September 28, 2017 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: Bike riders rescue woman in Santa Clarita, and dumping bikeshare bikes in all the wrong places
Let’s call this Morning Links lite.
Writing about bicycling fatalities in San Diego and Laguna Canyon — with a third in Santiago Canyon still to come — left limited time to write today’s post.
So we’re just hitting the highlights today. Or lowlights, in some cases.
We’ll be back with a more detailed report tomorrow.
New York’s mayor throws bike riders under the bus, ignoring stats from his own Department of Transportation showing protected bike lanes improve safety for everyone and enhance compliance with traffic laws.
Caught on video: A total jackass records himself leaning out of a car window to shove a London bicyclist off his bike and into a bus stop sign, as his equally obnoxious passengers laugh. Hopefully they’ll catch these jerks and give them the jail time they so richly deserve.
Wallet Hubranks the most fun cities in the US, based on criteria that includes bike rentals and hiking trails, but not bikeways. Which may be why Los Angeles just barely missed the top ten, checking in at number twelve. That’s better than Oxnard, though, which ranks as the least fun city in the US.
San Francisco’s Beyond Chron website looks at former USC bike repairman Lil Bill Flournoy, who was unceremoniously booted off campus last year, and now fixes bikes on a city-owned space across from the university.
A San Francisco supervisor is shocked to learn Uber and Lyft drivers illegally use bike and transit lanes; people who bike and ride buses, not so much.
Bighearted Idaho paramedics bought a new bike for a 13-year old boy after his was damaged when he was hit by a driver, along with bike helmets for his brothers and sisters.
It’s not just LA. Cambridge MA is experiencing their own bikelash as residents rise up to complain about the overly rapid implementation of a whole 1.25 miles of bike lanes in one year, leading to an apology from the mayor. Yes, just over a single mile.
An Op-Ed in the Washington Post says it was reckless for lawmakers to drop a requirement that all bikes must have a bell, insisting that a polite little ding is more effective than yelling a warning.
A writer in the Guardian says Google Maps must be improved if it’s going to be useful for bike riders, including information on bike parking once you get where you’re going.
Jansen, the Deputy Executive Director of Advancement, stepped up to fill the void after Butler announced her resignation last June. And was selected to remain as head of the organization by the coalition’s board of directors, following a nationwide search.
Building upon the national reputation the LACBC enjoyed under previous ED Jennifer Klausner for its groundbreaking efforts to reach out to LA’s immigrant community, Tamika Butler led the organization in refocusing its efforts on building equity in underserved communities.
And in doing so, became a leading voice for the underprivileged and people of color within the bicycling community nationwide.
Now it will be interesting to see if Jansen continues those efforts, or moves the LACBC back to a more mainstream form of bicycle advocacy.
He comes at a time of unprecedented bikelash in the City of Angels, with bike lanes and safety projects under fire in Mar Vista and Playa del Rey. And as a lawsuit against the city, and a recall campaign to unseat Councilmember Mike Bonin, attempt to derail LA’s Vision Zero program and intimidate councilmembers to prevent any future lane reductions.
The LACBC has grown to become a mature advocacy group over the past several years. And will need strong leadership to help LA become the bikeable, livable community it must become.
San Francisco moves forward with plans to sort of crack down on bicycle chop shops without actually making them illegal; a homeless advocate argues that they’re just an entrepreneurial way to for homeless people to make a living recycling bike parts that they happen to find. Except too often, they happen to find bikes that belong to other people.
A 19-year old Fargo SD man was killed in a bicycle collision over the weekend, three years after he was deliberately run down in a dispute with a breakaway Mormon religious sect while riding his bike in Utah.
Bike lanes get the blame for traffic congestion in Minneapolis, even though construction projects are likely the real culprits. Never mind that the local TV station couldn’t seem to find any traffic backups to show in the report, despite taking the time to count bikes and cars during the morning and evening rush hours.
September 25, 2017 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: More on the all too real war on bikes, world championship highlights, and #1 on a bike trail
We’re finally back after missing the last two Mondays due to technical issues.
So if it only seems like we’ve been offline for a year, why am I a year older than I was when this all started?
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More proof that while the alleged war on cars in a myth, the war on bikes is all too real.
Nice article on 13 cycling legends every road cyclist should know. Although someone should tell them it is actually possible to ride a road bike without any interest in bike racing, or need for it.
San Francisco’s Curbedoffers a short course in sidewalk etiquette, including the admonition to get off and walk your bike. Which is good advice on any crowded walkway, whether or not it’s legal to ride on it.
Outside offers advice on the seven essential items you need to start mountain biking for the low, low price of just $2,000. Or you could just buy a helmet and a used bike for a couple hundred, slap on some gloves and start riding.
