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Bass out as LA gets a new immigrant mayor; LA gives us all the finger with HLA noncompliance; and Claremont follows LA’s bike plan blunder

November 6, 2026 / bikinginla / No comments

By now, you’ve undoubtedly heard that Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass officially conceded yesterday, ushering in the Nithya Raman era at LA City Hall, and making her the city’s first mayor of South Asian descent.

According to LAist,

Nithya Raman, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who offered a message of hope to a city beset by crises, has beaten Karen Bass in the race for Los Angeles mayor, the first time an incumbent has been ousted from that office in nearly a quarter century…

“And that work starts now, so that we can build housing that people can afford, parks for our children to play in, a transit system that can get people where they need to go, a city that is safe for its working people and its families, and a city government that is actually capable of delivering on its promises,” she said in the statement.

“I love this city, and I love its people, and I cannot wait to get started on building a better future together with all of you,” she continued. “Thank you so much, Los Angeles.”

She is also the first immigrant in memory to lead what has become a city of immigrants.

And in the Los Angeles Times’ look at how Raman will remake City Hall, the very first word is “bike.”

Bike lanes. Housing vouchers. A new police chief and many more new apartments, even in single-family neighborhoods.

And above all, data to find out if City Hall programs are working.

That’s a word that has been missing in action for the last four years, as the mayor led the city with a single-minded, and largely failed, focus on reducing homelessness.

Which isn’t to say that housing people living on the streets shouldn’t be a primary focus of a new Raman administration.

But it shouldn’t be the only one.

Los Angeles is failing as a city, with just two years to get our shit together before the world comes to our door for the ’28 LA Olympics. Will those visitors find today’s pothole-riddled and trash-lined streets? Or will Raman somehow find a way to make LA work in the short time before they get here?

This is how Streets For All founder Michael Schneider framed Raman’s ascension.

We will finally have a Mayor who is a trained urban planner who believes that you shouldn’t have to risk your life to cross the street, or ride a bike. Who believes in prioritizing efficient transit, and will accelerate good projects in the pipeline. Who endorsed Measure HLA and will tell city departments to stop fighting it. Who wants to build a ton more housing and will cut red tape to do so. A Mayor who is thoughtful, and cares about solving problems instead of speaking in platitudes.

However, it will be up to us to hold her feet to the fire, and ensure this becomes the bikeable, walkable, livable city we’ve been promised.

Because it isn’t now. And that, more than anything, is why Bass lost.

……….

Speaking of Measure HLA, Streetsblog’s Joe Linton reports that the city continues failing to comply with the requirements of the ordinance.

According to Linton, the city has installed only 300 feet of new bus/bike/walk/accessibility facilities since Measure HLA became law in early 2024. That’s because the city insists that the only project “HLA required the city to install is a 300 foot of Reseda Boulevard bike lanes in Tarzana,” as they’ve continued to find creative workarounds to avoid complying with the measure.

But, according to Linton,

But you shouldn’t have to come to Streetsblog to find this quantified. Measure HLA required the city to set up a website to “provide the public access to monitoring and evaluation data for the implementation of the Mobility Plan as required by [Measure HLA].”

The city’s HLA dashboard website has been online since early 2025, but it’s basically a sad joke: incomplete, opaque, and in many places outdated and incorrect. It’s worse than malicious compliance.

The public still has no straightforward way of tracking city progress related to HLA or the Mobility Plan that HLA requires the city to implement.

In other words, just like with Vision Zero and the mobility plan, where the city was required to maintain a website listing bicycle and pedestrian death, and hold monthly meetings to update the public on progress building out the plan.

Something they gave up on in both cases, when it became just too damned inconvenient for them.

Hopefully, Raman will force the city into compliance with the law. Because right now, the city is just basically giving us all the finger.

………

She gets it.

A Pomona College professor complains that Claremont is one of the state’s most dangerous cities for children on bicycles, as well as one of the worst for speed-related injury collisions. Yet local officials are wasting funds on a hobbled transportation plan.

According to an op-ed by Heather Williams in the Claremont Courier,

Will our elected officials rise to the moment and make Claremont safer and greener? Or will they squander our best-in-a-generation opportunity to change that?

In March 2025, Claremont’s City Council authorized a $482,919 contract with Alta Planning+Design to develop an Active Transportation Plan. The objective was laudable: study our streets, consult residents, and develop a comprehensive strategy for making Claremont safer, more accessible, and more environmentally sustainable.

But she was disappointed to learn that the plan they came back with is disjointed and disconnected — because those were the marching orders Alta was given.

According to participants, Alta’s pedestrian proposals include promising improvements: raised crosswalks, curb extensions, flashing pedestrian beacons, and traffic-calming measures. But the proposed bicycle network is fragmented, with protected lanes that begin and end unpredictably, disconnected routes, and stretches offering little meaningful protection.

Why? Advisory group participants report that Alta was instructed to preserve existing vehicle lane configurations, landscaped areas, medians, and substantial on-street parking, while avoiding conflicts with driveways and school drop-off areas.

These restrictions effectively rule out many of the changes necessary to create continuous, protected bicycle routes.

According to Williams, city leaders need to explain to constituents why they’re spending nearly half a million dollars on a plan that “institutionalizes the very deficiencies it was commissioned to address.”

Most importantly, council members should ask a simple question: would they feel comfortable allowing a 10-year-old child to bicycle independently along the routes this plan recommends?

If the answer is no, the plan isn’t finished.

That was exactly the problem with the first draft of the 2010 Los Angeles bike plan, also prepared by Alta, which brought the phrase “currently unfeasible” into LA’s biking lexicon.

Alta returned a bike plan where most of the key connecting routes were considered “currently unfeasible” because they required the removal of parking spaces or travel lanes — or even just the narrowing thereof — and that was something beyond the comprehension of city leaders.

Fortunately, that plan was rejected by the city Planning Commission at the urging of the bicycling community, which told Alta and LADOT to go back to the drawing board.

Literally, in this case.

The result was a bold plan that re-envisioned Los Angeles streets, and how Angelenos could get around in the years to come. And which was unanimously approved by the city council.

Then allowed to wither and die on the shelf.

In fact, UCLA’s Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies estimates that just five percent of the bicycling facilities called for in the city’s mobility plan have been built out — which is why Measure HLA was required, and passed by an overwhelming majority of LA voters.

The question is, will that be the route that Claremont will be forced to take? Or will city leaders listen to local residents and send Alta back to the drawing board, with instructions to come back with something that actually works?

Let alone something that will save lives, and move the city far down on that list of dangerous cities for bike-riding kids.

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Local

Fifty-five-year old Jose Antonio Zayas pled not guilty to murder in the fatal shooting of a Culver City bus driver who refused to turn around or stop in the middle of a traffic lane; Zayas allegedly fled on a bicycle taken from the rack on the front of the bus after the shooting. No one has said whether the bike was actually his, however, or if he just grabbed someone else’s bike to get away. Which probably the least important detail, but still.

State

Circulate San Diego offers an open letter explaining their Vision Zero budget priorities. Which is pretty much the same case they made in their last open letter on the subject, signifying the lack of progress.

The Guardian examines how Lancaster transformed the former Highway 14 car sewer into a a leafy oasis of walkable ramblas rebranded as The BLVD.

The San Francisco Chronicle dropped its usual draconian paywall for a story about a “whimsical” birdhouse-lined bike trail just a BART ride from the city.

Bad news from Elk Grove, where a 72-year old man suffered life-threatening injuries when he was struck by a driver while riding his bike.

California appropriated $75,000 for an art and storytelling project by Indigenous groups at a new $400,000 bike park under construction in Northern California.

National

A Salt Lake City man gets his stolen Surly back after a friend spotted it at a local bike co-op, four years after it had gone missing.

Sad news from Michigan, where an 82-year old man was killed when a driver crossed the center line and hit his bike head-on. Although despite what the story says, he was not “killed after being hit by a vehicle,” unless someone put him out of his misery afterwards.

International

Momentum debunks ten anti-bicycling myths used to argue against bike lanes. Which is pretty much the same arguments they debunked before.

Garmin is working with WAZE to provide drivers with an early warning about the presence of bicyclists.

Talk about missing the point. A writer for Pinkbike considers how El Salvador went from “murder capital to mountain bike haven.” Yet somehow fails to mention flawed elections and President Nayib Bukele ignoring a constitutional ban on two consecutive terms, while glossing over mass arrests, imprisonment without trials, and extrajudicial killings. But I guess none of that matters as long as it’s a great place to bike, right?

Tragic news from Bolivia, where the family of a 33-year old South Korean influencer has asked people to stop baseless speculating and malicious comments after he was killed by a hit-and-run truck driver while on an around-the-world bike tour.

London’s city assembly has called on the mayor to halt installation of floating bus stops until they agree on a better design, because of the danger they pose to blind bus riders when bike riders don’t stop like they’re supposed to.

Cycling Weekly follows a 127-mile singletrack trail along the UK’s River Wye, from its source in the boggy swamps of Wales’ Cambrian Mountains to the Bristol Channel.

A writer for The Independent makes the case for requiring numbered license plates for British bicyclists to rein in scofflaw riders. Because it has clearly worked so well to make drivers follow the laws, right?

Beijing, China has opened a new 21-mile riverfront trail along the south bank of the Qinghe River.

Finally…

That feeling when your KOM defeated by a squirrel. Why settle for natural loam when you can make your own?

And not all Limerick’s are funny. Or rhyme.

Especially the anti-bike ones.

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin.

Category: Morning Links / Tags: Alta Design, bicycling, bike lanes, Claremont, currently unfeasible, Joe Linton, Karen Bass, Los Angeles, Measure HLA, Mobility Plan 2035, Nithya Raman, Reseda Blvd, Streetsblog LA, Tarzana

’28 Olympics provide an opportunity to build a real LA bike network, and fight in-person to close a gap in the LA River bike path today

November 5, 2026 / bikinginla / No comments

A Los Angeles bike shop manager says the ’28 Olympics provide a perfect opportunity to build out an effective, connected bike network.

Writing for Planetizen, Alexander Golden argues that the city could emulate Paris in the buildup to the 2024 Olympics.

With less than 650 days to go and no concrete plan for moving the 3-5 million expected visitors around the city, Los Angeles should be looking to take as much strain off its Metro system during LA28 as possible. Given that the city is more than ready to embrace cycling, one answer could be to look to Paris’ “first bikeable olympics.” Two years before the opening ceremony Paris had no Olympic bike plan at all. By the time the Games rolled around, Paris had created a robust bike network that not only served Olympic spectators, but continues to move Parisians around the city to this day. If L.A. starts now, it could see the same lasting success.

However, Los Angeles has thus far gone the other way, despite years of clearly stated demands of local residents.

Similar to Paris, L.A. residents have spent the last decade begging officials for more bike infrastructure — with limited success. LA’s Mobility Plan 2035, adopted in 2016, maps roughly 260 miles of protected bike lanes and 660 miles of unprotected lanes. Execution has been the problem. By the city’s own count, only 22 miles of the protected network had been built by late 2023, along with 285 of unprotected lanes.

In 2024 voters tried to force the issue by passing Measure HLA, which won 65.5% of the vote. HLA requires the city to add the plans for bike, bus and pedestrian upgrades whenever it rebuilds a street. The City Administrative Officers report on the measurecalled it an unfunded mandate, and the ballot analysis put its cost at $2.5 billion over 10 years. Facing a roughly $1 billion deficit, the city cut the budgets of LADOT and StreetsLA, the two departments that build street safety projects.

It’s worth reading the whole thing. Because, if the current trends hold, Los Angeles is on the verge of electing a progressive mayor, like Paris’ Anne Hidalgo in the years leading up to the ’24 Paris Olympics.

