April 30, 2026 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on New round of ebike vouchers for SGV, bike lane tames(?) deadly Griffith Park road, and Bike Month cometh
Good news for the San Gabriel Valley.
The San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments is teaming with the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), Active SGV and the California Transportation Commission to open up a second round of funding for ebike vouchers.
A crowdfunding campaign has raised over $700 of the $900 goal to buy a new ebike for an 81-year old El Cajon jokester, who has gained internet fame in a series of viral videos, after the ebike he relied on for transportation was stolen. Which is a damn good reminder that ebikes can provide mobility people long after they stop driving. And for those who should.
They get it. The American Bicycling Education Association calls on the AP to add a section on ebikes to its industry-standard AP Style Book, defining an ebike as having fully operable pedals and an electric motor of 750 watts or less, as well as limited speeds (typically 20–28 mph), suggesting electric motorcycle, electric dirt bike or off-highway electric vehicle for bikes that don’t meet that definition.
April 17, 2026 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on CA Post: Los Angeles is a liberal hell, a call for reasonable ebike legislation, and man dies after Long Beach hit-and-run
And state and local government, from the governor and legislature on down to the mayor, city council and school board, are out to lunch…
But the bottom line is this: Government at all levels is failing to lead, course-correct, and address –– with even minimal efficacy –– a range of issues that increasingly degrade life here.
In fact, elected officials, driven by cronyism, interest-group pressure and out-of-touch far-left ideology, mostly make the crises worse.
Look, I’m no fan of our current city leaders, but life here ain’t all that bad.
It just could be a lot better.
And something tells me, we might not agree on who the special interests are. Never mind what “far-left” ideologies are just practical solutions that we haven’t been tried yet.
Like building more bike lanes and providing safe, practical alternatives to driving, rather than doubling down on the same things that got us in this mess.
Liberal hellfire and damnation — or maybe just fire — photo by Sergey Meshkov from Pexels.
California lawmakers are right to be concerned about the spread of high-powered electric devices marketed as e-bikes. There is some truth behind the now-familiar image of 12-year-olds doing wheelies through suburban streets on machines far more powerful than a legal electric bicycle. But too many of this year’s bills respond to that concern by going after the wrong target, and they will not deliver the results anyone actually wants. Instead of drawing a clear line between legal e-bikes and illegal e-motos, these proposals blur it further. They add burdens to the bikes people actually rely on, while failing to directly address the devices creating the confusion in the first place.
California needs to protect the promise of e-bikes, not let the e-moto backlash distort the law. In this century, e-bikes have been one of the most important transportation success stories in the state. They help people replace car trips. They expand access to biking for older adults, working families, and people who might not otherwise ride in hilly terrain. They make biking more practical for longer distances, hills, errands, school dropoff, and everyday life. In a state that talks constantly about climate, congestion, affordability, and mobility, e-bikes should be an obvious part of the solution, and under settled California law, they already are.
It’s worth checking out.
And taking just a few moments to voice your support.
Investigators still don’t have a suspect, but describe the vehicle as a Toyota Previa van that sped away west on Anaheim.
Anyone with information is urged to call LBPD Collision Investigation Detail Detective David Doughtery at 562/570-7355, or anonymously through LA Crime Stoppers at 800/222-TIPS (8477) or LACrimeStoppers.org.
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Streets Are For Everyone is joining with CD4 to call for help cleaning up the Forest Lawn Drive bike lanes on Saturday, April 25th ahead of this year’s Finish the Ride in Griffith Park (and good luck to Kayla as she competes in Hong Kong). For some reason, I can’t embed Instagram Reels, so you’ll have to click on the link.
SAFE is also celebrating the re-opening of the Marvin Braude Bike Trail in Pacific Palisades after it was washed out by last year’s storms, as well as progress on bike lanes in Griffith Park.
Instagram post
Finally, SAFE and Finish the Ride are bringing back the city’s much loved and lamented LA River Ride on May 3rd. And yes, it will still contain that confusing stretch south of DTLA where the bike path hasn’t been completed, and probably won’t be for some time.
Instagram post
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Streetsblog’s Joe Linton visits Santa Monica’s MANGo.
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New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talks healthcare while vlogging from her bike seat.
Thanks to Megan for forwarding the video.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
British bicyclists may be in for a surprise, after an English city finally got around to installing flexible wands to keep drivers from illegally parking in a bike lane. Which if Los Angeles drivers are any example, won’t actually stop anyone.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
The Pasadena City Council unanimously approved plans for the 710 Freeway stub, including housing and multimodal transportation initiatives, but wants to talk more about restorative justice for the mostly Black residents who were unceremoniously shoved out to make room for the never-built freeway.
