proven way to lower the risk of cyclists being killed: adding quality bike lanes.

A quality bike lane works for cyclists of even the most novice of levels to help them feel comfortable moving around their community. Usually, they’re separated from the road, or at the very least partitioned in a way that provides freedom of movement and opportunity to get around.

Hi-viz and fluorescent gear won’t stop inattentive drivers from hitting cyclists. It won’t stop a driver angered by the mere inconvenience of having to share the road. Unfortunately, it won’t stop drivers who mean well but don’t see a cyclist either. It’s a bike lane. More specifically, it’s separated bike lanes that improve cyclist safety.

It’s worth taking a few minutes from your day to read the whole thing.

Because he’s right, even though I ride with enough lights to guide Santa’s sleigh these days.

Thanks to Joel Falter for the heads-up. 

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He gets it, too.

Los Angeles Times Letters Editor Paul Thornton shares his experience after buying an ebike to beat traffic on a commute between his Alhambra home and the Times offices El Segundo that can stretch to two hours or more.

Tell that to someone who says you can’t use a bicycle for LA’s long commutes.

That was until I bought an electric bike and just this week started using it to ride the 46-mile round trip between home and work.

On Tuesday morning, by which time L.A.’s rush-hour traffic had fully rebounded from its holiday break, getting from Alhambra to El Segundo by e-bike took 90 minutes. The electric motor flattened hills and helped with attaining traffic speed sooner.

The commute home lasted 80 minutes. That’s 46 rush-hour miles in less than three hours — typically what it takes in a car, and less than the same journey on Metro rail.

But as we’ve all learned by now, even the best bike commute isn’t all sunshine and roses.

Thornton says bicycle safety is dangerously backsliding due to a lack of safe bike infrastructure, even as cities rush to catch up.

Big SUVs and trucks, with front ends resembling battering rams, are outselling all other vehicle types and killing pedestrians and cyclists with greater ease than ever before. Even many of the “protected” bike lanes popping up around Los Angeles, which separate cyclists from vehicles with flimsy plastic bollards that collapse if hit by a car, offer barely any protection.

To L.A.’s everlasting shame, traffic deaths have ballooned to crisis proportions since then-Mayor Eric Garcetti announced the goal of eliminating them completely by adopting Vision Zero in 2015. That year, according to the group Streets Are for Everyone, 203 people died in L.A. traffic; in 2022, 312 were killed.

Once again, it’s worth taking a few minutes from your busy Tuesday to read it.

Because he succinctly captures both the risks and the opportunity ebikes present, on a personal level.

And gives me a nice shoutout in the process.

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The Guardian takes a look at the Sunset4All project to improve safety and livability along LA’s busy — and deadly — Sunset Blvd, led by LA Bike Dad Terence Heuston.

Heuston says that at the time his group formed, safety problems with the Sunset corridor were already on many radars. The section of Sunset made it on the LA department of transportation’s Vision Zero High Injury Network, a list of the most dangerous roadways in Los Angeles. And safer biking on Sunset fit with Los Angeles’ Mobility Plan 2035, a blueprint launched in 2015 to transform LA’s streets into “complete streets” – roadways that can be safely used by bikers, pedestrians, cars and mass transit alike – by the year 2035. Furthermore, in 2015 the LA Metro Active Transport (Mat) program identified the Sunset corridor as high priority for safety improvements because it would make a significant impact on resident use of active modes of transportation, as well as the Metro.

The clear solution was creating protected bike lanes along the corridor, which studies have shown can improve safety for everyone on the street.

With Heuston leading the charge, activists were buoyed by the idea that they were advocating for something so many agreed should be done. “We were hoping this could be a model project,” says Heuston. “Sunset is this iconic boulevard in the most iconic ‘car-centric’ city in North America. The idea was: if we can change it here, then we can change it anywhere.”

They had community buy-in thanks to countless events like the coffee walk gathering and long hours spent talking to various groups, lots of volunteers and the support of their city council – or so they thought.

Unfortunately, Heuston and the other volunteers were gaslighted by former CD13 Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell, who told them to hire expensive independent traffic engineers to create plans and renderings for the project.

So the plans and renderings crowdfunded by the group just ended up in the circular file.

Hugo Soto-Martinez, who defeated O’Farrell for District 13 in the 2022 general election, says his predecessor lied to the group. Studies conducted by third parties aren’t accepted by the city. O’Farrell was “just sitting on the project”, Soto-Martinez said.

And yes, once again, it’s worth taking the time from your busy day to read the whole thing.

If for no other reason than to fully grasp the frustrations bike and safety advocates experience dealing with our auto-addled city leaders.

………

Dr. Grace Peng calls your attention to a proposal to improve bike-carrying bus service in the Bay Cities. And wants your support to put an actual ebike user on the Redondo Beach Ebike Task Force.

Preferably her.

………

This is who we share the road with. A Bellevue, Washington driver turned a local restaurant into a drive thru, the easy way.

Thanks to Ralph Durham for the heads-up.

………

The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.

No bias here. A Claremont, California letter writer applauds himself for striking a nerve with the “bike lane fanatics,” then proceeds to say a recent survey showing overwhelming local support for bike lanes doesn’t pass the smell test. Which evidently, is the only proof he requires. Thanks to Erik Griswold for the link. 

A New York bike rider shares “infuriating” video of the city’s drivers blatantly ignoring bicycle infrastructure, with “numerous sizable vehicles obstructing an already small bike lane.”

No bias here, either, as London’s Daily Mail accuses the city’s mayor of chopping down a historic palm tree to make room for “yet another bike lane for his beloved cycling constituents,” before conceding that the tree was merely moved to another location.

Organizers of an Oxford, England Christmas market threatened to cancel the event because city officials demanded they maintain bicycle access, instead of blocking a bike lane.

French officials decided to celebrate the season by plopping a large Christmas tree in the middle of a trans-European bike path. Because why wouldn’t they?

But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.

Bakersfield police arrested one person and seized seven bicycles after a large group of bicyclists took over city streets on Saturday, allegedly causing traffic hazards and disturbing the peace, as well as engaging in thefts, vandalism and at least one assault with a deadly weapon.

The family of a 91-year old British Army veteran says the ebike rider who crashed into him will likely get off with a slap on the wrist because the country has failed to update its bike laws, after the man died of his injuries three months after he was struck.

………

………

Local 

LA Weekly takes a long-delayed look at Mobility Plan 2035, which promised a transformation of Los Angeles streets when it was passed by the city council in 2015 — but fails to mention that it was promptly shelved and forgotten, in a story with the depth of something written by AI.

CD10 Councilmember Heather Hutt called for new protected bike lanes on a 3.1-mile stretch of Venice Blvd between Fairfax and Arlington avenues.

A coalition of South LA organizations is launching a new ebike library pilot called Power Up South Central, similar to an existing program in Pacoima.

Tomorrow is the last day to offer comments on the Glendale Bicycle Transportation Plan.

Santa Monica’s mayor proudly proclaims that the city will soon be the bicycling capital of the world, warning Amsterdam to watch out as she opens the new protected intersection on 17th Street. Correction: I originally misidentified the mayor of Santa Monica as a man, rather than a woman. But with a name like Gleam, I had a 50/50 shot. Thanks to Joe Linton for setting me straight. 

A Santa Monica letter writer says speed limits and road design must change if the city hopes to save lives.

 

State

The Orange County Bicycle Coalition has teamed with CABO and the American Bicycling Education Association to create a short video explaining CVC 21202, the basic law governing the operation of bicycles on the roadway. Thanks to Phillip Young for the link.

A Fullerton writer calls for safer bike and pedestrian detour around construction zones. Something that’s just as needed in Los Angeles, where construction work too often reminds us that people walking and biking barely enjoy second-class status.

 

National

Cycling Weekly offers a long list of reasons why roadies should ride in the dirt this winter.

A Wyoming website profiles one of the state’s most senior wildlife biologists, who is also a ninth-degree blackbelt in karate, the former mayor of Laramie, and a founder of the Tour de Wyoming cycling event.

A Houston magazine calls ghost bikes painful reminders of the city’s cyclist death problem, with over 100 such memorials dotting the city.

Bicycling says convicted killer Kaitlin Armstrong is appealing her 90-year sentence for fatally shooting gravel cycling champ Moriah “Mo” Willson, in a perceived love-triangle with pro cyclist Colin Strickland. As usual, read it on Yahoo if the magazine blocks you. 

