BikinginLA

Day 304 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025. 

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Happy Halloween!

If you’re still looking for a costume that will truly terrify your neighbors, consider going as a bike lane.

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If you live, work, commute or bike on or anywhere near PCH in western Malibu, take urgent action now to keep a vital safety project moving forward, which is currently in jeopardy before the Malibu Planning Commission.

Consider this alert from Streets Are For Everyone that went out yesterday; you’ll find a ready-made email response form on that link.

Choose Life Over Delay — tell the Planning Commission to Approve the Plan

On Monday, November 3, the Malibu Planning Commission will hold its final hearing to decide whether to approve the Caltrans PCH Safety Project — a $55 million once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rebuild and make PCH safer for everyone. Based on the last meeting, they are not likely to approve the plans unless people express strong support for the plans.

You can view that meeting here. The presentation, public comment, and debate start at 38:10 and continue for a couple of hours.

This plan would repave and reconstruct the western end of PCH from Cross Creek Rd to the Ventura County line while adding long-overdue safety improvements like:

• 15 miles of new or upgraded bike lanes
• 6,956 linear feet of new sidewalks in high pedestrian zones, including in front of Pepperdine University
• 42 new dark-sky compliant light poles
• The installation of 19 new guardrails
• 22 new or upgraded curb ramps
• Three new retaining walls
• Two realigned intersections
• A vehicle pull-out for law enforcement use
• Median reconstruction at various locations
• Associated roadway improvements along Pacific Coast Highway within the Public Right-of-Way between the Ventura County line and Serra Road

There are additional safety improvements that can and should be made after this. They will require additional funding and much more work to secure approval from agencies like the California Coastal Commission. The items above are changes that can be easily implemented with the funds immediately available.

If the Planning Commission fails to approve the project, the funding will vanish. The road will not be repaved, the safety upgrades will not happen, and Malibu will lose its only realistic chance to prevent more deaths on the western end of PCH for years or even decades.

This is not just another meeting — it’s a moral choice between action and inaction. Every year of delay means more preventable crashes, more empty chairs at dinner tables, and more families devastated by the same road we all depend on.

What We’re Asking You to Do:

Email the Malibu Planning Commission today and tell them to approve the Caltrans PCH Safety Plan. Ask them to prioritize lives over delays — to say YES to rebuilding PCH safely, responsibly, and collaboratively. We can continue to refine the details, but we cannot afford to lose the funding and start from zero.

Please also show up to the Planning Commission Meeting on Monday, 3 Nov, starting at 6:30 at Malibu City Hall. This is the link to the agenda.

You can also join and provide public comment on this virtually using this link.

This is Malibu’s last real chance to fix the western end of PCH.

Not mentioned is that failure to approve the plan means the money will be reallocated to other projects, somewhere else in the state. Which will set back desperately needed safety improvements on SoCal’s killer highway years, if not decades.

The Malibu Planning Commission doesn’t want to hear from me, since I haven’t set foot or wheel on PCH or in Malibu for years.

They want, and need, to hear from you.

Photo from Caltrans. 

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In what should come as a surprise to absolutely no one, CalMatters finds that California has some of the weakest DUI laws in the country.

California’s DUI enforcement system is broken. The toll can be counted in bodies.

Alcohol-related roadway deaths in California have shot up by more than 50% in the past decade — an increase more than twice as steep as the rest of the country, federal estimates show. More than 1,300 people die each year statewide in drunken collisions. Thousands more are injured. Again and again, repeat DUI offenders cause the crashes…

We found that California has some of the weakest DUI laws in the country, allowing repeat drunk and drugged drivers to stay on the road with little punishment. Here, drivers generally can’t be charged with a felony until their fourth DUI within 10 years, unless they injure someone. In some states, a second DUI can be a felony…

California also gives repeat drunk drivers their licenses back faster than other states. Here, you typically lose your license for three years after your third DUI, compared to eight years in New Jersey, 15 years in Nebraska and a permanent revocation in Connecticut. We found drivers with as many as six DUIs who were able to get a license in California.

