Just 97 days left until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025.
Photo of protected bike lane in Redondo Beach by Ted Faber.
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Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill that will make building bike lanes near the coast faster and easier by removing a requirement for a Coastal Commission study.
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The state also stepped in where Los Angeles tried and failed, as Newsom signed a bill banning cities from requiring automatic road widening with new building projects.
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The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is launching a new campaign to “demand a visionary Biking and Rolling Plan from our city officials, that helps us achieve our transportation, climate, and congestion goals — and makes our streets safer and more joyful. ”
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
A group of bike-riding Stockton, California teens caused a couple thousand dollars damage by throwing terracotta pots at passing cars. Although it’s questionable what their bicycles had to do with it.
Streets For All endorsed Santa Monica’s Measure K increasing the city’s Parking Facility Tax to improve traffic safety and safe routes to schools, while rejecting Measure PSK to divert half of that new revenue to the cops and other public safety departments.
State
Residents of San Diego’s Pacific Beach neighborhood are just the latest to complain about teenaged kids recklessly riding ebikes, although the ones shown are better classified as low-powered electric motorcycles.
A handful of New York bicyclists found a way to game the Citi Bike bikeshare algorithm, earning thousands of dollars a month by bike flipping — moving bikes from one station to another, then moving them back 15 minutes late. Thanks again to Megan Lynch.
A Chinese website looks back to consider how Shanghai became the country’s city of bicycles, producing China’s first bicycle in the 19th Century, before becoming home to the Phoenix and Forever brands after the communist revolution.
He notes that it’s natural to grieve, and we don’t all do it in the same way. But wonders whether it’s healthy to be reminded of these tragedies every time you pass by, and questions who wants to see something like that, anyway?
But that’s the point.
None of us want to see that. But we all need to be reminded what happened there.
Because a ghost bike is more than just a memorial. It’s a reminder to everyone who sees it about the fragility of human life, and the need to drive in a way that respects that.
A ghost bike is a searing reminder to respect the safety of people on bicycles, and to take your damn foot off the gas, for once.
Personally, I hate the damn things. I hope we never have to install another one.
But I will support ghost bikes until they’re not needed any more. And the last person killed riding a bike on our streets really is the last one.
Meanwhile, Streetsblog’s Melanie Curry has taken an in-depth look at the program. Or at least as in-depth as possible, given the closed-door decision making process, obtuse public pronouncements and obvious obfuscation.
I would have used another word starting with H instead of heck. And even that would be an effort to censure my own thoughts on the subject.
Curry writes that the California Air Resources Board, aka CARB, has continually promised that the the program, which is currently funded at $30 million after the state legislature sweetened the pot, will launch “soon.”
Sometimes that’s sometime in the next quarter, or the one after that. But every time, their self-imposed deadline has come and gone, with barely a dime laid out.
The soft launch that we’ve heard virtually nothing about has funded just 77 vouchers, mostly in the San Diego area, according to Curry. But no dollar amounts have been announced.
And if San Diego rings a bell, it’s because that’s where program administrator Pedal Ahead is located. And where Pedal Ahead and its CEO are reportedly being investigated amid accusations of mixing public and private funds.
As Curry explains,
And now, two recent articles in the San Diego Union Tribune say that the program’s administrator is “under investigation” by multiple agencies for various improprieties, and is being sued by one of its employees who says he wasn’t paid for work he did, and that the nonprofit mixed public money and private business.
When CARB announced that they had chosen Pedal Ahead as administrator for the program in 2022, advocates were quietly but frantically worried that a big mistake had been made. Rumors swirled about Pedal Ahead’s founder, Ed Clancy, and questions were raised about his personal connections to former CARB board member Nathan Fletcher, who helped Clancy launch his organization, Rider Safety Visibility (RSV), of which Pedal Ahead is a part.
But no one would go on record with their concerns, and CARB staff insisted that (former CARB board member, California Assembly Member and current San Diego County Supervisor Nathan) Fletcher had zero influence over the decision. They chose Pedal Ahead, they said, because of the organization’s experience with e-bikes.
Nope. Nothing to see there.
Never mind the apparent conflict of interest that led to Pedal Ahead’s selection, despite an application that wasn’t exactly on point, to be kind.
Rider Safety Visibility turned in an application that implied it would recreate the program it was running in San Diego. But that program was not at all like the state’s plan. That is, the Pedal Ahead program run by RSV is a “loan-to-own” program wherein income-qualified people are given e-bikes, which they could keep after a certain period of time as long as they fulfilled certain requirements, like riding at least 35 miles a week and bringing them in regularly to be checked (and to have their mileage checked on Strava units included on the bike).