A 30-year old Chicago woman faces charges for the drunken death of a 59-year old man riding a bicycle in October, while running three stop signs and driving in the bike lane, with a BAC two and a half times the legal limit.

The mayor of Anne Arbor, Michigan is one of us, urging others to join him in commuting by ebike.

 

International

Momentum tells Elon Musk’s vaunted Cybertruck to move over, because ebikes are the real sustainability game-changer, and considers the right and wrong way to lock your bike.

Bike riders continue to flock to Bolivia’s famed Death Road, despite the nearly three-mile high roadway claiming the lives of nearly 20 bicyclists every year.

Good question. The parents of a Newfoundland teenager want to know why the driver who hit him was able to get behind the wheel despite a lifetime ban on driving, after the man fled the scene after hitting the kid as he was riding his bike.

Forbes talks with a representative of the European Cycling Foundation attending the COP 28 climate conference about the role bicycling can play in confronting the climate crisis.

An angry driver tells British radio star Jeremy Vine to fuck off, after the bike-riding BBC presenter challenged him for blowing through a stop sign.

An Oxford, England city councilor responds to a challenge from a bicycling critic to post a photo of school bike racks on a cold wet December day by doing just that — showing the racks overflowing with bikes.

A French engineer is attempting to solve the problem of exploding lithium-ion ebike batteries by storing energy with a supercapacitor, instead.

A Kenyon newspaper looks at the nation through the eyes of a 24-year old woman who is riding solo over 8,000 miles across Africa.

A Pennsylvania man recreates a historic 900-mile trip from Nagasaki to Yokohama by Penny Farthing, 136 years after the original journey.

 

Competitive Cycling

Cycling News offers a comprehensive team-by-team look at next year’s WorldTour cycling teams.

 

Finally…

Seriously, why wouldn’t an elderly ghost want to watch a little kid learn how to ride a bike? Is it really a folding bike if the wheels don’t?

And why go around when you can go through?

………

Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.

Oh, and fuck Putin

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Four Pepperdine students dead thanks to official inaction on deadly PCH, and more context-free San Diego ebike panic

October 19, 2023 / / 5 comments

This is who we share the road with.

Tuesday night, four young Pepperdine University students were killed by an alleged speeding driver on Southern California’s killer highway.

The four 20-year old college seniors were standing on the side of the road in an area locals call Dead Man’s Curve when the 22-year old driver slammed into three parked cars, knocking them into the women.

And making them all collateral damage on a roadway designed and build to accommodate, if not encourage, high speeds.

The driver, Fraser Michael Bohm, was booked on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence, which will likely be upgraded to four counts once he’s arraigned.

It’s only a pity that the people who have gone out of their way to keep this killer highway dangerous and deadly won’t face charges with him.

It was nearly a decade ago that I began representing the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, now BikeLA, on the PCH Task Force.

The task force was created by the state legislators who then represented the Malibu, Pacific Palisades, Santa Monica and Ventura County areas to address safety and other concerns on the highway, with input from the various stakeholders.

The LACBC took an interest because PCH is such a popular route for bicyclists of all kinds. And claimed so many as victims.

In fact, it is the single most deadly roadway for bike riders in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

The LACBC joined with other representatives to demand safety improvements to the highway, ranging from road diets and protected bike lanes, to eliminating roadside parking and reducing speed limits.

In almost every case, we were told what we were asking for was impossible. We were told the road, Malibu’s 22-mile long main street, was necessary to funnel commuters from Ventura County and the San Fernando Valley in and out of the LA area.

The overly wide traffic lanes, high speed limits that were nearly universally exceeded, slip lane right turns and roadside parking were all necessary to prevent excessive traffic congestion, or so we were told.

Never mind they also encouraged speeding drivers weaving in and out of slower traffic 22 hours a day. And put bike riders at needless risk of right hooks and dooring.

Caltrans, which has responsibility for the roadway, could have taken steps to dramatically improve safety years ago.

They didn’t.

Malibu, Los Angeles and Santa Monica could have demanded changes that would have saved lives.

They didn’t.

Sure, minor changes were made. A painted bike lane here, widening the shoulder there. But the killer highway remained, and remains, a deadly speedway for most of the day and night.

Now four young women, who did nothing to put their lives in danger, are dead — victims of an alleged speeding driver, and the officials, engineers and bureaucrats who enabled him.

The young man behind the wheel is likely to be middle-aged before he gets out of prison, unless an overly lenient judge takes pity on him.

It’s just a pity that the others who have worked so hard to keep PCH so deadly won’t be there with him.

What a fucking waste.

A 2013 publication highlights the joys of biking sans helmets on SoCal’s deadliest highway.

……..

San Diego media sources were whipped into a tizzy by “startling new statistics” from the city’s Rady Children’s Hospital, which shows increasing rates of ebike and e-scooter injuries, especially among children.

Yet once again, they fail to put any of it in context.

Injuries can be expected to rise with increasing rates of any activity. If more people started playing Frisbee golf, we’d see rising rates of arm and impact injuries as a result.

What matters is whether those injuries are rising faster than the increase in ridership, or becoming more serious than a baseline of bicycling injuries.

Unless and until we have that context, reports like this are nothing more than a concerning, but anecdotal, data point.

……..

Frequent contributor Megan Lynch forwards news that UC Davis journalism students, not the professional press, are digging into what’s been done since a student was killed by a university employee while riding her bike.

I was lucky enough to be logged on to Mastodon at the time the MuckRock bot sent this through. Otherwise I’d never have known someone was finally making a CPRA request on this. Sadly, it was not made by UC Davis student journalists, but students in a journalism class at University of Nevada, Reno.

You may remember that (19-year old sophomore) Tris Yasay was killed by a yet-unnamed UC Davis employee driving a UC Davis sanitation truck on May 25, 2022. First responders were all UC Davis employees as well (UCDPD and UCDFD). Local press didn’t ask many questions and the few that the Davis Enterprise followed up on was because I got after the reporter about it. It still wasn’t what was needed.  UC Davis was successful in burying the questions.

Months later, its PR flacks linked the “accident” and the grant they applied for re “cyclist and pedestrian safety” that simply targets pedestrians and cyclists for re-education, not its own drivers.

So far as I know, UC Davis has not done any campaign to re-train its own drivers or at least it has not publicized one. I vaguely recall reading somewhere that the claim was that the driver could not see the cyclist in the side view mirror. In which case, the position and efficacy of these mirrors needs to be examined. Because cyclists are a regular feature of the UC Davis campus and if the side view does not accurately reflect what’s going on, drivers should be trained to crane their heads around and look for themselves BEFORE turning. “Blind” spots should be minimized on the vehicle.

But haven’t read about any of that happening.

I’m interested to see what the student journalist finds and if the MuckRock interface will let everyone see it when UC Davis responds. They also requested the City of Davis Bicycle Action Plan.

……..

Our Deutschland correspondent Ralph Durham forwards a newsletter from the ADFC, aka General German Bicycle Club, on the subject of licensing bicycles, and why that’s a bad idea.

Here is a link to the ADFC newsletter on the subject of bike license plates. And their list of reasons not to have them. A huge one is the cost because of bureaucracy. Something Germans know a little about.

However, you’ll either need to read German, or dump the story into a translation service like Google Translate.

……..

I used to ride this same route almost daily to get to Lake Hollywood when I first moved to Los Angeles about a hundred years ago.

It didn’t feel safe then, and it feels a lot less safe now.

………

Bike Talk posts their latest episode, starting with questioning the effectiveness of Vision Zero on both coasts.

………

LA County wants your input on proposed bike paths in the county.

https://twitter.com/streetsforall/status/1714684080581955821

………

Local 

West Hollywood’s city council voted to end the city’s e-scooter trial phase and extend their contracts with Lime and Bird, although by a narrow 3 to 2 margin; the increasingly conservative WeHoVille site predictably did not approve.

 

State

Calbike claims a number of “big” legislative victories that survived the governor’s desk, along with concerns about bills creating an ebike safety study and a Caltrans bike czar.

The Kern County coroner’s office has finally identified the 39-year-old woman killed by a driver while riding her bike in Bakersfield last month; the CHP continues to blame her for crossing in front of the driver’s car.

