Tag Archive for bike lanes

New CA ebike bill still 3 times UK limits, Hollywood Walk of Fame officially sucks, and we pay the price for LA potholes

January 16, 2026 / / No comments

Well, that puts things in perspective.

We mentioned yesterday that a new bill in the state legislature (AB 1557) would cap ebike engines at no more than 750 watts.

Anything above that would be classified as a “motor-driven cycle,” requiring a license and registration.

But in the UK, ped-assist ebikes are already restricted to a maximum continuous power output of 250 watts, with a cut-off assist speed of 15.5 mph.

In other words, a third of what legal ped-assist ebikes would be lowered to in California.

And we wonder why we have a problem.

Meanwhile, Road.cc recommends the year’s best ebikes, most of which should be available in this country. And none of which looks like an electric motorbike.

Photo by Josh Sorenson from Pexels. 

………

It’s official.

Hollywood’s Walk of Fame has once again been declared the world’s worst tourist attraction.

Which anyone who lives or works near, or has ever visited, Hollywood Boulevard can attest to, without ever going to the effort of visiting all the other tourist attractions.

Even the World’s Largest Ball of Twine probably has it beat.

Never mind that we were supposed to see a new and improved version of the boulevard by now, complete with protected bike lanes, larger sidewalks, more trees and fewer traffic lanes.

The plans are already in place, after undergoing the city’s usual endless series of public meetings, complete with compromises to placate every possible point of view.

Plans are also ready to convert the stretch of boulevard between Highland and Orange into a multi-block pedestrian plaza, which could do more than anything else to improve safety and reinvigorate the area.

I asked former LADOT Executive Director Seleta Reynolds that very question all the way back in 2018, and was told it was shovel ready as soon as a majority of Angelenos demanded it.

Who, I might add, were never asked that question.

Our leaders just assumed, as usual, that most people would oppose it, based on the city’s standard decision making process of giving in to whoever screams the loudest.

Never mind that an overwhelming two-thirds majority of city residents voted to build sidewalks, bikeways and bus lanes when they passed Measure HLA.

Hollywood doesn’t have to suck.

We just lack leaders with the guts to do anything about it.

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It should come as no surprise to anyone that LA streets are full of potholes after the recent record rains.

Which the city is not fixing, due to massive maintenance budget cuts by a mayor and city council who put us on the brink of bankruptcy due to unfunded pay raises for city employees.

But what would be, at worst, an expensive inconvenience for motorists could lead to serious injuries, or worse, for people on bicycles.

Because your front wheel unexpectedly dropping out from under you can result in severe falls. And swerving to avoid a pothole can put you in the path of oncoming drivers and their big, dangerous machines.

So the city might save a few bucks by not fixing potholes now, and pay for it later in the form of massive legal settlements.

But we’ll be the ones who really get stuck with the bill.

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LADOT wants your input on improving South LA’s Broadway corridor.

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It’s the battle of the bike lane sweepers this weekend.

https://twitter.com/StreetsR4Every1/status/2011647196781748378

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You can now ride the full length of California’s most iconic bicycling route once again.

https://twitter.com/CHP_Monterey/status/2011552241459876199

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British ‘cross competitors demonstrate the many and varied ways you can fall off a bike.

 

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Local 

South Central LA-based artist Lauren Halsey appears to be one of us, posing with a pink BMX bike to discuss her “immersive, architectural” artworks, as well as the limited-edition bicycling jersey she designed with Rapha and the Miami Design District to raise funds for cancer research.

The Silver Lake Track Club invites you to join them on February 7th for year two of Altadena to the Palisades: An Ultra-Marathon Relay, running or biking up to 50k — aka 31 miles — through the burns zones to raise funds for recovery efforts.

The Los Angeles Times suggests six places in Southern California to try bikepacking. I’ll take Joshua Tree for the win, thank you. 

 

State

Police busted a man wanted for probation violation and robbery after he led them on a pursuit from National City into San Diego, riding his ebike on the freeway. Although something tells me he wasn’t riding anything that would be called an ebike under the new California bill, let alone British regulations.

Life is cheap in San Mateo County, where the local DA announced they won’t be filing charges against a 19-year old woman who pulled her car out of a parking lot, striking an 11-year old kid on an ebike — who had the right of way — then jumped a curb, fatally slamming into four-year old boy and injuring his six-year old sister, before crashing into the restaurant they were leaving; prosecutors concluded they couldn’t get 12 jurors to agree she was negligent. Sure as hell sounds like she was, but what do I know?

 

National

Speaking of ebikes, Specialized is recalling all their Turbo Como SL commuter ebikes, saying you should stop riding it immediately due to a risk of cracks in the steerer tube. Which is probably a bad thing. 

Speaking of recalls, if you’re wearing an R.X.Y bicycle helmet, stop; the helmets violate minimum bike helmet standards, and pose a risk of serious injury or death. Which is definitely a bad thing.

He gets it. The publisher of a Las Vegas sports business site says the solution to the city’s deadly roads is better enforcement and education, as well as engineering better designed roads.

In a rational ruling from the New York courts, a judge has concluded that the city’s Department of Transportation has a rational basis to build bike lanes because that’s exactly what they’re supposed to do.

Kindhearted cops in Oviedo, Florida worked with a local nonprofit to give a girl a new bicycle, helmet and lock to ensure she has a safe way to get to middle school. Apparently, they haven’t heard about Florida drivers yet. 

 

International

Evidently, ice biking is nothing new. The CBC says bicycling up the frozen Yukon River dates back to the Klondike Gold Rush.

After five years and more than 3,000 hours of bicycling the streets of London, a man has developed his own bicycle safety map of the city, which is now used by more than 1.3 million people.

A London woman says that as a Black bicyclist in what is normally a white man’s sport, she’s already an icon whether she wants to be or not.

A British mother of three was sentenced to 35 years to life behind bars for a road rage-fueled feud, after running down and fatally ramming an ebike rider with her Range Rover at speeds of up to 75 mph. Once again, the victim probably wasn’t riding something that should be called an ebike. 

If you build it, they will come. One in five people in Brussels, Belgium now bike to work, as bicycling rates have jumped 40% in just five years.

 

Competitive Cycling

Next year’s Grand Depart for the Tour de France will roll through Scotland, starting in Edinburgh, rolling through the Scottish Borderlands, Dumfries and Galloway before finishing just south of the border in Carlisle, England.

 

Finally…

Your next e-cargo bike could fold like an origami crane. That feeling when your interior design career is on hold until the ’28 Olympics.

And when you need an app to know if your local bikeways are under water.

Literally.

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

Oh, and fuck Putin. 

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

WeHo bike lanes going green, and new CA bill would cap ebike speeds and reclassify more powerful ebikes as motorbikes

January 15, 2026 / / One comment

West Hollywood will paint existing bike lanes on Santa Monica Blvd, Fairfax Ave and San Vicente Blvd green to increase their visibility.

It will be that particular shade known as “Hollywood Green,” allowing filmmakers to work around the color to avoid the disastrous rollout when Los Angeles first went green.

Painting the lanes is probably a good idea, given that most drivers seem to think the Fairfax bike lane is only there to bypass backed-up traffic, seemingly never occurring to them that there might be a bicycle in it.

And usually there isn’t, for exactly that reason.

Green paint isn’t likely to stop those drivers. But at least they’ll have a better idea what law they’re breaking.

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That’s more like it.

A new bill in the state legislature would cap ebike engines at no more than 750 watts while imposing new speed restrictions.

AB 1557 would also reclassify more powerful electric motorbikes as motor-driven cycles, which would require a license to operate.

Maybe then we can finally get everyone to stop calling the damn things ebikes, and blaming all of us for the actions of a relative few teen knuckleheads.

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Streets For All will host a mobility debate for the candidates for city controller next Thursday.

Only one of whom has corgis, which should be a key consideration.

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

An English borough clapped back when drivers complained about paying for the roadway as well as bike lanes, only to be rewarded with a 20 mph speed limit to protect vulnerable road users, replying that motorists don’t pay any more than anyone else and the country hasn’t had a road tax for nearly a century.

No bias here. A British news channel breathlessly announced that bicyclists now think illegally modified ebikes pose a bigger risk to their safety than motor vehicles. Except they left out the word “some,” because only 8% of the people polled believe that — and only 500 people were polled.

No bias here, either. Aussie commenters set their hair on fire when a photo showed a bicyclist riding in a bus lane, insisting that the single rider was somehow “inconveniencing hundreds” during rush hour. Must have been a damn big bus, because no one else in the photo seems to be even a little bit inconvenienced.

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Local 

The Eastsider reminds us that Metro is looking for your comments on closing the gap in the LA River bike path through DTLA, Vernon and Maywood.

Calabasas bike-themed restaurant, bike shop and coffee bar Pedaler’s Fork is opening a second location in LA’s Frogtown, near their existing 10 Speed Coffee and close to the LA River bike path.

Santa Monica will conduct yet another bicycle and pedestrian safety operation from 2 pm to 8 pm today. So ride to the letter of the law until you cross the city limits so you don’t get ticketed. Or just avoid the city entirely this afternoon and evening if you can.

 

State

Calbike has opened registration for April’s biennial California Bicycle Summit in Sacramento.

Oceanside police are pushing for a change in the city’s ebike regulations to prohibit carrying a second rider and allow cops to temporarily seize the ebikes of scofflaw riders. Although once again, they seem to be conflating ped-assist ebikes with illegally modified electric motorbikes and dirt bikes.

A 73-year old Rancho Bernardo man is bicycling around San Diego with his son to interview random people they meet and post the videos online. The story is paywalled, but you can see their videos on their website.

 

National

A New York news site says bicyclists and ebikers continue to exceed Central Park’s 15 mph speed limit, endangering lives, while the speed limit is almost impossible to enforce. Yet the photo shows a couple kids on e-motorbikes with full face helmets, one pulling a wheelie, making it clear that regular bicycles and ped-assist ebikes aren’t the problem. And speed guns work just as well on them as they do with motor vehicles.

Streetsblog says the way to solve the problems in Central Park is to build better bike lanes around the park’s perimeter, so non-recreational riders don’t have to use it as the only safe route across town.

Proof protected bike lanes work. Ridership on a contested Brooklyn bike lane went up 60% after it was protected — even though the former mayor ripped out three blocks of the protection.