The statewide plan, in contrast, would give money to people to buy their own e-bikes.
Nothing to see there, either.
So let’s be honest.
At this point, it’s obvious that the California ebike voucher program is just one massive clusterfuck, with no public openness or accountability.
And it’s long past time for the California Attorney General’s office to audit the program, and open a criminal investigation if it’s warranted.
Because I highly suspect it is.
So if anyone wants to pass this on to them, I’m fine with that.
Thanks to Ellectrek for the heads-up. And to Melanie Curry for her reporting.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
A road raging, hit-and-run driver was arrested in Ventura County after plowing into a bicyclist riding at the back of a group on LA’s Mandeville Canyon Road; he’s then seen honking and yelling at the bike riders filming him as he plows through a gate, before engaging in a brief police chase and crashing once again in Malibu.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
A Florida man has been busted on hit-and-run charges after crashing his speeding ebike into a man playing soccer on the beach, then fleeing the scene. Yet another reminder that you have as much responsibility to stop after a crash as a driver does. Even though they too often don’t.
For what seems like the first time in recorded history, a cop in North Platte, Nebraska offers safety advice for bicyclists that doesn’t once mention wearing a helmet. Although I’m not sure about the requirement to have a front bike light “that protrudes up to 500 feet,” which seems just a tad excessive. And dangerous.
Forget cycling. British bike hero Chris Boardman, who won the men’s individual pursuit at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, wants to own a Sussex football club. That’s soccer to those of us on this side of the pond.
July 2, 2024 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on New LA-area bike lanes including Hollywood Blvd, and bill banning sharrows on higher-speed roads loses support
Just 182 days left until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025.
The new separated bike lanes on the east end of Hollywood are partially in place on the eastbound side, and already rideable.
Bike lanes have been installed on the newly resurfaced Foothill Blvd in Lake View Terrace, demonstrating what’s possible with Measure HLA, which mandates building out the city’s mobility plan whenever streets are resurfaced — if city leaders would stop actively blocking it.
Redondo Beach extended and upgraded the bike lanes on a resurfaced section of Torrance Blvd, adding green paint in the conflict zones. Because as we all know, a dab of colored paint stops distracted, aggressive and/or intoxicated drivers every time.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. The New York Times reports on a “bizarre culture war” against bike lanes in Queens, where nearly every home in the neighborhood sports a “No Bike Lanes” lawn sign, as residents prefer the convenience of parking directly in front of their homes to the safety of kids riding their bikes. Although as others have pointed out, nearly every news story about a similar conflict somehow identifies bike lane supporters as “cyclists,” while opponents are always “residents. Because evidently, people who use bike lanes never, ever live there.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels who are behaving badly.
Here’s your chance to tell Caltrans to improve safety on the deadly 22 miles of PCH that runs through Malibu, as the agency calls for comments on the PCH Master Plan Feasibility Study; a virtual workshop will take place from 1 to 4 pm on Thursday, July 18th. Unfortunately though, the link to register for the workshop is broken.
Five years after a 12-year old girl was nearly killed by 17-year old driver while riding her bike in a Sacramento crosswalk at an intersection on the city’s High Injury Network, her parents complain the city hasn’t done anything to fix it. Before you click on the link, though, be forewarned this one is really hard to read.
Vermont now has a four-foot passing law, with a $200 fine for breaking it. But as we’ve seen, a passing law is only as good as the local cops commitment to enforcing it.
Once again raising the question of how old is too old to drive, an 83-year old British man walked without a single day behind bars for killing a 54-year old man riding a bicycle; he was still driving despite suffering from degenerate eyesight and failing a roadside vision test.
About damn time. Eritrean cyclist Biniam Girmay became the first black African cyclist to win a stage in the Tour de France, capturing stage three in a mad sprint to the finish; meanwhile, former Giro champ Richard Carapaz slid into the yellow jersey, while matching the time of Tadej Pogačar.
Back in 2019, a four-year old girl was tragically killed by a driver as she crossed the street in Koreatown, while holding hands with her mother.
In a crosswalk. With the light.
Alessa Fajardo and her mom did everything right as they crossed Olympic at Normandie that October day, yet she died anyway. Even though Los Angeles officials knew long before about the dangers of that area and intersection.
In fact, the school they were going to was ranked the city’s 13th most dangerous campus just six years earlier, while Koreatown as a whole was rated LA’s fourth most dangerous neighborhood for bike riders and pedestrians.
That’s pedestrians, like little kids crossing the street with their mothers.