The two people killed by shifting lumber form a passing Freightliner truck while riding their bikes on Napa County’s Silverado Trail were identified as a married couple from Portland, Oregon; no word on why they were riding in Napa. It’s questionable whether the driver gave them the required three-foot passing distance, which might have spared them from the impact. 

No one seems to like San Francisco’s new Valencia Street centerline protected bike lane, as advocates call it dangerous and counterintuitive, while merchants along the street say it’s killing their business.

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is looking for a new executive director once again, as current ED Jannelle Wong is stepping down after just 18 months on the job.

 

National

NPR reports on the recent study that shows regular bike riding can improve mental health for middle school students. Which is one more reason for Safe Routes to Schools. 

Bicycling offers a requiem and post-mortem for the popular Surly Cross Check, which has been discontinued by the bikemaker. This one doesn’t seem to be available from other sources, so you’re on your own if the magazine blocks you. 

Friends of 32-year old BMX champ Nathan “Nate” Miller want to know why the Las Vegas driver who killed him hasn’t been charged for the September crash, after security cam video surfaced showing the speeding driver jerking between lanes before crashing into Miller’s bike, then crashing into a fence and a parked vehicle.

The wife and daughter of fallen former Bell, California police chief Andreas “Andy” Probst first realized he was injured when they got an alert of a fall from his Apple Watch, then heard police sirens and helicopters just blocks from their Las Vegas home; two teens face murder charges for intentionally running down Probst in a stolen car, apparently just for the hell of it.

A 62-year old Florida woman has been identified as the hit-and-run driver captured in a viral video crashing into an 11-year-old girl riding her bike in a school parking lot, and pushing her at least 60 feet with the car; instead of helping the girl, she just got out of her car, asked if the victim was okay, and told her to just go home and take a shower.

Once again, a cop has killed someone riding a bicycle, this time in Marion County, Florida, where a 22-year old sheriff’s deputy ran down a 63-year old man early Wednesday; investigators quickly blamed the victim for riding on a dark roadway without a helmet or reflective clothing, or using lights on his bike. Because apparently, patrol cars in Florida don’t have headlights that could have illuminated someone riding a bike.

 

International

Momentum offers 13 helpful tips for a worry-free first-time bike commuting experience.

Inside EVs says the new European Declaration on Cycling offers 36 principles aimed at advancing bicycling in the European Union, laying the groundwork for future legislation to unlock the full potential of bicycles.

An Australian woman has been seriously injured riding her bike, less than a week after warning a Victoria state parliamentary inquiry into road safety about the extreme risks bicyclists face on the country’s roads.

 

Competitive Cycling

Sad news from Arizona, where longtime bike racer John Timbers, a previous winner of the Iron Horse Classic and the Manhattan Beach Grand Prix, and founder of Arizona’s Vuelta de Bisbee stage race nearly five decades ago, was killed by a hit-and-run driver while riding his bike in Tucson early Tuesday morning; he was 78.

 

Finally…

That feeling when a trio of random tweets tells a story about traffic violence and automotive hegemony. Nothing like suffering a daily aerial assault on your bike commute.

And who says you can’t do stunts on a heavy-ass bikeshare bike?

………

Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.

Oh, and fuck Putin

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Newsom’s veto could mean tickets for seeking sidewalk safety, and LA Times calls out California’s roadway climate fail

October 11, 2023 / / Comments Off on Newsom’s veto could mean tickets for seeking sidewalk safety, and LA Times calls out California’s roadway climate fail

No surprise here.

Both Calbike and CABO responded to Governor Gavin Newsom’s veto of a bill that would have legalized sidewalk riding on any street without adequate bike lanes.

And needless to say, they came out on opposite sides of the issue.

Calbike, aka the California Bicycle Coalition, decried the veto, arguing that sidewalk riding may not be the best choice, but it’s sometimes the only safe one.

“Is sidewalk riding ideal? No,” said Jared Sanchez, policy director for CalBike. “In a perfect world, most streets would be Complete Streets, with safe facilities for all modes of transportation. But that’s not the reality today, and it will take years to transform every dangerous roadway in California into a safe route for biking. In the meantime, people on bikes must, at times, travel on streets with fast traffic and no bike lanes. By vetoing this bill, the governor has taken an action that will lead to more deaths and injuries of people on bikes.”

While CalBike agrees with the governor’s assertion in his veto statement that building better bike infrastructure is the best way to provide safe spaces for people who ride bikes and that the state has moved in the right direction to create more protected and connected bikeways, infrastructure for safe biking remains woefully inadequate.

Meanwhile CABO — the California Association of Bicycle Organizations — applauded the governor’s veto.

An open letter from Alan Wachtel, Government Relations Director for CABO, pointed out the dangers of bicycling on sidewalks, both for bike riders and pedestrians.

While my organization and I appreciate the author’s intent to improve bicycle safety, this bill would instead have exactly the opposite effect. It would encourage dangerous bicycling habits, and it would constitute a huge step backward in the goal of routinely accommodating bicycle travel everywhere in the transportation network. Unfortunately, the author’s office has repeatedly declined to meet with us even to discuss these issues.

Under existing Vehicle Code §21650(g) (which I helped to draft), bicyclists may already ride on sidewalks everywhere, unless prohibited by the code or local ordinance. AB 825 would eliminate that local power unless the adjacent roadway includes a designated bicycle facility, except for last-minute amendments that provide complicated exceptions meant to protect pedestrians (but that are inadequate to do so).

But AB 825, despite being promoted as a bicycle safety bill, would, on the contrary, also be more dangerous for bicyclists. It relies on and actively perpetuates the misconception that the only safe places for bicycles are designated facilities and sidewalks.

This may be the rare instance where they’re both at least partly right.

CABO is correct that bikes don’t normally belong on sidewalks, where they pose a danger to pedestrians and an increased risk to bike riders, despite the perception of safety.

But it’s also true that a sidewalk can provide a refuge from dangerous roadways lacking safe infrastructure — especially the typical suburban California stroads, where riders often have to contend with speeding drivers exceeding the already high speed limits.

It’s also demanding too much to expect an inexperienced bike rider to take the lane on a busy street filled with impatient and distracted drivers.

It’s unreasonable to ticket someone for putting their own safety ahead of any local restrictions under those, or similar, circumstances.

Or to expect someone on a bicycle to always know when they’ve crossed from one city where sidewalk riding is allowed, to another where it’s prohibited, particularly when the restriction isn’t posted.

Then there’s the problem the bill was originally drafted to address, where police too often use sidewalk riding restrictions as a pretext to stop and search, or merely harass, people of color.

I always encourage people to ride their bikes in the street, both for their own safety, and that of people walking on the sidewalk.

But I understand if they choose not to, as I have myself for short distances, or when faced with dangerous situations on the street.

And penalizing them for making that choice is wrong — as was Newsom’s veto of the bill.

Besides, we all know sidewalks are really just parking spots for entitled drivers.

……..

The get it.

An editorial from the Los Angeles Times called out California’s transportation policies, arguing that the state’s highway spending doesn’t match it’s climate promises.

Then again, that’s what we’ve come to expect from the auto-centric Caltrans, despite its repeated commitments to Complete Streets and active transportation.

Two recent reports highlight the discrepancy. Regulators have warned that the state needs to slash the amount of miles people drive 25% below 2019 levels to help meet 2030 emission reduction targets. But traffic and car dependence has increased in recent years, according to a report from the progressive advocacy group NextGen Policy.

It’s no surprise why: California continues to spend the bulk of its transportation dollars to maintain and expand car-centric roads and freeways. Instead of doubling down on the existing system that makes it inconvenient and unsafe to travel by bike, foot and transit, California should be spending the bulk of its transportation funding to remake the urban landscape so people have real choices in how they get around.

But that’s not happening. Of the state’s primary transportation funding programs, just 19% of the money has gone to projects that help reduce the need to drive, such as building out bike lanes, sidewalks, rail service, electric buses and affordable housing near jobs, according to an analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council. These programs are in such demand that the state is regularly forced to deny funding to highly rated pedestrian and bicycle projects.

It’s worth reading the whole piece, because they’re right.

Caltrans continues to flush massive amounts of funding down the highway widening toilet, addicted to the never-ending chase to fix traffic congestion while fueling induced demand.

And like any other addict, the only solution is to quit.