Justice denied, as a Salvadoran immigrant faced up to 12 years behind bars for killing a Long Island bike rider in a drunken crash, but was deported before he could be sentenced.

A group of Tampa, Florida mountain bikers are building their own trail, the city’s firstl.

 

International

Bike Radar explains why your ebike battery loses power when it’s cold, with a lithium ion battery having just half the power at 4 below zero Fahrenheit that it does at 77 degrees. Which is not a problem most SoCal riders are likely to have. 

The state of Mexico will invest the equivalent of $6.3 million to build four new bike lanes, as well as six protected intersections in high traffic areas.

London’s Telegraph recommends the ten European bike routes for all skill levels that you should tackle in your lifetime. Particularly if you feel an uncontrollable urge to circumnavigate Iceland. 

A London writer experiences the culture shock of moving from an air-conditioned office to a bicycle delivery service following his fourth layoff in six years, saying he hadn’t counted on get hit by cars and skinheads — let alone seeing the city in a whole new light.

Ireland’s Taoiseach, otherwise known as the country’s prime minister, condemned a judge’s comments that bike riders have made Dublin a nightmare, while the country’s Labour Party filed a formal complaint with the courts.

Cycling Weekly recommends the “unknown” climbs of the Austrian Alps, calling them harder than those of the Tour de France.

More proof protected bike lanes work. A year-old protected bike lane in the Australian state of Tasmania hasn’t had a single bicycling crash since it was installed, despite seeing 6,000 trips each month, while overall crashes on the street have dropped nearly a third.

 

Finally…

Now you, too, can turn your kid’s balance bike into an electric snow trike. That feeling when you have a need to prove you really did it.

And building your granddog his own bike seat. Or a mobile dog house.

Or something.

@louie_and_grandpaw

Spoiled little daschund ! Grandpaw built this custom snoopy inspired dog house from scratch for his grand dog Louie! #daschund #dogsoftiktok #dogtiktok #dogmom

♬ Linus And Lucy – Take 1 – Vince Guaraldi Trio

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

Oh, and fuck Putin. 

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

Reforming DUI law to make it kinda less lax, Venice NC rethinks the bike plan, and throwing a bike at a hit-and-run driver

January 14, 2026 / / No comments

Apparently, CalMatters is getting results for calling out California’s lax DUI laws.

The nonpartisan nonprofit news organization has run a series of hard-hitting stories pointing out how the state allows dangerous and deadly drivers to remain on the roads, even after taking a life.

Or repeatedly getting busted while too drunk or stoned to drive.

And how those overly lenient laws adds to the state’s ever increasing body count due to traffic violence caused by people who shouldn’t have been behind the wheel in the first place.

Now they’re reporting that a number of bills are being proposed in the state legislature to tackle the problem, including one directly addressing DUI.

(Assemblyman Nick) Schultz, a Democrat from Burbank, is the chair of the Assembly’s Public Safety Committee and a former DUI prosecutor. He unveiled a new bill last week – which he called “the tip of the spear” – that would crack down on repeat drunk drivers. The bill would:

  • Let prosecutors charge a felony for a third DUI — a “paradigm shift” for sentencing, he said, that would bring California more in line with states like Oregon, where Schultz worked. Right now, in California, a driver generally can’t be charged with a felony until their fourth DUI in 10 years.
  • Require any driver who gets a fifth DUI conviction within 10 years to have their license revoked for five years, and to install an in-car breathalyzer for four years. As we’ve reported, California has some of the weakest DUI laws in the nation, and these measures touch on two reasons why.

Look, I’m glad to finally see some action to address DUI. Any action.

But waiting for a fifth DUI in just ten years to get serious about taking away someone’s driving privileges is like giving someone his gun back because his first few shots missed.

A driver’s first DUI should result in an automatic six-month loss of license, and a requirement to use an interlock device for at least two years.

A second DUI should result in automatic jail time, or at least home vacation confinement. And a third should mean serious prison time, and a permanent loss of license.

That’s three in a lifetime, not 10 years. Or 20.

We should also impound the cars of any drivers who have their license suspended, for whatever reason. Because as we’ve seen, too many people continue to drive even after their license has been taken away.

Does that sound harsh?

So is having to arrange a funeral for a loved one.

The simple fact is, no one has a right to drive. It is a privilege granted by the state, only after passing a test demonstrating a basic knowledge of traffic laws, and the ability to drive safely.

Which means that everyone should know it’s illegal to drive after drinking or getting high. Other than speeding or distracted driving, nothing a person does behind the wheel is more likely to result in the death of another human being.

And don’t get me started on how lenient our speeding and distracted driving laws are.

Right now, we enforce DUI with a wink and a nod, accepting a driver’s promise to never, ever do it again. Until they do, when we usually just do the same thing.

And keep doing it until they kill someone.

It’s long past time we put a stop to it, once and for all. And incremental steps, however well intentioned, won’t get us there.

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The Venice Neighborhood Council wants to know where you think a safe Venice bike network should go.

Never mind that there’s already a Los Angeles bike plan, part of the city mobility plan, that maps that out in detail.

But whatever.

The Venice NC Parking & Transportation Committee met Monday to discuss the creation and distribution of a Bikeway Network for Venice in time for the ’28 Olympics.

According to YoVenice,

The purpose of the survey is to include community input, advice, and suggestions before the final product is distributed to the general public. Should they receive board approval, several methods of distribution will be used for maximum participation and input.

The creation of a Venice Bikeway Network would be the ultimate goal and objective.

It’s not that they shouldn’t take another look at it.

Obviously, things have changed in the decade and a half since the bike plan was unanimously approved by the city council. They should consider how it can be improved, particularly in a neighborhood where residents are five times more likely to ride a bicycle than most Angelenos.

But start with the work that’s already in place, without trying to reinvent the (bicycle) wheel.

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Seriously?

A 31-year old Indiana man faces charges for the hit-and-run death of a 69-year old Indianapolis man riding a bicycle, after police tracked him down two months later.

He bizarrely told investigators that he knew he had been in a crash, but kept going because he thought someone had just thrown a bicycle at his truck, and had no idea there might possibly be someone riding it.

If he actually believes that, prosecutors should add a DUI charge to his indictment, because he’d have to be whacked out of his mind to have that thought even pop into his head.

He should also have been charged with murder, because it took half an hour to find the victim after he was run down, at which point it was too late to help him.

And to top things off, the driver was out on pre-trial release for a separate domestic battery case.

Nice guy.

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This is the future we could have.

Although as someone else pointed out in the comments, we already have a few Metro Bike Hubs, but nowhere near enough. And you have to have a membership, rather than just using it on demand whenever you need it.

 

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

No bias here. Conservative politicians in England’s Merseyside region are attacking a “ridiculous” new bike lane network as “crackpot stuff,” even as the local government calls for people to ditch their cars for some shorter journeys, insisting it will make area “healthier and safer.”

No bias here, either. Irish bicyclists and advocacy group attacked the remarks of a judge who imposed his own views as a driver to slash an award to an injured bike rider by 80%, saying bicyclists “have become a nightmare in Dublin;” one group argued it showed “language that risks normalizing hostility towards people who choose to travel by bike.” Never mind that the judge once refused to take a breathalyzer test when he was suspected of drunk driving.

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Local 

Just months after Pee-wee Herman’s classic red and white bicycle was donated to the Alamo, and a second went to Kourtney Kardashian as a Christmas present, another of the 14 duplicate bikes used to film Pee-wee’s Big Adventure was donated to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures at Wilshire and Fairfax.

Apparently, a random video of bicycling through LA’s Skid Row is proof that California is “a third world hellscape,” where the “streets look like Mogadishu.” In other words, sort of like a few streets in any other major city.

LA’s killer highway nearly claimed another victim, as a man in his 50s was seriously injured when he was run down by a driver while riding an ebike in Hermosa Beach. Although photos from the scene make it clear that he was riding an electric motorbike, rather than a ped-assist ebike.

 

State

The City of La Mesa is teaming with the San Diego County Bicycle Coalition for an hour long virtual information session for new bicycle owners tomorrow evening.

A Eureka woman was arrested nearly a year after she used her SUV as a weapon by allegedly speeding up to intentionally strike a bicycle being ridden by someone she knew, while driving on the wrong side of the road, then backing up to run over the victim’s bicycle, and crashing into another car after running a red light as she tried to make her escape; fortunately, the victim didn’t appear to be seriously injured, although the driver of the car she hit was hospitalized afterwards.

 

National

There’s a special place in hell for anyone who flees the scene of a crash, leaving a little kid lying in the street — like the driver who hit a child’s bike as he was riding in a Bend, Oregon crosswalk. Fortunately, the boy wasn’t seriously injured.

Bike Portland struggles to make sense of what caused an experienced bicyclist to lose control of his bike and go over his handlebars, after a witness said initial reports that he hit a large pothole were wrong.

Oregon letter writers argue that improving bike infrastructure helps reduce oil dependence.

A 23-year old Salt Lake City man has been arrested for fatally shooting a bike thief in the back, as the alleged thief was riding off on his bicycle. We’ve said too many times already that no bicycle is worth a human life. Just let it go, and let the cops deal with it. That’s what they’re paid to do.

A tri-state planning association for the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut region calls on New Jersey to reject a legislative crackdown on ebikes that would be the most restrictive ebike law in the US.

You’ve got to be kidding. A bike-riding kid in South Carolina got the blame for crashing into the side of a passing pickup, even though it’s far more likely the driver sideswiped the kid. Never mind that even if the kid did crash into the pickup, the driver was clearly violating the state’s three-foot passing law.

 

International

Momentum recommends a dozen “hidden gem” bicycling routes for your bike bucket list, only one of which is in the US.

An English writer says a bike rider was killed by a hit-and-run driver in his town, leaving the bicycling community scared — and serving as a reminder that safer roads aren’t a ridiculous request, but a need. Trust me, I know the feeling. But I’d add heartsick to those feels, too. 

She gets it. An Irish coroner looking into the death of a 58-year old bike rider blames the lack of a comprehensive bike path network, while a bike advocacy group says the street where he was killed by a truck driver “is not safe for people walking or cycling.”