It took four-and-a-half years, and a $9.6 million dollar settlement before anything was done about it.
Starting with the problem of each city councilmember acting like little kings in their own districts, responsible for identifying and approving any improvements before they are made.
Or not.
Neither former District 10 Councilmember Herb Wesson, who represented the district when Alessa was killed, nor his successor, Mark Ridley-Thomas, secured that funding. Ridley-Thomas was indicted on federal corruption charges, suspended from the council and later convicted and removed from his seat in late March 2022. Nobody represented the district until Heather Hutt was appointed that September.
Hutt identified and allocated $530,000 for the new signals in June 2023, but the installation work did not begin until April 2024, four months after the family’s suit against the city was settled.
District 10 staff would not comment on the record about why they could not secure the funds in 2020, 2021, 2022 and early 2023.
No surprise there.
Then again, even on the rare occasions when councilmembers really do try to do something, angry motorists too often rush for their torches and pitchforks — and threats of recall elections.
Two years before little Alessa was killed in Koreatown, the city agreed to another $9.6 million settlement, this time with the family of a 16-year old girl killed crossing — wait for it — Vista Del Mar to get to her car after leaving Dockweiler Beach.
The same beach where the kids were killed on Tuesday.
Then-CD11 Councilmember Mike Bonin responded by ordering long-delayed safety improvements on Vista Del Mar, and a handful of other streets in Playa del Rey. Both because too many lives had already been lost on the deadly roadway, and because the next settlement, for the next inevitable death, would be exponentially higher.
Now just three years after that, two more people have needlessly lost their lives on that same bloody stretch of road. And despite a breathless report from Fox-11, police reports said there was no indication either driver was under the influence.
Never mind that the settlement for this one will likely be exponentially higher than the last one, since Los Angeles installed, then removed, safety improvements that might have prevented it.
Yet despite at least four deaths on the same section of roadway in just nine years, some people still seem to think they should have the unfettered, God-given right to go zoom zoom whenever and wherever they want, innocent lives be damned.
Twitter post
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If you want to know why we can’t manage to do anything about the ever-rising rate of needless deaths on our streets, that’s it.
And it would be nice if our current mayor and council would somehow show they actually gave a damn, since the previous ones clearly didn’t.
Three of the kids were critically injured when the 83-year old driver hit them head-on as they rode single file, leaving the children screaming in terror and pain amid their mangled bikes.
She was arrested at the scene, then released and taken to a hospital after police concluded she wasn’t in a “fit state” for questioning.
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Speaking of deadly roadways, here’s your chance to fight for bike lanes on PCH in Long Beach.
A bike rider in Brussels, Belgium is lucky to be alive after he was knocked off his bike by a driver who tried to pass him and his companion while driving in a clearly marked bike lane, then the enraged motorist got out and slashed the victim’s throat with a knife; the victim managed to escape with just six stitches when the driver barely missed his jugular.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Streets For All urges support for a proposed 28-mile The Hill to Sea transit corridor traversing 13 cities and unincorporated communities from Pasadena to Long Beach, which would “aggressively reduce car dependency by prioritizing high quality bus service, safe protected bike paths, and improved sidewalks for walking and businesses.”
Orange County supervisors voted to crackdown on ebikes, including restrictions on sidewalk riding, imposing speed limits and reclassifying bikes that generate more than 750 watts through their motors — even though the latter two could put them in direct conflict with existing state law.
Colorado took a step forward by creating a dedicated $7 million funding stream for “proven small infrastructure projects that improve safety for vulnerable road users,” such as bike lanes, sidewalks and other pedestrian improvements. While that’s far too little — even for a relatively small state — it’s a hell of a lot more than most are willing to commit to.
Sad news from DC, where a 34-year old White House staffer was killed while riding his bike when he crossed the center line on a sharp curve during a fundraising ride, and was struck head-on by an oncoming motorist; Jacob Thomas Brewer was the husband of Fox News contributor Mary Katharine Ham.
April 30, 2024 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on New automatic braking regs protect peds, Bike Month just a day away, and SaMo and Pasadena honored for best bike lanes
Just 245 days until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025.
On top of everything else, I’ll be having a small skin cancer today, no doubt a souvenir of decades of riding a bike when they still thought the sun was good for you, and and any lotion you might use was meant for tanning, not screening out dangerous rays.
So the status of tomorrow’s post is to be determined at this point. Not because of the minor surgery, but whether I’ll survive riding the bus with an effed up shoulder and ribs.
Hopefully I’ll bounce back and see you in the morning; if not, we’ll be back bright and early on Thursday.