………

It looks like Amazon’s Prime Days, which concludes today, is the bike world’s new October Black Friday.

………

Road.cc pits a $15,000 superbike against a $430 find from Facebook Marketplace to determine how much speed money can actually buy.

And concludes that it does make a difference, but not as much as you might think.

………

The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.

A Cambridge, Massachusetts newspaper says a court heard rehashed arguments in yet another lawsuit fighting the city’s separated bike lanes, after the city has already won preliminary injunctions and subsequent appeals in two similar cases.

A Streetsblog op-ed calls out a proposal supported by a majority of New councilmembers to license all ebike riders, which would create a bureaucratic nightmare and discourage ebike use, while ignoring the lackluster infrastructure and unsafe work standards at the root of the problem.

New Yorkers rode their “little bikes” last night in protest of the mayor’s derisive comments about being able to ride their “little bikes” safely thanks to him, at a time when the city’s bicycling deaths are up dramatically.

………

Local 

West Hollywood sheriff’s deputies reported three collisions involving pedestrians last month and four involving people on bicycles, while stating that enforcing the city’s restrictions on sidewalk riding is a low priority; it’s legal to ride on the sidewalk on any WeHo street without a bike lane.

 

State

Chinese ebike maker Velotric is offering discounts up to 20% to students, staff and faculty at UC San Diego, while the campus expands bike lockers and protected bike lanes.

San Marcos is getting a new eight-acre bike park, including a pump track, perimeter trail and jump lines for beginner, intermediate and advanced riders.

The campus police chief at UC Santa Cruz warns students about the growing bike theft problem at the school, while offering tips on how to keep your bike safe.

 

National

Electrek applauds Seattle’s cute little electric bike lane sweepers.

Denver drivers can’t seem to figure out how a traffic diverter works, continuing through on the wide bike lane instead of following the really big arrows on the street directing them to turn. Although the city deserves a lot of the blame for leaving enough room in the bike lane for cars to enter.

A 28-year old Denver man is nearly 8,000 miles into an effort to visit every US National Park in the Lower 48 states on one continuous bicycle trip; so far he’s made it to just 19 of the 51 parks on his itinerary.

A writer for Kansas’ Rider University student paper describes how a bright blue bicycle took him from an awkward 16-year old kid stuck at home during the pandemic, to a bike-riding man about campus.

This is why we need to ban right turns on red lights. A Kansas driver was caught on video slamming into a bike rider, who had waited until it appeared to be safe before crossing in a crosswalk with the light, and was right hooked by the driver after riding off the curb.

Road diets in Philadelphia led to a 34% decrease in fatalities on the city’s recently constructed Complete Streets.

Abandoned bikeshare bikes continue to litter a South Carolina town after the city’s provider shut down last spring.

 

International

Momentum says riding in a dress this fall is not as difficult as you might think.

A member of Britain’s Conservative Party says he will continue to call for a mandatory bike helmet law in Parliament, despite his own party repeatedly rejecting the proposal.

The mayor of Manilla’s Quezon City returned from a trip to Copenhagen, vowing to use the Danish city’s bicycle-friendly infrastructure as a role model to make her town the bicycling capital of the Philippines.

An Aussie bike advocacy group condemned video of an “entitled” SUV driver crossing the double yellow lines to pass both a bike rider and a second driver who was patiently following the bicyclist waiting for a safe opportunity to pass.

 

Competitive Cycling

Belgian pro Nathan Van Hooydonck says he immediately knew his cycling career was over when he was nearly killed in a car crash after suffering a heart problem while driving; he retired after waking from a coma and being fitted with an internal defibrillator to correct any future cardiac arrhythmia.

 

Finally…

Why settle for being a coffee roaster or a wrench when you can do both? That feeling when the heroine who defends you from bike thieves is an angry mom with a spade.

And why just ride on rubber when you can put the rubber to the rubber?

………

Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.

Oh, and fuck Putin

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

NY Times misses the mark on ebike critique, witness refuses to report hit-and-run driver, and sharrows ain’t bike lanes

July 31, 2023 / / 3 comments

Before we start, I’ve received a secondhand report that someone riding a bicycle may have been killed in Mentone on Saturday.

It’s possible the report could have been referring to a fatal crash in nearby Highland on Friday, which the police were quick to blame on the bike-riding victim crossing the street outside of a crosswalk.

Even though there is no requirement or expectation that bike riders use one, and many police agencies mistakenly interpret state law as banning bikes from crosswalks.

But whether it refers to the same crash, or a second crash a dozen or so mile way, it’s yet another tragic reminder to always ride defensively, and stay safe out there.

Because you can watch out for dangerous drivers, but there’s no guarantee they’re watching for you.

Thanks to Jeffrey Rusk for the heads-up.

………

No bias here.

The New York Times, which should really know better, published an exceptionally one-sided screed on the dangers of ebikes for teenaged users.

But somehow forgot to mention that the real danger didn’t come from the bikes the victim’s were riding, but from the drivers and motor vehicles that killed and maimed them.

The e-bike industry is booming, but the summer of 2023 has brought sharp questions about how safe e-bikes are, especially for teenagers. Many e-bikes can exceed the 20-mile-per-hour speed limit that is legal for teenagers in most states; some can exceed 55 miles per hour. But even when ridden at legal speeds, there are risks, especially for young, inexperienced riders merging into complex traffic with fast-moving cars and sometimes distracted drivers.

“The speed they are going is too fast for sidewalks, but it’s too slow to be in traffic,” said Jeremy Collis, a sergeant at the North Coastal Station of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office, which is investigating Brodee’s accident. The investigation is ongoing pending a medical examiner’s finding.

The Brodee in that reference was 15-year old Brodee Braxton Champlain-Kingman, who was killed when he was rear-ended by a driver while changing lanes on his ebike.

Something that could have just as easily happened if he’d been riding a regular bike, and may have had nothing to do with the ebike he was riding. And never mind that he’d still be here if not for the driver who ran him down, regardless of his judgment, or the lack thereof, in changing lanes.

Even though it resulted in nearly universal knee-jerk condemnation of teenagers on ebikes, if not ebikes in general — including a proposed law to ban younger ebike riders and possibly require a license to ride one, regardless of age.

The Times follows it up with a second article discussing just what an ebike is, while considering how safe they are.

Or in their eyes, aren’t.

Here’s how Electrek responded to the stories.

The article even explicitly lists the biggest danger that played a role in that crash, explaining that the boy’s bike “had a top speed of 20 miles per hour, but his route took him on a busy road with a 55-mile-per-hour limit.” And yet the article seems to imply that the e-bike’s presence was the compounding issue, instead of reading into the author’s very own sentence to realize that the true problem was that the road didn’t have anywhere safe for cyclists to ride. There was no protected bike lane.

By all accounts, the e-bike rider was correctly and legally using the roadway in the only way he could. In fact, according to eye-witnesses of the car crash that killed the e-bike rider, he “did everything right,” including signaling his turn…

As Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School David Zipper pointed out, every single e-bike crash listed in the article was a collision between a car and e-bike. None were simply e-bike crashes without the added of a car. “All could’ve been avoided if e-bike riders were protected from cars (or if there were no cars)”, Zipper explained on Twitter.“Fight the real enemy.”

The Electrek article goes on to add this about the second Times story.

Amazingly, the article uses a statistic pointing out how dangerous cars are, but flips it around to imply that because studies have proven that faster moving cars are dangerous, that means e-bikes shouldn’t travel too fast, presumably to also reduce the danger of these small and lightweight machines.

It’s right there. The answer is literally in the body of the NYT article. Unprotected road users (pedestrians and cyclists) are much more likely to be severely injured by cars as the car speed increases. And yet this statistic is used to imply that e-bikes shouldn’t be used at speeds of over 20 mph.

Thanks to Yves Dawtur for the heads-up. 

………

Marcello Calicchio forwards news of a (insert negative descriptor here) Nextdoor user who claims to have witnessed a hit-and-run by an aged driver, but refuses to contact the police, somehow thinking a Nextdoor post is good enough.

Um, sure.

And somehow thinks she’s a victim, because commenters piled on telling her to fulfill her legal and moral duty to report what she saw to the police.

So if you were the victim of a hit-and-run on San Diego’s Highway 76 on Saturday, you know who to contact.

Or better yet, who to have your lawyer contact.