Speaking of bike bucket lists, a French website recommends the Parc naturel régional du Luberon in the heart of Provence, saying it might as well have been “designed for exploring on two wheels.”

 

Competitive Cycling

Two-time Tour de France and defending Vuelta champ Jonas Vingegaard will race the Giro this year, as he tries to claim the only Grand Tour he hasn’t won. Yet. Note to newspapers — does it really make sense to paywall an AP story that’s readily available on the internet?

Australia’s Royal Automobile Association, the country’s equivalent to AAA, is urging drivers and bicyclists to be patient and courteous, and obey the law, during the upcoming Santos Tour Down Under. Although it’s not the scofflaw bike riders whose impatience and lack of courtesy puts everyone else at risk.

 

Finally…

Turning a simple bicycle jersey into a work of art. Nothing like spending your Christmas riding laps around a Mickey D’s drive-thru.

And accusing an oil-sponsored bike race of “pedalling climate bullshit.”

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

Oh, and fuck Putin. 

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

LA approves $6.8m for crappy Chandler Bikeway extension, and NY mayor takes literal shovel to bridge bike lane bump

January 7, 2026 / / One comment

Los Angeles thinks you want to ride in the center of the roadway.

And they’re willing to bet nearly $7 million of your money they’re right.

Yesterday, the Los Angeles City Board of Public Works approved a $6.8 million contract to build an extension to the popular Chandler Bikeway, with a design that places the semi, kinda but not really protected bike lanes on the left side of the road.

Because parking.

As in, they weren’t willing to risk the wrath of LA’s angry drivers by removing parking to create space for the bike lane on the right side.

Because nothing is more LA than your God-given right to free car storage right next to the curb in front of your home. Or anyone else’s, for that matter.

But giving city leaders the benefit of the doubt, maybe they think they’re going to protect us by putting bikes over there on the left, where no one would expect it. Kinda like safety in invisibility.

And we know how well that’s worked out for us.

But there it shall be, henceforth and forever more running down the center of the road — not in the median like it is in Burbank, but over there on the left shoulder. With nothing but those chunky white bendable bollards that no one would ever think of running over to protect us.

Right next to what used to be known as the fast lane, before every lane turned into one.

Joe Linton shares his own thoughts about the coming new bike lane in a Bluesky thread that somehow seems only slightly less pessimistic than me.

So take it away, Joe.

Please.

I confess I expect this to be a crappy project. Instead of removing some parking to put protected bike lanes along the curb, cyclists will be shunted into the left lane along the median. Maybe it will work?

— Joe Linton (@lintonjoe.bsky.social) 2026-01-06T17:25:53.737Z

At ~$7M for 3 miles, it's also fairly expensive… per BPW staff report "scope includes remove concrete median islands; reconstruct street pavements, curb & gutter, & ramps; modify traffic signals; install concrete transit platforms"

— Joe Linton (@lintonjoe.bsky.social) 2026-01-06T17:33:18.121Z

Even with that concrete curb work underway, cyclists get only plastic protection: "Class IV bike lanes [protected bike lanes] with raised rubber defenders [basically 'armadillos'] and K-71 bollards [soft-hit white plastic bollards]"

— Joe Linton (@lintonjoe.bsky.social) 2026-01-06T17:36:16.893Z

Center-running bikeways work in some places (ie: some Barcelona ramblas) but have failed spectacularly closer to home – see wretched results on Valencia in SF. sf.streetsblog.org/2024/11/19/s…

— Joe Linton (@lintonjoe.bsky.social) 2026-01-06T17:40:11.824Z

I expect that this Chandler project will spend a lot of money to serve few cyclists… and many folks will still bike in the outer lane. I hope I am wrong.

— Joe Linton (@lintonjoe.bsky.social) 2026-01-06T17:41:24.525Z

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Call it the further adventures of life in a bike-friendly city.

Unlike, say, here in Los Angeles, where our mayor says she’s one of us, while doing everything she can to avoid implementing the city mobility plan — or complying with the Americans with Disability Act — going so far as to replace street resurfacing with something called “large asphalt repair.”

Because resurfacing the street would trigger Measure HLA’s requirement to implement the mobility plan, as well as requiring ADA-compliant curb cuts.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, New York is using $700 million in congestion pricing tolls to improve transit, while the city’s new bikeshare-riding mayor demonstrated his administrations new bike-friendly direction by reversing cuts made to a major bike safety corridor that was tainted by a bribery scandal under the previous adminstration.

Now Mayor Zohran Mamdani is grabbing a shovel himself to repair a major obstacle blocking the bike lane on the Williamsburg Bridge, infamous among the city’s bicyclists as the “Williamsburg Bump.”

Although not everyone was happy, since the bump gave them a chance to catch a little air.

Thanks to Megan for the YouTube video. 

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ActiveSGV & SGV Water Action invite you to join them on a ride to Santa Fe Dam on the 17th.

https://twitter.com/ActiveSGV/status/2008585641722839307

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LABikeBoy shares what it’s like to live in LA without a car for a full year.

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A 23-year old “lad” rode more than 15,500 miles from the UK to Australia, retracing the bikepacking tour his father took 40 years earlier, while riding the same bicycle.

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

Seriously? Business owners in Cathedral City, California try to make the case that new green plastic bike lane bollards are cutting into their sales by reducing visibility and accessibility, leading to a drop in foot traffic. Or maybe foot traffic is down because it’s been raining for the last two weeks. 

Leaders with the UK’s Bikeability training program expressed fears that hostile tabloid media coverage is scaring parents out of letting their kids ride bikes.

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Local 

An ebike rider was lucky to escape without serious injuries when they were right-hooked by a driver while riding in the painted bike lane on Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood; witnesses described the crash as a hit-and-run, but sheriff’s deputies insisted the driver stuck around.

 

State

Police in Merced are asking for the public’s help finding an 87-year old man suffering from dementia, who was last seen riding a pink adult-sized bicycle

 

National

A man in Portland was killed when he apparently hit a pothole while riding his bike. Demonstrating once again that bad roads pose a greater risk to bike riders than they do to motorists. And a single hole in an otherwise good road surface can be even more dangerous, because bicyclists may not be expecting it. 

Detroit’s new Gordie Howe International Bridge, named for the former NHL great, is set to open early this year, allowing people to bike and walk between the Canada and the Motor City, as well as drive. Look, I’m not saying I’m old, but I remember watching Howe skate. 

New York bikeshare users are calling on the city to subsidize the Citi Bike program, after fees increased for the fifth year in a row.

Atlanta is about to break ground in the city’s largest greenspace on what they’re calling a “world-class bike park for all ages and skill levels”.

 

International

Momentum is busy recycling old news stories as new news, making it harder to tell what’s actually new and what isn’t — although it’s kind of a dead giveaway when a story about why cargo bikes are better than minivans for family vehicles begins by predicting Europe ‘will’ sell half a million cargo bikes in 2022.

Unbelievable. For the second time in just two days, a 13-year old boy was killed by dogs while riding a bicycle, this time in Nova Scotia, where a boy died three days after he was attacked by “three large-breed dogs” as he was riding past someone’s property. Seriously, just keep your damn dogs secured, already.

A London bicyclist is convinced a professional thief used Strava to track his movements and trace him back to his home before stealing three high-end bikes worth the equivalent of 40 grand.

A Scottish mountain biker relates his obsessive pursuit of summiting all 282 of the Munros, the Highland peaks topping 3,000 feet in elevation named for Sir Hugh Munro, who first mapped them in 1891.

A Dublin professor says it’s about time the city began focusing on better bike lanes and the newly pedestrianized College Green between Trinity College and the old Irish Parliament building, arguing that bikes, buses and walking are the only solutions to worsening congestion.

That didn’t take long. People on motorbikes are already encroaching on Ho Chi Minh City’s first bike lane, less than a week after it was opened in the city formerly known as Saigon, Vietnam.

 

Competitive Cycling

Cyclist ranks pro cycling kits from worst to first; needless to say, Ineos Grenadiers and their white shorts came in dead last — although Velo foresees those white shorts paired with a pink jersey, as they predict a win for the Grenadiers in the Giro.

The world’s most famous bike mechanic is riding off into the sunset, as the mustachioed Calvin Jones hangs up his Park Tool apron after 28 years.

 

Finally…

Why buy a titanium bike when you can acquire the whole brand? That feeling when you meet the love of your life at a bike race, and end up featured in People.

And always ride with a pool cue in case you find yourself unexpectedly jousting with trash.

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin. 

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

Why this isn’t e-BikinginLA, New York’s new mayor puts his money where his bike is, and new San Diego Fondo this June

January 5, 2026 / / 7 comments
Welcome back!
And thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who donated to the 11th Annual BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive!

I can’t begin to tell you how grateful I am to all those who gave this year to support this humble site.

So thanks to John, Norwood, Mary, Robert, Jim and Glenn for their generous donations in the final days of the fund drive to help keep all the best bike news and advocacy coming your way every day.

In the end, more than 60 people opened their hearts and wallets to donate this year, falling just just a few hundred short of breaking that elusive $5,000 barrier for the first time — far more than I expected after what was such a difficult year for so many of us.

Now the holidays are finally over, and I’m tanned, rested — or maybe rusted after all this rain — and ready to get back to work.

And hey, happy new year! Let’s hope it’s a better one for all of us. 

………

Let’s start with a recent email exchange with someone who seemed to think I write too much about ebikes, suggesting I should change the name of the site to e-BikinginLA.

He warned that things would look a lot different to if I was a parent riding a “real bicycle” with child passenger, and then someone zoomed by in the curb lane or on the sidewalk at 28 mph.

This was my response, which I’m sharing to clarify where I stand on the great ebike debate.

I write about ebikes because that’s what’s in the news these days, just like I’ve written about any number of things that have been in the news over the years.

I’m not a fan of high-speed, throttle-controlled ebikes, which I believe should be recategorized as motorbikes and require a license to operate. I do like ped-assist ebikes with a max speed of 20 mph, simply because they expand the potential for bicycling from the proverbial “young and healthy” we always hear about, to virtually everyone. And provide the potential to trade a car for a bicycle for countless people who might not otherwise even consider it.

I also believe every bicycle should be ridden within the limits of the law whenever practical, which would generally prohibit passing on the inside or riding on the sidewalk at an excessive speed. Everyone should ride in a safe and sane manner, regardless of how their bike may be powered. And no one should ever have a sense of entitlement on the streets, whether walking, biking or driving.