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There may be hope yet. Eventually, anyway.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, aka NHTSA, unveiled the final draft of a new regulation to improve traffic safety, requiring every new motor vehicle sold in the US to have forward collision warning, automatic emergency braking and pedestrian detection braking.
According to the AP,
The standards require vehicles to stop and avoid hitting a vehicle in front of them at speeds up to 62 miles per hour (100 kilometers per hour). Also they must apply the brakes automatically at up to 90 mph (145 kph) if a collision with vehicle ahead is imminent.
The systems also have to spot pedestrians during the day and night, and must stop and avoid a pedestrian at 31 mph to 40 mph (50 kph to 64 kph) depending on the pedestrian’s location and movement.
Presumably, any system than can detect pedestrians should be able to protect people on bicycles, although that’s not guaranteed.
Or even required.
Yet another reminder that we remain an afterthought when it comes to safety.
However, the new regulations won’t take effect for another five years. And it will take decades before most older cars with more limited capabilities are off the roads.
It’s predicted the new regs will save just 362 lives each year, less than 1% of the more than 40,000 people killed annually on American roads.
But it’s a start.
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Metro offers a guide to next month’s Bike Month, including Metro Bike discounts for Bike Week, starting May 13th, and free Metro rides for Bike Day on Thursday the 16th. Although what’s missing is any mention of Bike Day activities, or the pre-pandemic Bike to Work pit stops to encourage more people to try bike commuting.
Beverly Hills will mark Bike Month with a series of events, ranging from a month-long commuter challenge and a “May the 4th Be With You” family bike ride to the kind of Bike to Work Day pit stop Metro appears to have forgotten.
Pasadena will also celebrate Bike Month, starting with National Ride a Bike Day this Sunday, the annual Rose Bowl Ride of Silence on Wednesday the 15th, and refreshments at City Hall for Bike to Work Day.
Meanwhile, LAist offers a guide to living carfree in the City of Angels, including how to use your bike for transportation; you can listen to their podcast from last year on the same subject below.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. Sheriff’s deputies in San Marcos will conduct an “ebike safety sweep” on Wednesday afternoon to educate riders on ebike safety, while ticketing any violations committed by ebike riders — including a requirement to ride to the right, which only applies if you’re traveling at less than the speed of traffic. If you do get a ticket, fight it, because an operation specifically targeting ebike riders rather than all road users suggests illegally biased enforcement.
No bias here, either. A writer for Strong Townssays Florida Governor Ron DeSantis isn’t wrong when he says “some activists want to make driving so miserable that people have to abandon their cars,” accusing a “significant percentage of safe streets activists” of being motivated by a hatred of cars and the people who drive them. Never mind that a “significant percentage” of safe streets activists are drivers themselves.
Eureka explains to drivers how to operate their big, deadly machines after a pair of new bikeways currently nearing completion are finished. Because evidently, that whole “licensing and registration” thing they keep insisting should be required for bicyclists isn’t enough to guarantee the people who pass them actually know how to drive already.
That’s more like it. An Arizona man will spend at least 12 years of a 14-year sentence behind bars, after pleading guilty to negligent homicide and hit-and-run charges for fleeing the scene after killing a bike rider; he was already wanted on outstanding state and federal warrants at the time of the crash. Which at least explains why he fled.
Autopsy results show a Colorado mom, whose body was found three years after she disappeared on a Mother’s Day bike ride, was murdered “by unspecified means,” and had been injected with an animal tranquilizer used to immobilize wildlife before her death; her husband was initially charged with her murder, but charges were dropped because authorities hadn’t yet found her body.
Israeli Occupation War Cabinet minister, and former opposition candidate Benny Gantz is one of us, too, breaking his foot while riding a bike in Southern Israel. But at least he has the freedom to ride a bike, unlike most people in Gaza these days.
Competitive Cycling
Sofia Gomez Villafañe and teammate Matt Beers won this year’s Belgian Waffle Ride in San Marcos on Sunday, with Courtney Sherwell and Caroline Wreszin rounding out the women’s podium, and Alexey Vermeulen and Petr Vakoč finishing second and third for the men.
Former Tour de France champ Geraint Thomas blames UCI boss David Lappartient and race organizers for half of the crashes in pro cycling, saying that level of carnage wouldn’t be accepted in any new sport. Although someone should tell him about all those people flooding ERs with pickleball injuries.
March 29, 2024 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Guilty verdict in bizarre Palm Springs attacks, South Pas rips out safer streets, and new CicLAvia summer event maps
Just 277 days until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025.