………

Speaking of those new bike lanes/sharrows on Doheny in Beverly Hills, as we were last week —

………

Make it safe and convenient to ride a bike, and people will.

In droves.

………

More than once I’ve found myself singing “The harder they come, the harder they fall,” as I scraped myself off the pavement.

Those times I’ve still been able to sing, that is.

………

That feeling when a mountain biking god, and one of your lifelong biking heroes, is having dinner with his family just walking distance from your Hollywood apartment.

And yes, I would have dropped everything if he’d said to c’mon over.

………

The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.

No bias here, either. A Minneapolis cop used his loud speaker to order a group of bicyclists to ride in single file — in a public park.

Once again, someone has tried to sabotage a bikeway, this time dumping screws and nails on a controversial new bike lane in Victoria, British Columbia. This should be treated as terrorism, since it’s a deliberate attempt to kill or injure innocent people for political ends. But won’t be. 

………

Local 

LADOT wants your opinion on bikeshare, and is willing to give you a shot at a $100 gift card to get it. Thanks to Steven Hallett for the tip.

 

State

A Fullerton writer asks if the city’s bike plan is in danger of being nibbled to death. Although that may be better than simply ignoring it, like a certain megalopolis to the the north.

The Newport Beach Police Department is using mounted cops to crack down on illegal ebikes.

Some residents of San Diego’s Serra Mesa neighborhood are upset about new lane reductions and buffered bike lanes, accusing them of causing traffic congestion and frustrated drivers, even as the traffic in the background continues to move smoothly.

Sad news from the Bay Area, where a 51-year old Santa Rosa man was killed when a pickup driver crashed into his bicycle leaving a parking lot in Rohnert Park.

 

National

Bicycling reports that a new survey shows the Congressional E-BIKE Act, which would cover 30 percent of the cost of a new ebike, is supported by 70% of Americans living in major cities, and nearly half would be extremely likely to buy one if the bill passes. As usual, read it on Yahoo if the magazine blocks you. 

Even bikes that don’t move can cause dangerous falls, as Peloton recalls more than two million of their popular exercise bikes.

Auto Evolution says the new European-style ebike from America’s last remaining Tour de France winner fits perfectly with the Barbenheimer zeitgeist.

Life is cheap in Arizona, where the “driver” who was behind the wheel watching videos on her phone when a self-driving Uber test car ran down Elaine Herzberg as she crossed a Tempe road with her bike walked without a day behind bars, after copping a plea to just three lousy years of supervised probation. Which is three years more than Uber got, while Herzberg got the death penalty just for crossing the damn street.

Tragic news from Colorado, where a motorcyclist was killed, and a couple riding a tandem bike were seriously injured — the man severely — when the motorcyclist crossed the centerline in a winding canyon, and slammed into their bike before sliding off the roadway; a Boulder paper suggests the motorcyclist was attempting to flee the scene when he crashed a second time.

The Associated Press says the massive RAGBRAI bike ride across Iowa puts small town America into focus.

An op-ed from the advocacy director of a Chicago active transportation group says the city may be near the bottom of PeopleForBikes ratings for bikeability, but public support could help make it the nation’s best city for bicycling. Then again, we could say the same about Los Angeles. 

Gothamist says last week’s bloody scooter crash on the Manhattan Bridge bike path has left four people injured and the cycling community shaken, as riders of traditional bicycles compete for space with motor-scooter riders illegally using it.

A Virginia man’s dream European cycling vacation was saved when his stolen bike was recovered by using an AirTag, as well as bugging the hell out of the airline. Thanks to David Drexler for the link.

 

International

Momentum offers a beginner’s guide to learning to ride a bicycle later in life.

A 48-year old Welsh driver has been charged in the death of triathlete Rebecca Comins as she was taking part in a bicycle time trial last year.

London’s Daily Mail describes how a deaf and endearingly daft bike-riding cat became an instant Instagram star.

A retired French school teacher has created his own job, riding his recumbent bike across the country personally delivering handwritten letters “to friends of friends and soon-to-be new ones.”

NPR reports that Berlin bike riders are standing up to the city’s new conservative mayor, forcing him to backpedal on a campaign pledge to standup for the city’s poor, downtrodden drivers.

Life is cheap in India, where an Army doctor got a single year behind bars, seven years after the speeding crash that killed the father of a young child while he was riding his bike.

A nine-year old Guyana junior cycling “prodigy” made waves in her bike racing debut, following in the footsteps of her late father, three years after the former national cycling team member was killed by a drunk driver on a training ride.

This is who we share the road with. After a Singaporean school bus full of kids nearly ran over a bicyclist before smashing into three cars, the bike rider realized there was no one driving the bus, because the driver had apparently fallen out.

 

Competitive Cycling

Gut-wrenching news from Boulder, Colorado, where 17-year old rising cyclist Magnus White, a member of the US Junior Men’s National Team and the 2021 Junior 17-18 Cyclocross National Champ, was killed when he was struck by a driver while training for the world junior championships in Scotland next week; a crowdfunding campaign in his memory has raised nearly $60,000 of the $70,000 goal. We’ve got to stop murdering our children. Let alone so many of our best and brightest.

Dutch cyclist Demi Vollering won the second edition of the revived women’s Tour de France on Sunday, after demolishing her competitors on Saturday’s Tourmalet climb.

Rising American cyclist Veronica Ewers was sent home with a broken collarbone after crashing hard and flying into a ditch on Friday’s stage of the Tour.

The Los Angeles-based Bahati foundation is sponsoring the Ghana Cycling Federation to help groom young cyclists to compete in major international events.

 

Finally…

Forget carb loading and chug a bicarb, instead. Bicycles get blamed for crashes, even when no one is riding them.

And who needs a moving van when you’ve got a bicycle?

………

Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.

Oh, and fuck Putin

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Improving first/last mile connections in Culver City, no safe routes to LA River path, and Metro fail at Union Station

July 6, 2023 / / Comments Off on Improving first/last mile connections in Culver City, no safe routes to LA River path, and Metro fail at Union Station

Culver City-based bicycle training and advocacy group Walk ‘N Rollers wants your input on improving first and last mile bike and pedestrian access to the Culver City E-Line/Expo Line Metro Station.

Please join Metro, LADOT, Walk ‘N Rollers, and BikeLA on Thursday July 13 for an important community planning process! We are seeking participants who live, work and play within a 1⁄2 mile radius of the Culver City Metro Station on the E-Line (formerly Expo Line) to help ensure that future street improvements in the project area create more accessible and safer pedestrian, cyclist and transit rider pathways and experiences.

At this meeting, we will workshop and gather input on the proposed First/Last Mile Project List for street improvements around the Culver City Metro Station on the E-Line.

Space is limited – Please RSVP here by July 7. bit.ly/CCExpo1stLastMile

Date: Thursday, July 13, 2023
Time: 6 – 8pm
Place: Helms Design Center, 8745 Washington Blvd, Culver City, CA 90232

Photo by Olya Kobruseva from Pexels.

………

This.

In the six years I’ve lived in Hollywood, I’ve yet to find a safe, comfortable route to the LA River Bike Path that doesn’t involve a bus or car.

It will never reach its potential until it’s easy to access by anyone from any part of the city.

………

Another lost opportunity in the City of Angeles, as Metro’s plan to improve bike and pedestrian access to Union Station, as well as improving the forecourt to the station, appears to be in jeopardy as grant funding expires. 

………

London and Paris aren’t the only cities where bikes are taking over the morning commute.

More proof that if you build it, they will come.

………

The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on rolling.

No bias here. A New Jersey cop says yes, “Lance” is allowed to take the entire lane, though he doesn’t really recommend it, while conceding that drivers who yell “Get out of the way!” are wrong.

Talk about not getting it. The Jerusalem Post writes that high-end Canyon bikes will come with embedded V2X (Vehicle-to-Everything) tech to prevent crashes by notifying other bike riders to their presence — apparently assuming the real danger to bike riders comes from other people on bikes, not the people embedded in the big, dangerous machines.

But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.

DC police are searching for a bike-riding man accused of sexually assaulting two people.

A 73-year old Edinburgh woman was left badly bruised when she was struck by a hit-and-run bike rider as she stepped out of her home; the man refused to identify himself before riding off.

………

Local 

West Hollywood announced that construction is underway on the new bus priority lanes on North La Brea Ave in the city, with work set to begin yesterday.