I’m tempted to say we can only hope that a Nithya Raman administration would follow through on her stated support for bicycling and other forms of alternative transportation leading up to the games, and beyond.

But we can do more.

We can demand it. And we should.

……….

Speaking of which, I received the following email from Streets Are For Everyone yesterday.

A critical project to close a gap in the LA River Bike Path near Griffith Park is at risk of further delays, and we need your help!

Public comment at Thursday’s Recreation and Parks Task Force meeting will be accepted in person only, so we need as many advocates as possible to show up in support of this important connection.

Please join us tomorrow morning at 10:30 AM to speak in support of this critical project. Your presence and public comment can help demonstrate the community’s strong support for closing this gap.

Recreation and Parks Task Force Meeting Details

Thursday, November 5, 2026
10:30 AM
Valley Plaza Recreation Center
12240 Archwood Street, North Hollywood, CA 91606

Again, public comment will be accepted in person only.

Context

The approximately one-mile section between Riverside Drive and Forest Lawn Drive, known as “LARiverway – LA River Bike Path Phase 4,” is facing major opposition from some in the local equestrian community.

The project has already cleared environmental review and received City Council approval; however, the Recreation and Parks Department still needs to grant the rights necessary to establish the right-of-way and move forward. An earlier agenda item to approve the Grant of Rights was deferred following significant pushback, again, from some members of the local equestrian community.

This Thursday, the Recreation and Parks Task Force will hear from both equestrian and cycling advocates. We need cyclists and community members to attend in person and show strong support for completing this important connection.

I have written suggested talking points which you can access here: Talking Points – LA River Bike Path Phase 4.

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SAFE also invites you to attend their observance of the World Day of Remembrance for the the victims of traffic violence, which will be held just off the Pasadena CicLAvia route, below, a week from Sunday.

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The last CicLAvia of the year takes place on Sunday, November 15th when the open streets event returns to Pasadena for just the second time; CicLAvia offers highlights you can expect along the route.

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In news that really shouldn’t surprise anyone, a new study of collapsable, aka foldable, bike helmets has found that on average, they provide less protection than other bike helmets, although there is nothing inherent in their design that would prevent them from being improved to match the risks protection of other bike helmets.

………

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

London’s Westminster Council says it just doesn’t know where bicyclists should go after the recent pedestrianization of Oxford Street, even though the council had previously published plans for alternative bike routes. In other word, when asked where bike riders should now go, they politely said go to hell.

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

Boston cops are looking for a bike rider who “went berserk” when a man told him to stop riding on the sidewalk, arguing with the victim before chasing him down and punching him in the face, then returning to take pictures of the man lying on the ground. While that’s major asshole behavior, it does seem to lower the bar a tad for berserking.

A Long Island man faces charges after throwing an object at a Tesla, then spitting on the car and pulling a pocket knife on the driver after the driver rolled down his window to ask him why; the driver then struck the man when he was attempting to get away. At least that’s his story, and he’s sticking to it, although it seems likely that he may have done something to provoke that response, but still.

Life is cheap in the UK, where a 38-year old London man was sentenced to less that four years behind bars for punching a man nearly twice his age to death, because the older man had told a kid riding a Lime bike on the sidewalk to slow down.

………

Local

LA officials are encouraging feedback on the second phase of remaking Westwood Blvd to install dedicated bus and bike lanes, and are willing to bribe you with the somewhat slight possibility of winning a $50 gift card.

State

A San Francisco woman tells the local public radio and TV station how much she loves riding her ebike 12 miles to work every day, and how much she’ll miss it when she switches back to driving for the winter. Which raises the obvious question of why switch, then.

San Franciscans have reaffirmed their vote to remove cars from the former Great Highway, which has been converted to the Sunset Dunes linear park, by a nearly two-thirds margin.

If you think you’ve seen women’s cyclist Lotte Kopecky or her husband, Axel Merckx, riding around the Bay Area, you’re probably right.

National

The Pedaling Relief Project established by Seattle’s Cascade Bicycle Club reached a dramatic milestone by rescuing two million pounds of food and essential goods by bicycle and delivering them to local food banks.

A 64-year old construction flagger faces a charge of criminally negligent homicide for the death of a school teacher walking her bike through a construction zone in my ostensibly bike-friendly Colorado hometown, after allegedly flagging her into the path of a semi-truck four months ago; the charge carries a maximum penalty of one to three years, plus two years of mandatory probation. Although you’ll have to get around my hometown paper’s paywall if you want to read it.

A woman in her 30’s describes being terrified of her own body for most of her life after living with spinal scoliosis, until she moved to Colorado and accepted an invitation for a bike ride, and what she thought would be an easy ride around town turned into a 20-mile ride into the countryside.

The family of 34-year old Boston transportation planner begged city counselors to turn their words into action, and improve safety on the street where she was killed riding to work; they also announced plans to distribute the $100,000 raised after her death to ten local advocacy groups.

Tuesday’s blue tsunami extended to ballot measures pushed by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, which all passed, including measures supporting outdoor dining and speeding the construction of bus and bike lanes.

A Philadelphia bike ride protesting against Jewish-owned businesses has been roundly and rightfully condemned by Pennsylvania’s two US Senators, the state attorney general and local organizations. Just to be clear, protesting against the government of Israel is no more antisemitic than protesting Italy is anti-Catholic, but extending that protest to individual Jews is.

International

Life is cheap in British Columbia, where prosecutors are asking for a lousy two years probation for a 63-year old man who ran a red light a full six seconds after it had changed from green, killing a 68-year old woman riding a bicycle — but it’s no biggie, because he was thinking about his poor mother in the hospital instead of watching the road in an effort not to send anyone else there.

The four people arrested in Toronto for protesting the forced removal of bike lanes over the objections of local officials are contesting their arrests by arguing that police are trying to stifle dissent.

A fan of the 141-year old Luton Town football club had his effort to ride to every one of the team’s away games this year prematurely ended when someone stole his bike after he stopped at Starbucks to use the loo, but says he’s been blown away by the support he’s received from the team and its supporters.

Riding without lights in Oxford, England could cost you the equivalent of $94.

In yet another example of keeping a dangerous driver on the road until it’s too late, the killer hit-and-run driver who dragged a British bike rider under his car for nearly five minutes, while repeatedly swerving to dislodge the victim, has been sentenced to 25 to life behind bars, along with a lifetime ban on driving, after he was convicted of murder; he had 28 previous convictions, including multiple driving offenses, DUIs and fleeing from police.

Competitive Cycling

Classic Italian cycling component maker Bianchi has learned the hard way that you can’t mass produce handmade quality, entering the European equivalent of bankruptcy with over $112 million in debt.

Zwift’s new hi-def video world may be a little too realistic, after a user spotted a digitized Tom Doumalin taking a dump on the side of the road.

Finally…

Now you, too, can wear Brandon McNulty’s rainbow jersey while you ride Tadej Pogačar’s Colnago. Your old ebike batteries could have a new life as someone else’s industrial energy storage system.

And nothing like going out to ride your bike, and finding a six-foot python curled up under the frame.

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin.

Category: Morning Links / Tags: 2028 Olympics, Anne Hidalgo, bicycle network, bicycling, bike lanes, cicLAvia, cyclists vs equestrians, Dept. of Recreation and Parks, LA28, Los Angeles, Los Angeles River bike path, Paris, Streets Are For Everyone, traffic violence, Twenty-Eight By '28, World Day of Remembrance

Court rules in favor of bike lanes on Fountain Ave, and victims of LA County traffic violence to be honored on World Day of Remembrance

November 3, 2026 / bikinginla / No comments

This time, the law was on our side.

A Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge ruled that the bike lanes planned for Fountain Ave can go forward, after concluding that they don’t violate CEQA or

According to WeHo Times,

In a ruling issued Monday, Nov. 2, 2026, Judge Richard L. Fruin denied a petition for writ of mandate filed by Michael J. Kilroy against the City of West Hollywood and other defendants. The court granted judgment in favor of the city, rejecting the claims raised in Kilroy’s verified petition and complaint.

The case, filed Oct. 29, 2025, challenged the city’s decision to move forward with Phase 1 of the Fountain Avenue Streetscape Project without conducting a full environmental review. Kilroy, who owns an eight-unit apartment building at 1308 N. Flores St., near the intersection of Flores Street and Fountain Avenue, argued that the city’s reliance on CEQA exemptions was improper…

The project is being implemented in two phases. Phase 1 consists of the initial roadway reconfiguration and safety improvements, while Phase 2 is expected to involve a more extensive reconstruction, including wider sidewalks where feasible, upgraded Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant curb ramps, landscaping, street lighting, traffic signal improvements and utility relocation.

However, as a commenter on the site pointed out, whether the project actually moves forward will depend entirely on the outcome of today’s election. A shift of just one vote coming from a slate of more conservative candidates running in WeHo could be enough to doom it.

So call it a win for now. Whether it stays that way is yet to be determined.

My selfie skills may suck, but today’s photo is a reminder that there’s more than one way to Bike the Vote.

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Streets Are For Everyone invites you to join them to commemorate the local victims of traffic violence on the World Say of Remembrance November 15th, this time at Pasadena City Hall.

Streets Are For Everyone (SAFE) invites you to join us and hundreds of communities worldwide for World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims on Sunday, November 15.

In 2025 alone, 705 people were struck and killed on LA County roads, and 56,893 were injured, over 6,000 of them severely. World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims is a UN-recognized day, the third Sunday in November, when communities across the world remember those lost, support those impacted by traffic violence, and take action to prevent these tragedies from ever happening.

As part of this year’s theme – Remember, Support, Act – SAFE is honored to partner with CicLAvia in presenting a large-scale public art installation featuring 705 empty chairs set up in Pasadena’s Memorial Park, each adorned with a single yellow rose, representing a person lost to traffic violence in Los Angeles County last year.

Friends and family of those who have lost a loved one at any point, anywhere (not just in LA County), are also invited to contribute to the public art installation by decorating chairs and adding them to the Field of Remembrance, or by drawing chalk-art pictures on the paths winding through this field.

Our Remembrance Ceremony includes a press event, dove release, and songs – bringing together traffic violence survivors, victims’ families, elected officials, community organizations, and advocates around these three calls to action: Remember, Support, Act. Through personal stories and remarks, the ceremony will honor those affected by preventable violence and carry forward our collective effort to put an end to traffic violence.

Event Details

Date: Sunday, November 15, 2026
Location: Pasadena Memorial Park
85 E Holly St, Pasadena, CA 91101
Field of Remembrance: 10:00 AM – 3:00 PM
Press Conference and Remembrance Ceremony: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM

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

No bias here. Anaheim city leaders are grappling with “life or death” ebike policies, even though the people causing the problems aren’t riding ebikes, but illegal e-motorbikes and non-street legal dirt bikes.

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

An Irish newspaper says “mobs of yobs” on bicycles and e-scooters armed with fireworks terrorized people walking on the newly pedestrianized Oxford Street — yet illustrated the story with long lines of cars no longer allowed there.

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Local

As usual, Metro and most other LA County transit systems will offer free rides today for Election Day. Which should be a paid legal holiday, but isn’t.

Speaking of Metro, Streetsblog has a list of Metro scoping meetings for the Sepulveda Transit Corridor beginning tomorrow night.

Also tomorrow, Pasadena will host the city’s second virtual community meeting for the 1.8-mile Pasadena and St. John avenues corridor tomorrow, as they continue to accept comments online.

South Pasadena will hold a community meeting on Thursday, Nov. 12, from 6 to 7:30 pm in the South Pasadena Middle School auditorium on the Huntington Drive-Fremont Avenue Corridor Improvements Project.

State

An Atwater intersection will now carry the name and memory of 10-year-old fourth grader who was struck and killed while riding his bike near his home and school in April.

Sad news from south Sacramento, where a man riding a bicycle was killed in a right hook by a pickup driver.