Personally, I’d like to have an e-cargo bike just so I can bike to Costco or the hardware store, and take my service dog with me wherever I go, which doesn’t exactly work on my 18-speed racing bike. However, I’ve never actually ridden one yet, after being a lifelong roadie, and don’t know if I’d really like it or not.

Meanwhile, on a related subject, The New York Daily News says the city could end its “vicious cycle” with high-speed ebikes by requiring them to be licensed and insured as mo-peds, like they do in the Netherlands.

But apparently, they don’t want you to read it, because the editorial is locked behind a paywall for subscribers only.

And a Bay Area woman says she’s all for ebikes, and the problems everyone seems to be complaining about are caused by people on electric motorbikes, not Class 2 ebikes like hers.

………

It didn’t take long for New York’s new mayor to demonstrate his transportation bona fides.

Just days after Mayor Zohran Mamdani took the oath of office, he announced a Complete Streets makeover of McGuinness Boulevard, including parking-protected bike lanes the full length of the corridor, considered a key bicycling route connecting Brooklyn and Queens.

The project was killed by the previous administration following a corruption scandal, when a top aide to former Mayor Eric Adams accepted “a relatively small sum of money” and the promise of a speaking role on a TV series to kill the project.

Thanks to Megan for the heads-up.

………

Oceanside bike lawyer and BikinginLA sponsor Richard Duquette is sponsoring the Giro di San Diego Gran Fondo this June, complete with cash prizes and KOM kits.

………

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

A Cathedral City man can be grateful a local driver is a bad shot, after a Palm Springs man is accused of deliberately hitting a man on a bicycle with his car following an argument between the two men, then making a U-turn to fire off a gunshot at the 40-year old victim before fleeing; 47-year old John Nicholas Duran was arrested later in Cathedral City, and faces charges of attempted homicide and assault with a deadly weapon.

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

A Florida man was knocked off his bicycle by the cops while carrying a sackful of stolen mail, after a year of posing as a mail carrier to break into people’s mailboxes. Although riding his route on a bicycle should have been a dead giveaway wasn’t a real mail carrier.

Bicyclists in London will now have the option of paying a fine equivalent to $67 if they’re caught running a red light, or watching video of a red-light running bike rider who was in a coma after he was hit by a bus driver. Personally, I’d rather just pay the fine.

Police in the UK are looking for a 20-something road-raging ebike rider accused of threatening and racially abusing a van driver, after being told he was riding too close to the van with no lights on his bike.

………

Local 

Streetsblog’s Joe Linton offers his predictions for the coming year, including a 50% drop in new bike lanes in Los Angeles, as the city puts on the brakes to avoid complying with Measure HLA and ADA-compliant curb cuts.

Burbank has closed a section of the Channel Bike Path between Verdugo and Providencia avenues for an undetermined period to conduct repairs.

San Pedro’s Bike Palace is now boarded up after more than 50 years as a local mainstay, while the owners deal with the aftermath of a devastating pre-Christmas fire; a crowdfunding page has raised more than $62,000 to help the rebuilding efforts. Unfortunately, the Daily Breeze story in the first link may be hidden behind a paywall, so you’re on your own if they block you.

I want to be like him when I grow up. A 79-year old Long Beach man rode his bike every day for more than 18 years, through an appendectomy and the death of his wife, going so far as to pay a man 20 bucks to borrow a kid’s bike after attending the Kentucky Derby.

 

State

Sad news from Fremont, where someone riding a bicycle was killed when a semi driver turned into a driveway in front of the victim. Although someone should tell NBC Bay Area that they might want to at least mention the driver, because the damn truck didn’t do it on its own.

The bikelash is real. San Francisco’s transportation pendulum appears to be swinging back in favor of motorists, as the people on four wheels claw back their political power.

 

National

A Las Vegas writer says the city could be safer for biking and walking if it just invested the same effort into building paved trails as it does for stadiums.

An 18-year old Utah man rode his bicycle 14,000 miles from Morocco to Singapore in five months. At that age, I was happy just to drive across the state line to buy booze. 

Colorado’s state ebike tax credit will be cut in half this year, dropping from $450 to just $225, as bike shop owners understandably question whether that will result in a drop in sales.

For the second time in just two weeks, a Texas driver ran down two people riding their bikes, this time in Houston, killing one person and critically injuring the other. But at least the driver stuck around this time.

A 73-year old man was charged with aggravated vehicular homicide for killing a 44-year old Toledo, Ohio man as he was waiting on his bicycle at a red light, running him down from behind before fleeing the scene. The next time someone asks you why so many bike riders run red lights, remind them about cases like this. 

Tennessee drivers will now be expected to know bicycle hand signals as part of the driver’s test. Although they probably already understand the most common one. 

New York’s street safety efforts seem to be paying off, after 2024 was the safest year on city streets since they began keeping stats 116 years ago.

A 40-year old man from El Cajon, California has been charged in the hit-and-run death of a 49-year old man riding an ebike in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, after spending three days on the run.

New Orleans is the latest city to offer a rebate up to $1,200 to buy a new ebike. Which compares favorably to the $0 offered by Los Angeles.

A 20-year old hit-and-run driver in Louisiana also faces a vehicular homicide count, among other charges, after the 64-year old bike-riding man he ran down while allegedly driving drunk died in the hospital a day later.

Once again, an advocate for safer streets was killed while riding his bike, this time when a Macon, Georgia man was run down from behind by a 73-year old woman, who claims she didn’t see him before the crash — yet police still blamed the victim for simply riding in the roadway, instead of on the shoulder, and not yielding to traffic.

Sad news from Florida, where Joe Montgomery died of apparent heart trouble, 55-year after he founded Cannondale above a Connecticut pickle factory, naming the bikemaker after a nearby train station; he was 86.

 

International

Momentum offers their resolutions for a “very bicycle new year,” including embarking on more aimless, social bike rides, and always make bicycling the first choice.

British Columbia bike riders say winter weather doesn’t stop them, but “snow-packed bike lanes and impatient drivers” can.

Bicycling has hit an all-time high in Flanders, with an increase of 40,000 bicycle trips per day since 2022 in the Dutch-speaking region of northern Belgium.

Take a bicycle tour of Transylvania. But maybe wear a garlic necklace just to be safe. 

Over 1,000 people turned out in Vadodara, India on Sunday for the 55th annual Fit India Sundays on Cycle, just one of the 5,000 bike events held across the country yesterday.

A Zambian woman says the gift of a Buffalo bike from World Bicycle Relief has allowed her to double the profits from her small shop, and help her children dream of a better future.

Bicycling has become a hugely popular form of recreation in China, accounting for a whopping $42.9 billion in bike sales in 2024.

Next time you find yourself in Osaka, Japan, make plans to visit the Shimano Bicycle Museum, where you’ll find a century of exclusive bicycling history from the earliest Safety Bikes, to a rain-proof electric trike and a five-seat racing bike.

 

Competitive Cycling

British Olympic cyclist Sir Chris Hoy made his first appearance just weeks after suffering a severe leg injury in a mountain biking crash, hobbling out on crutches to present a trophy to the winner of the World Darts Championship.

Double Olympic medalist Wout van Aert had surgery to repair a fracture and a sprained ankle after crashing on a snowy ‘cross course.

A Rwandan website considers the role a mother played in the rise of her daughter in junior cycling.

 

Finally…

Who needs an ebike when you’ve got an exoskeleton? Or a camper van when you’ve got a postal ebike?

And doing the Stranger Things bike thing, without that whole downer Upside Down thing.

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin. 

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

Reporting on LA’s crumbling infrastructure, weaseling out of HLA, and comparing street users to bloody gang warfare

December 4, 2025 / / No comments
Day 338 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025. 

………

It’s Day 7 of the 11th Annual BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive!

Thanks to Bernard, Michael, another Michael, Catherine and Patrick for their generous support to help keep SoCal’s best source for bike news and advocacy coming your way every day. Along with one donation specifically earmarked for corgi treats. 

So what are you waiting for? It only takes a few moments to donate via PayPal, Zelle or Venmo. 

Our Fund Drive spokesdog is standing by. 

………

Don’t count on it.

My News LA reports the Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved a proposal requiring city departments to report back on what they need to fix the city’s crumbling infrastructure.

The measure gives the departments 60 days to return with a “comprehensive analysis of funding, staffing and resources needed to address deteriorating public infrastructure and bring the city up to industry standards,” including “repair, replacement, maintenance and timely inspection of bike lanes, curb cuts, sidewalks, street trees, storm drains and street lights.”

Like the street lights on my street, which were stripped by thieves for copper wire. And the city says they’ll get around to fixing in six months, at best.

You mean, like that.

But if past is prologue, that 60 day deadline will likely slip by weeks, if not months. If they actually respond at all.

Experience tells us that no one is likely hold them to that commitment. And whatever reports are returned are unlikely to move the needle much.

Because one thing Los Angeles does best is study problems. But never actually, you know, do anything about them.

………

Good on them.

Streets For All takes Mayor Bass, LADOT and the Board of Public Works to task for trying to weasel out of their obligations under Measure HLA, as we reported yesterday.

Let’s hope someone actually listens this time.

Meanwhile, Streetsblog’s Damien Newton has more on the city’s ongoing efforts to not comply with the simple requirements of the street safety measure passed overwhelmingly by Los Angeles voters.

Not that that seems to matter to city officials.

………

The police chief of Gulf Shores, Alabama says the simple competition between various groups for space on the streets is nothing but a “good old-fashioned turf war.”

Not having stuck his far enough into his mouth, he continued,

“Not your traditional turf war. We could call the e-bikers the Crips, the pedestrians the Bloods, the bicyclists the Gangster Disciples and the motorists Mammoth-13. Name your gang.”

First of all, there is no street gang called Mammoth-13. I can only guess he meant MS-13, short for Mara Salvatrucha. Which tells you how much experience he has with actual gangs.

And while there are inevitable conflicts between various street streets users, particularly in a small beach town with limited road space, I’m not aware of much intentional bloodshed on the roadways.

According to Wikipedia, an estimated 20,000 people have been killed in gang warfare between the Bloods and Crips since their founding in the 1970s, the overwhelming majority of those deaths purely intended.