Many drivers stay on the road for years even when the state does take their license — racking up tickets and even additional DUIs — with few consequences until they eventually kill.

Seriously, read it now. We’ll wait for you.

Back already?

Maybe you caught the part where they said “drunk vehicular manslaughter isn’t considered a “violent felony,” but DUI causing “great bodily injury” is. So breaking someone’s leg while driving under the influence can result in more jail time than killing someone.

Go figure.

Or that some California drivers have somehow remained on the road with up to 16 DUIs, until some innocent person pays the price. Or far too often, more than one.

And that arrests have dropped in half over the past 20 years, even as loosened cannabis laws and ready access to pharmaceuticals — legal and otherwise — mean more people than ever are likely driving under the influence of something.

This isn’t just theoretical for me.

One of my best childhood friends was killed by a drunk driver our senior year of high school. He was a state tennis champ deciding between a college scholarship and going pro when a woman somehow jumped a 50-foot median with guard rails on either side, and hit his car head-on, killing him and a passenger.

She walked away without a scratch. Or any jail time.

The same with my cousin, a rodeo queen killed when her father made a sudden turn, throwing her out of the back seat, then ran over her when he went back to get her.

So yeah, it’s personal.

And don’t even get me started on all the many victims of drunk and drugged drivers I’ve had to write about here over the last two decades.

Yes, this state just approved a law extending the ability of judges to order DUI drivers to install an interlock device. But that won’t do a damn thing to stop someone from getting behind the wheel stoned out of their mind.

Take this case in point. Or this one.

It’s long past time California got serious about drunk and drugged drivers, even if that means taking their cars away and not just their licenses. Or building a new effing prison to hold them all if we have to.

I’ll be happy to chip in to help pay for it, if it means a few more people will make it back home at the end of every day.

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More on yesterday’s story about the California Air Resources Board stabbing the bicycle community in the back by quietly stabbing the California Ebike Incentive Program in the front when no one was looking.

According to Streetsblog’s Damien Newton,

Despite demand for e-bike vouchers being so high that it crashed the website each time the state opened the lottery, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) voted at their last meeting to end the statewide program it oversaw, rolling the remaining $17 million of the original $30 million allocated by the legislature into its “Clean Cars 4 All” Program.

The concept of California E-Bike Incentive Project began had so much promise but was plagued with scandal and incompetence to such a level that one prospective applicant told Streetsblog last April, “If they were actively trying to sabotage the program, what would they do differently than this?”

Regardless of the intent, the effect is the same. The April application portal was the last time the program gave out certificates.

He adds that the most surprising thing is how quietly the program slunk out — or was tossed out — the back door, with no official announcement, no press release, and no mention on the program’s website.

There’s more. A lot more, in fact.

It’s all worth a read.

But what occurred to me yesterday is that this could leave CARB exposed to a lawsuit for age discrimination and violating the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Because by transferring the funds to a green car program, they are favoring people capable of driving over those who can no longer drive due to age and/or illness, and needed an ebike to provide greater mobility.

Could it win?

I have no idea. I’m not a lawyer, and have no expertise in ADA or age discrimination law.

But if someone needs a plaintiff, I know where they can look.

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LADOT reminds us they’re looking for feedback to finally fix dangerous Ohio Ave west of Westwood Blvd.

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Gravel Bike California explores the Breckenridge Mountain Loop, just a two-hour drive from Los Angeles.

Although the only Breckenridge I’ve ever ridden is just a tad further away.

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

No bias here. The local paper says adding a movable barrier to the bike lane on the Richmond-San Rafael bridge is a good idea, allowing the state to close the bike lane on weekdays to make more room for cars. Because evidently, the convenience of drivers outweighs the convenience and safety of everyone else. 

An English politician complains that a few feet of pavement for new bikeway is changing the character of the city by covering over historic cobbled paving stones. But the city just says hold on, we’re not done yet.

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

A British man was surprised to learn a bikeshare company has no legal liability for the ebike rider who crashed into his bicycle, leaving him “hours from death.”

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Local 

Streets For All says the $2 billion — yes, with a B — LAX ATMP Roadway Improvement Project will only have the opposite effect, tearing up streets just before the Olympics, while making things more dangerous for pedestrians and people on bikes.