National

Eighty-four-year old Harrison Ford relies on tennis and riding his bike to stay in shape in his 80s.

A law firm says that 68% of bicyclists killed between 2015 and 2024 were not wearing helmets, but only 19% of bicycling injuries in 2024 involved head injuries. Make of that what you will, because sure as hell don’t know what it means for us.

Seattle Bike Blog calls for breaking all the city’s records for biking during the dark, rainy months.

Heartbreaking story from Oklahoma, where the family of a 16-year old boy are taking comfort in his decision to be an organ donor, just two weeks before suffering a catastrophic brain injury when he was struck by a driver while riding his bike home from a new job.

Sad news from Wisconsin, where Harry Spehar, Trek’s first product manager, died after suffering a stroke; the Vallejo, California native was 80.

International

PeopleForBikes rates the best international cities for bicycling, with the large city category led by the usual suspects, although a few German cities managed to break into the top ten; the medium-sized cities are all in Belgium and the Netherlands, while Canada fares well in the small cities camp.

Despite being in Ontario, bike lanes are not being removed in Montreal, unlike Toronto, but that didn’t keep an 18-year old man riding a bicycle from being killed by a driver in a suspected stolen car who was fleeing from police; hundreds of bicyclists staged a die-in to protest the death.

Also in Montreal, the family of an 89-year old man killed killed by a driver while trying to get into the passenger door of his car honored him with a pair of white ghost shoes suspended from a lamppost.

They get it. An Ethiopian website says “the measure of a city’s greatness is not found in the height of its buildings alone, but in the freedom of a child to walk safely, the ease with which a commuter can cycle to work, the pleasure of a family strolling beside a restored river, and the dignity of people reclaiming public spaces as their own.” Couldn’t have said it better myself.

A 29-year old Singaporean man was sentenced to five years and nine months behind bars for the 2024 death of a bike rider in Australia; he was originally charged with murder before pleading to manslaughter in August.

Competitive Cycling

If you’re going to hold a gravel race, might as well do it in the Great Karoo region of South Africa, if only so Cycling News can show off their knowledge of what multiples of giraffes and zebras are called.

Velo says Chinese bikes are in and Bianchi is out as major changes come to WorldTour sponsorships next year.

Finally…

Peddling pies by pedaling. That feeling when the insurance company says blame your marriage, not the bike crash.

And the new British version of Saturday Night Live celebrates Brits joyfully risking their lives on Lime bikes.

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin.

Category: Morning Links / Tags: bicycling, bike lanes, CEQA, Fountain Ave, Los Angeles, Pasadena, SAFE, Streets Are For Everyone, traffic violence, WeHo, West Hollywood, World Day of Remembrance

Change the law to allow DA’s to file 2nd degree murder for hit-and-runs, and drawn into WeHo politics by Fountain Ave bike lanes

October 26, 2026 / bikinginla / 4 comments

For well over a decade, I’ve been calling for a crackdown on hit-and-run drivers, including immediate driver’s license revocation and impounding their car.

But now, in light of Saturday’s horrific Montclair hit-and-run that killed two innocent people, I’m willing to reduce that to one very simple and achievable ask — change the law to allow DA’s to file a 2nd degree murder charge in hit-and-run cases.

It’s based on a very simple premise. Vehicular manslaughter is defined as “the unlawful killing of a human being with a motor vehicle, without premeditation or malice aforethought.”

But in a hit-and-run, the driver makes a conscious decision to leave the victim injured or dying in street — in this case dragging one victim over a mile with his car.

The defense would undoubtedly argue that the driver was too drunk to consciously choose to let the victim die rather than stop of call for help. But that’s something that a jury should be able to decide, never mind that he never should have been behind the wheel in the first place.

So what do you think? Is a murder charge appropriate in a case like this?

………

He gets it.

I’m used to criticizing op-eds on WeHo Online written by opponents of bike lanes, like perennial city council candidate and store owner Larry Block. So I expected the worst when I saw yet another bike-related op-ed on the West Hollywood website.

But I was pleasantly surprised to read longtime WeHo resident, Jungian psychotherapist and avid cyclist Chris Kilbourne describe wading into local West Hollywood issues and reconsidering old political alliances to argue that the Nov. 3 election could “determine the future of safer streets, housing and the city’s broader vision for progress.”

Now I found myself researching as much as I could through online articles, documents and discussion boards when I’d hear the many terrible things Kyle Brazeal and his buddies, John Duran, and Larry Block the three front-runner anti bike-lane candidates were doing. For example, Kyle wrote a comment in response to an article in WeHo Times (https://wehotimes.com/fountain-avenue-streetscape-plans-up-for-discussion-on-tuesday-aug-19/) in which he appeared to brazenly brag that he would speed in his car along Fountain Ave., even having gotten ticketed several times, which he ignored, declaring that he would never slow down unless there were speed bumps and flashing lights, which violent car-centric attitude horrified me; as well as angry, intimidating outbursts she experienced from him in commission meetings. And regarding John Duran, his sexual harassment scandals certainly concerned me, which concern became heightened as I learned about his allyship with Kyle and Larry, whose unapologetically anti-rent control position is offensive, as are other apparent compromised ethics, especially evident in his supposed recusal from his blog, wehoonline (https://wehotimes.com/west-hollywood-council-candidate-larry-block-accused-of-abusing-ownership-of-news-site-to-attack-political-rivals/) which seems to have a terrible habit of attacking his enemies and promoting his allies.

Kilbourne describes biking to last Monday’s city council meeting, and speaking passionately in support of the city he loves, as well as the need for safe bikeways. But despite the win on Monday, it could all be for naught if the conservative NIMBY slate beats out more progressive YIMBY candidates.

Now comes the election on November 3rd. If Chelsea (Byers), Helen (Kreiger), and Stephen (Post) are not voted in, there is still a chance that the whole humanizing beautification of Fountain Ave. could end up with the same old annoying traffic, now with flashing red lights and speed bumps, after more incessant delays, relinquished state grants, and agonizing injuries and possible lawsuits. And the NIMBYs will have conserved their precious parking spots on the street, which as homeowners presumably with their own driveways, they personally probably don’t even need.

As you can see, itt’s not a quick read. But it’s worth the time it takes to read it, especially if you live and vote in West Hollywood. Or if you’re just looking for a roadmap to get more involved in your own community.

………

Good for him.

A San Diego City Councilmember called for a less defensive response from city workers to a recent grand jury report calling into question the city’s approach to building bike lanes, concluding that the city’s lack of a “connected, well‑maintained bike infrastructure discourages many people from bicycling as a viable commuting option.”

According to public radio station KBPS,

City officials said they partially disagreed, and that bike infrastructure in the city is getting better. They also said transportation decisions are influenced by more than just infrastructure.

But Councilmember Kent Lee said he thinks the grand jury got it right, and that unsafe streets clearly discourage people from biking.

“I don’t know about my colleagues, but I would just agree — that’s just factually true,” Lee said. “I understand contextualizing … but to me, it just came off as we’re being very defensive.”

It takes courage for a city leader to publicly defend bike lanes given the level of bikelash seen in San Diego lately, as drivers decry the loss of traffic lanes and parking required to build the kind of safe, connected bike network the grand jury called for.

………

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

Always happy to fan the flames of any New York bikelash, the conservative and contrarian New York Post highlights a coalition of Brooklyn groups opposing a ballot measure that would change the city charter to make it easier to build bike lanes, as the groups somewhat disingenuously say they’re “against decisions being made about our communities without meaningful participation from the people who live and work here,” since they literally get a vote on it.

No bias here. An English town councilor complained that new “nightmare” bike lanes are unwanted and an “utter disaster” for the town, arguing that safer pedestrian crossings would have been better because the local population isn’t exactly young. Maybe someone should tell him that older people bike, too.

………

Local

The Los Angeles Times considers whether the ebike backlash is an overreaction. Yes and no — it’s an overreaction if you lump all ebikes, legal and otherwise, together.

Streetsblog discovers new bike lanes on Lankershim Blvd in North Hollywood, and near Expo Park on Broadway Place and 39th Street in South LA.

A man riding an ebike suffered non-life threatening injuries when he was struck by a driver in Long Beach Friday night.

State

A 12-year old Orange County boy calls for “common sense ebike safety reform,” which would ban anyone under 16 from riding anything other than Class 1 ped-assist ebikes, while requiring testing and licensing for ebike riders. Never mind that New Jersey has already found a similar law unworkable, less than a year after it was implemented.

Speaking of which, LAist talks with OC DA Todd Spitzer about charging parents and guardians for usage of illegal ebikes by children.

A 35-year old Ocean Beach man was arrested for DUI after hitting a 52-year old woman riding an ebike as she rode in a bike lane, as the driver was attempting to make a U-turn, leaving the victim with multiple facial fractures.

The San Diego County Bicycle Coalition teamed with local organizations to host an ebike safety class for more that 50 kids, after 14-year old Owen Harris was killed while riding an ebike in the city last month.

Kern County is on the verge of completing a new bikeway connecting Northwest Bakersfield to the Kern River trail, with the final railroad crossing expected to be finished next spring.

A Santa Cruz op-ed says it’s time to stop mourning bicyclists and start protecting them on local highways.

A Lodi bike rider was injured when he was struck by a community cop, after allegedly crossing against the red light.

National

A Utah man flew to the Netherlands to recreate a more than 100-mile bike ride his father took on a bicycle with no tires, after hitchhiking with Nazi soldiers to deliver food to his father during the famine of 1944-45.

You’ve got to be kidding. A Republican running for Congress told President Trump that Iowans don’t ride bicycles, apparently forgetting the iconic RAGBRAI ride across the state, supported annually by Iowa’s roughly 900,000 bicyclists; officials with RAGBRAI, aka the world’s largest bicycle tour, said au contraire, mon frère. Actually, that’s a little highfalutin for down-to-earth Iowans, but still.

A Chicago bike route was renamed in honor of a three-year old little girl who was killed by a driver while riding on the back of his mother’s bicycle.

A quaint little Hudson River town wants to build out a bicycle network to connect with a new rail trail along the river. But, you know, parking.

Bighearted DC TV viewers dug into their own pockets to replace an ebike a single mother used to support her family, after she had been robbed by masked teens.

Good idea. A Baton Rouge, Louisiana bike parade raised funds for a local bike co-op.

International

A columnist for Road.cc digs into disturbing efforts to “martyr” Georgia hit-and-run driver Jerry Ross, who freely admits to driving into a group ride while blaming the bicyclists for the crash, and warns that the trend could be headed to the UK.

A reviewer for Bike Radar says forget wind tunnels and AI, the best bicycles are still designed by people.

He gets it, too. A Toronto writer says stop calling him a “biker,” as if bicyclists were one big tribe all with the same interests, because bike riders aren’t all the same, and we’re not the enemy. Not to mention that most people think of bikers as big hairy guys with matching leathers on Harley Davidsons.

British bike hero Chris Boardman, now the country’s active travel commissioner, says that police are right to focus on drivers rather than bicyclists, because bicycles don’t pose the same risk as two-ton motor vehicles.

Competitive Cycling

If you thought you saw pro cyclists Remco Evenepoel and Demi Vollering riding the streets of Los Angeles recently, you may have been right as they flew in to promote Specialized and scout out possible routes for the ’28 LA Olympics.

Finally…

Yes, ebike jousting is a thing now. Then again, so is an annual Cemetery Creep bike ride.

And the obvious key to celebrity bike dating is matching ebikes.

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin.

Category: Morning Links / Tags: 2nd degree murder, bicycling, bike lanes, bike politics, Fountain Ave, hit-and-run, Los Angeles, vehicular manslaughter, West Hollywood

All hands call to save Fountain Ave bike lanes, ICE attacks ebike-riding CA native in Long Beach, and bike lanes are conservative

October 19, 2026 / bikinginla / No comments

Man, that was a rough week.