And that’s just as of 2014.

I have no idea how many people have been killed in that supposed “gang warfare” between pedestrians, bicyclists, ebikers and drivers in Gulf Shores. But I suspect the number may be just a tad lower.

Which is not to minimize the dangers of traffic violence, let alone the incidents of violent road rage.

But comparing people competing for road space to actual gang warfare just doesn’t play in a city like Los Angeles, where far too young lives have been snuffed out over the past five decades just because someone was wearing the wrong colors, or crossed into the wrong neighborhood.

Never mind that the overwhelming majority of killing on our streets — and presumably, his — is done by just one of those so-called “gangs” he’s so worried about.

The one in cars.

And that’s the one gang he doesn’t suggest doing anything about. Unlike bikes, ebikes, scooters and pretty much any other kind of non-motor vehicle conveyance, including feet.

So maybe he needs to just deal with the situation by calling for more bike lanes and crosswalks, and leave metaphors to people who actually know what they’re talking about.

Which is a polite way of saying get your fucking head out of your ass already, chief.

………

You’d think all those drivers stuck in traffic would catch on after a while.

But nope.

………

UCLA’s bruins4bettertransit teams with LADOT to conduct their own race to determine whether bikes, buses or cars provide the fastest means to get from campus to the E Line station.

My money’s on the bike.

Even without the long-debated bike lanes that would make it even easier, and safer.

………

………

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

No bias here. A Silicon Valley news site reports that bicycle advocates in Sunnyvale scored a victory over disgruntled neighbors, after the city council voted to eliminate parking on one street to make room for buffered bike lanes, framing the issue as “us versus them,” rather than a matter of improving safety for everyone.

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

A Massachusetts woman suffered a shattered left ankle and torn right knee when she was thrown from her horse when a bike rider cut across her path and spooked the eight-year old horse, which then had to be put down.

………

Local 

Caltrans is improving sidewalks and resurfacing a stretch of Alvarado Street in Echo Park, which already has shared bus/bike lanes, and building 1.7 miles of new bus/bike lanes on Santa Monica Blvd in Hollywood.

Torched enjoys the recent Stranger Things Melrose CicLAvia, while pondering the upside down need for corporate sponsorships for all things LA, including open streets.

We’re not the only ones holding an end-of-the-year fundraiser. Streetsblog is holding a fund drive through the end of this month, so toss ’em a few extra bucks, too.

Volunteers from the Pasadena Complete Streets Coalition delivered turkeys and other Thanksgiving fixin’s to the Friends in Deed nonprofit to feed people experiencing homelessness or vulnerability.

 

State

Irvine and Newport Beach joined the parade of Orange County cities cracking down on ebikes, following similar action in Stanton, Huntington Beach, Yorba Linda, Orange and Buena Park.

Carlsbad became the latest San Diego County beachfront city to crack down on ebikes, banning riders under 12, and asking the state to prohibit anyone under 16 from carrying passengers on the back. Although like the Orange County cities, they don’t seem to distinguish between ped-assist bikes and electric motorbikes and dirt bikes. 

‘Tis the season. For the 22nd year, elementary school children in Victorville received new bicycles courtesy of a local nonprofit program.

This is who we share the road with. A heartless hit-and-run driver slammed into a group of families crossing a San Bernardino street, dragging a baby stroller down the block and severely injuring two little kids. Yes, a baby stroller.

 

National

Kindhearted Oregon cops dipped into their own pockets, combined with a steep discount from a local bike shop, to replace a bike for a middle school boy after his was stolen.

More proof bikes are good for business, as People For Bikes examines how the annual El Tour de Tucson boosts participation, community, and the local economy.

A Monroe, North Carolina car dealer is living on the roof of his business until he collects 1,017 bikes to donate to kids in need for Christmas; as of Wednesday evening, he had about 670 bikes to go.

No surprise that Florida ranks second, behind only South Carolina, for people searching online for legal help after a bicycling crash. The only real surprise is that California doesn’t even rank in the top ten — maybe because we know to call the BikinginLA sponsors over there on the right first.

 

International

How is bicycling better than any dating app? Let Momentum count the ways.

Strava data shows Colombia’s Alto de Patios climb on the outskirts of Bogotá is the world’s most popular bicycling road, followed by a riverside road in São Paulo, Brazil, and a bridge in southwestern London.

A 69-year old Canadian man raised $50,000 riding around the world for cancer research.

Tragic news from Wales, where a 37-year old French fashion designer was killed when she was run down from behind by a driver while on a bicycling vacation.

Cycling Weekly goes looking for the roads, people and culture that make France’s Britany region a “dream cycling destination.”

If you have an Agree C:62 road bike made by German bikemaker Cube in either of the last two years, you’re asked to stop riding it immediately due to a risk of the front fork delaminating and cracking.

Czech carmaker Škoda’s We Love Cycling site offers their holiday gift guide for bicyclists — and for a change, they’re focused on “thoughtful picks” for women who ride bikes.

A South African woman says she feels energized after she was invited to represent women bike riders a breakfast meeting at Johannesburg business school, after taking up riding to cope with grief following the death of her mother.

 

Finally…

Cervelo, the choice fleeing felons everywhere. You may not be a deviate, but your bike still can be.

And your next recumbent could really fly.

No, literally.

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin. 

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

Bike lanes slowing fire trucks is an urban myth, celebrate SciFi author Octavia Butler tomorrow & give Egan his damn bike back

November 7, 2025 / / Comments Off on Bike lanes slowing fire trucks is an urban myth, celebrate SciFi author Octavia Butler tomorrow & give Egan his damn bike back
Day 311 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025. 

………

It was a quiet bike news day yesterday, so let’s get right to it.

Today’s photo: If they can drive an ambulance on the old beach bike path pre-widening, they can drive a fire truck on or near a bike lane. 

……….

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

No bias here. Firefighters in San Antonio, Texas apparently haven’t gotten the memo, trotting out the persistent urban myth that a proposed road diet and two-way cycle track will slow down their trucks and response times, even though that hasn’t happened in other cities. And those bigass trucks with their massive tires could just drive over the little plastic posts they’ll probably use to separate the bike lanes from the traffic lanes, anyway.

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

A Singaporean driver was shocked and appalled to see a pair of teens drafting a semi on a bicycle and an ebike without the “proper gear,” as if a few ounces of plastic and foam would somehow offer protection if they went under a multi-ton tractor trailer. Look, we’ve all seen that scene from Breaking Away, but seriously, it’s not a good idea, with or without a helmet. 

………

Local 

Say you’re old without saying you’re old. Former LA City Councilmember Dennis Zine reminisces about “even” riding his bike on city streets delivering the Los Angeles Herald Express and Herald Examiner.

Don’t miss the Octavia’s Pasadena Bike Ride tomorrow, as the Rose City celebrates Pasadena native and noted SciFi author Octavia E. Butler.

 

State

Encinitas is getting rid of back-in parking, widening lanes and ripping out one of the separated bike lanes on Santa Fe Drive, after drivers couldn’t figure out how to manage them.

A 55-year old man was hospitalized with a compound fracture of his tibia/fibula and a fractured femur after he was struck by a driver while riding his bicycle in Pacific Beach Wednesday night; police said he continued straight at an intersection instead of making the required right turn, riding into the path of a driver on the cross street.

The people of Fallbrook have raised more than $1,000 to replace a 34-year old disabled man’s ebike, after he was the victim of a hit-and-run driver who destroyed his bike.

A Santa Cruz man learned he had multiple myeloma, a difficult to treat form of blood cancer, after suffering an apparent rib fracture on a marathon bike ride; 14-years later, he’s back to riding his bike after a being in remission for three years thanks to a cutting edge therapy.

 

National

Bike Magazine recommends their picks for the year’s best bike computers. Although the best bike computer is the one you’ve already got — after you throw it as far as you can so you can just enjoy riding without one. 

Talk about not getting it. A Newton, Massachusetts resident and self-described bike rider complains that new raised bike lanes around a sharp curve make the road more dangerous, because it narrows the roadway on a dangerous corner. Except that forces drivers to slow down, which is kinda the point. 

The kindhearted folks at a sporting goods store in a tiny town in central New York State have given away 7,000 bicycles to kids in need so far this year, just a fraction of the 23,000 bikes they’ve donated since beginning the program.

The bike bus movement has taken over Montclair, New Jersey, with hundreds of kids riding their bikes to school every day.

Drivers who block bike lanes in Montgomery County, Maryland could now be subject to a whopping $60 fine. In other words, a gentle slap in the wallet, if not on the wrist. 

 

International

You’ve got to be kidding. An English man claims he had no idea he struck and killed a man riding a bicycle as he was backing up across the roadway to make a U-turn, insisting he thought he hit a stick — even though he never bothered to stop to see what shattered his rear window before driving away. You know, like any normal person would. 

He gets it now, anyway. A UK Member of Parliament accepted a challenge from local bicyclists to ride a “terrifying” stretch of roadway, so he could understand the need for a new greenway. And he did.

Britpop singer Ed Sheeran is one of us, describing how he crashed a borrowed bicycle while riding down a steep hill, then continued riding to a pub — only to wake up in pain the next morning with a broken rib, elbow and wrist.

Life is cheap in Singapore, where a truck driver got eight months behind bars after pleading guilty to driving without due care and attention for killing a woman who was riding an ebike in a crosswalk, after blaming the victim for not looking for traffic first, before crossing. But at least he lost his driver’s license for eight years.

 

Competitive Cycling

Someone stole the yellow Pinarello bicycle Colombian cyclist Egan Bernal rode on the final stage when he won the 2019 Tour de France.

A bike shop owned by the family of Chilean mountain biking star Martín Vidaurre was also the victim of thieves, who stole bicycles worth the equivalent of $103,000.

If you want to win friends and influence people, don’t suggest privatizing Alpe d’Huez and selling tickets to watch the Tour de France.

 

Finally…

Your new ebike could look like, well, a bike. Well, who wouldn’t ride a bicycle if you’re hunting vampires?

And more proof Mathieu van der Poel is a wheelie good cyclist.

Sorry.

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin. 