Louisville, Kentucky has painted new downtown bike lanes a bright shade of neon green, not to keep drivers out, but to make them more obvious to pedestrians, who were falling off the curbs. Evidently, they don’t film many movies or TV shows there, because that looks like the same shade Hollywood producers went to war against here in Los Angeles.
Shockingly, business owners have “concerns” over a proposed new bike lane on a New York thoroughfare. In other words, kinda like every business owner everywhere when new bike lanes go in. Never mind that studies show their business is usually better within a few months afterwards.
Oopsie. The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority said recently that just 1,700 people use a new bikeway each day; that turned out to be the number of people who use the new showers at the end of the path, compared to 7,000 people who used the actual pathway in just a four-hour window.
March 31, 2026 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on West LA CicLAvia coming next month, LA speed cams and photo bike lane ticketing, and new helmet may be safest ever
Happy César Ch…uh, Farmworkers Day, to all who celebrate.
The legislature, in a typical compromise to avoid passing any major traffic safety legislation, approved a pilot program allowing speed cams in six cities, three in Northern California and three in Southern California.
Streetsblog reports San Francisco and Oakland already have their speed camera programs up and running, while Long Beach and Glendale have finalized locations and approved vendor contracts; San Jose is the other NorCal city included in the program.
The law was later amended to allow a handful of desperately needed speed cams on PCH in Malibu, as well.
The six-city pilot program was a compromise to get a bill that would have legalized them statewide out of committee.
According to Streetsblog, Los Angeles was the last city to move forward with its program, as usual for the notoriously risk-averse and driver-shy city. But the city finally finalized the speed cam locations last week, and will send the contract out to bid with a goal of getting them installed and working by the end of the year.
Yay, us.
In other long overdue news, Streetsblog adds that Los Angeles is trying to work out the details on a program to use cameras to ticket drivers parked in bike lanes.
Here’s a thought.
Let the people who actually use the bike lanes enforce the law by submitting their own photos and videos of drivers blocking bike lanes, and just send the owners a ticket, already.
The helmet scored a 4.61, more than two points better than the next highest rated helmet.
It’s based on the company’s proprietary OBLIK impact management system, designed to reduce both linear and rotational forces; the nearly 20-year old MIPS system only reduces rotational forces.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
Someone may or may not have tried to sabotage an Iowa bike path, after the bomb squad destroyed a suspicious device packed with nails and explosive materials left in a backpack along the trail.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
A recent University of Arizona grad from Humboldt is setting off with his dad on a 9,600-mile ride to visit all 30 major league ballparks. Although if they really wanted a challenge, they should try riding to all 120 minor league parks in the US alone.
There’s not a pit in hell deep enough for the co-founder of the Bellingham, Washington edition of the World Naked Bike Ride after he was busted on kiddie porn charges; he claimed he was doing research for a children’s book about a child who runs around naked — even though his book was published six years ago.
A Delhi-based white-collar worker swaps his car for a bicycle to commute to work for four months to see if biking every day can help improve the city’s air quality crisis, and finds he can get to work on a bicycle as fast as in a car. A few years back, I spoke with a Delhi-based bike accessory maker, who was comfortable riding that city’s seemingly chaotic streets, but just couldn’t imagine how we manage riding the mean streets of Los Angeles.
Somehow we missed this one last week, as a pro-Palestinian and environmental protestor caused a major smashup in the Tour of Bruges by sitting in the middle of the road as the peloton approached; the same man disrupted the finale of the 2022 Tour of Flanders by running across the roadway, splashed paint on Vermeer’s Girl with the Pearl Earring, tied himself to a goal post during the Belgian FA Cup final, and sprayed the British Embassy in Brussels with red paint. Yet somehow, he was still allowed within 50 miles of a bike race without adult supervision.
March 27, 2026 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Arrest made in road-rage harassment of OC bicyclists, Trump halting bike lane funding, and K Line extension okayed
My apology to everyone who received an earlier email containing nothing but an outline.
Evidently, I hit the wrong button, and posted it instead of saving it so I could keep working.
And yes, I freely admit to being an idiot, or any other term that feels most appropriate rolling off your lips.
One of those viewers must have been someone in the police department, because a suspect is now under arrest for the alleged road rage attack.
According to a press release from the Newport Beach Police Department reposted on Fetzer’s Instagram account, a man identified as Corona resident Samir Weiss was busted for assault with a deadly weapon, as well as a charge for obstructing traffic.
They seized the weapon used in the attack as evidence — Weiss’ blue BMW M3.
Video footage of the incident shows the blue sedan driving behind the cyclists in a bike lane, accelerating and honking. At one point, Fetzer’s friend is seen jumping onto a curb with his bike, apparently to avoid the vehicle. The footage also appears to show a passenger throwing water at Fetzer.
According to Fetzer, the situation escalated a few miles later near a Shake Shack, where the driver and several others exited their vehicles and confronted the cyclists. Fetzer said the driver and four other people blocked traffic lanes, made threats and attempted to tackle them off their bikes.
