As always, there is a standing $50,000 reward for this, or any other fatal hit-and-run in the City of Los Angeles.
Anyone with information is urged to call LAPD Officer Diaz or Sergeant Nily at 323/421-2577, 1-877/527-3247 after business hours and weekends. Or anonymously at 1-800/222-8477 or lacrimestoppers.org.
This should surprise absolutely no one who has been paying attention for the past several years.
Things are not looking good for the completion of the vaunted Twenty-eight by ’28 projects that we were promised would be finished in time for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
Even after the list was dumbed down by removing the hard stuff, like finishing the LA River Bike Path through DTLA and Vernon.
The driver eventually stopped and called the police, but only after being chased down by a witness, who apparently stopped to pick up the victim’s wife after she had been knocked in a ditch.
Local residents have called for safety improvements following multiple hit-and-runs on the roadway, where speeding is common.
Speaking of which, as promised, and at long last, here are the photos David forwarded from Sunday’s West LA CicLAvia, where I’m told a good time was had by nearly all.
All photos by David Drexler
As an added bonus, he also sent along a reminder why you don’t park under a palm tree on a windy day, spotted outside a Porsche dealership along the route.
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This is who we share the road with.
Twitter post
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Thanks to Megan for forwarding video of the bicyclist who inspired Breaking Away looking back on his victory in the Little 500.
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Local
Finish the Ride and Finish the Run will take place in Griffith Park this weekend to call for safer streets and honor the victims of traffic violence; the events will take on added poignancy as Caitlin Cole, the sister of fallen bicyclist Regan Cole Graham — who was seven months pregnant with her daughter Ophelia when they were both killed in Playa del Rey — will ride Regan’s bike to complete the ride they never finished.
Bad news from East Oakland, where a 38-year old man was in grave condition after he was struck by a hit-and-run driver while riding his bicycle Monday night; police are looking for the owner of a black Land Rover who just kept going without stopping after striking the victim, who is believed to be homeless. Unfortunately, you’ll have to find a way around the paper’s paywall to read the story.
Streetsblog talks with Josh Naramore of the National Association of City Transportation Officials about how cities can get ready for the robo-taxi revolution, arguing that it can be done without losing momentum on building livable streets for people outside of cars, too, if it’s done right.
Britain’s Ineos Grenadiers Cycling Team will will have a new name and team colors for next month’s Giro d’Italia; they will now be known as the Netcompany Ineos Cycling Team after signing the AI company to a five-year sponsorship agreement.
To be honest, I’m pretty wrung out after writing about our third SoCal bicycling death in just three days.
And I don’t have a lot of time left to work tonight after dealing with all that before my last drop-dead deadline to get some sleep — hopefully not literally. So let’s just see how much we can get done, and try to catch up on more tomorrow.
And that includes the photos I promised you from Sunday’s CicLAvia, so I hope you’ll be patient with me for a few days.
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Mark your calendar for at least two more CicLAvias this year, despite Metro’s threats of cutbacks to future events that would only coincide with the World Cup and the ’28 Olympics.
Redditor johnnyshotit has some nice shots, too, while Michael Schneider offers video from the day.
Reddit post
Twitter post
And speaking of Schneider, he spotted a new LA modal filter.
Twitter post
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Police in Santa Monica will conduct yet another of the LA area’s traffic safety enforcement operations targeted at traffic violations that endanger pedestrians and bicyclists today.
As usual, ride to the letter of the law until you cross the city limits, because the cops may be focused on motorists, but they’re legally required to enforce any violations they see, regardless of who commits it.
The driver later told sheriff’s deputies “it wasn’t ‘reasonable’ for cyclists to take a whole lane, so ‘he drove into them.'”
“I told him I had video of the incident and offered to show it to him, which he stated he didn’t want to see because he knew he did nothing wrong,” the report says.
Fortunately, no one was seriously injured.