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , ,

Better bikeability in Whittier and Pomona, Utah puts 95% of residents near paved paths, and bike lanes reduce near-misses

November 5, 2025 / / Comments Off on Better bikeability in Whittier and Pomona, Utah puts 95% of residents near paved paths, and bike lanes reduce near-misses
Day 309 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025. 

………

If you’re reading this, it means I managed to finish today’s post, despite spending all day dealing with a broken pipe under the bathroom sink, which dumped 50 years worth of accumulated inky goo over everything in the cabinet beneath it. 

Good times. 

It also means the icky gunk probably wasn’t toxic.

And if you’re not reading it, why the hell am I writing this?

………

It looks like things are getting better in the far reaches of Los Angeles County.

First up is a press release from County Supervisor Janice Hahn, touting the approval of an 8.4-mile, $27 million Complete Streets project in South Whittier, expected to be finished just in time for the ’28 Olympics.

Los Angeles, CA – Today, the LA County Board of Supervisors voted to approve the South Whittier Community Bikeway Access Improvements project, which will bring a total of 8.4 miles of bike lanes as well as street improvements to unincorporated South Whittier, with sections adjoining the cities of Santa Fe Springs and La Mirada. The project will bring bike lanes to within one mile of the Metrolink’s Norwalk/Santa Fe Springs Station.

“We are not only adding bike lanes—we are repairing and expanding sidewalks for pedestrians, adding trees, and improving signage to make our community safer and more accessible for everyone. This project is a major investment in a better quality of life for South Whittier and its neighbors,” said Supervisor Hahn, whose district includes the area. “I’m proud that we’re now a big step closer to making this vision a reality.”

Current view and rendering of improvements to Leffingwell Rd.

The South Whittier Community Bikeway Access Improvements project will install 4.6 miles of Class II bike lanes and 3.8 miles of Class III bike routes, without loss of travel lanes or parking. Additionally, the project will provide pavement resurfacing, installing wayfinding signage, construction of bulb-outs, reconstruction of curbs and gutters, sidewalks, and curb ramps, landscaping medians, removal and replanting of trees, replacing streetlights, and upgrading traffic signals with pedestrian push buttons with audio and vibration devices.

Work is expected to begin next July and be completed by January 2028, with an estimated total cost of $27 million. Funding sources include County road funds, Metro grants, as well as federal funds. Additionally, the City of La Mirada will contribute $67,000 and the City of Santa Fe Springs another $18,000.

Next comes this item from Streetsblog’s Joe Linton, who observes that Pomona is becoming bike friendly, “going above and beyond the basic minimums for safer streets, including bikeability, walkability, accessibility, and transit improvements.”

In the last half-dozen years, the city of Pomona has stepped up efforts toward safer, more multimodal streets. As new light rail arrives, the city is working to calm traffic, and to improve bikeability, walkability, and accessibility.

With about 150,000 residents, Pomona is the 7th most populous city among the 88 cities in L.A. County. More than two-thirds of Pomona residents are Latino; the city is also home to a longstanding Black community. Incomes vary in different neighborhoods, but a significant portion of the Pomona population is working class.

And yes, Pomona is in Los Angeles County, even if many Angelenos west of the 605 might assume otherwise.

It’s a good read, and shows what can be done when city officials actually care enough to make the necessary changes to improve safety.

It also might be worth putting your bike on the A Line and exploring the city yourself.

………

That’s how you do it.

Utah’s governor has proposed building a 3,100-mile network of paved, protected bike paths spanning the entire state.

Comparing it to an Interstate Highway system, Governor Spencer Cox said the “Utah Trail Network,” 500 miles of which already exist, would put a safe bikeway within one mile of 95% of the state’s population.

According to Singletracks,

The trail system has been in the works since legislation passed in 2023, allocating up to 5% of revenues from six different taxes to the project, not to exceed $45 million per year. In effect, the project has been funded to the tune of $45 million per year indefinitely…

“The goal is to connect the entire state of Utah with a network of paved trails. The goal is to help people have transportation options so they can choose to walk, bike, or scoot to their destinations without having to get in a car,” Stephanie Tomlin, Trails Division director at UDOT, told ABC4.

There is currently no plan for anything like this here in California.

The closest we have is the California Coastal Trail, which proposes connecting existing bike paths along the Pacific coast from Oregon to Mexico. Which is great for bike touring or casual coastal rides, but does little for bike commuters, or anyone anywhere else in the state.

But maybe there should be.

………

No surprise here.

A new London study finds that bike lanes help avoid near-misses while bicycling.

The study, published in published in the Accident Analysis & Prevention journal, used helmet-mounted bike cams to record incidents of near-misses with drivers while riding on the city’s streets.

It examined 94 bicycling near-misses recorded during 317 hours of London commuter footage, gathered by 60 people riding bicycles, while finding —

  • Close passes and conflicts at intersections were the most frequent near-miss types.
  • Near-misses were more common during morning peaks, on roads with 30 mph speed limits and without bicycling infrastructure.
  • Bicycling infrastructure had a protective role but more needs to be done to address close passing and junction conflicts.

According to Road.cc,

One of the study’s senior authors, Nicola Christie, said cycling near misses were often “overlooked” in official statistics as they sometimes go unreported. Calling them “crucial indicators of road safety,” the professor explained that the findings “show that most near misses happen on roads without cycling infrastructure, and that junctions are particularly hazardous.”

“One of the benefits of using helmet-mounted cameras and voice-activated reporting as we did in this study is that they offer an easy and effective way to gather data on cycling safety, which can be used to evaluate the impact of infrastructure changes and safety campaigns,” she explained.

“This research adds to the growing evidence that cycling infrastructure helps protect cyclists and that Transport for London’s action plan to improve cycling safety is paying off.”

Just more evidence that even painted bike lanes can improve safety.

……….

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

A self-entitled street vigilante was released from a Florida jail, following a viral incident where she got out of her Bentley to confront a bunch of ebike-riding kids for popping wheelies — probably on electric motorbikes, rather than ped-assist ebikes — even though they obeyed her demand to “get off the road” by moving to a nearby bike path, then snatched a phone out of one kid’s hand and threatened to throw it into a canal, before driving off on the bike path. Although it sounds like the judge in this case might be just a tad biased.

Speaking of bias, London’s Telegraph accuses “even bicyclists” of routinely violating a new 10 mph construction zone speed limit in the Islington neighborhood. Which might make sense if every bicycle came equipped with a speedometer, like motor vehicles. Or if bicyclists posed the same risks to others as people in cars.

Sometimes, it’s people on two wheels behaving badly.

The government council in County Cork, Ireland is considering a 14 mph speed limit for bicycles on a local greenway, accusing “speed merchants…in Lycra just whipping past” pedestrians.

………

Local 

At the same time CARB is killing the state ebike voucher program, the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments has launched their own voucher program, offering eligible residents up to $2,000 towards the purchase of a high-quality e-cargo bike. Although you’ll have to find a way around the paper’s paywall if you want to read the story.

Still no justice in Lynwood, where the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors renewed a $20,000 reward for the hit-and-run driver who killed a motorcyclist in a left-cross crash in 2004.

 

State

Over 1,500 people turned out for Saturday’s annual Bike the Coast series of rides in San Diego County, along with a post-ride festival benefiting Bike MS.

San Diego cops plan to use engagement before enforcement in dealing with people illegally riding ebikes on the beachfront bike path in Pacific Beach.

Sad news from Salinas, where a woman riding a bicycle was killed in a right-hook collision with a semi driver, the latest in a long string of local crashes.

 

National

About damn time. Montgomery County, Maryland finally got around to banning drivers from parking, stopping or standing in bike lanes.

 

International

Cycling Weekly offers a bikepacker’s guide to “jaw-dropping” destinations around the world. As long as you don’t consider anything between Quebec and Patagonia part of the world.

Police in Cancun, Mexico arrested a woman for the hit-and-run death of a man on a bicycle, after identifying her car on security video.

A Canadian law professor advocates for the Idaho Stop Law, arguing that requiring bike riders to obey the same laws as motorists creates a false sense of equivalency. Maybe California can finally get an Idaho Stop, aka Stop as Yield, once Gavin Newsom’s veto pen leaves office next year.

Apparently, you can now add Navarra, in Northern Spain, to your bike bucket list.

This is who we share the road with. A pair of Indian men were sentenced to “rigorous” life imprisonment for the road rage murder of another man seven years ago, who shouted at them after they dented his car with their motorbike.

 

Competitive Cycling

USA Cycling has opened their fourth annual online fundraising auction, offering everything from entry to Unbound or the Leadville 100 to Tadej Pogačar’s signed World Champion jersey.

Keep your eyes open for Belgian cyclist Wout van Aert running, not riding, through the streets of Laguna Beach.

Cycling Up To Date hosts a rather pointless debate over whether Tadej Pogačar could still dominate using gear from ten years ago. Because the answer depends entirely on whether everyone else was using that same decade-old tech, too. 

 

Finally…

If you’re looking for a new career as a serial ebike snatcher, try not to take one with a hidden AirTag. Remembering when a bike crash meant With or Without You performed without him.

And the mayor of New York is now one of us.

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin. 

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

More on CARB’s quiet murder of scandal-plagued CA Ebike Incentives, and Metro forgets HLA bike lanes on Sunset busway

November 3, 2025 / / Comments Off on More on CARB’s quiet murder of scandal-plagued CA Ebike Incentives, and Metro forgets HLA bike lanes on Sunset busway
Day 307 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025. 

………

Okay, so the Dodgers won, after nearly giving me and everyone in Los Angeles a heart attack. 

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I credit a lifetime of bicycling for maintaining a steady pulse rate throughout the game. How anyone else in this city managed to survive, I have no idea.

And if you’re heading to the victory parade today, for Kershaw’s sake, take Metro.

Or better yet, ride your bike. Just be careful where you lock it up, and how, to make sure it’s still there when the parade it over. 

Meanwhile, today’s photo is a reminder of the total disaster we all endured trying to apply for ebike vouchers earlier this year.

As if any of us actually needed one.  

………

The San Diego Union-Tribune’s Jeff McDonald followed-up on the collapse of the California Ebike Incentive Program, in a story that doesn’t appear to be hidden behind the paper’s usual paywall.

After getting a typically non-responsive response from the California Air Resources Board about CARB’s co-opting of the remaining $18 million in ebike voucher funding, McDonald, who has closely followed the story from its very messy beginning to its inglorious end, wrote this.