Bizarrely, Fetzer told the Register that Weiss had reached out to him. Not to apologize, as you might think, but to challenge him to fight, MMA style.
Fetzer also shared what he said was a direct message from the driver after the incident.
“Hey bro let’s both sign waivers and meetup for a consensual Full MMA sparring session,” the message reads. “Let’s settle this like men.”
However, I’ve always thought of fighting as something that happened back behind the grade school playground at recess or after class let out for the day.
Although despite the way KCBS frames it, the message didn’t rise to the level of an actual threat, legally at least, since it was framed as a challenge.
But as I learned after reporting an apparent threat I received on here to the LAPD, someone has to actually say they’re going to harm you, rather than just saying they want to.
Or challenging you to “settle it like men.”
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Transportation for America warns that not only is the Trump administration trying to rip out a popular DC bike lane to make more room for cars, they’re trying to do the same thing across the country by cutting off funding before the lanes can even be built.
The Metro Board approved the northern extension of the K Line Cedars-Sinai, West Hollywood and the Hollywood Bowl, after a last-minute agreement to allow work on obtaining funding to move forward, while an additional one-year study of the effects of tunneling in the area around Lafayette Square is conducted.
According to the Los Angeles Times,
However, in the 24 hours before Thursday’s meeting, Bass met several times behind the scenes with West Hollywood Mayor John Heilman, a major backer of the K Line extension, to come up with an amended motion that allows West Hollywood and L.A. County to work on securing funding that will allow the project to accelerate while also calling for additional study of the Mid-City section and community engagement. The new amendment, Bass stressed before the board voted in favor, would not delay the project or its funding…
Explaining her push for a compromise, Bass said that Lafayette Square is one of Los Angeles’s most significant historic Black neighborhoods. She recounted the history of nearby Sugar Hill, a once thriving Black community that was “profoundly disrupted” by the construction of the 10 freeway.
The difference, of course, is that the Sugar Hill neighborhood was razed by white city leaders who saw no value in a Black community, while the train will go deep underneath the existing homes.
And to the best of my knowledge, won’t involve destroying an inch of the historic neighborhood.
But still.
No one wants to see historically Black neighborhoods harmed. So if it takes yet another study to calm fears while the project moves forward, so be it.
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Good news for our neighbor to the south, who can really use it.
Bluesky post
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Shifter discusses five bicycle advocacy mistakes you didn’t even know you’re making, from thinking it’s you versus the world, to making sure that political leaders who say “no” suffer consequences for their decisions.
Get ready for yet-another bicycle and pedestrian safety enforcement operation in Santa Monica tomorrow, with cops set to ticket any traffic violations that could endanger either one, regardless of who commits it or why. So once again, ride to the letter of the law until you cross back into Los Angeles or Culver City, so you’re not the one who gets written up.
A San Diego op-ed from a pair of local bike advocates responds to a previous argument against plans for a bike lane on Governor Drive in the University City neighborhood, saying there’s simply no other place to put it.
Washington State is rebooting their ebike rebate program, offering vouchers up to $1,200. That compares favorably to California, which no longer has an ebike program because CARB stole all the money and gave it to buyers of electric cars and trucks, forgetting that ebikes are EVs that help get other EVs and gas-burning vehicles off the roads. Schmucks.
Wisconsin offers safety tips for bicyclists, which mostly make sense for a change, noting that “in 2024, a bicyclist was killed or hurt about every 11 hours” in the state. Damn, that guy should be more careful.
A writer for Psychology Todayresponds to rumors about Tadej Pogačar’s win in Milan–San Remo, arguing that while we should never forget previous doping incidents, suspicion can become a psychological defense, and “If every new level is interpreted only through the past, then the past begins to limit the future.” Yeah, what he said.
March 11, 2026 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on New LA bike lanes sprouting with the spring, and CA DMV fights to keep killer driver on the road and record secret
Maybe we’re making progress after all.
Suddenly, there’s news of bike lanes sprouting all across the Los Angeles area, albeit to the apparent chagrin of some.
The North Westwood Neighborhood Council voted to approve plans for a protected bike lane on Ohio Ave, which offers the only practical east-west route between Westwood and Santa Monica that does not require riding past on-and-off ramps for the 10 Freeway, where at least two bike riders have been killed in recent years.
Streetsblog’sJoe Linton offers more information on a number of bike projects in Los Angeles, including Crystal Springs Drive and Pershing Drive below, as well as plans for new bike lanes on Terra Bella Street after the East San Fernando light rail project results in ripping out 2.8 miles of bike lanes on Van Nuys Blvd.
Crystal Springs Drive in Griffith Park is looking a lot better, too, four years after Andrew Jelmert was killed in a hit-and-run while training for the former AIDS/LifeCycle Ride. Although I remain adamant that cars don’t belong in parks. Period.