He is now being held without bond on two counts of aggravated assault, hit and run, reckless driving, aggressive driving and failure to maintain a safe distance from a bicycle.
Which is a lot of charges for “not doing anything wrong.”
Waymo effectivesly tells London bike riders “screw you,” arguing that it’s just too high a bar to expect their autonomous cabs to keep out of bike lanes, because customers want to be dropped off in them. Although the few times I’ve used one, I can’t recall ever being asked whether or not I want to be let out in a bike lane. I can recall getting extremely carsick, however.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
A Binghampton, New York man faces charges for playing repo man with a baseball bat, beating another man senseless when the victim didn’t pay everything he owed after buying an ebike from him; he then rode off with the bike in question.
You’ll now find a new conservation mural facing the Ballona Creek Bike Path on the ima Members Lounge building on Sepulveda Blvd; created by Victor Ving with support from the League of Conservation Voters, the mural calls for protecting our public lands.
A 26-year old Stockton man was lucky to escape injury when a car pulled up next to him as he was riding his bike, and someone fired a gun out the window.
There’s not a pit in hell deep enough for a Pennsylvania man accused of fleeing the scene after killing a third grader riding a bicycle, while driving under the influence; when police smelled alcohol on his breath after tracking him to his home, he first asked “How can I get a DUI if I have been drinking at my house all day?”, before admitting he’d felt “a bump” while he was driving home.
Heartbreaking news from North Carolina, where a 51-year old man faces multiple charges after he “veered off” a roadway while under the influence of coke, opiates and benzodiazepines, and slammed into a nine-year old boy as he sat on a bike in his own driveway, knocking the kid into retaining wall and severing his leg. Speaking of that pit in hell…
International
Residents of Liverpool, England say they don’t think plans for a five-mile bike lane connecting two other bikeways is popular with locals due to a loss of parking, even though 77% of respondents support it, and 69% say they’ll use it.
The ride takes place on the last Friday of every month on the corner of Western and Wilshire across from The Wiltern. Routes change monthly, turning each ride into a moving tour of the city. Some rides head west toward Marina del Rey, others east toward Mariachi Plaza, passing through neighborhoods that rarely feel connected outside of car travel.
As the ride moves through different neighborhoods, it often brings energy — and customers — to local businesses along the route as riders stop for food, drinks and supplies throughout the evening.
By my calculations, that means it rolls tonight, making it a perfect kickoff for CicLAvia weekend.
In addition to pledging affordable housing for all and protecting Angelenos from ICE and harassing landlords, she offers an extensive section on transportation and traffic safety, including this:
Angelenos are tired of sitting in traffic, feeling unsafe on their streets, and navigating broken sidewalks. We’ve voted for real change — Measure R (2008) and Measure M (2016) committed $120B to the expansion of rail and transit across the county, and Measure HLA (2024) mandated that street safety improvements happen when streets get repaved, not decades later. We’ve been waiting for City Hall to deliver on those promises with the urgency they deserve. Los Angeles moves too slowly, spends too inefficiently, plans too haphazardly, and acts too timidly to give people the transportation network they’ve already voted for…
Since 2015, Los Angeles has had a Vision Zero policy, a commitment that no one should die on our streets from traffic violence. Instead, traffic deaths have risen by more than 50%. It has never been treated as a genuine priority. Walking, biking, and driving are all less safe than they should be.
Residential streets are overwhelmed by cut-through traffic. Bike lanes lack physical protection. Roads are too fast and crosswalks are too few. Every time the city repaves a street without fixing any of this, we miss the cheapest chance we’ll ever get to make it safer.
And enforcement is aimed at the wrong things. LAPD spends too much time on pretextual stops and equipment violations that have nothing to do with the dangerous driving that is actually killing people.
That’s a damn good start, especially after four years of Mayor Bass ignoring bike and pedestrian safety on our streets, and dragging her foot, if not her ass, on implementing Measure HLA.