The state air board did not respond to follow-up questions about the flawed administration of the e-bike program or two investigations into Pedal Ahead, the San Diego nonprofit selected to manage the effort whose website is now suspended…

The San Diego Union-Tribune first reported in June 2024 that the SANDAG e-bike initiative was troubled. Agency officials had begun investigating Pedal Ahead early last year for failing to comply with terms of the grant it had been awarded two years earlier.

At the same time, the Union-Tribune reported, CARB was conducting its own review into Pedal Ahead’s management, and criminal investigators at the California Department of Justice were scrutinizing the San Diego nonprofit.

Yet nothing in CARB’s statement took any responsibility for the failed administration of the program. Or for selecting a highly questionable administrator for the program.

Pedal Ahead founder Edward Clancy was deeply involved in an investigation into an alleged bribery scandal involving foreign money donated to San Diego-area politicians by agreeing to wear a wire for the FBI. However, he was not charged with any wrongdoing himself.

Then again, people who co-operate with investigations in order to land bigger fish often aren’t. Just ask Los Angeles “City Staffer B.”

Again, according to McDonald,

But in his leadership of Pedal Ahead, publicly filed tax returns and Clancy’s own comments raised questions about how the organization accounted for the millions of dollars it received from government contracts.

The nonprofit’s revenue and expenses reported on federal tax returns did not always match publicly announced contracts. Clancy told the Union-Tribune that $1 million Pedal Ahead collected was in a bank despite not being included in declared revenue.

“Funding is in a money market account, per contract requirement to yield interest that goes back into the program,” he said in a 2024 email. “To date, there is additional approximate $34,000 earned.”

Finally, writing in a very deadpan, journalistic voice, McDonald concluded,

General accepted accounting principles do not allow nonprofits to withhold revenue or spending from their public tax filings.

Which is putting it mildly.

Yet no one at CARB has ever taken responsibility for orchestrating this massive shitshow, instead sweeping it under the rug by co-opting the funding and just shutting the whole damn thing down.

Nor, to the best of my knowledge, has anyone ever asked them to.

Full disclosure, McDonald reached out to me for a comment on Friday, but I didn’t see his email until after Friday’s game, and I apparently responded too late for his deadline.

But this is what I would have said.

This is an extremely car-centric decision that defeats the entire purpose of Ebike Voucher Program, which was to provide viable alternatives to driving to reduce pollution and traffic congestion. The fact is, there is no such thing as a clean car; even an entirely electric car has to get power somewhere, and still contributes to particulate pollution from brake and tire wear. This also discriminates against older and disabled people who can no longer drive and need a viable transportation option. Simply put, there is nothing good about this extremely short-sighted decision.

In retrospect, I may have sounded a tad miffed. When I intended sound miffed as hell.

I have repeatedly called for an investigation into this program. But if anyone has actually looked into it — whether the legislature that approved it, the governor’s office, or the state attorney general — not one word has leaked to the public.

Instead, everyone seems to have simply gone along with CARB’s attempt to quietly kill the whole program, and hope no one noticed.

We have, though.

We have.

Meanwhile, a project manager with the Sacramento Area Bike Advocates politely rips into them, too.

………

Maybe one lawsuit isn’t enough for them.

Just months after Metro was sued for violating Measure HLA by not including the bike lanes called for in the Los Angeles Mobility Plan 2035 on their makeover of the Vermont Ave corridor, the county transit agency appears to be making the same mistake on Sunset Blvd.

According to a little noticed item in last week’s Metro Community Relations Newsletter, the agency is planning to build bus lanes on the busy boulevard, while once again ignoring bike lanes called for in the Mobility Plan.

Get involved and hear about the changes coming to Sunset Bl—virtually!
Metro is planning improvements to make travel along Sunset Bl faster and more reliable. The project will improve a 4.3-mile stretch from Vermont Av to Havenhurst Dr by adding bus priority lanes for Metro Line 2 on weekdays during peak hours. Each day, about 20,000 riders travel this segment, and the priority lanes will make their trips faster and more reliable. In addition, the project will benefit over 111,000 residents and nearly 60,000 jobs located within a 10-minute walk of the corridor. Join us for a virtual community meeting on Wednesday, November 12, from 6 to 7 p.m. to learn more about the Sunset Bl Bus Priority Lanes Project. You can participate online using this link (Meeting ID: 815 9457 3537) or by phone at 213.338.8477. Visit the project website to learn more: metro.net/sunsetbl.

The project runs 4.3 miles along Sunset, threading through West Hollywood, Hollywood and East Hollywood, while the Mobility Plan calls for four miles of painted, unprotected bike lanes along the corridor, in addition to bus lanes and pedestrian enhancements.

So let’s all applaud Metro for taking the long-overdue step of building bus lanes on Sunset. But maybe we could gently nudge them towards keeping the city’s bike lane promises, too.

Speaking of which, Joe Linton, who seems to be everywhere these days, reminds us about that virtual meeting to discuss the project on the 12th of this month.

Mark your calendars: Metro will host a virtual outreach meeting Wed Nov. 12 6-7 p.m. for proposed Sunset Blvd bus lanes through Hollywood & East Hollywood – Vermont to Havenhurst (just west of Fairfax)

— Joe Linton (@lintonjoe.bsky.social) 2025-10-29T19:36:11.823Z

………

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

A writer for Road.cc puts tongue firmly in cheek, and considers what would happen if the ultra-conservative Reform Party takes the reins in the UK, concluding bikes would make the obvious scapegoat after they get rid of all the foreigners.

No bias here. A Cambridge, England letter writer complained about an election mailer that said “Your vote can save lives,” arguing that bike safety isn’t the only issue facing the city, and two of the three recent bicycling deaths shouldn’t count because they happened on streets with shiny new bike lanes.

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

A 49-year old Singaporean man was lucky to get off with just two months behind bars for blowing through a red light on his bicycle, and killing a 70-year old woman.

………

Local 

The Sierra Club spends time with the river channels of Los Angeles, which is where most of our local bike paths are.

Momentum credits Santa Monica resident Caro Vilain for using her clever social media videos for the greater good “to help revolutionize the way we perceive urban cycling.”

 

State

Two Encinitas ebike retailers closed, with one owner blaming a shift to illegal electric motorbikes rather than more traditional ped-assist ebikes.

Join the club. San Diego’s 10 News reports that the city is not making progress towards its promise of zero traffic deaths.

Sad news from Bakersfield, where someone riding a bicycle was killed when they allegedly ran a red light, and was struck by an arson investigator with the Bakersfield Fire Department.

More sad news, this time from Manteca, where a 15-year old boy was killed when he was struck by a train while riding his bike on a railroad trestle across the San Joaquin River, along with a friend who escaped injury.

A 25-year old Stockton man was arrested for allegedly attacking and robbing a 70-year old “elderly” woman as she was riding a bicycle; his getaway was foiled when he tried jumping into the bed of a passing pickup, and the driver apparently wasn’t having it.

 

National

In what may be the understatement of the year, Cycling West says trees make bicycling more pleasant.

Direct-to-consumer mountain bike brand YT Industries USA is the latest bike company to go belly-up, shutting down both its San Clemente and Bentonville locations, four months after its German counterpart declared insolvency.

Someone riding a bicycle was killed by an accused drunk and reckless driver in Las Vegas on Sunday, the 132nd person killed on the streets of the city just this year.

Tragic news from Austin, Texas, where a man was killed, and his two young kids injured, when a hit-and-run driver ran a red light and slammed into the bike they were all riding.

A Maine man known locally as Bicycle Larry is still missing, more than 20 years after he disappeared without a trace while riding his bike.

 

International

Momentum ranks 30 of the world’s most beautiful bicycle routes. None of which are in California, whether by design or omission. 

Bicyclists in Mérida, Yucatán are fighting to keep protective planters on a bike lane, despite calls for their removal from local businesses, who argue they interfere with tour buses and reduce street parking. In other words, kind of like anywhere else. 

A Winnipeg, Manitoba newspaper says it’s never too cold to ride a bike, as long as you’ve got the right gear. I can attest to that, although personal experience suggests it can be too snowy, too wet or just too damn miserable. 

That’s more like it. A Member of Parliament from Oxfordshire, England demanded that funding for bicycle safety be included in the country’s upcoming budget, after a series of collisions in a local town.

British mountain bikers were warned against using unauthorized trails in Coombs Wood, where two young riders were injured at an “accident black spot.”

A 77-year old Frenchman somehow rode his bicycle off the road and fell down a 130-foot ravine, surviving for three days on red wine he had in a shopping bag. Which is a vital safety reminder to always carry some form of booze on your bike. Thanks to Megan for the heads-up. 

Hundreds of bicyclists turned out for Dubai’s annual bike ride.

A group of women in their 20s and 30s are using their bicycles to reclaim the post-apartheid streets of Johannesburg, South Africa, where bicycling is no longer seen as an elite hobby or a last resort for the poor.

Jessica Alba is one of us, exploring Australia’s Gold Coast on a Lime Bike, while wearing a black-on-black Dodger’s cap, as she films her latest movie.

 

Competitive Cycling

Sad news from France, where the oldest living Olympic gold medalist died at age 101; cyclist Charles Coste won gold in team pursuit in the 1948 London Olympics, and served as a torchbearer 76 years later at last year’s Paris Games.

UK cyclist Zoe Bäckstedt, the reigning U23 cyclocross and time trial champion, urges you to “wear a helmet, please,” claiming her’s saved her life in a training crash that resulted in a broken hand and wrist fracture.

 

Finally…

Why bother riding on two wheels when one will do? That feeling when you take the wrong turn out of the airport, and startle the locals by pushing your mud-crusted bicycle out of the forest hours later.

And nothing like letting a David Bowie lyric dictate your next 3,000-mile ride.

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin. 

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

CicLAvia comes to South LA Sunday, anti-bike lane bike commuter, and reality shifts when ebike-hater downloads rental app

September 8, 2025 / / One comment
Day 251 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025. 

………

Patch offers a reminder about this weekend’s Historic South Central meets Watts CicLAvia.

Included among the highlights are the birthplace of West Coast Jazz, Watts Towers and the former LA headquarters of the Black Panthers.