And even the death of a pregnant mom isn’t enough to get protected bike lanes on Pershing Drive.
Bluesky post
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This is why people keep dying on our streets.
Cal Matters reports that the California DMV not only kept a driver on the road, despite at least 16 previous moving violations and four crashes, they fought to keep his driving record a secret.
Even from persecutors after he was charged with vehicular manslaughter for killing a two-year old boy.
And adding insult to grievous injury, the DMV renewed his license just a year later, while the manslaughter charge was still pending.
Surely, the DMV did some sort of review before deciding it was safe to let (Kostas) Linardos stay on the road.
Right?
The DMV spent close to a year fighting to keep the answer to that a secret, refusing to release information on Linardos without a court order and then urging a judge not to issue such a decree. The agency’s lawyer argued in a filing that prosecutors wanted records “for the improper purpose of smearing the DMV for alleged and unfounded wrongdoing.”
Prosecutors said they wanted the DMV records to help show Linardos knew the risks of driving recklessly, which is something they needed to prove to make a felony vehicular manslaughter charge stick.
When the issue finally made it to court this year, the attorney representing the agency made a shocking admission: The DMV had no records of any investigation into a longtime reckless driver who killed a 23-month-old boy. The agency didn’t even appear to have held a hearing before deciding it was fine to let Linardos stay on the road.
Although once again, there’s no attempt to differentiate between ped-assist ebikes and electric motorbikes.
According to the study, the hospital recorded 262 ebike-related trauma cases last year, with most of the victims 11 and 14 years old, with a noticeable spike among 13‑year‑olds.
While that likely corresponds to the increase in ebike use, the hospital also reported ebike injuries were likely to be more severe than those caused by regular bicycles.
It’s also questionable how many of those ebikes were actually street legal, or could legally be ridden by children that young, who are limited to Class 1 and 2 bikes with a maximum speed of 20 mph.
And as studies have shown, sharrows are worse than nothing when it comes to preventing injuries to bicyclists, and shouldn’t be used on streets with speeds above 35 mph.
Actions speak louder than words, Lucy pulls the football away again; whatever aphorism or metaphor one wants to use, Caltrans proves once again that it’s run by bad actors who betray the public in their relentless pursuit of auto-über alles policies.
Then there’s this.
With the removal of the painted bike lanes, which were woefully inadequate on a multi-lane street such as Oak Street to start with, Caltrans now expects cyclists to share a lane with traffic. Keep in mind that this is also a major route to I-880 and is plagued with non-stop speeding traffic and red-light running. The removed bike lanes are on a major bike commuter routes that connect the Oakland ferry terminal, Lake Merritt BART, and thousands of residential units…
Nobody, really, should be surprised. Caltrans, Alameda County, and the consultants who work for them have acted in bad faith throughout this project.
Never mind that Caltran’s ostensible Complete Streets policy requires the state transportation agency to “provide comfortable, convenient, and connected complete streets facilities on all projects and in all project phases, including construction and maintenance,” according to Jeanie Ward-Waller, Director of Transportation Advocacy at Fearless.
She should know, since Ward-Waller was the whistleblower who was “reassigned” from her position as Deputy Director of Planning and Multimodal Programs at Caltrans after warning that a Sacramento highway project violated that same policy.
Just one more reminder, if we needed it, that the agency’s Complete Streets requirement needs to be codified into law, since they only seem to follow it when it’s convenient for them or the public demands it.
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I had the time to rip into this piece from a rightwing Irish site, as a writer complains about the “fetishization” and “relentless promotion” of the government’s “obsession” with bicycling.
According to Vincent, from the “perception of the average person”, the number of cyclists in Dublin using the city’s bike lanes “is so small that it is set completely off balance with the amount of space they take up”.
“Hardly anyone uses these lanes, and yet we are forced to swallow it when an entire lane from a road is sacrificed – often with the result of creating an infuriating one-way system in the area – to make space for more bikes; the same bikes that seem never to fill the lanes they are currently provided with,” he continues, failing to grasp the point of cycling infrastructure entirely.
Never mind that those “empty” bike lanes have resulted in a 50% increase in bicycle trips.
But that inconvenient fact probably wouldn’t fit his narrative.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
The LAPD is looking for a suspect in a bike-by shooting in Historic South Central Los Angeles, after a 36-year old man was shot by someone on a bicycle while sitting in his car at Washington Blvd and Santee Street.
If you left your bicycle, cellphone, blowtorch or prosthetic leg on a Metro bus or train, they may be holding it for you to reclaim. Although it makes sense that someone would leave their bike behind after losing their leg on the bus, which would make it kinda hard to pedal.
Momentumhails Santa Monica resident Caro Vilain, aka mobilityforwho on Instagram, for her “viral videos steering a fun-fueled cycling revolution.” I would have embedded some of her videos, but Insta was being uncooperative tonight.
