Welcome back from the three-day King Day holiday weekend.
I hope your weekend was better than mine, and you got to ride in that perfect January weather, while the rest of the country froze their asses off.
As for me, I spent every night of the weekend writing about a fallen bike rider, including a six-year old kid killed by a hit-and-run driver in front of his parents in Pacific Beach.
I still haven’t recovered emotionally from writing about that one, and can’t even imagine what they’re going through.
Let’s hope this week is a little better. Okay, a lot better.
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Streets Are For Everyone will host a public press conference at 1 pm today at Kelton Ave and Wilkins Ave in Westwood with founder Damian Kevitt and Jonny Hale of People’s Vision Zero, who went viral when he was arrested for trying to paint a DIY crosswalk when the city wouldn’t.
A press release promoting the event quotes Kevitt as saying,
“The people of Los Angeles want safer roads; they are begging for them. The City has the tools to save lives, but it’s so mired down in bureaucracy, legal red-tape, and fighting lawsuits that it actively prevents simple and effective ways to make roads safer.”
It also quotes Hale,
“We’re not gonna paint every residential intersection, but the same processes that make it hard for us to make roads safer, make it hard for city workers to do their jobs. The city should address this and prioritize street safety and infrastructure.”
Vision Zero failed in this city as much because of the city’s endless bureaucracy as it did for a lack of vision and commitment.
I know it’s the last minute, but maybe a good turnout for this will put some pressure on city officials to do something, or get the hell out of the way and let us do it.
No one should ever go to jail for trying to save lives.
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Megan writes to complain that European train operators agreed to a common definition of what is a bicycle to be allowed onto trains.
But as usual, failed to consider adaptive bikes and nontraditional bicycles used as mobility devices by disabled passengers.
Unfortunately, once more the absence of diversely disabled people in “the room where it happens” results in continued inequity.
So while this seems to be a compromise, but improvement on the old rules for abled bicyclists, it’s not as good for those riding other types of cycles, particularly disabled people (many of whom need handcycles, trikes, and bikes with seats rather than saddles).
Some will retort this is a compromise and they’ll continue working on it, but (1) I bet they won’t continue working on accessibility & inclusion issues because (2) they probably aren’t working on getting disabled cyclists into the decision making areas of cycle and train advocacy.
And part of the point is that abled cyclists don’t have to do as much work to get answers nor to “prove” their needs.
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Streets For All will host a mobility discussion with city council candidate Faizah Malik, who is challenging CD11 Councilmember Traci Park, on Monday.
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Streetsblog’s Joe Linton demonstrates the danger of slip lanes.
This week’s video ventures onto a porkchop to cross a dangerous #SlipLane
— Streetsblog L.A. (@streetsblogla.bsky.social) 2026-01-15T19:01:54.873Z
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
A Florida cop faces charges for tackling a teenager off his bicycle at a local skate park.
Maybe the reason Edinburgh bike riders don’t use the bike lane just might have something to do with the parked cars encroaching on it.
But sometimes, it’s the people on who wheels behaving badly.
Police in San Francisco are looking for a group of bicycle-riding teens who attacked a man who told them to slow down, and was forced to flee for his safety.
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Local
Metro will hold a public meeting to discuss the recently released Draft Environmental Impact Report for the Los Angeles River Path Project to close the gap through DTLA, at the Lincoln Heights Community Center this Wednesday.
Speaking of Metro, Michael Schneider explains why Metro has so much trouble doing anything for anyone who’s not in a car, including not pursuing bus lanes because it’s just too hard.
About damn time. Santa Monica will use AI-powered cams mounted on parking enforcement vehicles to enforce drivers blocking bike lanes. I met with various Santa Monica police chiefs multiple times over the past 30 years to complain about blocked bike lanes in the city, only to be told there was nothing illegal about it.
State
You may never get to ride in Copenhagen, but California could be the next best thing, since a petition to sell California to Denmark has now drawn over 280,000 signatures.
Oceanside could be the next California city to restrict ebikes, with a new ordinance allowing police to seize ebikes from reckless riders, or anyone who has gotten two or more ebike violations in 12 months. Once again conflating electric motorbikes with ped-assist ebikes.
National
The New York Times remembers Cannondale founder Joe Montgomery, crediting him as the man who made bicycles lighter by switching from steel to aluminum frames.
Gadget Review considers six cutting-edge bicycle inventions that they say actually deliver.
A Massachusetts man talks with public radio about riding 46,0000 miles across six continents, with no intention of stopping now.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed the nation’s strictest ebike bill on his way out the door, requiring registration, licensing and insurance for all electric bikes, while doing away with the three-tier system most states use to classify them. And once again, lumping ped-assist bikes into the same bucket as electric motorbikes.
Bicyclists in Asheville NC are pushing for safer streets in the wake of a collision that killed two men riding bicycles and injured another, when a garbage truck driver drifted onto the wrong side of the road.
That’s more like it. A 35-year old Florida woman agreed to a nine-year sentence for a 2022 hit-and-run crash that killed a 56-year old man riding a bicycle, knocking his body off a bridge and into the river below where he had to be recovered by a Coast Guard crew.
Florida authorities were able to rescue a lost bike rider who had gone off trail by tracing the GPS on his phone, and relaying it to rescuers. Which is a good reminder to always take your phone with you.
International
Momentum says bicycles are the perfect antidote for the winter blues.
MMA lightweight contender Justin Gaethje is one of us, confessing he didn’t do his best in his last title shot after crashing his bicycle just 18 days before the bout.
An 83-year old English man has no intention of quitting, after working at the same bike shop since he was just 15.
Lime has been ordered to pay a London business owner the equivalent of more than $10,000 after he seized Lime Bikes that had been left on his property, then charged the company storage fees to hold onto them.
Competitive Cycling
The iconic Leadville Trail 100 mountain bike race has banned drop handlebars, ruling that all competitors must use flat or riser handlebars, although Cycling Weekly says it won’t actually make riders any safer.
Mountain Bike Action profiles two-time US National Champ and World Cup podium finisher Anna Newkirk, calling her America’s rising star in women’s downhill racing.
American Matteo Jorgenson will skip the defense of his Paris-Nice title to become the new wingman for Jonas Vingegaard at the Tour de France.
British sprinter Vicky Williamson announced her retirement at 32, despite struggling back from a crash that left her with a broken neck and back, dislocated pelvis and a slipped a disc that knocked her out of the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Finally…
Who needs a helmet on your head when you’ve got an airbag in your shorts? That feeling when you can’t get a new part for your kid’s bike because the bikemaker is too busy conducting inventory.
And if you’re going to flee from the cops on your bike, make sure you’ve got a good chain on it first.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