Which is not a phrase I ever thought we’d use back in the day,

And BikeLA — the former Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, will host a feeder ride to the open streets event.

https://twitter.com/heybikela/status/1963666212887593338

………

A year-round London bike commuter says he’s no fan of bike lanes.

His reasoning is that a) they don’t really reduce traffic — either vehicular or on the Tube — since most people stop riding in bad weather, and b) because they’re often blocked for one reason or another.

Then there’s this.

Most British roads still have no cycle lanes, after all, but they’re still very safe for cyclists. In 2023, 24 cyclists were killed and just over a thousand seriously hurt per billion miles cycled in this country. In other words if you cycle a mile, the chance is about one in a million that you’ll be seriously hurt or worse. I’d have to commute every weekday for well over 200 years – without any holidays – before it would be likely that I’d suffer a serious mishap. Even given today’s gloomy pension prospects, I hopefully won’t have to do that.

As for the danger from cyclists, it does exist: but it’s minuscule. We Brits are roughly as likely to be killed by lightning as by a cyclist. We’re noticeably more likely to be killed in an “accident involving cattle”. In a world with cars and carbon monoxide and food poisoning in it – let alone heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s – worrying about being killed by a cyclist would be pretty illogical.

It’s only one man’s view, of course, but I consider the fear that many cyclists have of riding among motor traffic to be pretty illogical too. There are some bad and aggressive drivers out there to be sure, but that’s true of cyclists too, and in fact most drivers in my experience are safe: sometimes even friendly.

He’s right. But wrong.

I made a pretty similar calculation some time back, too.

In 2009, Americans took 4 billion trips by bicycle.

How safe is bicycling? Cyclists suffered in an estimated 52,000 injuries in 2009; making your odds of returning home safely from any given ride nearly 77,000 to one; the chances of surviving any given ride were over 6.3 million to one in your favor.

On the other hand, people do get injured — or worse — riding a bicycle.

So while the odds of completing any given ride safely are astronomically in your favor, they’re still odds. Which means there’s always a chance of losing, infinitesimally small though it may be.

And the whole point of bike lanes is to improve all our odds of getting home in one piece.

He also makes another mistake common to experienced bicyclists.

You may feel comfortable riding in traffic, just like I did for years. But bike lanes aren’t for those of us who feel confident mixing it up with motorists.

They’re for the people who don’t.

Bike lanes — particularly protected bike lanes — provide space for the overwhelming majority of people who don’t feel safe sharing the same road space with drivers.

Especially with bad drivers, which to be honest, most people are at one time or another. They drink, they speed, they use their phones, and just do stupid stuff.

You know, as people do.

So if you feel comfortable riding in traffic, great. But that doesn’t mean everyone else should, because they don’t.

And won’t.

Meanwhile, a Santa Rosa bicyclist insists our London friend is not the only one who feels that way.

………

Another London writer, with tongue planted firmly in cheek this time, says he hates bike riders.

God, I hate cyclists: shooting the lights, ignoring zebras, mounting the pavement, overtaking on the inside, thinking they’re so damned virtuous, being all vegan, pro-Palestine and probably trans, crouched over their racing handlebars like they’re on the Tour de frigging France, in their silly hats with those mincy little shoes, skin-tight shorts disappearing up their bum cracks…

But when he’s on a bike, “the pedal is on the other foot.”

Bloody motorists: fat, entitled, Farage-voting sales reps, slumped in the driving seat like Jabba the Hut, killing the planet with every lazy depression of the gas pedal, oblivious to my presence, distracted by TikTok, missing the light changes, failing to indicate, smoking fags and eating burgers, overlapping into designated cycle lanes, clogging up a city that is perfectly well served by trains and buses…

But one thing we can all agree on, he says, is everyone hates ebikes.

And they’re all drug dealers anyway, and gang members and petty crims, which is why they wear balaclavas and ride with their hoods up. Who cycles with a hood up unless they’re off to bash an old lady or sell heroin to schoolgirls? And if not drug dealers then, worse, they’re Deliveroo and Uber Eats stormtroopers, dispensing poisonous portions of fatty crap to the last few citizens not on Ozempic, feeding the obesity epidemic with cold cheeseburgers their consumers couldn’t be bothered to get up off the sofa and go out and get for themselves; racing to hit the targets they need to make ends meet, unregulated, killing pedestrians to get to the front doors of the people they’re killing with pizzas; a situation I blame, when I’m driving my car, on the illegal immigrants riding the bikes, but, when I’m riding my lefty pedal bike, on the greedy capitalist fat cats at “Big Food”. Farageist or Polanskyite, there’s nothing to love about e-bikes.

And as for the rented ones, the Limes and the Forests and the Santanders, they sit at the top of the pyramid of evil: no accountability, no ownership, no investment in the infrastructure, no dog in the fight. Random chancers leaping aboard them helmetless, no notion of the rules of the road, no tax paid, giggly gangs of students on summer evenings riding seven abreast like the Von bloody Trapps, leaving their bikes, when they run out of juice, strewn across pavements and shop doorways, piles of them in broken heaps all over town like dead green horses at the back door of the slaughterhouse. The very end of civil society.

And then, he downloaded the Lime app, and his world was turned inside out like an Escher lithograph.

Seriously, it’s worth taking a few minutes to read the whole thing. Because it might just be the best laugh you have all day.

………

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

A Naples, Florida advocacy group offers sad but necessary advice on how to get away unharmed in a confrontation with an angry driver, including avoiding eye contact, which can be interpreted as confrontational. Just like with angry apes and aggressive subway riders. 

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

Life is cheap in London, where a 45-year old man walked without a day behind bars for breaking a woman’s jaw when he crashed into her while riding his bike on the wrong side of the road; he was fined the equivalent of a “paltry and insulting” $675.

………

Local 

That’s more like it. A 64-year old Long Beach man was sentenced to 30 years to life behind bars for the meth-fueled crash that killed 12-year old Noel Bascon in 2020 as the boy rode his bike across a Costa Mesa intersection with his father; Richard David Lavalle’s sentence was doubled because of his prior criminal convictions, and charged as a 3rd strike. He was credited with over four years time served.

 

State

Sunnyvale City Councilmember Richard Mehlinger suffered a broken left thumb and right wrist when he was struck by a driver while riding his bike; the “staunch traffic safety advocate” said the crash showed the “necessity and urgency” of installing bike lanes.

Around two dozen bicyclists rode with their dogs on a three-mile circuit along San Francisco’s Sunset Dunes on the Dogon’ Bike Ride, organized by comedian Sarah Catz-Hyman.

 

National

A pair of entrepreneurs scored a $200,000 invested on Shark Tank, after a stationary bike ride convinced Kevin O’Leary and another shark they had indeed invented a more comfortable bike seat.

A guest writer for Bike Portland says the city’s greenways won’t be safe until they build them that way.

Dozens of Denver residents rode across the city in search of bagels and matzo ball soup on the city’s annual Jewish Deli Bike Tour.

A 22-year old Ohio man set out on a bike ride in 1973, and was never seen again; his body was finally identified this year, 52 years after he disappeared after last being seen in Cleveland — and 45 years after remains were found in a Whitney, Ontario park, 461 miles away.

Hundreds of people turned out for a protest ride in central Philadelphia to demand better protection for bicyclists, after a 67-year old bike advocate was killed in a collision while riding a bike.

 

International

A Montreal columnist complains about possible plans to close a roadway to motor vehicle traffic, arguing that there’s no need to provoke a battle between bicyclists and drivers when so many of us are both. And yet, the roads are unevenly apportioned overwhelmingly in favor of one over the other.

An English man returned to his home after riding his bike around the world,  arriving back in Cornwall 477 days and 22,300 miles after he left.

Life is cheap in Ireland, where a taxi driver on his way to work walked without a day behind bars for crashing into a six-year old boy riding a bike; he was fined the equivalent of $879 for the crash that left the kid with bruising and a broken arm.

The good news is, the coach of the Paris Saint-Germain soccer team is one of us; the bad news, he crashed his bike and broke his collarbone, and will be out of action after surgery to repair it.

UNESCO World Heritage site Albi, France successfully melded a 19th-century railway viaduct across the Tarn River with a lightweight new bike and pedestrian bridge.

Drew Barrymore says her 12-year old daughter crashed her ebike while riding in the mountains of France, and ended up using her bra as a tourniquet for her badly ripped elbow.

French endurance cyclist Sofiane Sehili’s attempt to set a new record for bicycling across Eurasia ended badly at the Russian border, where he was accused of crossing the border illegally and tossed in jail, just 248 miles short of his destination, and 10,936 miles after setting out from Lisbon, Portugal.

Horrible story from India, where a 40-year old man was stabbed to death and his body dumped in the woods over accusations of practicing witchcraft, after riding his bike to a nearby village for repairs.

 

Competitive Cycling

Danish sprinter Mads Pedersen claimed victory in Sunday’s Stage 15 of the Vuelta a España, while two-time Tour de France champ Jonas Vingegaard remained in the red leader’s jersey, with João Almeida 48 seconds back in second place.

Once again, someone protesting the war in Gaza disrupted the Vuelta, causing two riders to crash when he jumped out from the side of the road waving a Palestinian flag; because of the repeated protests, the Israel Premier Tech cycling team switched to new uniforms without the team name.

Welsh Olympic medalist and 2018 Tour de France champ Geraint Thomas called it a career after Sunday’s final stage of the Tour of Britain, capping his career in his hometown of Cardiff, as the race was won by 22-year old Frenchman Romain Gregoire.

Pre-race favorite Neilson Powless was forced to run with his bike when he suffered a flat in Saturday’s Maryland Cycling Classic; he ended up finishing 18th, well behind eventual men’s winner Sandy Dujardin, while Poland’s Agnieszka Skalniak-Sojka won the women’s race.

Around 70 bicyclists were injured, some seriously, in a mass crash in a German bike race involving more than 1,000 amateur and semi-professional cyclists.

Tragic news from Malaysia, where a 28-year old man was killed in an amateur race when he tried to avoid crashing into a group of riders, falling onto the other side of the road where he was struck by a motorist.

 

Finally…

Nothing like stumbling on a bicycle that’s been rolling in the deep like it was sung by Adele. The mountain bike of the future, as designed by AI.

And motorcyclist pot, meet bike-rider kettle.

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin. 

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