Nothing like the British press’ breathless hysteria over a New York actor sharing a bike with his kids. Seriously, am I the only one who wants to slap their editors and say get over it already?
A second Boston-area bicyclist has been arrested for refusing to stop for a bike cop after blowing a stop sign on a bike trail. Seriously, just stop, take the ticket and fight it in court. Beats the hell out of spending a night behind bars.
Japanese bicyclists are rushing to buy liability insurance after courts have given huge damage awards in cases involving bike riders. Here in the US, your automotive insurance and/or homeowner’s or renter’s insurance should cover you, but check with your agent to be sure.
The latest computer problem was solved with the painful realization that Apple’s iCloud is not your friend. Once that was mostly shut down, the problems I was having seem to have disappeared.
But while BikinginLA was down yesterday, my words were going up somewhere else.
Wes Salmon, host of the popular Seattle podcast The Group Ride, recently made the big move down to Southern California.
And for reasons known only to him, one of the first things he wanted to do after moving here was to invite me to appear on his show.
Personally, I would have gone to Disneyland instead.
Although talking to me was about a hundred dollars cheaper. And only slightly less likely to induce you to lose your lunch.
Nevertheless, yesterday he posted his full 42 minute interview with me. Which should make the perfect soundtrack to today’s post, if your ears and eyes can manage to multitask better than mine.
I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet, so let me know if I embarrassed myself.
A South Carolina writer insists helmets should be required for bikeshare users. Although it should be noted that there have been just two bikeshare fatalities anywhere in the US, with or without helmets. Which makes it seem like a solution in search of a problem.
A Thousand Oaks letter writer accuses the city of social engineering by requiring apartment builders to provide “only” an average of two parking spaces per unit, and allowing adjacent street parking to count towards that requirement. Never mind that the entire history of driving could fit that description.
Great story. One year after a South Carolina man was nearly paralyzed in a collision while riding his bike, he’ll be running in a Napa half marathon, accompanied by the surgeon who saved him — and the driver who hit him.
A Boston bike rider is led away in cuffs after she refused to stop for a bike cop who tried to pull her over for rolling a stop on a bike path; she said she kept riding as a protest against police ticketing bicyclists instead of drivers. Seriously, when a cop tries to pull you over, on two wheels or four, just stop already.
An English writer says she’s fed up with selfish, racing cyclists who only have themselves to blame for not getting hell out of the way of drivers who take up the entire road with their SUVs.
Never mind that road diets have been shown to increase safety up to 47%. But why let a little detail like that get in the way of a good rant?
Then there’s her screed about Vision Zero coming from — gasp! — Sweden.
Common sense would tell you that traffic solutions should be developed locally without guidance from irrelevant foreign capitals, and that’s why common sense is not in the museum.
During 2016, the first full year of Vision Zero’s implementation in Los Angeles, fatalities in traffic collisions were up a horrifying 43 percent over the previous year.
Although she might have mentioned that all LA did in 2016 was develop a plan for Vision Zero. And to the best of my knowledge, talking about reducing traffic deaths has never caused a single collision.
Or that the purpose of Vision Zero is not to prevent traffic collisions, but to keep people from dying in them, by recognizing that people will always make mistakes, but better roadway designs can keep those mistakes from killing someone.
And never mind that virtually every traffic solution currently in use in LA came from somewhere else. From traffic lights and stop signs, to the billion dollar HOV lanes on the 405.
About the only innovation we can claim is the right turn on red light. Which isn’t exactly a template for safety.
But the topper is this one, where she goes out of her way to have it both ways.
Although city officials consulted extensively with community groups before turning eight-tenths of a mile of Venice Boulevard into one of Mayor Eric Garcetti’s “Great Streets,” the part of the plan that involved taking away a traffic lane in each direction wasn’t exactly displayed on street banners.
So she acknowledges that the city conducted extensive outreach. Then turns around and says it didn’t do enough outreach.
Maybe next time she should do a little basic research so she knows what the hell she’s talking about before flying off the handle.
Or wasting newsprint with uninformed drivel like this.
A Missouri man was doing 93 in a 35 mph zone — and driving on a suspended license — when he slammed into a bicyclist last year; he now faces a charge of first-degree involuntary manslaughter.
An 83-year old Michigan man faces a misdemeanor charge after killing one bicyclist and injuring another in a rear-end collision last year. Older people may depend on their cars for mobility, but we’ve got to find a way to get them off the roads before it’s too late.
Speaking in Oakland, a traffic engineer says protected bike lanes must be the new normal, and urban planners are still trying to undo the damage caused by vehicular cyclists in the 1970s and 80s.
A New Zealand cyclist calls for ripping out a new separated bike lane, after first assuring us he’s one of the good ones — not, he insists, a spandex clad rider on a $5,000 carbon fiber bike, or someone who insists on slowly taking the lane at rush hour.