I can’t remember the last time a migraine knocked me out like that, or affected me so badly for so long after the pain was finally gone.

I’m told my migraines, and the associated dizziness, stem from a traumatic brain injury suffered in the infamous beachfront bee incident that put me in the ICU for a few days 20 years ago.

The impact knocked me cold for several minutes, erasing any memory of the crash and leading to one of those life-after-death visions you read about, which, real or hallucinated, both shattered and cemented my own personal faith.

The ER doctors at Santa Monica’s St. John’s hospital told me my helmet probably saved my life. But in those pre-MIPS days, it did nothing to prevent the concussions I suffered.

The first migraine I ever had came four years after that, and they’ve continued to grow more frequent and worse in the years since.

I’ve often been a critic, not of bike helmets, but of the overpromises made by so many people who equate bike helmets with seat belts or air bags, as if they would somehow magically protect you from a multi-ton motor vehicle traveling at highway speeds.

They won’t.

Even the best bike helmets are intended to protect you from relatively low speed falls off your bike, not collisions. But as I’ve learned the hard way, that limited protection can still make a huge difference in your health decades after a crash.

Now the Canadian-made Pikio Si Oblik has been rated the safest ever by the testing institute at Virginia Tech. It’s hard to recommend a helmet that costs nearly $400, especially when you can get a decent MIPS model for so much less.

But based on my own experience, it might be worth it.

………

As we said last week, tonight there’s an all hands on deck meeting of the West Hollywood City Council, as WeHo Councilmember Lauren Meister is once again attempting to kill the long-promised protected bike lanes on Fountain Ave.

Meister tells WeHo Online that the council didn’t receive any other options other than the bike lanes when they voted to approve the project — even though the street was subject to nearly a decade of discussion and public meetings — and she prefers a plan that would replace the bike lanes with parking spaces, calling it a “compromise.”

Although the C-words I would use are “capitulation,” and “convenience,” as in a surrender to the whims of motorists who are used to parking on the deadly street.

Never mind that protected bike lanes have been shown to improve safety up to 90% for all road users, while maintaining parking would only serve to keep the corridor deadly by forcing bike riders to use the single remaining lane or ride in the door zone.

Streets For All explains how you can help by attending tonight’s meeting, or sending an email to the councilmembers in advance of the meeting.

Parking proponents will undoubtedly be out in force at the meeting, and will need to be met with an equal and opposite demand to improve safety for everyone. The alternative will be to keep Fountain Ave unrideable and unsafe to walk along and cross, as well as to drive.

If that’s the plan, they might as well save the money to pay for ghost bikes and white tires for all the victims yet to come.

………

More evidence that ICE is out of control, after a Long Beach man was intentionally run down by ICE agents as he was riding an ebike and struck with an unmarked vehicle, then tased twice and handcuffed face down in the gutter, suffering a broken arm in the attack.

Ricardo Gonzalez was attacked by agents on Saturday, apparently because of the color of his skin, since they had no other means of determining his immigration status as he was riding his bike. Never mind that Gonzalez was born in Hanford, California, making him a US citizen by birth, despite Trump’s efforts to change that.

The agents also rifled through his wallet, and confiscated his ID and Meta glasses.

A crowdfunding campaign for Gonzalez has raised over $13,000, more than doubling the initial $6,500 goal.

Note to ICE agents: Maybe try to determine someone’s citizenship and immigration status before you run them down with an SUV — or better yet, just don’t run them down in the first place.

Thanks to Megan for the heads-up.

………

He gets it.

A Bakersfield writer says bike lanes are a conservative cause, so it’s time to stop targeting them and the leaders who advocate for them.

Here’s what these critics miss: A bike lane makes a road safer even when no one is riding in it. Wide lanes invite speeding and inattention. Narrowing them slows traffic, and the striped buffer puts extra feet between moving cars and people on the sidewalk. Federal data cited by city staff show bike lanes on arterial roads cut car-bicycle crashes roughly in half. If anything, the city should go further and add bollards or other barriers, so a drifting driver hits a barrier before a person. That would also make riders feel safe enough to use the lanes more.

Now consider the money. Many roads in northwest and southwest Bakersfield were built with two lanes each way but enough pavement for three or four, on the theory that traffic would someday need it. At the pace we grow, that day is decades away, if it comes at all, and these roads will need rebuilding long before then. Where were the fiscal watchdogs when we paved all that unnecessary asphalt? Repurposing a few feet of it for the safety of everyone is a bargain by comparison…

And when it comes to bike infrastructure itself, fiscal conservatives have been making the case for years. The Kern County Taxpayers Association, hardly a group of free spenders, has long pushed for a better network of bike and walking paths across the city, including more than 50 miles of trails along abandoned and underused rail lines. When the region’s leading fiscal watchdog says safe places to walk and bike are worth the investment, critics who call it waste should take note.

None of this is a liberal plot to take away anyone’s car. It’s about two things conservatives have always championed: freedom of choice and public safety. People should be free to choose how they get around, whether that’s driving, biking, walking or some mix, to save money on gas, to get some exercise, or to let their kids gain a little independence. But that choice only means something if every option is reasonably safe. Too often, it isn’t. A parent may hesitate to let a 12-year-old ride to school. A retiree may not be able to safely walk to the corner store. Someone who can’t afford a car, or can’t drive one, may be taking their life in their hands just crossing the street. Keeping people safe is among the most basic jobs of local government, and the right to get home alive shouldn’t depend on being encased in a car. Responsible spending, personal choice, public safety and strong families are supposed to be conservative values. Safe streets serve all four.

Maybe someone should show this to Sean Duffy, our current Secretary of Transportation, and tell him enough with the “DEI bike lane” crap.

And I say “current,” because no one seems to have job security in this administration, except for those who seem to least deserve it.

………

A San Francisco writer discusses the difference riding a bicycle has made in his life over the past ten years, improving it in ways he couldn’t have imagined.

My colleague Lily Janiak, our San Francisco Chronicle theater critic who bikes to shows and everywhere else, coaxed me along like a mother duck, warning me about the risks of tires sticking in streetcar rails, getting “doored”, and even other cyclists. Struggling to remember it all, I felt certain I was going to die.

Instead, I was reborn.

Or at least rebranded. Riding a bicycle has become as much a part of my Chronicle job as exploring new spaces, hanging out with cool old people and breaking big Pacifica Taco Bell news. I now take my bike and public transportation to assignments as a rule.

In the process, I’ve gotten healthier, spent less money and saved time cruising past traffic jams. But the results extend beyond all that (and the smugness that often comeswhen cyclists lecture about health, money and traffic). I’ve become a better journalist and a better community member. I may not live longer — did I mention that I bike in San Francisco? — but I’m definitely doing a better job working for you.

Unfortunately, the story is hidden behind the paper’s draconian paywall. But it’s worth finding your way around it if you can to give it a read.

………

The Hollywood Reporter examines the bicycling documentary The Perfect Road, which premiered recently at the London Film Festival.

Years ago, Maximilian Schnell left his job and his life in Paris and began a nomadic lifestyle on his bicycle. The road has given him freedom and adventure. And he has set himself grueling physical and mental challenges.

Perfect Road, a documentary from Danish directors and cousins Adam and Christian Bonke, follows him on an extreme journey through some of Europe’s highest mountain passes, while also providing a meditation on modern life and character study. For one, even in an age of digital nomads, Schnell’s lifestyle pushes the envelope. And then, his relationship with his partner Nina makes him question his life priorities.

………

We’ve seen this video before, depicting a Slovakian mountain biker outrunning a bear, possibly without even knowing he was doing it.

But an animal website uses this 2017 encounter as a launching pad to consider what you should do if you run into one while riding out in the woods. Hint: Unless you can ride faster than 35 mph, you may lose the race.

………

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

A Florida convenience store owner is facing a second-degree murder charge after intentionally driving his car into a 14-year old boy riding an ebike, because he thought the boy had attempted to burglarize his store.

In one of the most shameful episodes I’ve seen, a Quebec City family called off a planned ghost bike ceremony for their 11-year old son after receiving “hateful” messages; a member of the group Souliers et vélos fantômes Québec — Ghost Shoes and Bicycles Quebec — called the comments “wildly inappropriate.” Seriously, there’s not a pit deep enough for anyone who’d send something like that to parents whose child had just been killed, under any circumstances.

A woman is seen on video being chased by a man with a machete for undetermined reasons as she rides her bicycle alone through Kenya.

Twitter post

………

Local

The Los Angeles Times profiles UCLA law student Jonathan Hale, and his DIY campaign to paint the crosswalks the city won’t.

Pasadena is asking for your comments on proposed safety improvements to the St. John and Pasadena avenue corridor.

State

Irvine has decided to put the city’s CicloIrvine open streets program on hold while they work through their budget problems. Once again, you’ll have to navigate the OC Register’s draconian, self-defeating paywall.

Sad news from Visalia, where a man riding a bicycle was killed by a ~~heartless coward~~ hit-and-run driver.

Sleepy Santa Cruz ranks as the sixth most dangerous California city for bicyclists, as Huntington Beach checks in at #1, to the surprise of no one who has been paying attention, while Bell ranks a surprising second; Palo Alto and Gardena were the two safest cities. In a case of good news/bad news, Los Angeles didn’t make either list.

There’s a special place in hell for anyone who would crash into two six-year old kids as they’re riding their bikes in Half Moon Bay, and just drive off leaving them on the side of the road; 37-year old Robert Schumann faces multiple charges after cops used a drone to track him down as he bravely hid in the woods to avoid capture. Fortunately, the children are hospitalized in stable condition. Once again, however, you’ll have to work your war around yet another unproductive paywall.

National

Aussie pro cyclist Lachlan Morton succeeded in setting a new record for the old Pony Express route last week, beating the relay team that carried Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural address to California by nearly 12 hours, while covering the 1,966-mile route in 6 days, 21 hours and 15 minutes. Although Morton did have the advantage of paved roads, pneumatic tires and something slightly more aero than a horse.

A Salt Lake City letter writer says the city’s bicycle and pedestrian improvements may be confusing for drivers, but the benefits are worth it.

My bicycle-friendly Colorado hometown held a third annual bike parade to honor a ten-year old boy killed by a distracted driver in 2023.

Dallas, Texas is looking for feedback on an interactive map of proposed bike safety improvements, as advocates push to turn research into legislation protecting bicyclists.

New Hampshire state police are investigating after a local mayor and state representative got into a brief “verbal altercation” with someone riding an ebike; the man says he only got out of his car to retrieve his wife after she got out to have words with the bike rider.

New York Streetsblog says Central Park is long overdue for the kind of perimeter bike lanes found at the city’s other parks, and complains that the half-measures implemented after New York banned cars from the park have only made things worse.

International

A Nobel Prize winner examines the anti-aging industry, and concludes that the humble bicycle is one of the most effective anti-aging tools out there.

Bike Radar considers how many headlamp lumens you really need to see and be seen after dark. Personally, I’ll settle for roughly 3.9 octillion, which is only slightly brighter than the sun.

Momentum looks at seven of the longest off-road bike trails in North America.

Ottawa, Ontario identified seven bike lanes that could be impacted by a new provincial law that limits removing traffic lanes to add bike lanes during road reconstructions.

A London writer who wisely chooses to remain anonymous justifies why they’ve ridden though roughly 40,000 red lights and have no plans to stop, although kindly choosing not to ride through red lights and crosswalks when pedestrians are present.

Another London writer says the city has spent the last 15 years building for bikes, before now deciding the bikes are the problem.

Drivers in Scotland have been told to stop driving on a bike path as a shortcut around construction delays.

For the second consecutive year, the UK is holding a series of bike rides across the country to highlight the need for safer routes for women riders.