Including forcing a man to jump off his bicycle to avoid getting run over when the seemingly maniacal driver suddenly hit the gas and jumped the median, aiming directly at victim at an estimated 60 mph.
Juaquin Mercer Moraga was found guilty of three counts of felony assault with a deadly weapon, two counts each of misdemeanor assault and misdemeanor vandalism, and one count each of felony vandalism and misdemeanor battery, after less than a day of deliberation.
The defense argued that Moraga was suffering from paranoid delusions at the time of the attacks, as a result of “major depressive disorder,” “cannabis use disorder” and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Apparently, drivers there insist on running over something. And if they can’t run down bicyclist and pedestrians, they’re going to kill the bits of plastic and paint installed to protect them.
According to Greenspon,
At this point, it’s been more than six months, and residents have formed opinions. On March 20th city council voted to do away with most of the bike lanes and all of the delineators, under pressure from locals who didn’t want them in their neighborhoods. Some neighbors allegedly even ran materials over.
Transportation Commissioner Diego Zavala told the council he’s been maintaining the project since August 2023.
“I’ve had at least three instances – seemingly intentional – of damaging; such as swerving into the cones to run them over while I was working on the streets.” Zavala said. “This is an indication that more permanent solutions will erase any opportunity for erratic drivers to harm pedestrians in these areas.”
Especially when the safety measures did virtually nothing to slow or inconvenience people in the big, dangerous machines.
Naturally, as with any other street installation that residents insist went in “overnight,” commenters at the South Pas city council meeting complained about non-existent outreach, insisting that they had no warning the project was going in until they woke up and saw it on the street.
Earlier in the meeting, South Pasadena’s Transportation Program Manager David Peña had gone over the outreach background for the quick-build project. He said a subconsultant had done door to door canvassing in 2021 and dropped off fliers in July 2023, about a month before the project was installed.
Must have been a very deep sleep.
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That loud bang you heard yesterday wasn’t the St. Louis Cardinals falling to the Dodgers in their home opener yesterday; the Cards went quietly, with more of a whimper than a bang.
Instead it was CicLAvia dropping route maps for two more events, for Western Ave in South LA this June, and August’s return to Hollywood and WeHo.
The year will round out with October’s return to the ever-popular Heart of LA, and a first-ever visit to Ventura Blvd in the Valley in December, along with another CicLAmini in Lincoln Heights this September.
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Oceanside bike lawyer and BikinginLA sponsor Richard Duquette forwards news of another massive legal judgement, after an 84-year old Santa Barbara man was awarded $3.8 million from Caltrans and the driver who hit him.
According to the Santa Barbara Independent, Ronald Wilmot was run down from behind while riding with a small group of friends on the Arroyo Quemada Bridge on Highway 101.
Whenever the retired elementary school principal and his friends would cross the narrow stretch of Highway 101 on their regular bike rides between Santa Barbara and Gaviota, he said, “we would look in our mirrors to make sure an 18-wheeler wasn’t coming, wave our left arms, and ride like hell.”
On January 3, 2021, Wilmot ― the last in a line of four cyclists ― was hit from behind by a motorist who said she felt squeezed by another car and veered into their bike lane, which merges into the slow lane of traffic on the bridge and shrinks to a 12-inch shoulder. The driver said she never even saw the group…
Most significantly, the jury found that the 400-foot bridge ― part of the state’s official Pacific Coast Bike Route ― constituted “a dangerous condition of public property,” and that Caltrans had failed to properly warn motorists of this “concealed trap.” While Caltrans has installed a “clutter” of signage around the bridge, the jury also said, none of it notifies drivers that bicyclists may occupy the slow lane.
Adding insult to literal injury — Wilmont suffered a “serious compound break of his left leg above the ankle, seven busted ribs, a punctured lung, and compression fracture to his spin” — he was also forced to give up bicycling, a major part of his life since he was 19.
I’d want a hell of a lot more than that if I had to give up something that’s been the main focus of my life since I was 24.
Maybe I could sue my own damn body for keeping me off my bike.
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Streets Are For Everyone, aka SAFE, is teaming with tonight’s Critical Mass for a vigil to honore the victims of traffic violence at the Autry Museum in Griffith Park.
VIGIL IN GRIFFITH PARK FOR THE 966 BICYCLISTS KILLED BY MOTOR-VEHICLE TRAFFIC CRASHES
Over 1000 bicyclists gather to remember bicyclist Andrew Jelmert and advocate for safer streets.