And was told he could fish them out after the meeting — after one of the security officers dumped coffee into it.
Just another sign of how bike riders are treated in this city.
Never mind how easy it would have been for someone, anyone, to agree to hold them for him until he came back out. Or just how stupid it is to talk about encouraging bicycling, while actively discouraging bicyclists.
And never mind the kneejerk opposition he found to including bikes in the project once he finally got inside the Metro meeting.
Photo from LA Streetsblog.
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Lyft envisions a redesigned Wilshire Blvd that reduces the street’s 10 spacious lanes down to just three narrow one, along with dedicated bus lanes, to show what life could be like in a world of shared, self-driving vehicles.
The plan also includes wider, park-like sidewalks and protected bike lanes.
The company says the narrowed street could accommodate twice as many road users and carry four times as many people as it currently does.
Wilshire capacity before redesign
Wilshire capacity after redesign. Charts from CNN
No word on whether the forces attempting to roll back road diets in Mar Vista and Playa del Rey plan to recall the president of Lyft or file suit to stop the concept while it’s still in the vaporware stage.
Simon Cowell is one of us, as he goes bike riding with his family in the former Biking Black Hole of Beverly Hills, which is finally starting to show some promise.
This is why you shouldn’t chase a bike thief yourself. A pair of Visalia men nearly got shot by a bike thief after they chased him down when they saw him take a bike from their garage.
Bicycling deaths and serious injuries are down 20% since UK police began an undercover operation to catch drivers passing too close to bicyclists. Maybe that will convince the LAPD to finally give it a try.
My laptop is finally back in working order, after ten days and a hard drive-sized hole in my wallet. Which means we’re now back in business, with a lot to catch up on.
And my apologies in advance if I don’t you credit you for something you may have sent me. I’ve tried to keep track of who sent me stories while my computer was down, but may have lost a few along the way.
Like it or not, cyclists are engaged in a civil-rights battle — about whether we deserve a truly safe place on the road, whether people who kill us with cars should face the same legal consequences as people who kill with other weapons, whether hundreds of human lives represent acceptable collateral damage in a properly lubricated car-focused economy.
I love riding fondos and ogling handbuilt frames, but there is actual blood in the street and people need to decide where they stand. You have to decide where you stand.
A British Columbia lawyer who specializes in getting dangerous drivers off the hook says “arrogant cyclists” seldom obey the laws governing bicycling, and drivers should take pictures of their scofflaw behavior and report them to the police. And yet he somehow fails to see any hint of a double standard there.
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If everything went according to plan, Scottish cyclist Mark Beaumont will have set the new record for riding around the world by the time you read this, arriving in Paris in just 79 days — one day ahead of schedule.
Drivers are running over the flex posts marking what passes for protected bike lanes in Oakland. Which should come as no surprise to anyone here in Los Angeles.
If you’re going to take part in a New Orleans area charity ride, don’t leave your Corgi at home. Note to Times-Picayune: not all mass bike rides are races. And if your headline is about dogs, don’t illustrate it with a photo of meat on the grill. Seriously.
And the paper says justice isn’t found in headlines, arguing that an extreme, and extremely rare, case of a bicyclist killing a pedestrian is a poor basis to change the law.
As of this writing, it had garnered over a thousand signatures. Not to mention a lively, if somewhat misinformed and frightening, debate on the local Next Door.
And someone should tell them those bollards are flexible, and can be driven over in case of an emergency.
Thanks to Doug Moore for the heads-up. Road diet photos from the USDOT Federal Highway Administration website.
Not only will Santa Monica’s Cynergy Cycles measure your butt to find the perfect saddle, they’ll also keep a digital record of your nether regions stored for future reference. At least when someone builds a statue of me after I’m gone, they’ll have a perfect record of my ass.
Santa Clara County’s $6 billion transportation project is on hold, thanks to a single woman who is suing to stop the whole thing to protect an ancient aquifer under a planned BART station. As opposed to all those modern aquifers, evidently.
You’ve got to be kidding. A Portola driver won’t be charged, despite being found at fault for plowing head-on into a group of cyclists last month, injuring six people.
Residents of a Canadian town complain that bicyclists continue to ride abreast in the traffic lane, instead of single file in the new, apparently substandard bike lane. Just a thought: If you want bicyclists to actually use it, don’t build a crappy, poorly marked gutter bike lane in the first place.
Maybe someone should tell them that bikes are already required to have lights after dark. And nightlights are what you install in your kids’ bedroom so they won’t be afraid of the dark, or so grandma won’t trip in the bathroom at night.
Then again, they also want to see laws banning people from looking at their “mobile electronic devices” while crossing the street. Because everyone knows distracted pedestrians are the real problem, not all those texting drivers in their multi-ton SUVs.