Registration is now open for the Santa Clarita Halloween edition of Finish The Ride and Finish The Run.

Streetsblog says new El Monte buffered bike lanes offer a safer route to two transit stations for the area’s working class bicyclists.

 

State

Two men completed a 550 mile bike ride through Central California, following the path of a legendary 1966 farmworkers march.

Authorities in San Diego blame an ebike battery for “possibly” starting a fire that caused $50,000 damage to a condo in the Serra Mesa neighborhood.

For a change, both bike riders and business owners approve of a $10 million plan to improve safety on a Bakersfield street.

Sad news from Stockton, where a 73-year old woman was killed by a driver while riding her bicycle.

 

National

New Smith bike helmets will call for help if you’re in a crash.

Best Reviews offers advice on the best dog bicycle leashes to ride with your “high-engery” pooch, while failing to mention that the AKC recommends against it for small to medium-sized dogs.

A Washington newspaper offers advice to drivers on how to avoid a right hook. Short answer, don’t turn in front of people on bicycles.

Streetsblog wants to know why a Chicago-area street Google calls bike friendly isn’t getting any bicycle upgrades in a new streetscape improvement project.

Ohio state troopers blame a 15-year old bike rider and the design of a bike path for a fatal crash, and not the 91-year old driver who hit a kid riding in a crosswalk.

After a 38-year old Kentucky man was run down from behind by a hit-and-run pickup driver, police quickly conclude that speed wasn’t a factor in the crash, but drinking probably was. Although if the driver had been going slower, the victim might still be alive. So maybe what they really meant is excessive speed wasn’t a factor. Thanks to Glenn Crider for the link.

 

International

They get it. Momentum casts more dirt on the sharrows grave, saying they used to make sense in theory, but are now useless and possibly dangerous in practice. Although I’d say they can drop that “possibly.”

A science site says a runner expends more energy than a bike rider, even when they’re traveling side-by-side.

Life is cheap in Montreal, where police say it was just an oopsie when a truck driver ran over a 53-year old man who fell off his bike, and just kept going without stopping.

Earth.org writes that Hong Kong residents are missing out on the benefits of bicycling when the city ranks 84th out of 90 cities worldwide for bike friendliness. Then again, Hong Kong isn’t exactly friendly to its own residents these days under new Chinese management.

Life is cheap in Australia, where a former Australian football star walked with a lousy $1,500 fine for the hit-and-run crash that seriously injured a bike rider, leaving the victim with a series of bolts and plates in his neck, and suffering from constant headaches and flashbacks.

The Sydney Morning Herald says bicycling can be a great way to enjoy overseas cities, even if it’s a dismal experience in most Australian cities.

 

Competitive Cycling

Aussie Jai Hindley took the first mountain stage of the Tour de France, along with Adam Yates’ yellow jersey, by staging a stunning solo finish on stage five; an Australian news site applauds the preparation that led to a “brilliant” move in the Pyrenees.

Velo says Jonas Vingegaard’s “rocketship acceleration” over the stage’s final summit left his chief competitor Tadej Pogačar reeling and 53 seconds down. But it’s still a long way to Paris.

Former Paris-Nice champ Luis Leon Sanchez was the latest notable rider to withdraw from Le Tour, crashing out with a broken collarbone on stage four.

USA Cycling announced the American team that will compete in the Track World Championships next month.

I want to be like him when I grow up. A 95-year old man is preparing to compete in the cycling events in the biennial National Senior Games, and offers advice on how to stay in shape, physically and socially.

 

Finally…

Now you and your bike can both have mullets. It can make for a crappy ride when there’s a toilet in the bike lane.

And now you, too, can use a common traffic cone to stop a self-driving car in its tracks.

My apologies to anyone who can’t see the Twitter video; I haven’t been able to find the original on TikTok.

………

Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.

Oh, and fuck Putin.

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , , ,

LA bike riders suck drivers crap, Buttigieg calls for safe streets for families, and college BMX team needs your help

March 9, 2023 / / Comments Off on LA bike riders suck drivers crap, Buttigieg calls for safe streets for families, and college BMX team needs your help

No surprise here.

Back in the ’60s, musical satirist Tom Lehrer penned an ode to the pollution choking American cities, with the admonition “Don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air!”

That warning is especially appropriate for anyone in Los Angeles who doesn’t spend their time safely ensconced in a hermetically sealed vehicle.

According to the Los Angeles Times, researchers from the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy have concluded that LA’s wealthier — and whiter — communities export their pollution to the neighborhoods they drive through on their way from here to there.

Which, in most cases, means less wealthy, and less white, neighborhoods.

And that people who drive more are exposed to less pollution than those who don’t, and vice versa. Which means people who walk or bike end up sucking down the crap their vehicles spew.

That, my friends, means you and me. Just because we choose to walk or ride a bike.

Particularly if we’re sucking their particulates as we ride in or through urban communities.

Photo by Khunkorn Laowisit from Pexels.

………

In an interview with Fatherly, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg discusses making it easier to travel with your kids, including making sure families can sit together on airplanes without paying an extra fee, which appears to be the most urgent transportation issue in America today.

Fortunately, he goes on to discuss the need to be able to ride a bike or walk with your kids without getting killed.

And to your question, this goes beyond aviation. We really want to make sure that every form of transportation is easier and safer. That includes designs for roads that benefit safety, including safety for families that are walking or riding a bike together. It’s part of why we’re really promoting active transportation being safer. In our transit, one thing we’re doing for Americans with disabilities is funding the upgrade of old transit stations that are not yet ADA compliant. That’s the right thing to do for the disability community…

I want to make sure that they’re safe, of course, that they can, as they grow up, confidently and safely ride a bike or safely be a pedestrian wherever they go. And I want some of the things that we deal with routinely today to seem antiquated by the time they’re old enough to ask about it, including the rate of roadway deaths. That could eventually, I think, become almost like polio. One of these things parents tell their disbelieving kids or grandkids, that “we used to tolerate 40,000 people dying every year in car crashes. But thankfully, we did the right thing so that your generation sees nothing of the sort.”

It’s good to know he get it.

But we’ll need to keep the pressure on to ensure that commitment to families translates to safer cars and SUVs, as well as streets.

………

If anyone has any extra cash or gear lying around, the Lindsey Wilson College Cycling Team needs you help, after someone stole their gear on the way to this weekend’s BMX Nationals in Bakersfield.

Thanks to Jeff Vaughn for the heads-up. 

………

Transportation PAC Streets For All has made their endorsement for next month’s special election to replace disgraced Councilmember Nury Martinez in CD6.

And they call it a draw.

………

Portland artist Dr. Nik responded to criticism that his street art looked too much like ghost bikes by going full orange.

………

A Missouri cop was suspended after crashing head-on into a stationary bike rider who was waiting to merge onto a rural highway, while the officer was “looking at” his phone.

Not texting, the cop was quick to clarify, as if that somehow made a difference.

Thanks to How The West Was Saved for the tweet.

………

This is what it looks like when a Texas driver slams into your live podcast.

………

Sometimes, its the people on two wheels behaving badly.

Police in England are looking for a 40-something man who punched a teenage boy in the nose after narrowly avoiding crashing into him with his bike.

………

Local 

Streetsblog says plans to reduce street racing in Angeleno Heights don’t go far enough; the neighborhood was the setting for the first few Fast & Furious movies, and continue to draw heavy-footed fans.

The South Bay Cities Council of Governments is introducing a network of streets designed for slower vehicles, like ebikes, with a maximum speed of 25 mph. And marked by a kind of funky green and blue turtle sign.

 

State

San Diego approved a $2.1 million settlement for a man who spent five days in intensive care after suffering facial fractures, a brain bleed and a seizure when he hit a massive debris-filled pothole while riding his bike on Torrey Pines Road, and wasn’t able to work for five months.

Registration is now open for August’s Tour de Big Bear. And with a little luck, the snow from last month’s blizzards should be almost gone by then.

A Dublin website raises concerns over ebike access to trails allowed by last year’s Omni-Bike Bill, even though it specifically excludes trails in state parks and local areas with their own policies.

Tragic news from Berkeley, where a 42-year old man died five days after setting himself on fire on the UC Berkeley campus, despite the efforts of bystanders who used their own clothes in an effort to put it out — and one man who threw his bicycle at the burning man, as if that could somehow extinguish the blaze.