LOS ANGELES – On Friday, March 29, Streets Are For Everyone and LA Critical Mass are joining together in a vigil at The Autry Museum in Griffith Park at around 9:00 pm. Participants will remember and honor the life of bicyclist Andrew Jelmert who was killed while riding in Griffith Park in 2022 and to bring attention to the staggering number of bicyclists killed in motor-vehicle traffic crashes in Los Angeles and across the nation. Jelmert was struck from behind in the early afternoon of April 16 by a driver who was intoxicated while speeding through the park at 80+ MPH.
Over 1000 Bicyclists will arrive at Autry Museum for the vigil having started the ride with LA Critical Mass at Western and Wilshire. 966 bicyclists were killed in motor-vehicle traffic crashes across the United States in 2021 – each attendee at the vigil represents a lost bicyclist. The event will also include speakers who have been directly impacted by traffic violence.
WHAT: Thousands attend Vigil within Griffith Park at Autry Museum to honor fallen cyclists and Andrew Jelmert who lost his life 2 years ago in Griffith Park.
WHEN: Friday, March 29, 2024, from 9:00 PM – 10:00 PM (Interviews available from 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM; Cyclists will arrive between 9:15 and 9:30)
WHERE: Autry Museum
4700 Western Heritage Way
Los Angeles, CA 90027
SPEAKERS:
Damian Kevitt, Executive Director of Streets Are For Everyone, victim of a crash in Griffith Park in 2013 that resulted in the loss of his leg
Andre Goeritz, husband of deceased bicyclist Andrew Jelmert
Representative from Councilmember Nithya Raman’s Office
VISUALS:
More than 1000 bicyclists arriving to the vigil
Speakers at the vigil calling for safer roads
Background of Griffith Park and the location of Andre’s fatality
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
London’s Daily Mail reports on “amazing videos” depicting “exploding” rider-on-ride road rage. Which amounts to a motorcyclist gently criticizing bicyclists for riding through a red light, and a trailing bicyclist berating another bike rider for not undertaking a large truck.
Following the death of her friend on a Berkeley street last month, a writer for Cal Matterscalls for safer streets through the passage of a pair of Senate bills, which would force Caltrans to adhere to its own Complete Streets policies, and require speed governors to limit the ability of drivers to exceed the posted speed limit by more than 10 mph.
Oakland is down to the last five days for public input on proposals to redesign one of the city’s most dangerous streets by reconfiguring traffic lanes and auditing bike paths. Just please, please, please don’t put the bike paths in the middle of the damn roadway. No, seriously.
National
CBS News reports traffic deaths are spiking in the US, despite billions spent on improving safety. Except the $2.4 billion they’re talking about doesn’t go very far when spread among all the cities and states in the US, and doesn’t do a damn thing to reduce the size of SUVs, or get drivers to put down their phones and stop speeding.
Oregon’s bicycle tax, the only statewide bike tax in the US, reflects a significant bike boom in 2022, followed by a moderate bust back to pre-pandemic levels for 2023.
Streetsblogconsiders the disaster on Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, questioning why we treat major transportation tragedies with so much urgency, while ignoring “our collective car crash epidemic” with over ten times the number of victims on the bridge dying as a result of traffic violence in the US every day.
March 14, 2024 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Measure HLA maintains lead with 2/3 support, the world’s coolest streets, and misdemeanor charges in AZ massacre
Just 292 days until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025.
Then share it — and keep sharing it — with everyone you know, on every platform you can.
As of this writing, we’re up to 1,016 signatures, so let’s keep it going! Urge everyone you know to sign the petition, until the mayor agrees to meet with us!
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Before we start, let’s all welcome Beverly Hills Bike Law, the newest advertiser on here.
So take a moment to click on the ad over there and check out their site, and let ’em see attention advertising here will get them.
Then tell your favorite local bike shop, so maybe they’ll get the message, too.
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Measure HLA, the Healthy Streets LA ballot initiative, continues its overwhelming lead with nearly 2/3 of the vote in last week’s primary election.
One interesting point is that we, briefly, already did something like HLA in Los Angeles. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, cities worldwide created slow-streets programs to allow persons to walk, bicycle, and dine outside – on streets – during a time when COVID transmission indoors was risky and still poorly understood.
We at METRANS studied that program, in work funded by the National Center for Sustainable Transportation. From spring through fall of 2020, Los Angeles implemented 50 miles of these slow streets. We examined the effect of this rapid slow street implementation on shared electric scooter travel in four cities, as a marker to inform how large networks of street infrastructure that supports walking and bicycling can encourage non-car travel. We found that scooter trips increased by 54.78% on COVID slow streets in Oakland, 22.16% in Los Angeles, 74.5% in San Francisco, and 10.77% in Portland.