A North Carolina newspaper offers an in-depth report on last month’s 950-mile Remember the Removal bike ride to help members of the Cherokee Nation reconnect with their heritage, while retracing the northern route of the horrific Trail of Tears; an estimated quarter of the 16,000 tribal members died along the way when the Cherokee people were forced to walk to Oklahoma from their Southern Appalachian homelands.
Because something tells me voters might have a long memory in this case.
It was just short of two years ago when Lau plowed her car into the bus stop where 40-year old Diego Cardoso de Oliveira and his wife, 38-year old Matilde Moncada Ramos Pinto were waiting with their two children, 1-year old Joaquim Ramos Pinto de Oliveira and 3-month-old Cauê Ramos Pinto de Oliveira, after celebrating their wedding anniversary.
Diego and Joaquim were killed instantly, while Matilde and Cauê died days later in the hospital.
Lau was driving on the wrong side of the divided roadway at 70 mph at the time of the crash. Yet Chan bizarrely ruled that there was no point in punishing her, because she’s old and really, really sorry.
Which must be why she tried to hide her assets before the inevitable lawsuit.
According to the website,
As if the family of the victims hasn’t suffered enough, last month, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Bruce Chan expressed sympathy for the now 80-year-old Lau and stated it was unlikely she would serve any jail time or even a community service mandate after pleading no contest to four felony counts of gross vehicular manslaughter…
After Lau changed her plea from not guilty to no contest, Chan said his duty “was to balance the deaths with the other factors of the case.” Those factors included Lau’s age, her lack of criminal history, and “her remorse,” as well as the fact that her own husband had died in a car accident early on in their marriage.”
Chan even injected some hearsay into the proceedings, saying that in the hospital after the crash, “Lau tearfully told medical staff she wished she could trade places with the family.”
Chan said jail time would mean Lau would probably die in prison. As opposed to her victims, who just died in the street and the local hospital.
Instead, he said he’d sentence her to a lousy two to three years probation. But at least she won’t be able to drive — legally, anyway — until her probation ends.
So we can expect Lau to get her license back when she’s 83, with the blood of four innocent lives on her record.
Seems reasonable.
But as writer Susan Dyer Reynolds notes, remorseful people don’t usually hide their assets.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, in July 2024, the surviving parents of Cardoso de Oliveira and Ramos Pinto filed a wrongful death civil suit against Lau. In May 2025, the relatives filed another civil lawsuit, this time asking a judge to void alleged financial transfers that Lau made after the first civil lawsuit was filed. The victims’ families accused Lau of transferring her ownership interest in several properties to new limited liability companies and selling properties to third parties, including her son-in-law, thereby transferring millions of dollars to avoid potential financial penalties from the civil suit. Hiding assets doesn’t sound like remorse to me…
Me, either.
So if you wonder why people keep dying on our streets, overly lenient judges like Chan are a damn good place to start.
But at least he won’t be around much longer to let any other killer drivers walk.
A proposed San Diego ordinance would ban kids under 12 from riding Class 1 and 2 ebikes, as well as prohibiting a passenger from any ebike without a permanent passenger seat; children under 16 are already prohibited from riding Class 3 ebikes.
This is who we share the road with, part two. A Sacramento website reports that Black pedestrians are disproportionately more likely to be killed on the city’s streets, illustrating the story by describing a 26-year old South Sacramento man who was struck by a driver while crossing the street, then repeatedly run over by multiple drivers — all of whom fled the scene, and none were ever brought to justice.
That’s more like it. A Texas man was sentenced to 15 years behind bars for the hit-and-run that killed a popular 38-year old bike rider four years ago, and reporting his car stolen in an effort to cover up the crime. Does that ever work?
Seriously? Police in Raleigh NC have no intention of filing charges against the driver who killed a 65-year old man riding a bicycle, even though he was in a crosswalk with the green light, apparently because a) the victim was riding against traffic, and/or b) because the driver wasn’t drunk — even though the investigation is still ongoing, for no apparent reason. Never mind that crosswalks are bidirectional, and being under the influence isn’t the only way a driver can be at fault. And be forewarned, there’s no way to opt out of the cookies if you click on the damn link.
Last night, I tried to have a rational discussion with someone on Twitter/X who disagreed with me.
And was quickly reminded why that’s a bad idea.
Admittedly, I eventually lost my cool. Well, only if you consider telling someone to “eat shit” before blocking them losing your cool.
I don’t take kindly to someone trying to tell me who and what I am, and what I believe, without knowing anything about me other than some point the disagree with.
Or maybe they just find my whole existence disagreeable.
But the gist of the conversation, with someone who described himself as an active bicyclist, was A) Los Angeles isn’t Amsterdam, B) bike lanes allegedly slow traffic and hurt business, and C) this has always been a car-centric city and always will be.