 

National

Pink Bike offers advice on how to not feel stupid walking into a bike shop.

Forbes offer recommendations for the best lights to see and be seen on your bike. As we noted recently, ultra bright daytime lights are one of the best ways to protect yourself, without donning a hi-viz clown suit.

Bicycling looks at the causes of numb hands while you ride, and what you can do to prevent it. My best advice is to keep moving your hands into different positions, and relax your death grip on the handlebars. Unfortunately, this one doesn’t appear to be available anywhere else, so you’re on your own if the magazine blocks you.

A Florida columnist offers advice on how to survive a bike ride in the state, which is the nation’s most dangerous state for people on two wheels.

 

International

An Ottawa, Canada jury has rejected a man’s claim that he slashed a neighbor’s throat in self defense in a dispute that began with allegations of a stolen bike. But he hasn’t been found guilty yet, after his defense team called for a psych assessment.

They get it. A UK advocacy group says bicycling must address its lack of diversity, arguing that “The male, white, cycling enthusiast niche has reached its natural limit.”

Life imitated art, as a British bike rider was photographed struggling to push his bike up a snow-covered hill, 50 years after a famed bread ad directed by a young Ridley Scott showed a boy pushing his bike up the same hill.

Aston Martin F1 driver Lance Stroll managed a 6th place finish in the Bahrain Grand Prix, just weeks after breaking both wrists and a big toe in a bicycling crash.

 

Competitive Cycling

Two-time Tour de France winner Tadej Pogačar topped last year’s winner, Jonas Vingegaard, in a mountaintop finish in stage four of the Paris-Nice race.

Cycling Weekly says Dutch super-team SD Worx looks unbeatable in the early women’s classics.

Sadly, you’ve already missed your chance to own Tom Pidcock’s race bike, along with bikes belonging to Egan Bernal’s and Geraint Thomas.

 

Finally…

Now you, too, can own Audi’s new e-mountain bike — which has a sentence instead of a name — for the low, low price of just ten grand. That feeling when your ebike gets stolen, but you get it back — twice.

And if you’re already an ex-con, maybe leave the ghost gun at home on your next bike ride.

………

Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.

Oh, and fuck Putin, too.

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , ,

Arizona toll rises to 19 including two dead, how to protect yourself on two wheels, and Ballona Creek path could be extended

February 28, 2023 / / 2 comments

Make that 19.

The number of victims in Saturday’s bicycling massacre in Phoenix suburb Goodyear, Arizona has risen to two dead and 17 injured.

NPR reports the victims of the crash have been identified as a woman from Goodyear and a man visiting from Michigan, both 61-years old. Eight people remain hospitalized, with one in critical condition.

According to the AZ Central website,

Goodyear Mayor Joe Pizzillo also offered his condolences to those whom the fatal collision had impacted.

“We have a tight-knit cycling community, so this has deeply affected many across the West Valley,” Pizzillo said at a news conference at the city’s police station. “But a tragedy like this affects the entire community of Goodyear.”

Twenty-six-year old driver Pedro Quintana-Lujan reportedly told police his steering had locked before the truck drifted right and ran down the riders, likely one and two at a time. One victim said he wasn’t actually struck by the truck, but by the bodies of victims piled on its grill.

Police report there is currently no indication that the crash was intentional. The results of a blood test to determine if the driver was under the influence are still pending; however, as Arizona Bike Law points out, police would have needed evidence of intoxication in order to get a warrant for the blood test.

According to AZ Central, court documents show Quintana-Lujan told police he had smoked marijuana with his wife the previous evening, roughly 11 hours before the collision.

There’s no report on whether police are looking at distraction as a possible cause, or have examined Quintana-Lujan’s phone.

The victims were participating in a regular weekly ride sponsored by the West Valley Cycle bike club. They were among 20 riders in the second of three groups taking part in the ride when the driver mowed them down, spewing bodies in every direction.

Which means only one person on a bike managed to avoid becoming a victim. Chillingly, no one was likely aware of the driver before he plowed through the entire group.

“No one really saw the truck because he pretty much hit the back of the group and came all the way through the group,” (club founder David) Herzog told NPR.

The driver was in a massive Ford F-250 pickup, designed with a flat front grill that would have acted as a sledge hammer when driven at speed; a trailer being pulled by the truck would have added mass while limiting maneuverability.

Quintana-Lujan faces a raft of charges after prosecutors threw the book at him, including two counts of manslaughter and three counts of aggravated assault; at last report, he was still being held on $250,000 bond.

A crowdfunding campaign for the victims has raised nearly $80,000 of the $120,000 goal.

On a personal note, I’m having a hard time coping with this one, and all the emotions it brings up. Like mass shootings, mass casualty crashes like this just shouldn’t happen. 

Photo from Pexels.

………

BikinginLA sponsor Richard Duquette emailed to say the 65-year old bike shop worker seriously injured in the Goodyear crash that we mentioned yesterday had just helped him with his bike last month.

He also reminds all of us of something we have discussed here before, that one of the best ways to protect yourself is to max out the coverage on your own automotive insurance, which also covers you on your bicycle.

Buy the maximum Auto Uninsured/Under insured motorist ($500k min.) & excess Umbrella ($2M) coverage with a UM/UIM “rider” (not just liability) because YOU then control the amount of coverage, instead of relying on the defendant drivers insurance limit, if any, or if in the “course & scope of employers coverage”.

Mass crashes like this may prove difficult getting full compensation, as there will be multiple victims to apportion damages. So spending the money on strong insurance coverage is a critical family & financial planning investment as a bicyclist.

He explains more in this blog post from 2016.

Frequent contributor and San Diego bike advocate Phillip Young also offered his thoughts on how to avoid being a victim of a motorist.

A brightly colored bicycling kit especially with bio movement (bight color with movement) and a rear view mirror may save a trip to the emergency room (ER) or morgue. Easily seeing cars from behind with a mirror is essential situation awareness.

Wear brightly colored bicycling kit [Yellow Chartreuse (best), White (2nd Best) or Orange (3rd Best)]:

  1. Jersey
  2. Helmet
  3. Reflective vest
  4. Shoes, shoe covers, or socks and pants (bio movement)
  5. Front and back blinky lights. (lights with bio movement are the best on arms and legs)
  6. Spoke reflectors, front and rear reflectors, and other reflectors
  7. Rear view mirror (Third Eye bar end mirror is the best)

I can’t argue with any of his advice, although my personal take is to wear colors that contrast with the environment you’ll be riding in. Dark colors can be effective in bright daylight, while light or hi-viz colors are a must at night; we’ve all seen Ninja cyclists decked out entirely in black.

Or maybe we haven’t, which is exactly the problem.

I also believe in using multiple bright running lights, day or night, with a steady white light and flashing white light in front, and three flashers in back.

That’s based on the advice of bike crash survivor Mark Goodley, who researched the optimal approach to lights following the collision that nearly killed him.

I’ve never felt the need for a mirror, since I could usually sense a car coming up from behind before they got close enough to pose a danger. But now that I’m older, I find I get surprised more often, making a mirror a valuable safety tool.

And Young is absolutely right about wearing something attention-getting on your legs. I wear reflective ankle bands at night, and should probably up my shoe and sock game during the day, to ensure drivers see them pumping up and down.

I’ve been known to strap a light to my ankle, though that’s not always easy or comfortable.

I also advise adding front and rear facing bike cams, which could be the only way to provide your side of the story in a serious crash, because the cops will talk to the driver while you’re being hustled away by paramedics.

………

Today’s must read comes in the form of an op-ed from Streets For All Founder Michael Schneider.

Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Schneider bemoans the days when kids could walk and bike in their own neighborhoods.

Half a century ago, it was very common for kids to disappear into their neighborhood and play with other kids, often arriving by bike. This included the school commute. In 1969, 48% of children 5 to 14 walked or biked themselves to school. By 2009, this was down to 13%.

The result has been an enormous increase in children arriving by car. Anyone with school-age children is likely familiar with long and chaotic car dropoff lines in front of schools all over Los Angeles. The same applies to kids’ playdates, activities, sporting events, etc. — usually, children arrive and depart by car.

A large part of the problem — pun intentional — is the ever increasing size of motor vehicles, crowded into streets and lanes that remain the same size they were decades earlier.