A British city counselor attends a conference on designing streets through a child’s lens first, and explains that “towns that are safe for children are safe for everyone.”

British actor Taron Egerton paid a fine and received points on his driver’s license after bicycling content creator CyclingMikey filmed him using a mobile phone while driving.

Sri Lanka’s head cricket coach takes time out for a little mountain biking in Pakistan, praising Islamabad’s natural beauty.

Two German men are retracing the route of China’s Long March by bicycle; the military maneuver by the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army became a defining chapter in modern Chinese history, leading to the defeat of the forces of Chiang Kai-shek in the Chinese Civil War.

Competitive Cycling

Former cycling scion Taylor Phinney finished eighth in the men’s individual pursuit at the 2026 UCI Track World Championships, while beating his personal best by a massive 11 seconds, nearly seven years after he retired from road racing. Although his wife Katarzyna Niewiadoma-Phinney is still kicking ass on the women’s road circuit.

Finally…

Now even the rocks are out to get us, as a 76-year old Florida woman was killed by a falling boulder while riding in Pennsylvania. Then again, London sewage seems to be out to get us, too.

And maybe it’s just me, but this seems like a bad thing.

Instagram post

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin.

Category: Morning Links / Tags: bicycling, bike lanes, ebikes, fiscal conservatives, Fountain Ave, ICE, Lauren Meister, Long Beach, Los Angeles, parking, protected bike lanes, WeHo, West Hollywood

10 laps of 10 miles up and down Mandeville Canyon for mental health, and ghost bike proof that the bike lanes are the real problem

October 8, 2026 / bikinginla / No comments

Ten laps of ten miles each on 10/10. Or put another way, 10/10 on 10/10.

That’s what a group of bike riders will be doing Saturday morning, riding up and down Mandeville Canyon to raise funds for the Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, which runs the suicide prevention hotline here in Southern California.

This is the seventh consecutive year the 10/10 Mandeville Challenge has been held, now sponsored by the Domestique Cycling Club. The first time it was just a single man riding up and down the iconic cycling climb; last year 91 bicyclists raised over $13,000 for mental health and suicide prevention.

This year they’re already over $22,000.

There’s still time to sign up ride or make a donation, so I’m including the full press release for the event below. And even if you’re saving your legs for Sunday’s CicLAvia, you can still show up and cheer the riders on.

LA Cyclists Will Climb Mandeville Canyon Up To Ten Times On World Mental Health Day To Fund The 988 Crisis Line

The 10/10 Mandeville Challenge returns Saturday, October 10, raising money for Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, home to the nation’s first suicide prevention center

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 7, 2026. On Saturday, October 10, World Mental Health Day, cyclists from across Los Angeles will gather before dawn at the base of Mandeville Canyon for the 10/10 Mandeville Challenge, a community ride benefiting Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, home to the nation’s first and most comprehensive Suicide Prevention Center and the organization that answers 988 calls, chats and texts for Southern California.

Each lap is a full climb of Mandeville Canyon, 1,000 feet over 10 miles round trip. Ten laps is 100 miles and 10,000 feet. Cyclists choose their own lap goal, supporters pledge per lap or donate outright, and all donations and pledges go to Didi Hirsch. Last year 91 cyclists completed 391 laps and raised more than $13,000. This year flat donations have already passed $22,000 before a single lap has been ridden, with per-lap pledges still to come.

The challenge was founded in 2020 by Dr. Trevor Schraufnagel, who saw the isolation of that fall deepen depression and suicide risk, and who rode Mandeville alone on October 10 that year. The name carries the meaning: a 10 out of 10 is the hardest effort a cyclist can give, and the challenge asks everyone on the mountain to find theirs at least once, whether that takes one lap or ten.

“In the fall of 2020 I watched isolation deepen depression and suicide risk for a lot of people, and the hardest part of my job was the number of them who believed help wouldn’t help. It will. That’s what this ride is for,” said Schraufnagel, licensed clinical psychologist and founder of Balance CBT, Associate Director of the UCLA Anxiety Disorders Clinic, and founder of the 10/10 Mandeville Challenge. “Somewhere on that climb every cyclist hits a 10 out of 10, and that effort is relative only to you. We ride on World Mental Health Day because that’s the point.”

“We are so grateful to Dr. Trevor Schraufnagel, event organizers, and everyone taking part in the 10/10 Mandeville Challenge for turning a personal challenge into a powerful act of community support,” said Lyn Morris, LMFT, Chief Executive Officer of Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services. “Suicide prevention is something we all have a role in, and every conversation, every act of connection, and every dollar raised can help make sure someone in crisis knows they are not alone and that help is available. On World Mental Health Day, this ride is a meaningful reminder of the difference we can all make and the power of community.”

The 10/10 Mandeville Challenge is presented by Domestique Cycling Club, with support from Specialized Santa Monica, Goodboybob Coffee, Maurten, SVRY, Tirata and Athletic Brewing. Cyclists can register and supporters can pledge at go.rallyup.com/1010mandeville.

Event details

What: 10/10 Mandeville Challenge 2026, a community cycling climb benefiting Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services

When: Saturday, October 10, 2026, 6:30am to 7pm

Where: Mandeville Canyon Road, Brentwood. Participants gather at the Event Base Station at Paul Revere Charter Middle School, 1450 Allenford Avenue, Los Angeles.

Who: Open to all cyclists. Supporters can pledge per lap or donate at go.rallyup.com/1010mandeville

As for today’s illustration, I’m too tired tonight to try to figure out any other way to illustrate mental health, so a happy smiling sun it is.

………

It’s not the cars, it’s the bike lanes that are the problem.

Even when someone on a bicycle gets killed in the shadow of In-N-Out in Venice Blvd, in what passes for a protected bike lane in Los Angeles, and right under a Karen Bass campaign poster.

If that doesn’t sum up the state of the city these days, I don’t know what does.

At least now we know when and where Oscar Lazaro was killed, reportedly in a dooring.

I’ll write something up later to remember him.

Thanks to Angelo for the heads up.

………

Local

Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 1740, creating a statewide fast track for bike, pedestrian and transit projects that improve access to the coast.

State

Not a bad idea. The San Diego County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a regional Ebike Injury Warning System to identify where ebike injuries happen, who is being hurt, and what types of devices are involved. Which should help them figure out that legal ped-assist ebikes ain’t the problem.

National

A Bend, Oregon columnist writes that he finally got an ebike after 21 years of bike commuting, and wondered why he waited so long. Although I’m more impressed that he still rides a skateboard at skate parks in his 50s.

A Utah couple in their 60s rode their bikes 3,634 miles across the Northern US.

Hundreds of people decorated their bicycles to take part in an unofficial bike ride marking the start of a Cincinnati art festival.

The parents of a fallen teenage bike rider filed suit against the 80-year old driver who killed her as she rode her ebike in a crosswalk with warning lights flashing; the noted local folk artist is already facing a misdemeanor charge of negligent operation of a motor vehicle resulting in the death. Which will likely be pled down to a traffic ticket before they’re done, and he should be back to driving in no time.

A Boston writer considers what the city could learn from Danish cyclists, and concludes it’s a matter of obeying the law and being more courteous. I would have said it’s fighting for safer streets to stop drivers from killing kids — aka stop de kindermoord — but he’s entitled to my opinion.

Crashes — and deaths — are piling up in New York’s Central Park, despite a lack of motor vehicles and the people in them on the park’s carfree loop, which looks as busy as a typical CicLAvia in the photo accompanying the story.

This is the cost of traffic violence. Nearly ten months to the day after a 78-year old New York philanthropist was killed riding his bicycle, police arrested the driver — but only charged them with failure to yield.

International

Cyclist says “by women, for women” bikewear brands have multiplied in the last decade, resulting from “frustration with the lack of well-designed, thoroughly tested women’s cycling clothing and a desire to build products around women’s own ideas of what cycling kit could and should be.”

An Ontario, Canada letter writer says adults on bicycles need to set a better example for kids by riding safely and following the law. She’s got a point. I stopped blowing through stop signs when a little kid pointed at as I went through one, and told his dad he wanted to be just like me when he grew up.

New traffic regulations go into effect in Nova Scotia later this month, including regulations designed to prevent doorings and right hook collisions, as well as cracking down on ebikes.

Competitive Cycling

An angry Tom Pidcock says he wanted to stop racing after a cop traveling the wrong way on a police motorbike hit two of his teammates during an Italian race, injuring one rider and fucking up the other’s bike.

Good news from Philadelphia, where 20-year old American cyclist Ezra Caudell was released from the hospital, 31 days after he was critically injured when he lost his balance and hit a lamppost during Philadelphia Cycling Classic

Finally…

Your next ebike could carry six additional people, or every dog in the neighborhood. Why settle for off-the-shelf titanium or carbon fiber, when you can build your own wooden bike, right down to the wooden chain.

And that feeling when ChatGPT can’t conceive of tradespeople transporting their gear by bicycle any more than real people can.

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin.

Category: Morning Links / Tags: 10/10 Mandeville Challenge, bicycling, bike lanes, can't see the traffic for the cars, Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, Domestique Cycling Club, ghost bikes, Los Angeles, Mandeville Canyon, mental health, suicide prevention

Ebike rider killed in Arleta collision, LA installed bike lanes on 1 whole mile of streets last year, and man rollerblading from LA to NY killed in Kansas

September 28, 2026 / bikinginla / 5 comments

I guess we’re going to ease back into this slowly.

I’m apparently still affected by the adverse reaction to the Moderna covid and flu shots last week. I had hoped to play catch-up today, and cover most if not all of what we missed last week.

But after falling asleep mid-sentence and running my laptop battery down to zero, it’s clear that I still don’t have my strength back — something I discovered after thinking I was okay on Saturday and nearly passing out at a WeHo dog event.

But at least I got to see a nice bakfiets someone rode to the dog park. Even the corgi stopped to check it out.

Due to the resulting time constraints, I’m going to be an asshole today and not take the time to look up who sent me what. So thank you for sending me stuff, even if I don’t credit you individually.

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I promised someone last week, before everything went to hell, that I would look into the death of man killed by a driver while riding an ebike in Arleta early in the morning of Sunday, September 13th.

The victim was struck by the SUV driver before 2 am in the 13000 block of Osborne Street.

A crowdfunding campaign posted by his brother has raised over $17,000 of the $20,000 goal to help pay for funeral expenses, describing in heartbreaking detail how much he loved, and was loved.

However, as we have discussed before, it’s difficult to determine whether a fallen ebike rider was on an electric bicycle or an electric motorcycle, since the police and the media can’t seem to tell one from another. And while any death is tragic, only the former are the subject of this site.

So unless I know for certain that the victim of a crash was riding a ped-assist bicycle, and not some other form of two-wheeled electric conveyance, I’m not including them in the already too high count of SoCal bicycling deaths.

And yes, even one is one too many.

So while my heart goes out to the family and loved ones of Oscar Adrian Lazaro, I won’t be adding his name to a 51 others who have lost their lives riding a bicycle in our deadly corner of the country.

But if anyone can convince me he was on a legal Class 1, 2 or 3 ebike, I’m more than willing to reconsider.

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Gracias por nada, Los Angeles.

Or rather, thanks for a whole 2.2 miles of new bike lanes installed in the last fiscal year, from June 2025 to June 2026. Except that’s lane miles — i.e., counting each side of the roadway separately — so we’re really talking about a whole one and one-tenth mile of net new bike lanes.

Streetsblog’s Joe Linton wrote earlier this month that the City of Los Angeles, not to be confused with the other 87 cities and various unincorporated areas that make up LA County, built a whopping 7.5 miles of new bike lanes. But at the same time, the city removed 5.3 miles of already existing bike lanes, resulting in the wholly underwhelming 2.2-mile net total.