Which is fine. He’s entitled to his opinion, just as I am to mine.
And he’s right, Los Angeles isn’t Amsterdam. Neither is Paris or Copenhagen. Only Amsterdam is Amsterdam, just like only LA is LA.
But that doesn’t mean a city can’t change.
Amsterdam wasn’t always what it is today. In the 60s, it was a car choked, traffic clogged mess, until people got tired of the endless toll of traffic deaths, and began the “Stop de Kindermoord” movement.
That is, stop murdering children with motor vehicles.
That was the beginning of a total reimagining of the city that made it one of the most walkable, bikeable cities in the world today, where driving is usually the last choice when other options aren’t practical.
The same is true with Copenhagen, at roughly the same time and for the same reasons.
Yet despite the assumptions of those who so casually throw out “this isn’t Amsterdam” as if it’s a trump card, those cities are far from unique. In just the last decade, we’ve seen Paris reinvent itself to be far more walkable and bikeable, utilizing the concept of the 15 Minute City.
And in just the last few years, we’ve seen London transform to the point that bikes often outnumber cars in the city center.
Even my Colorado hometown took a similar journey.
When I was a kid, there were no bike lanes. The first bike path, along the river through town, was built while I was away.
But as the city grew from 10,000 people when I was in grade school, to 25,000 in high school, to nearly 170,000 people today, it continued to sprawl and be built around cars, with the inevitable traffic and congestion, until the people there said “enough.”
Today it is a Platinum Level Bicycle Friendly Community, according to the League of American Bicyclists.
In other words, it changed, because the people who live there wanted it to. Boulder, about 45 minutes to the south, took a similar path.
Maybe those cities are outliers. Or maybe the only reason Los Angeles, and other similar cities, aren’t like that is that the people haven’t demanded it.
Yet.
His second argument was based on a basic fallacy.
He made the case that bike lanes that were installed, then removed, in Playa del Rey because they slowed traffic, and there weren’t enough bike riders to justify them.
Which was kind of the point.
They weren’t installed for our benefit. Making the city more bikeable and a little safer was only an added bonus, brief though it may have been.
They were installed as a tool to calm traffic, intended to slow cars and reduce traffic flow because of the unacceptable level of traffic collisions and deaths in the Playa community.
And while it’s possible that they may have initially hurt local businesses, repeated studies have shown that retail sales and tax receipts usually increase within a year or two after the installation of bike lanes — and the people who initially fought the lanes often later fight to keep them.
That didn’t happen in Playa, simply because they were never given the chance.
The final argument is also based on a fallacy.
Anyone who lived here in the ’30s or ’40s wouldn’t recognize the car-centric city we have devolved into. Los Angeles once had the best transit system in the country, with every neighborhood efficiently served by the Red and Yellow Cars.
Those were the trolley systems that once ran down the middle of every major roadway. But they were removed to make way for cars, resulting in the overly wide boulevards we have today.
Before that, the city’s roads were built and paved to accommodate bicycles, prior to the mass production of motor vehicles.
And before that, it was a city of dusty roads and trails for horses and wagons.
So the city has already reinvented how it gets around multiple times. And we can do it again if a majority of Angelenos want it.
Then again, the two-third majority who voted for Measure HLA would seem to suggest they do.
I won’t get into the whole thing now — or probably ever — except to say that it, too, is based on a couple of basic fallacies, which like a butterfly flapping its wings on the other side of the world, sends the whole damn thing off in the wrong direction.
The concept of traffic violence was never intended to suggest that there is anything intentional about it. Simply put, traffic violence reflects the fact that crashes are violent events, which can inflict violent trauma to its victims.
And like other forms of violence, the causes can be addressed, and the effects minimized.
As for the idea that traffic violence, or traffic deaths, are an epidemic, that isn’t meant to suggest it has suddenly become so. Violent crashes and traffic deaths have been epidemic ever since the motor vehicle was invented.
Traffic deaths have always been too high. Calling them an epidemic now is merely a recognition of the problem.
It’s kind of like if measles had always been around, and no one ever bothered to do anything about it. Then one day, someone pointed a finger and called the problem an epidemic that could be treated.
One last point.
The writer of this piece suggests that the solution to safer streets isn’t separating bikes and pedestrians from motor vehicles, but for everyone to focus on sharing the road safely and efficiently.
I used to believe that, too.
I have often said that if everyone obeys the law, and share the road in a safe manner, that crashes are unlikely, if not impossible.
But that fails to account for human nature.
People will inevitably make mistakes, and do whatever is most convenient for them in the moment, largely because they’ve always gotten away with it before. And will continue to get away with it, until they don’t.
Which is the whole rationale for Vision Zero, based on the idea that human beings make mistakes, and roads should be designed so those human mistakes don’t become tragedies.