The 1973 Honda Civic was 140 inches long and 59 inches high. Today, a Honda Civic is 168 inches long and 70 inches high. A 2015 Ford Mustang is 63% larger than its 1964 predecessor. A 2018 Mini Cooper is 61% larger than its 1950 counterpart. A 2013 Land Rover is 43% larger than a 1981 model. And a modern-day pickup truck or SUV is larger than a World War II-era Sherman tank.

As cars get larger, they squeeze space in existing roads, leaving even less room for pedestrians and cyclists. Where a kid on a bike might have been able to fit comfortably between parked cars and moving cars before, they are now more likely to be perilously sandwiched between them. Even just crossing the street has become harder because of the awful blind spots for drivers of modern,massive SUVs.

It’s more than worth a few minutes of your day to read the whole thing.

Because there’s no clearer sign that our cities have failed us than the way they’ve failed our children.

………

Speaking of Michael Schneider, it looks like he won a major victory in the effort to extend the popular Ballona Creek Bike Path to near where the creek rises to the surface at its eastern end.

………

An effort is underway at the state legislature to ban bans on sidewalk riding, in the absence of safe bikeways.

As the tweet suggests, allowing people to ride their bikes on the sidewalk when there’s no bike infrastructure present enables them to decide what is safest and most comfortable way to ride in that situation, without fear of getting a ticket for trying to protect your own life

However, it’s important to remember that pedestrians have the right-of-way, and we all have to ride safely and courteously around them.

Another bill sponsored by Streets For All would eliminate jail terms for transit fare evasion.

Now if we could just get someone to introduce a bill to permanently revoke drivers licenses from hit-and-run drivers.

Finally, the transportation and safety PAC is hosting their next virtual happy hour a week from tomorrow, with Culver City Vice Mayor Yasmine-Imani McMorrin.

………

The winds of political reform are finally blowing in Los Angeles County, as Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Holly Mitchell are proposing an expansion of the five-member Board of Supervisors, traditionally known as the five little kings for the power they’ve enjoyed over the years.

With the two sponsors on board, they just need one more vote to pass the motion.

And yes, that’s a good thing.

https://twitter.com/LindseyPHorvath/status/1630282154113650689

………

Pasadena’s Municipal Services Committee will receive a report at this afternoon’s meeting recommending the city reject a proposed ebike incentive program; ActiveSGV calls for comments calling for rejecting the rejection.

https://twitter.com/ActiveSGV/status/1630311877296427008

………

Has it really been that long?

Culver City-based street safety and bicycle education nonprofit advocacy group Walk ‘N Rollers is celebrating their 11th anniversary next month.

………

Gravel Bike California rode up to the snow that fell over the weekend above the San Fernando Valley.

………

This is what a city does when it’s serious about fighting climate change.

https://twitter.com/Anne_Hidalgo/status/1630460341678112769

That tweet translates to:

Fighting pollution also means supporting Parisians in their transition to other means of transport.

This is what we do by offering numerous financial aids for the purchase of bicycles.

………

The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.

No bias here. A writer for City Watch with a severe case of windshield bias calls for free transit use while rejecting bicycling out of hand, suggesting that “bike lanes and other traffic-“calming” measures are probably the worst approach since these practices constrict traffic flow creating more congestion, increasing engine idling, and in many areas exacerbating the inability for trucks to make deliveries, moms to drop off kids, or even to back into a parking space if that rara avis should become available.” You can read her full misguided take, if you can navigate the site’s seemingly interminable popups. 

A Kiwi man says local officials laughed at him when he requested separate bike paths and underpasses for bicyclists at a new roundabout that’s under construction, warning that the dangerous design could result in a bike rider being killed in the first year.

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Local 

Streetsblog offers a wrap-up on Sunday’s successful CicLAvia in the San Fernando Valley, along with a schedule of upcoming CicLAvias; the next one will be Mid City meets Pico-Union the day before April’s Tax Day. Get your taxes done early so you’re not stuck at home with a pile of receipts, when you could be out enjoying the carfree streets.

The long-awaited Mark Bixby Memorial Bicycle and Pedestrian Path on the new $1.5 billion Long Beach International Gateway Bridge is slated to open in May, following the completion of demolition work on the former Gerald Desmond Bridge; the path is named for longtime local bike advocate Mark Bixby, who was killed in a Long Beach plane crash along with four other community leaders.

If you need a cop to come out to a relatively minor crash in Long Beach, better tell the dispatcher you think the driver is drunk or stoned or you won’t see one.

 

State

California is offering $33 million to underserved communities to launch and support new and existing shared mobility projects, including bikeshare.

San Luis Obispo is considering allowing bike riders onto the sidewalk.

 

National

A Honolulu TV station considers bicycling as part of their Multimodal Mondays.

Hiking advocates question proposals in the Montana legislature that would allow ebikes anywhere that bicycles are allowed, including off-road trails. One thing that often gets lost in that debate is that ebikes provide backcountry access to countless people who would not be able to enjoy it otherwise. 

Dallas has combined 39 miles of existing bike trails with 11 miles of newly built bikeways to create a 50-mile loop around the city.

Oops. WWI flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker almost didn’t become one of the most decorated aviators in American history, after cracking his skull attempting to fly his bicycle off a Columbus, Ohio shed in an attempt to imitate the Wright Brothers flight.

The family of a fallen New York bicyclist is suing the city for $100 million, alleging that nothing was done to fix the corridor she was riding on despite five previous deaths in less than two decades. They may have a case, since they can prove the city was aware of the problem, but didn’t correct it. Although the eventual settlement will be far lower than what they’re asking.

A Central Pennsylvania public radio station shares a poem about the intersection of bicycling and Alzheimer’s from Pennsylvania poet Henry Israeli.

Florida’s Highway Patrol is wrapping up their hit-and-run awareness month by telling drivers to stay at the scene after a crash, after Tampa Bay saw over 300 drivers flee this month.

 

International

Bike Radar examines how to prevent hand and wrist pain when you ride. A good padded handlebar tape and padded bike gloves help. So does relaxing your death grip on them in stressful situations.

A South London bike shop owner surprisingly argues that expanding the city’s Ultra Low Emission Zone will just cause chaos. Although the fact that he owns nine cars, and it would cost him the equivalent of nearly $100,000 to make just three of them compliant with the new rules, might have something to do with it.

It only took 18 months, but a London truck driver has finally been charged with killing a pediatrician who was biking to work after taking it up during the pandemic. But whoever designed the city’s Holborn gyratory, where eight bike riders have been killed in the last 15 years, should face charges, too.

A new dockless bikeshare service named Fredo aims to provide last-mile connectivity in suburban France. Although things did not end well for Fredo in The Godfather II. 

Austria gets serious about multimodal commuting by offering a subsidy of up to the equivalent of $636 on the purchase of a folding bike, but only for people with an annual transit pass; the country is also offering a subsidy of half off the price of an ebike, up to a little over $1,000.

Fatal car crashes surged in Germany last year; not surprisingly, bike riders and pedestrians remained among the most vulnerable victims, with death rates rising for both groups.

Spanish newspaper El Pais reports on the new study showing stolen Dutch bicycles usually remain in the city where they were taken, continuing to contribute to the local economy. Even if the original owners are screwed.

Arevo says they’ve fulfilled 96% of the more than 2,800 Indiegogo orders for their new Superstrata custom carbon bikes and ebikes, which are being 3D printed and assembled in Vietnam.

Tragic news from the Philippines, where a 14-year old boy was killed when he failed to round a corner on his bicycle, and rode off a 33-foot cliff; family members blamed the crash on a broken brake.

 

Competitive Cycling

Cycling Weekly says the opening weekend of the bike racing season has seen a shift from Jumbo-Visma to Soudal-Quick Step as the classics team to beat. And no, I didn’t know they have earthquakes in the UK.

Cycling Weekly’s point was driven home by the remarkable feat of Jumbo-Visma rider and Tour de France champ Jonas Vingegaard winning all four stages of the O Gran Camiño.

 

Finally…

Now you, too, can have your picture taken on a giant bicycle with Mexican conchas for wheels. That feeling when selling your bicycle means a more than 13 hour, 43-mile walk home.

And bbenfulton reminds us that reggae legend Peter Tosh was…uh, half of us, too.

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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.

Oh, and fuck Putin, too.

 

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