While we only had data for shared electric scooter trips in our study, the research gives a strong hint that building streets that are inviting for walkers, bicyclists, and others will lead to increases in non-car travel.
On the other hand, news station KNX plays Debbie Downer by asking how the city will pay for HLA, based on the discredited city estimate of $300 million a year. Even though that total includes only marginally related costs that the city is already on the hook for, such as resurfacing streets and repairing broken sidewalks.
Life continues to be cheap in Goodyear, Arizona, where the truck driver who slammed into a group of bicyclists last year was charged with just 11 misdemeanor counts, after the DA refused to file felony charges.
The Maricopa County Attorney refused to bring felony charges, despite the recommendation of police investigators, claiming there wasn’t enough evidence for a conviction.
Even though the sheer number of dead, maimed and injured people would argue otherwise.
Westside Congressman Ted Lieu pats himself on the back for securing $2 million for a trio of Santa Monica projects, including a half million for safety enhancement along the Lincoln Blvd corridor, which won’t include bike lanes.
A new study from my bike-friendly Colorado hometown shows that when the city installed parking spaces for dockless bikeshare bikes and e-scooters, and imposed penalties for improper parking, scooters and bikes blocking sidewalks dropped by 12%.
An editor for Cyclist says there’s no point in being a weight weenie, taking the contrarian view that bike weight doesn’t matter. I never thought so when I kept up with bicyclists on high-end bikes while riding my old steel-framed Trek. But changed my mind when I started dropping them after switching to a much lighter and faster LeMond.
Here’s another one for your bike bucket list — South Korea’s “heart-pounding” Seorak Granfondo, described as a “thrilling journey through some of the most captivating terrain Asia has to offer…against the backdrop of the stunning Seoraksan National Park.”
We made the national news, for all the wrong reasons.
CNN reported on LA County’s killer highway, the four Pepperdine students killed by a speeding driver earlier this year, and the 58 people killed along PCH in Malibu in just the last 13 years.
“I should have been there and I usually would be there,” (Pepperdine senior Bridget) Thompson said. “I can just picture them in the car on the way there. I know they were listening to music and I know they were singing along.”
The girls parked and were walking along the Pacific Coast Highway when prosecutors say a BMW going 104 miles per hour slammed into several parked cars before hitting and killing Niamh Rolston, Peyton Stewart, Asha Weir and Deslyn Williams – all Pepperdine seniors…
Thompson is now among those demanding safety changes along the iconic Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. She helped dedicate a memorial on the scenic highway, which stretches the California coastline, featuring 58 white tires — one for each of the lives lost on the road in Malibu since 2010.
It’s a heartbreaking story, but a necessary one.
Maybe a little national humiliation is what we need to finally get some long-needed changes made.
The court ruled that cities aren’t responsible for injuries to bike riders from poorly maintained roads that don’t have bicycle infrastructure, reasoning that bicycles are allowed to use such roadways, but aren’t the intended users.
Apparently, drivers are.
Not only does the ruling absolve cities of responsibility to maintain safe streets, it also provides a disincentive to build the infrastructure that would make them liable.
And makes it clear that we’re nothing more than guests anywhere else.
The driver of one Ford Mustang was passing another on a sweeping mountain curve, and slammed headfirst into three bicyclists traveling in the opposite direction.
The driver fled the scene, then he and his passenger abandoned the car a short distance later with the airbags deployed. The driver of the other car attempted to give chase after checking on the victims, but crashed into a guardrail.
It seems almost miraculous that only one of the victims was seriously injured. A second rider suffered major road rash after flying over the car, while the third rode into a ditch to avoid the crash.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
Sad news from San Jose, where the Bay Area’s Mr. Roadshow died Sunday after a long battle with a degenerative muscle and nerve disease; prior to the paper’s draconian paywall, I often linked to his stories when he got it right, or to criticize when he missed the mark. Gary Richards was 72.
The small town nestled below LAX announced plans for a cycle track on a portion of El Segundo Blvd, as well as Class II and Class III bike lane on El Segundo, Nash Street and Douglas Street, and Class III bike lanes on Continental Blvd.
For anyone unfamiliar on the terminology, a cycle track is a fully separated or protected bike lane, while Class II bike lanes are the usual painted door zone bike lanes we all know and love.
Class III bike lanes, on the other hand, aren’t really bike lanes at all.
They’re sharrows.
Those funny arrow-shaped chevrons that are supposed to indicate that bicyclists are allowed to share the lane, just like we can on most streets without them, and which have been shown to be worse than nothing.
And nothing is already pretty bad.