If you disagree with that, that’s fine. We should be able to disagree without being disagreeable, and find a consensus that works for the majority of people, while protecting the rights of the minority.
That’s how democracy works.
So disagree, vehemently if you must.
But try to keep the insults to a minimum. And I will, too.
Photo by Joni Yung.
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Megan forwards the Meyer’s Brothers podcast, in which Danish actor, producer and screenwriter — and the Game of Thrones Jaime Lannister — Nikolaj Coster-Waldau reveals not only that he’s one of us, but that bicycling is his favorite form of transportation.
Hawaii is joining the long list of states cracking down on ebikes, with one resident telling lawmakers it’s become a Wild West,” with little kids “zipping out around a corner on the sidewalk with some high-speed motorized vehicle.”
In a doubly tragic case of Texas symmetry, two 16-year old bicyclists were struck by drivers while each was riding with a companion; one suffered life-threatening injuries, while the other sadly didn’t make it. In the second case, both rides were struck by the driver, while in the other, the victim was hit so hard his GPS showed him flying off his bike at nearly 78 mph after the impact.
In yet another example of keeping a dangerous driver on the road until it’s too late, a 37-year old Louisiana man faces a number of charges after critically injuring a 63-year old bike rider who had stopped to fix his chain — including his 4th DUI. In any rational world, he would have been off the road after his second. If not the first.
January 29, 2026 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Bike lanes could be coming to Los Feliz, CicLAvia comes off life-support, and hit-and-run driver murders Holocaust survivor
Or as most of us know them, the majestic evergreen cedars lining either side of the busy boulevard, which have been designated as a Historic-Cultural Monument since 1970.
CD4 Councilmember Nithya Raman, who somehow represents the area in a bizarrely gerrymandered district, got the city council to approve $400,000 for a feasibility and design study to install a cycle track between Fern Dell Drive and Vermont Ave.
A safe bikeway along the corridor would provide a huge benefit, as there is currently no safe way to get from Hollywood to the LA River or the zoo, without climbing extremely steep hills.
Or to Costco, for that matter.
………
It looks like CicLAvia may be off life support.
According to the San Fernando Valley Sun, Metro voted last year to approve funding for open streets events tied to the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Olympics, putting traditional open streets events at risk.
However, after outrage from the community, Metro agreed to fund 70% of the cost for nine additional open streets applications, while requiring host cities to provide the other 30% matching funding.
Which is exactly what the Los Angeles City Council did yesterday, voting 12-2 to approve $3.2 million for open streets.
CD3 Councilmember Bob Blumenfield and CD7’s Monica Rodriguez opposed the measure because only one of the events is planned for the San Fernando Valley.
I neglected to consider yesterday that not everyone has Instagram. Which I should have, considering I only have it to share corgi photos and witticisms.
Well, I think they’re funny, even if the dog doesn’t share my sense of humor. Or my wife, for that matter.
Fortunately, Randy corrected my mistake yesterday, posting details of the West LA Unity Ride, while noting rental bikes will we available.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
You know your new bike lane sucks when riders are reporting broken bones and kidney damage, like this one in Brighton & Hove, England; the city is defending itself by arguing that they’re all turning in the wrong place.
A British man was convicted of assault for punching a bike rider who had stopped to relieve himself in the woods along a bike path, accusing the victim of being a “pervert,” and touching his genitals in front of him. Which is generally what one does when one stops to take a leak; a better question might be why was he looking?
An op-ed in the Los Angeles Times says the county has set a goal of ripping up 1,600 acres of pavement and replacing them with green space and trees, but questions if it’s too little, too late. Probably. Because we all know how “goals” tend to work out around here.
Bike lanes on Fairfax Ave now have a new coat of Kermit, in a special shade or green specifically designed not to piss off Hollywood filmmakers. Although that’s still probably not enough to keep drivers from using them as traffic bypass lanes.
The attorney representing the family of 6-year old Hudson O’Loughlin is looking for deeper pockets than the woman accused of killing the boy as he rode his bike with his family in Pacific Beach; the suspect has been without a valid driver’s license for nine years, which means she probably doesn’t have insurance.
National
Amazon is recruiting ebike delivery riders who own their own bikes without any illegal modifications and with their own liability insurance; the company has also begun investing in their own ebike cargo vans for urban deliveries.
Seriously? A nonprofit bike park in Idaho continues to battle with county officials, who have denied it a permit to even build bathrooms, in a dispute that boils down to whether it should be classified as a ‘park’ or a ‘recreational facility.’
A 62-year old motorcycle rider faces a vehicular homicide charge for killing a 68-year old man riding a bicycle just a few miles from my Colorado hometown following a nine-month investigation; he’s accused of failing to negotiate a lefthand curve after passing another motorcycle, striking the victim on the far right shoulder, apparently head-on. Which makes it sound like the investigation should have taken about ten minutes.