They also improved a whole 14.1 miles of existing bike lanes, which usually translates to adding a row white plastic bendie posts and calling it protected, as if those wands will somehow magically ward off a couple tons of ballistic steel and glass.

Which is like trading the family cow for a handful of magic beans. I mean, your family does have a cow, right?

And people wonder why I’m voting for Nithya Raman, if only because she’s not Karen Bass — the current mayor who not only supervised the non-building of bike lanes for the last three-and-a-half years, but also personally intervened to keep Forest Lawn Drive deadly.

Not to mention my current state Assemblymember, who voted to make it virtually illegal to fix the deadly street after a more than $300,000 lobbying campaign on behalf of Forest Lawn and Mt. Sinai cemeteries, in what can only be seen as a blatant attempt to drive more business.

Pun intended.

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Speaking of things that suck, as we seem to be this morning, yet another person traversing the county without benefit of a motor vehicle was killed by a driver before they could reach the other coast.

According to the New York Times, 24-year old Norwegian Joachim Lanham was killed by a driver in Kansas while attempting to rollerblade from Los Angeles to New York.

Lanham was 22 days into his journey when he was apparently run down by an 82-year old woman, once again raising the question of what the hell someone that old was doing behind the wheel. Except that in many, if not most cases, auto-centetric road designs and the lack of viable options doesn’t give them any other choice.

I’m just tired of people coming to this country on a tourist visa, and being sent home in a box.

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If you’ve been hanging around this site for awhile, you’ve probably seen my complaints that, despite common perceptions, bike helmets aren’t the life-saving equivalent of seat belts and air bags, and do little to protect again high-speed crashes or injuries to other parts of the body.

However, I may be forced to reconsider their utility, after a woman in Philadelphia used her bike helmet to stop a sexual assault.

No word on what the man actually did, or attempted to do. But the 63-year old woman responded by whacking the guy with her bike helmet — and continued to chase after him, yelling and smacking him with it, until a stranger intervened to protect her.

And him, apparently.

One more reason you should always have a helmet handy, evidently.

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Metro Bike says “Westward ho!” by expanding service between West Los Angeles and DTLA, as well as Downtown Los Angeles southward to the Rail-to-Rail Active Transportation Corridor.

Twitter post

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Kyle writes to say that Bike Streets is launching in Torrance.

They’re looking for 20 people willing to log every ride with Bike Streets and help build a Low-Stress Torrance Bike Map; you can sign up at bikestreets.com/join.

According to Kyle’s email,

Bike Streets takes a practical “Network First” approach to making biking safer and more accessible.

Instead of waiting years for individual bike lanes to be designed and funded, Bike Streets helps communities:

• Map the safest, lowest-stress streets and paths that already exist
• Connect those routes into a usable bike network
• Identify dangerous intersections and missing links that prevent the network from working
• Focus resources on fixing those critical gaps
• Start with practical, lower-cost improvements while working toward permanent infrastructure

The goal is to create a connected network that people can use now, and then continually improve it over time.

I think this is an approach worth learning about for anyone interested in making it easier and safer for kids and families to bike around their communities.

He says the project began with a podcast video from Avi Stopper of Strong Towns.

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A Bay Area TV station says a new bike trail offers a safer way to ride into Sausalito.

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A New England-based law firm forwarded their guide to safer electric transportation, covering everything from e-cars to ebikes, electric scooters and hoverboards, for whatever it’s worth.

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Sometimes, it’s the person on two wheels behaving badly.

A 41-year old father of two died four days after he was struck by a speeding 32-year old bicyclist while walking in New York’s Central Park.

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Local

Hoodline reports the LA Board of Public Works is set to approve an $84 million contract for a 2.9-mile segment of the Los Angeles River bike through Reseda, but will abandon planned under-crossings in order to finish in time for the 2028 Olympics, forcing riders to cross major streets.

Long Beach, like her larger neighbor to the north, met its target year for eliminating traffic deaths in abject failure, with 35 traffic deaths already this year, including six in just 18 days this month.

Speaking of Hoodline, nice to see their Jake Rodriguez reads this site, and thanks for citing me in his article about the fatal Paramount hit-and-run.

State

Construction has started on a bridge extending San Diego’s Fenton Parkway over the San Diego River in Mission Valley, providing bicyclists, pedestrians and yes, motor vehicle drivers with a safe crossing during high-water events.

Sad news from San Jose, where a 32-year old woman was killed by a driver while riding her bike.

National

You can all sleep better tonight, knowing the NTSB, aka National Transportation Safety Board, is on the case of the Milligan University massacre. On the other hand, it’s not comforting to know that Tennessee thinks a bicycling route with a 55 mph speed limit is somehow okay.

New protected bike lanes in Queens NY are the physical benefit of New York’s congestion pricing tolls.

A Baton Rouge, Louisiana group is still riding together, ten years after it was started by a 45-year old man to uplift the community.

International

Having obviously run out of things to talk about, Momentum continues recycling old articles, in this case linking to a 16-month old Japanese study showing that riding a bicycle can help people over 60 live independently. In other breaking news, researchers have confirmed that ursine creatures do, in fact, defecate in the woods.

Competitive Cycling

In a win that shocked the world, the men’s elite cycling world title went to none other than Brandon McNulty, the 28-year old journeyman becoming the first American rider to take the title since Lance Armstrong in 1993, and Greg LeMond in 1983 and 1989; McNulty won by a 52-second margin in a two-lap solo breakaway.

Aussie Michael Matthews finished second in the race behind McNulty, with Mathieu van der Poel taking bronze.

The women’s world’s were marked by a massive 15-rider crash that changed the outcome of the race; fortunately, the two most seriously injured riders were showing marked improvement a day later.

Dutch cyclist Demi Vollering may have won may have won the rainbow jersey at the Road World Championships, but she was still sanctioned with a 1000 CHF fine — the equivalent of roughly $1,200 — a 25-point deduction in UCI rankings, and a yellow card for “using a non-compliant position or point of support on the bicycle.”

A 32-year old man documented his ride in the Race Across America, better known as RAAM, finishing the more than 3,000 race in 11 days, 23 hours and 3 minutes in a tribute to his father, who is suffering from prostate cancer; his film The Road to Why is now available on Apple TV and Amazon.

Twenty-three-year old Afghan cyclist Fariba Hashimi won silver in the Asian Games, after having to disguise herself as a man in order to train without abuse in the ultra-conservative country.

A 25-year-old Aussie cyclist and coach is back racing just two years after a life-saving heart transplant.

Finally…

Speaking of the worlds, the masseur for the Slovakian team had to shave his legs and compete in the race, after none of the country’s team members were physically able to race; he made it 100 km — 62 miles — before dropping out.

Twitter post

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

Oh, and fuck Putin.

Category: Morning Links / Tags: Arleta, bicycling, bike lanes, ebikes, failure of leadership, Forest Lawn Cemetery, Forest Lawn Drive, Kansas, Karen Bass, Los Angeles, Mount Sinai Cemetery, Nithya Raman, Oscar Adrian Lazaro, protected bike lanes, Rick Chavez Zbur

Failed bike bill wins in principle, Trump’s war on DEI bike lanes mirrors state’s attack on Forest Lawn Dr, and WeHo sued over Ackerman death

September 3, 2026 / bikinginla / Comments Off

Calbike writes that there is victory in defeat for Encinitas State Senator Catherine Blakespear’s SB 569.

The bill would have prohibited the removal of any bike lane without ensuring that whatever follows provides a safe and accessible environment for bicyclists.

Yet the legislature affirmed the general principle behind the bill by adding a budget amendment limiting the application to the Santa Fe Drive project in Encinitas, which motivated SB 569 in the first place.

The budget bill prevents Encinitas from removing the bike lane on Santa Fe Drive, which was built using state General Fund money, unless the city can ensure that bike riders will be as safe without the bike lane as they are with it.

According to Calbike,

In doing so, the underlying principle behind the bill has now been validated by the Legislature: public investment in safe bikeways should have the same presumption of durability we expect from other roadway investments, especially if we expect people to shift how they travel.

The concept underlying SB 569 is bigger than protecting any particular strip of pavement. At CalBike, we see it as protecting the integrity of public investment. A bikeway is part of a network, so removing one segment can cause damage well beyond that block: a comfortable route to a school can suddenly have a dangerous gap, a connection to transit can become inaccessible to many riders, and a network that took years to assemble is often only as strong as its weakest link. When faced with such gaps, many would-be bike riders find the risk intolerable and opt into more car trips.

Which is a lot of words to say that bicyclists rely on an entire bike network to get where they’re going safely, and removing any one segment can make the entire network less safe, and less practical to use.

So even though the larger bill lost in this session, at least the legislature seems to get that bike networks need to be maintained in their entirety. And that losing one link degrades the whole damn thing.

Then again, the same could be said of not building promised bike lanes, which is what Metro is being sued over on the Vermont corridor.

And what the legislature actively prevented on Forest Lawn Drive.

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Even People magazine has picked up the story of the Trump Administration’s bizarre war on “DEI” bike lanes, as if bikes were part of a secret commie plot to disadvantage white male drivers in favor of trans nonwhite women on bicycles.

The story includes this gem —

In an email statement to NPR, a DOT spokesperson said it “continuously reviews its policies to ensure each promotes safety, efficiency, and common sense.”

“Since nearly 80% of the population uses cars to get to work and their important medical appointments, we are taking a closer look at federal guidance to ensure American families have the infrastructure they need,” the statement said, per the outlet. “This is a common sense approach despite the Left’s belief that everyone should ride a bike to their shoebox-sized apartment to eat crickets to achieve a phony climate agenda.”

I would like it on the record that I, for one, have never knowingly eaten a single cricket, though I do sometimes sleep with my mouth open, so who knows.

Then again, our own state legislature has joined in that same war on bike lanes, DEI or otherwise, by passing legislation at the financial behest of Forest Lawn and Mt. Sinai cemeteries, that will make it difficult, if not impossible, to improve the bike lanes and traffic safety on Forest Lawn Drive.

So it’s not just the right making bizarre decisions to block bike lanes and keep our streets and highways dangerous.

And yes, this tweet from Elmo — no, not that one — pretty well sums it up.

Twitter post

Or this, for that matter.

Twitter post

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No surprise here, as the family of fallen bike rider Blake Ackerman has filed a lawsuit against the city of West Hollywood, as well as the alleged hit-and-run driver who killed him.

WeHo Times writes,

According to court records obtained by WEHO TIMES, Robin L. Ackerman filed the lawsuit individually and as successor-in-interest to the estate of her son, Blake Adam Ackerman. The complaint, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, names Douglas Morton Adams, the driver accused of striking Ackerman, along with several unidentified government entities and other defendants.

The lawsuit alleges negligence, a dangerous condition of public property and wrongful death. It seeks damages to be determined at trial and requests a jury trial.

The family could have a good case, considering the city’s dithering over building the long-promised protected bike lanes on Fountain Ave that might have prevented his death.

As the lawsuit alleges, the city knew the roadway was dangerous for bicyclists but failed to make the necessary safety improvements.

West Hollywood is moving forward with the project now, although with the usual glacial speed. But as usual, the decision to move forward comes too late for Ackerman.

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I recently received a request to add a specialized mountain bike suspension shop in Irvine to our list of bike shops on the Resources page.

However, I’m planning to remove that page, because it’s nearly impossible to keep it current the way bike shops come and go these days. So I responded with a counter offer to allow them to introduce themselves to you.

And yes, I’m open to any other bike shops who want to send me a similar description.

ST Tuned is a mountain bike suspension shop based in Irvine, CA, specializing exclusively in suspension service, tuning, and setup for Fox, RockShox, Öhlins, Cane Creek and DVO. We’re not a general bike shop — suspension is the only thing we do, which means every rebuild, tune, and setup gets the kind of dedicated attention a shop juggling a dozen other services simply can’t offer.