The city is placing them on streets with 35 mph speed limits, which drivers typically exceed by 10 or 15 mph. Which means anyone riding on those streets is likely to have someone running up their ass in a motor vehicle at 50 mph.
And making it clear that the arrow symbols are just there to help drivers improve their aim in an attempt to thin the bicycle herd.
Testimony showed she used Strava to track down where Wilson was staying, and shot her repeatedly.
Armstrong then fled the country after she was interviewed by Austin police. She was found living in Costa Rica under an assumed name following an international manhunt, and reportedly having plastic surgery to change her appearance.
She now faces up to 99 years behind bars under Texas law.
Gravel Bike California takes an urban adventure across LA’s Eastside, featuring #ArroyoFest, Elysian Park and Eldred Street, the steepest road in the city.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. A Denver-area newspaper insists that the city’s transportation department has been “captured by the bicyclist lobby and is busily screwing up streets across the city with ridiculous and ugly plastic bollards, roundabouts, and striping all in the name of ‘bicycle safety.'” God forbid anyone should use “ugly” street treatments in an effort to save lives, or that people who ride bicycles should have the right to successfully petition city officials, just like anyone else.
A Wisconsin legislative committee approved a pair of bills that make it against the law to “intentionally” expose someone’s genitals or bring a child to any event where adults will expose themselves, in response to allegations that a ten-year old girl participated in the Minneapolis World Naked Bike Ride. Because apparently we need to shield kids from seeing dicks on bikes, rather than being run down by dicks in cars.
Road.cc tests ten ultra low-price bike accessories from Chinese online marketplace Temu, and surprisingly finds more hits than misses. I tried ordering a couple pairs of non-biking shoes from the site, one of which was about three sizes too big, and the other appeared made to fit a duck’s foot.
Pro cyclist and former ski jumper Primož Roglič auctioned off some of his memorabilia on live TV, raising the equivalent of over $217,000 to fund scholarship for young athletes in need of financial support. And demonstrated his ski jumping technique in a move proving no one puts Primož in the corner. Once again, read it on Yahoo if Bicycling blocks you.
And this time, I actually managed to manage my diabetes well enough to stay awake to work.
So let’s get right to it.
And apropos of nothing, here’s an AI image of a corgi riding a tricycle.
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A couple quick reminders of events taking place today.
LADOT is hosting a virtual workshop to discuss building bikeways connecting neighborhoods on the Westside, which they could find in the city’s decade-old mobility plan, if they bothered to dust it off.
However, judging by their tweet/post, the actual time is on a need to know basis. But since you may need to know, it starts at 5:30 pm.
Twitter post
The other event takes on a sadder tone, as street safety nonprofit SAFE — aka Streets Are For Everyone — will place a ghost bike for fallen Hollywood producer Bob George, who was killed in a dooring in East Hollywood last month.
Twitter post
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He gets it.
Twitter post
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
Discover Los Angeleslooks forward to next month’s CicLAvia – South LA on December 3rd, the final CicLAvia of the year. Just my luck they had to schedule it on my sister’s birthday, when I will be otherwise engaged.
Streetsblog’sMelanie Curry takes Caltrans to task after Director Tony Tavares tweeted that safety is the agency’s top priority, arguing that if it is, it certainly doesn’t show. Maybe he can explain how wasting billions to widen freeways makes anyone any safer.
That’s more like it. An Iowa woman was sentenced to 20 years behind bars for the drunken crash that killed two men and injured another when she somehow mistook a bike path for a freeway onramp; she’ll have to spend at least 17 years behind bars before she’s eligible for parole. Which should give her plenty of time to sober up.
That’s more like it. Several members of the Dallas, Texas city council rode their bikes to work as the city works on its first new bike plan in a decade; one council member said he only felt safe on about half of his ride. Which is probably more than many of the city’s bike riders could say.
You’ve got to be kidding. Life is really cheap in Georgia, where a 28-year old man walked without a day behind bars for the hit-and-run crash that left a 60-year old man riding a bicycle with life-threatening injuries; he jumped a raised median with his car, striking the victim from behind and kept going despite literally running the man over. If you wonder why people keep dying on our streets, this is Exhibit A.
The sister of a fallen Welsh bike rider and two of his friends have refurbished the historic village pub where he used to hang out, and are re-opening it in his honor. Although someone should tell the Welsh news site about this nifty new invention called paragraphs, which would make stories like this much easier to read.
Three climate activists who halted this year’s Men’s Elite Road Race at the UCI Cycling World Championships in Scotland by gluing their hands to the narrow roadway got off with a firm admonishment from the local sheriff, while the fourth was fined the equivalent of $307.19.