January 16, 2026 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on New CA ebike bill still 3 times UK limits, Hollywood Walk of Fame officially sucks, and we pay the price for LA potholes
Which anyone who lives or works near, or has ever visited, Hollywood Boulevard can attest to, without ever going to the effort of visiting all the other tourist attractions.
The plans are already in place, after undergoing the city’s usual endless series of public meetings, complete with compromises to placate every possible point of view.
Plans are also ready to convert the stretch of boulevard between Highland and Orange into a multi-block pedestrian plaza, which could do more than anything else to improve safety and reinvigorate the area.
I asked former LADOT Executive Director Seleta Reynolds that very question all the way back in 2018, and was told it was shovel ready as soon as a majority of Angelenos demanded it.
Who, I might add, were never asked that question.
Our leaders just assumed, as usual, that most people would oppose it, based on the city’s standard decision making process of giving in to whoever screams the loudest.
Never mind that an overwhelming two-thirds majority of city residents voted to build sidewalks, bikeways and bus lanes when they passed Measure HLA.
Hollywood doesn’t have to suck.
We just lack leaders with the guts to do anything about it.
Which the city is not fixing, due to massive maintenance budget cuts by a mayor and city council who put us on the brink of bankruptcy due to unfunded pay raises for city employees.
But what would be, at worst, an expensive inconvenience for motorists could lead to serious injuries, or worse, for people on bicycles.
Because your front wheel unexpectedly dropping out from under you can result in severe falls. And swerving to avoid a pothole can put you in the path of oncoming drivers and their big, dangerous machines.
So the city might save a few bucks by not fixing potholes now, and pay for it later in the form of massive legal settlements.
But we’ll be the ones who really get stuck with the bill.
Police busted a man wanted for probation violation and robbery after he led them on a pursuit from National City into San Diego, riding his ebike on the freeway. Although something tells me he wasn’t riding anything that would be called an ebike under the new California bill, let alone British regulations.
Speaking of recalls, if you’re wearing an R.X.Y bicycle helmet, stop; the helmets violate minimum bike helmet standards, and pose a risk of serious injury or death. Which is definitely a bad thing.
A British mother of three was sentenced to 35 years to life behind bars for a road rage-fueled feud, after running down and fatally ramming an ebike rider with her Range Rover at speeds of up to 75 mph. Once again, the victim probably wasn’t riding something that should be called an ebike.
It will be that particular shade known as “Hollywood Green,” allowing filmmakers to work around the color to avoid the disastrous rollout when Los Angeles first went green.
Painting the lanes is probably a good idea, given that most drivers seem to think the Fairfax bike lane is only there to bypass backed-up traffic, seemingly never occurring to them that there might be a bicycle in it.
And usually there isn’t, for exactly that reason.
Green paint isn’t likely to stop those drivers. But at least they’ll have a better idea what law they’re breaking.
AB 1557 would also reclassify more powerful electric motorbikes as motor-driven cycles, which would require a license to operate.
Maybe then we can finally get everyone to stop calling the damn things ebikes, and blaming all of us for the actions of a relative few teen knuckleheads.
No bias here, either. Aussie commenters set their hair on fire when a photo showed a bicyclist riding in a bus lane, insisting that the single rider was somehow “inconveniencing hundreds” during rush hour. Must have been a damn big bus, because no one else in the photo seems to be even a little bit inconvenienced.
Oceanside police are pushing for a change in the city’s ebike regulations to prohibit carrying a second rider and allow cops to temporarily seize the ebikes of scofflaw riders. Although once again, they seem to be conflating ped-assist ebikes with illegally modified electric motorbikes and dirt bikes.
A New York news site says bicyclists and ebikers continue to exceed Central Park’s 15 mph speed limit, endangering lives, while the speed limit is almost impossible to enforce. Yet the photo shows a couple kids on e-motorbikes with full face helmets, one pulling a wheelie, making it clear that regular bicycles and ped-assist ebikes aren’t the problem. And speed guns work just as well on them as they do with motor vehicles.
Streetsblog says the way to solve the problems in Central Park is to build better bike lanes around the park’s perimeter, so non-recreational riders don’t have to use it as the only safe route across town.
Bike Radar explains why your ebike battery loses power when it’s cold, with a lithium ion battery having just half the power at 4 below zero Fahrenheit that it does at 77 degrees. Which is not a problem most SoCal riders are likely to have.
More proof protected bike lanes work. A year-old protected bike lane in the Australian state of Tasmania hasn’t had a single bicycling crash since it was installed, despite seeing 6,000 trips each month, while overall crashes on the street have dropped nearly a third.
Spoiled little daschund ! Grandpaw built this custom snoopy inspired dog house from scratch for his grand dog Louie! #daschund#dogsoftiktok#dogtiktok#dogmom