Owner Mike Boon brings over 20 years of experience to every bike that comes through the shop, with a factory-level approach to rebuilds, custom valving, and bushing work. Whether a rider needs a full damper rebuild, a simple sag and setup session, or help troubleshooting a fork or shock that just doesn’t feel right anymore, the goal is always the same: get the suspension performing the way it was actually designed to.

One of the things that sets us apart is our on-trail suspension setup service. Rather than just dialing in numbers in a parking lot, we’ll go out on the actual trail with a rider and fine-tune sag, rebound, and compression based on how the bike feels over real terrain — roots, chunk, drops & jumps, whatever that rider actually rides. It’s a level of setup that’s hard to get anywhere else, and it usually ends with a rider feeling a difference they can’t believe they’d been riding without.

While ST Tuned is based in Irvine, we work with riders throughout Southern California — not just Orange County — and also offer mail-in suspension service for riders further out who want the same level of service without the drive.

Riders can find more information & book a service at sttuned.com or call the shop at (714)213-3083.

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

Murrieta is taking the fight against reckless teen ebike riders a step further, with a new ordinance that penalizes not only the rider, but also the parents of kids who ride recklessly on electric bicycles — even though the problem isn’t actually ebikes, but illegal e-motos and dirt bikes that are inexplicably mistaken for bicycles.

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Local

Something to look forward to, as you could be banned from using certain streets during the ’28 Olympic and Paralympic Games, with a travel network set aside for the exclusive use of Olympic traffic.

As the late, great John Prine said, your flag decal may not get you into heaven anymore, but your Santa Monica library card could get you discounts are local shops, including Bike Attack Electric and Road Runner Sports, among others.

State

Something called Fast Food Club lists ten California towns that are “perfect for a long, happy retirement,” many of which are bike friendly. And none of which are Los Angeles.

Sad news from Kern County, where an ebike rider was killed in Taft on Wednesday when he was right hooked by the driver of a utility truck while riding against traffic on the sidewalk. And yes, sidewalks are bidirectional, and there’s no restriction on which way you can ride, but drivers too often won’t be looking for you as they look the other way for oncoming traffic.

Police in Redwood City busted a serial bike thief for the second time, after receiving 10 separate reports of bicycle thefts from the Caltrain commuter line, one year after arresting the same man for the same crime.

Sad news from Auburn, where a 41-year old man was killed Monday when he was struck by three separate drivers as he tried to cross a highway on his bicycle.

Still more sad news from Northern California, where a 62-year old man was killed by a driver while riding a bicycle in Hayward on Monday.

National

A writer for Cycling West says local bike shops are fighting for their lives amid Trump’s up-and-down tariffs, and competition from direct sales, big box stores and online retailers. Which is why you should ride to your favorite LBS today and buy something. Anything.

Portland, Oregon is about to experience its own Carmageddon, encouraging motorists to ride their bikes, while at the same time warning bike riders about increased dangers on the streets when the southbound portion of I-5 shuts down for five weeks.

Unlike the Pennsylvania story a little further down, police in Utah got it right, citing a driver for failure to yield after right-hooking a 14-year old kid riding a bike in the same direction as the driver.

New York bike riders now have a new 5.5-mile protected bike lane between Sunset Park and Dumbo. Insert elephant joke here.

Bystanders in Prospect Park, Pennsylvania came to the rescue when a woman riding an ebike was pinned under a VW bug after she was right hooked, lifting the car off her to free her. Although the local TV station bizarrely framed it as demonstrating the dangers of ebikes and not wearing a helmet, rather than drivers not using their damn mirrors before making a turn.

She gets it. A North Carolina YMCA cycling instructor talks bike safety in the wake of the recent Milligan University massacre, reminding drivers that the speed limit is the maximum speed allowed, not how fast they have to go, and end with this — “Our roads belong to all of us. Every person using them has responsibilities, and every person using them deserves to get home safely.”

International

A bicycling club in Ontario, Canada celebrates their last tandnnmnnffffffsk em ride of the season for visually impaired bicyclists. Okay, that’s where I fell asleep while typing. Well, one of the places.

As we mentioned the other day — no, not that one, the other one — a British bike shop specializing in ebikes left customers hanging when they abruptly closed after 34 years, including one customer who paid the equivalent of more than $14,000 for two ebikes that were never delivered.

A writer for France Today invites readers to explore the country’s roads and bicycle routes — and asks French drivers to show a little understanding.

Competitive Cycling

Twenty-one-year old British “super-sprinter” Matthew Brennan won his third stage of the Vuelta on Wednesday’s stage 11, as race leader Enric Mas retained his 1:18 lead over Primož Roglič.

British cyclist Lewis Askey won the opening stage of the men’s Tour of Britain yesterday, finishing two seconds ahead of Italian Fillipo Ganna in a sprint finish.

Even Geraint the dog, named for British cycling great Geraint Thomas, turned out to line the course for the first stage of the Tour of Britain.

Nineteen-year old Ezra Caudell of the Modern Adventure Pro Cycling team remains hospitalized with what’s described as “multi-system trauma” after crashing hard with Lotto-Intermarché rider Milan Menten at the Philadelphia Cycling Classic; there’s no word yet on Menten’s condition.

Finally…

That feeling when the city paints a bike lane on the sidewalk, even though the same city bans bikes on sidewalks. Or when it’s harder to pedal your bike in rent-burdened neighborhoods.

And seriously, if you’re riding a bicycle after dark with coke hidden in your sock, put a damn light on it, already.

The bike, that is, not the sock. Or the coke.

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

Oh, and fuck Putin.

Category: Morning Links / Tags: AB 194, bicycle network, bicycling, bike lanes, Blake Ackerman, Calbike, Catherine Blakespear, DEI, Encinitas, Forest Lawn Drive, Los Angeles, SB 569, West Hollywood

State senate committee votes to keep drunks on road, driver didn’t brake in Milligan massacre, and LA sued for Pershing Drive death

August 21, 2026 / bikinginla / One comment

Evidently, Sacramento legislators support drunk drivers.

Or at least one does, anyway.

The Senate Appropriations Committee, led by Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, approved a hostile amendment that gutted a bill that would have required interlock devices for drivers convicted of DUI.

The bill, which has widespread support, would simply have brought the state in line with most other states, which already require the devices.

According to CalMatters,

Cervantes, you might remember, was arrested for a DUI in Sacramento last year, but prosecutors chose not to press charges after a blood test found she had “no measurable amount of drugs or alcohol in her system.” (She later sued the Sacramento Police Department, arguing the arrest was discriminatory and in retaliation for her legislation restricting police data collection.)

Her sister, Riverside City Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes, has two DUI convictions.

So anyone whose loved ones are killed by any drunk drivers with a previous DUI can send the thank you card directly to Cervantes office.

And hey, let’s have another one for the road.

Thanks to Joel for the heads-up.

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More fallout from the crash that killed two members of the Milligan University cycling team, and injured seven others — nine casualties out of the eleven member team.

The crash occurred when the car ahead of driver John Alexander Benfield moved from the right lane to the left lane. But rather than follow the first driver to the other lane to avoid the team, Benfield smashed into them, with investigators alleging he didn’t brake or take any other evasive action to avoid them.

It’s’s not even clear if Benfield ever saw the cycling team before plowing into them.

A county deputy helping to secure the scene allegedly detected the odor of marijuana coming from Benfield’s car.

You know, just a little wake and bake behind the wheel.

Allegedly.

Milligan University sophomores Haylan Engdahl and Brayden Rogers, both 19, died at the scene.

I said yesterday that Engdahl was from Kenosha, Illinois, but he was actually from Kenosha, Wisconsin; the other victim, Brayden Rogers, was a native of Huntsville, Alabama.

At last report, four of the surviving victims remained in critical condition in the ICU; three required surgery from the orthopedic trauma team, and one will require additional surgery.

Meanwhile, Benfield remained in custody after his bail was doubled to $300,000.

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No surprise here, as the husband of fallen bicyclist Regan Cole-Graham announced plans to file a wrongful death lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles.

Matthew Graham alleges that his wife’s death, along with that of his unborn daughter Ophelia, resulted from the removal of bike lanes from Pershing Drive, endangering bicyclists and ultimately leading to the deadly crash.

The 87-year old driver hasn’t been charged, supporting the argument that the crash was caused by poor road design.

I have argued since the bike lanes were installed in 2017, then ripped out months later to appease angry pass-through motorists, that the city would ultimately be responsible for any future deaths that occurred there.

Now Los Angeles taxpayers will be on the hook for yet another costly settlement — one that could easily reach into eight figures, because the city knowingly created a situation that was less safe than it had been when the bike lanes were installed.

But there’s no amount that could make these needless deaths right.

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This has nothing to do bikes, or anything else this site normally discusses.

But I literally laughed out loud when I stumbled on outraged articles about Australia’s national debt topping $1 trillion dollars, the same week the US national debt topped $40 trillion — a difference of a mere $39,000,000,000,000.

Never mind that $1 trillion Australian dollars equals just over $700 billion USD.

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

A London bike rider says we have met the enemy, and he is us, arguing that cars aren’t the problem, and bike riders have to look to their own ranks to improve safety.

In a typical over-response to ebikes, bicycles of all types will now be banned from the historic city center of Como, Italy, after Mayor Alessandro Rapinese was struck by an ebike rider in June; bike riders will now be forced to dismount and walk their bikes.

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Local

Incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and challenger Nithya Raman debated in Sherman Oaks on Wednesday, with questioners seemingly dedicated to protecting established businesses and homeowners, and opposing increased housing allowed under SB 79. My main takes were 1) Bass doesn’t seem to know she’s been mayor for three years, when she could have gotten a lot done, but didn’t, and 2) LAist probably didn’t need to talk over Bass and Raman with a station ID every ten minutes, as if we all had no idea who or what we were listening to.

More on CicLAvia returning to Pasadena this November after a ten-year absence.

Santa Monica drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians are urged to slow down and stay alert as the new school year begins. Good advice, but do they really want people to walk slower near schools?

State

Orange County DA Todd Spitzer is hosting what may be the country’s first ebike buyback event, providing up to $1,000 in an effort to get illegal e-motos and hacked ebikes off the road; the first 75 people will also get two Angels baseball tickets. There’s probably no truth to the rumor that the next 75 people will have to take four Angels tickets. Thanks to Edward for the tip.

San Diego is one of the largest US cities without a bikeshare system, something local bicyclists want to change, seven years after the city’s DecoBike system went down the drain. But you’ll have to get past the Union-Tribune’s draconian paywall if you want to read it.

San Diego’s Bike the Bay rolls for the 19th year on Sunday, giving local riders their only opportunity to pedal across the city’s iconic San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge. Although to be honest, the ferry is more fun, anyway.

National

You know bikes are taking over when a new bike park opens in windswept Laramie, Wyoming, in the middle of cowboy country.

There’s a special place in hell for whoever stole an ebike from a Derby, Kansas father who was declared legally blind earlier this year, taking away his only form of transportation and forcing him to miss work.

Tragic news from New York, where a 51-year old father called his wife to say he was just minutes from their home; moments later a hit-and-run driver doing an estimated 100 mph ran a red light and slammed into him on his bicycle, no doubt killing him instantly. Have I mentioned lately that hit-and-run drivers one the lowest forms of human scum occupying the earth? I didn’t think so. And don’t get me started on excessive speeding.

International

Bike Radar presents their short list for Bike of the Year.

The Guardian goes riding up Norway’s Mjølkevegen, as bicyclists are discover “the road’s breathtaking panoramas of peaks and lakes, dotted with cozy inns.” Although you shouldn’t be allowed to ride it unless you can pronounce it.