A Culver City paper offers more information on the official opening of the new Robertson Blvd Bus/Bike Lane Project.

Somehow, we missed this year’s Phil’s Cookie Fondo, hosted by former pro cyclist and Worst Retirement Ever host Phil Gaimon, to raise fund for the Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club — but you can still donate to the fundraiser.

 

State

Around 1,600 people are expected to turn out for Saturday’s Bike the Coast in San Diego County, with distances ranging from seven miles to a century.

The annual two-day, 31-mile Wounded Warrior Project’s Soldier Ride is currently underway in San Diego.

That’s more like it. A 27-year old Bakersfield man was sentenced to 12 years behind bars for the drunken hit-and-run crash that killed a 30-year old woman riding a bicycle in 2022, despite turning himself in a few days later after sobering up. As lax as California’s DUI laws are, the state-s hit-and-run statutes are even worse, providing an incentive for drivers to flee if they’ve had a few.

Marin County bike riders were expected to turn out last night for the annual Pumpkin Head Ride, which requires participants to wear a lit pumpkin on their helmets, if not their heads.

Sacramento’s Bike Lab works to empower local people through a variety of community services, including free bike repairs for anyone who needs it.

 

National

Knog is recalling its Blinder 900 and Blinder 1300 Front Bicycle Lights because the lithium-ion batteries could catch fire, but they promise they’ll replace it for you.

No point in waiting, I guess. Bike Magazine is the first out of the gate with a holiday gift guide. For all your Halloween giving, evidently. 

Somehow, I’ve never heard anyone say they’d start riding if only ebikes had a bigger interactive touch screen.

Of all the crashes that are unsurvivable, getting run down by a cement truck driver ranks pretty high on the list.

A Utah woman got a custom postpartum bike fit to help her get back on her bike, addressing the unique physiological changes affecting women after having a baby.

This is how Vision Zero is supposed to work. Albuquerque, New Mexico is building a new HAWK signal at a bike trail crossing where a bike rider was killed three months ago. Except why do they always have to wait until it’s too late? And someone should tell that TV station that the victim probably had a name. Just saying. 

The leaders of a Kansas hospital chain got together to build 25 new bicycles to donate to children and families across the Kansas City area.

An Ohio city opened a new connector project, including a new bike and pedestrian bridge, stitching together multiple miles of bike trails.

Great idea. A Baltimore-area bike shop teamed with a bike builder and custom painter to build a tricked-out, one-of-a-kind bicycle, raising over nine grand for a local homeless outreach group.

A Florida op-ed writer argues that greater enforcement against bike riders and pedestrians is exactly what’s needed to improve traffic safety. Because we’re the real danger, apparently, not the people in the big, dangerous machines.

 

International

A Canadian writer got his custom built, carbon frame Frankenbike back, courtesy of a small town marketplace, a year-and-a-half after it was stolen from the teenager he passed it down to.

Somehow, Brompton goes electric doesn’t quite have the same feel as Dylan going electric at the Newport Folk Festival, but still.

Europe’s most influential bicycle trade show is in jeopardy, after two leading German bike groups pulled out of Eurobike.

The UK now has a “boozy bike trail” through vineyards just 90-miles from London. Because if there’s one thing dank and drizzly England is known for, it’s wine. 

That’s more like it. Lime is deploying 500 dockless ebikes with child seats installed on the back to the streets of Paris.

A travel writer takes his family on a first-of-its-kind Botswana safari to track lions and elephants by bicycle.

 

Competitive Cycling

I want to be like him when I grow up. A Grand Junction, Colorado newspaper celebrates a 77-year old local man’s second-place age-group finish on the world master’s cycling stage.

 

Finally…

That feeling when your new artistic bike rack becomes a sock library. Or when you invent the first aero bike by using balsa wood and mummy tape.

And evidently, you’re not supposed to hurl Lime bikes out the back of a van.

Who knew?

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Thanks to Ted F for his very generous donation to support this site, and help me stay in the fight for a few more rounds.

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

Oh, and fuck Putin.