Right.
Sound more like the leadership of the committee is suffering from a serious case of windshield bias, and can’t wait until they’re free to go zoom zoom down the boulevard once again.
And never mind that the paint used to create the current configuration costs roughly $50,000 a mile, plus the cost of the plastic bollards, while the permanent road reconfiguration and paved off-road bike paths they propose could add up to tens of millions of dollars, if not more.
I suppose they could have a bake sale to pay for it.
And if they think people are pissed off now, just wait until they try to take their parking spaces away.
This email, from someone who requested that her name not be used, sums it up nicely.
I live in Mar Vista & just got this agenda for the neighborhood council meeting tomorrow. It is chock-full of anti-bike motions, from getting rid of the Venice Blvd bike lanes immediately to supporting mandatory helmet & reflector laws and banning texting while crossing the street to discourage obstacles (er, “distracted pedestrians”) from entering the roadway.
They are trying to frame killing the Venice bike lanes as pro-safety by couching it within a seemingly thoughtful proposal to build out a bunch of off-road bikeways through the neighborhood on side streets, which is great except that probably won’t happen anytime soon and will definitely be less convenient/slower than what we have now. As far as I can tell the short term proposal is to restore 3 lanes of traffic on Venice and put the bike lanes next to the cars again.
Super-shady that they announce these things with 24 hours’ notice…. hope some other bikers in the neighborhood have time to make it.
The meeting is scheduled for 7:30 to 9 pm tonight at the Windward School, in room 1030 of Building C (by the baseball diamond), 11350 Palms Blvd.
Note: The meeting agenda says it’s scheduled for 7:30 pm to 9 pm, despite the email to community members linked to above that incorrectly says 6 pm. Sorry for any confusion. Thanks to rob kadota for the heads-up.
Be there if you can make it.
Because they’re counting on the short notice to pack the house with bike lane and road diet opponents tonight, and crowd out any support for the project.
And while you’re at it, contact CD 11 Councilmember Mike Bonin’s office, and tell him you support the Venice Blvd Great Streets Project to improve safety and increase livability in one of LA’s previously neglected neighborhoods.
Because he’s the one who will ultimately make the decision.
Mike Bonin is one of the most progressive members of the council, and he has a track record of leading on the issues that matter most to the progressive movement. Bonin is the author of the $15 minimum wage, author of the most comprehensive clean money campaign-finance reform in the recent history of Los Angeles, author of the fracking moratorium and the effort to reach 100% clean energy and I am writing this to call out Alexis’ effort as nothing more than a NIMBY assault on a true progressive. Alexis, like most Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) activists got activated when something happened in his backyard — in this case a street safety measure (reduced lanes/added bike lanes) that the department of transportation installed with Bonin’s support and approval, which caused some additional traffic. Trying to make your community a safer place for pedestrians has never been more vilified than in this situation. Is this really grounds for a recall? Absolutely not!…
As he has sought to raise money for the recall effort, Alexis has started tapping into networks and groups that were established to continue moving forward the progressive agenda that was deeply ingrained within us during the presidential primary, the good ole’ days. I do not appreciate my movement being hijacked by someone who is so angry about an effort to save people from speeding cars in his neighborhood that he would call for a recall of a progressive Councilmember. Alexis’ actions distract elected officials and community activist from important matters that need to be address within the district. Alexis’ underhanded and misleading tactics need to be called out.
He goes on to decry a lack of transparency in the campaign, while adding what he sees as the real reason behind Edelstein’s efforts.
The recall has already allowed Alexis to frequent alt-right radio programs to promote and solicit funds for the recall, and every time he has gone on these shows to cozy up to racist shock jocks, he has made sure to use the social media accounts he set up for the recall to share his media appearances and promote himself. The voters of CD 11 made their voices heard loud and clear during March’s Election, but Alexis is behaving like a scheming opportunist who is blatantly rallying against Bonin because he thinks it will get him some press and boost his fledgling political career.
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Somehow, this one slipped under the radar.
So let’s all offer a belated congratulations to Evens Stievenart of LA’s Big Orange Cycling for successfully defending his championship in the solo category of the 24 Hours of LeMans Cycling last month.
A former race car driver, Stievenart set a new record by riding a whopping 593 miles in the 24 hour period.
San Diego’s struggling DecoBike bikeshare system will remove 16 popular docking stations from the boardwalks in beach communities at the urging of local residents and business owners. Which will make it more difficult for bikeshare users to ride to San Diego’s popular beaches, defeating the whole purpose of trying to get people out of their cars.
The pedestrian critically injured when a Hemet driver had a sneezing fit was a 16-year old girl walking with her bike-riding boyfriend; she remains in critical condition with major injuries following two emergency surgeries.