An Australian researcher says yes, ebike subsidies and safer infrastructure matters, but what will really encourage more people to ride bikes is having sufficient skills, confidence and support to ride.

Competitive Cycling

Twenty-two-year old Welsh cyclist Josh Tarling will line up for the start of the Vuelta a España for his Netcompany-Ineos team, just one week after his 19-year old brother Finlay was killed when a van driver got onto the course at the Volta a Portugal last Friday.

Calls to improve safety in professional cycling have only gotten louder in the week since Tarling’s death.

The same thing that happened to Tarling nearly happened to Aussie cyclist Maeve Plouffe at the women’s Tour of Britain as she was trying to catch up to the peloton after a puncture, and was almost struck head-on by a driver in a roundabout when traffic was allowed back on the course before all the riders had cleared.

It happened again on the race’s second stage, when the stage was neutralized for an hour due to a traffic collision ahead of the riders, as UCI seems incapable of keeping a race course clear long enough to run a race; Dutch superstar Lorena Wiebes has won both stages so far.

The BBC says the Tour of Britain is inspiring more Muslim women to ride bikes; then again, they said the same thing about the Tour de France Femmes. And once again, you’ll have to get past their paywall if you want to read it.

Finally…

That feeling when a runaway pig evades an ebike rider, and ends up living with Grammy-winning Hollywood celeb. Or when using cracked pavement as a bike stand becomes an internet bicycle meme.

And this is what you call a scary effing close call.

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

Oh, and fuck Putin.

Category: Morning Links / Tags: bicycling, bicycling deaths, bike lanes, Brayden Rogers, California State Legislature, CalMatters, drunk driving, DUI, Haylan, interlock devices, John Benfield, Los Angeles, Milligan University, Pershing Drive, Regan Cole-Graham, Sabrina Cervantes

CicLAvia returns to Pasadena, 19-year old Welsh cyclist killed in Portugal race when driver enters the course, and why Trump hates bike lanes

August 17, 2026 / bikinginla / One comment

The Little Old Lady from Pasadena can leave her bright red Super Stock Dodge in the garage this November.

CicLAvia made the surprise announcement last week that the popular open streets event is returning to Pasadena for the first time since 2015.

It will run down a section of Colorado Boulevard on Sunday, Nov. 15, with the exact route and hours to be announced.

The event appears to be so last minute that it’s not even on the CicLAvia website yet.

Photo of the iconic, 113-year old Colorado Street Bridge by mcbruin from Pixabay; Photo of the memorial to Jackie and Mack Robinson by Mike from Pixabay.

………

Tragic news from Portugal, where 19-year old Welsh cyclist Finlay Tarling was killed during Friday’s 8th stage of the Volta a Portugal; a rider with the NSN Development Team, Tarling was reportedly struck head-on by a van driver who prematurely entered the course after the majority of the peloton had passed.

The stage was neutralized after Darling’s death, and the NSN Development Team pulled its five remaining riders out of the race.

According to IDL Pro Cycling,

At the time of the accident, Finlay Tarling was riding alone, at the back of the pack as a chaser. On a descent, he was going so fast that a GNR support car couldn’t keep up with him. At that moment, there was one other support car—the last car in the race indicating that the peloton had passed (the broom wagon)—and two motorcycles following behind the race.

In principle, all three riders—who had fallen behind at that point—could have had a lead bike, but Tarling was going too fast on a descent. As he took the inside line in a fast left-hand turn, the car suddenly appeared there, driving in its own lane—but of course, it should never have been on the course at that moment.

The driver reportedly had waited for the racers to pass, and when he didn’t see anyone else coming, he asked if the race was over and it was okay to enter the course. After waiting a little, he pulled onto the course, with tragic results.

The driver tested negative for drugs or alcohol, and isn’t expected to face charges.

Cycling News reports Finlay was the brother of Josh Tarling, a cyclist on the Netcompany-Ineos team, and expected develop a successful career.

Needless to say, the Cyclistes Professionnels Associés (CPA), the union for pro cyclists, was angry over what was described as a “catastrophic” lack of security.

We are speechless and filled with anger after the news of Finlay Tarling’s death at the Tour of Portugal,” the CPA posted. “It is not right that a young athlete’s life should end this way, and we are furious that even today it is still not possible to prevent such serious accidents.”

The president of NSN Cycling called for better helmets in the wake of Tarling’s death.

“One thing we have to look at is helmets. They need a major upgrade. Bike helmets only need to meet standard testing like all helmets, EU standard CE EN 1078 is only rated for 19.5km/h (12.11 mph) and I do not believe this is enough for road racing.”

(Actually, that’s not enough for anything other than falling off a beach cruiser after too many fruity cocktails; I’ve long complained about the lack of protection offered by bicycle helmets.)

Darling’s parents released a statement, asking you to think of him the next time you clip into your pedals.

………

The Skepchick podcast considers why Donald Trump hates bike lanes.

My guess is he just didn’t get enough fawning admiration from cyclists when he briefly ran the Tour de Trump.

………

A Denver news report says a raging Colorado wildfire threatens the population Leadville Trail 100 mountain bike race, and all the financial benefits it brings to the struggling mountain town.

Thanks to Megan for the heads-up.

………

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

A 71-year old Upstate New York man faces charges for a road rage attack on a bike rider, swerving his car at the bicyclist and cutting the rider off, then pepper-spraying and kicking the victim in the face; he faces counts for assault in the third degree, reckless endangerment in the second degree, and criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford won the lawsuit attempting to stop him from ripping out Toronto’s bike lanes, as the Ontario Court of Appeal, the province’s highest court, ruled in his favor, but a Toronto website reminds readers its an election year there, too, and they can voice their displeasure at the ballot box.

………

Local

Courthouse News considers the struggle to close the eight-mile gap in the Los Angeles River bike path through DTLA, Vernon and Maywood. Maybe because the process has been such a trial up to this point.

Streetsblog’s Joe Linton checks out the new concrete curb-protected bike lane on Clark Ave in Long Beach.

State

Police in Irvine used a “specialized K9 officer and cutting-edge drone technology” to recover a high school student’s stolen ebike from an ex-con in a homeless encampment. That’s one very specialized dog if it knows how to pilot a drone.

LAist celebrates the newfound freedom to bike, skate or walk over the 5 Freeway in Irvine, thanks to a new bike/ped bridge over the busy highway.

Cops in Huntington Beach busted two men for using a fraudulent credit card to order five ebikes valued at more than $8,000 from the Jax Bicycle Center; employees became suspicious due to the size of the purchase.

Writing for the Voice of OC, a 12-year old Laguna Niguel middle school student says Orange County needs ebike safety reform immediately. Although they could have done better than illustrating it with a kid jumping a non-electrified mountain bike.

The California Coastal Commission finally approved a long-gestating plan to transform much of the northeastern corner of San Diego’s Mission Bay into marshland and recreation space — but not so much for bicycles, after ruling that a planned bike and pedestrian path has to be moved so it doesn’t pass through any wetlands. Although you’ll have to find a way around the Union-Tribune’s paywall if you want to read about it.

Tragic news from Sacramento, where two ebike riding teens were killed when then were both hit by a truck driver.

National

A new national survey shows strong support for sustainable transportation, local energy policies, and green infrastructure investments, though responses varied between urban and rural areas.

He gets it, the hard way. A Nevada bike rider questions why a hit-and-run driver left him lying bleeding in the roadway, saying “I can think of a lot of reasons why someone would hit me, but I can’t think of one good reason why someone would just leave the scene and leave me there.”

A 20-year old Arizona woman was lucky to survive when she was washed off a flooded bridge while trying to cross on her bicycle, then sucked through a flood tunnel; a woman who jumped in to rescue her had to be pulled out, too.

Utah endurance bicyclist Matthew Lefthand set a new world record for averaging 30 mph over 200 miles on a standard upright bicycle.

A Colorado woman says not only did becoming a one-car household reduce her family’s carbon footprint, it also made her life better.

Police in Chicago are looking for a reckless hit-and-run dirt bike rider who left a 45-year old woman riding a bicycle along the lakefront pathway with “catastrophic injuries.”

Tragic news from Indiana, where a 31-year old man drowned after apparently riding his bicycle around warning barricades, and falling into a gap where the road had been washed out.

A Boston suburb proves that Vision Zero works, as Somerville, Massachusetts — population 85,000 — goes four years without a traffic death.

A 63-year old New Jersey man raised $8,836 for a Newark homeless charity by competing in the 3,300-mile cross-country Trans Am Bike Nonstop Race.

A Biloxi, Mississippi couple celebrated their 50th anniversary with a 50-mile bike ride. My wife and I used to celebrate our anniversaries with a bike ride, too — I’d take the bike ride, and she’d celebrate when I made it back in one piece.

Horrible story from Birmingham, Alabama, where a 39-year old man was killed after he was struck by multiple drivers over an eight-minute period while riding his bike shortly before 4 am, including a sheriff’s deputy in a patrol car.

International

Forbes examines the more than 70 World Naked Bike Rides from around the globe, calling it a protest against “indecent exposure to cars.”

Cyclist’s Undercover Mechanic blames a “feast of information but a famine of knowledge” for why bicyclists are so bad at buying bicycles.

A writer for Road.cc says the collapse of Raleigh bikes is a British cultural tragedy, which feels personal to him and other riders of his generation.

An Irish woman rode 374 miles across the island alone to support two friends who had developed lymphoma, raising the equivalent of nearly $9,500 to fight the disease.

Multiple bicyclists have been arrested for violating the Isle of Man’s annual ban on riding the Mountain Road during the summer motorcycle racing season, even if it is the home of Sir Mark Cavendish. Then again, it’s also my ancestral home, which seems to count for nothing.

The Kazakh Embassy organized a Brussels bike ride to mark the 34th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Kazakhstan and Belgium.

A 66-year old Israeli man on a solo cycling trip in Finland has been found dead by the side of a road a week after his family lost contact with him; police believe he was the victim of a hit-and-run driver.

Momentum talks with a woman in St. Petersburg, Russia about her bike life, who describes her riding style as agile, unpredictable and fast, even if she rides a heavy retro bike people have called a “circus bike.”

Former South Korean Culture, Sports and Tourism Minister Yoo In-chon is on a seven-day, six-night pilgrimage to bike to 15 Catholic shrines in the country to mark the first anniversary of his younger brother Bishop Timothy Yoo Kyung-chon’s death.

Great idea. A Sydney, Australia bike scavenger hunt is designed to help riders discover the city, sending them to 15 locations where they have to find a stamp to mark their passport, with locations divided into Parks, Cycleways and Destinations.

Competitive Cycling

Wout van Aert demonstrates that he’s not invincible on gravel, as his training parter beats him to the finish at the Belgian Gravel Championships.

Former Argentine one-day classics specialist Juan Antonio Flecha may have retired from the sport, but he hasn’t given up bicycling, telling a writer “a cyclist is someone who lives life with a bicycle, not just someone who does sports,” as he drops his two daughters off at school on his bike.

A writer for Cycling Weekly says the recent Tour de France Femmes has has a major influence on women, who have taken up everyday bicycling as a result of the race.

Finally…

Riding naked with a group of other nude and partially clad bicyclists, good; riding pantless by yourself, not so much. Now you, too, can build your very own tandem unicycle.

And this is what you call a major phone fail. Thanks to Steven for the photo.

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin.

Category: Morning Links / Tags: bicycling, bicycling deaths, bike lanes, bike racing, cicLAvia, Colorado Blvd, Donald Trump, Finlay Tarling, Los Angeles, Pasadena, Volta a Portugal

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LA Cyclists Will Climb Mandeville Canyon Up To Ten Times On World Mental Health Day To Fund The 988 Crisis Line

The 10/10 Mandeville Challenge returns Saturday, October 10, raising money for Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, home to the nation’s first suicide prevention center

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