But we’ve heard promises like this before, most recently from former Mayor Eric Garcetti, who was great at formulating policy, and not so much on follow through. So what matters isn’t what a candidate says, but what actually ends up in the city budget.
And we won’t know that until after she, or someone else, is elected.
Things are looking good for Raman, though, with betting on the Kalshi prediction market showing her with a good chance of winning on the first vote.
And yes, betting is the right word, since Kalshi and similar sites are just semi-legal workarounds for online betting bans in the US.
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Apparently, there’s yet another ebike bill to keep an eye on in the California legislature.
A bill sponsored by the California Medical Association (CMA) that aims to reduce the growing number of severe electric bicycle (e-bike) injuries advanced out of the Assembly Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.
Joint-authored by Assemblymembers Lori Wilson and Marc Berman, and co-sponsored by the California Orthopaedic Association, AB 2346 establishes speed limits for e-bikes (15 mph for riders under 16 years old and 10 mph on sidewalks) and would allow local jurisdictions to set speed limits on bike paths and multi-use trails. It would also require manufacturers, sellers, and distributors of e-bikes to equip e-bikes with speedometers and lights and provide safety-related disclosures to consumers at the point of sale.
It seems relatively harmless, primarily affecting kids under 16.
The question is whether ebike makers will respond to that limit by making 15 mph the standard speed for all Class 1, 2 and 3 ebikes, since the bill doesn’t seem to make any distinction between classes, or for older riders.
Agoura Hills City Engineer Charmaine Yambao also noted how complicated and confusing the states ebike classes and regulations are — which The Acorn somehow managed to explain in one simple paragraph.
The fastest descent was probably set by whoever the hell was on it when Mauna Kea last erupted.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes — and pedestrians — just keeps on going.
Hopefully, justice delayed won’t turn into justice denied in Wisconsin, where a man who admitted to driving onto a bike path and deliberately killing a man by repeatedly hitting him with his truck was ruled incompetent to stand trial, after he refused to appear in court, and appeared to have no understanding of the court proceedings; however, the judge said he could be competent within a year with treatment. It’s not clear from the description if the victim was actually riding a bike, though.
Streets For All has issued a new report on how bad LA streets are going to get, now that the city has halted repaving to avoid complying with Measure HLA and the Americans with Disabilities Act — not to mention the drastic budget cuts to pay for the unfunded raises cops and city workers received. Let’s just say they’re painting the city red, and not in a good way.
HR 7353, aka the Magnus White and Safe Streets for Everyone Act, has passed the US House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trademark, and could be included in this year’s Surface Transportation Reauthorization package; the bill — named for the 17-year old USA Cycling team member killed by a drunk driver in Boulder, Colorado — would require automatic emergency braking systems capable of detecting vulnerable road users such as bicyclists, motorcyclists, and wheelchair users in all new passenger vehicles by 2029, something that is already required by the European Union.
Tragic news from Poland, where a 36-year old member of the country’s Parliament was killed when a driver veered onto the wrong side of the road, and hit him as he rode his bicycle; a member of the New Left Party, Lukasz Litewka was known for his animal rights advocacy and a billboard campaign to help shelter dogs find homes.
London officials hope hosting of the first ever women’s team time trial in the next year’s Tour de France Femmes will encourage more women to ride bikes in the British capital. Or maybe they could just, you know, build more and safer bikeways.
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 2, 2026 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Bike rider gets doored — and blamed — in WeHo, CicLAvia unveils new West LA route, and South Pas passes on protection
According to WeHo Online, the crash occurred at 8275 Santa Monica Blvd, across from Hamburger Mary’s, around 11:17 am.
A witness said the victim cut through between two cars, one parked and the other in the right lane, when the driver threw open his door right in front of the victim. “He literally just cut through,” she said. “This guy was opening the door, and there’s no way he could have seen the biker try to cut through the two cars.”
Unless, of course, the driver checked his mirror or looked behind him before opening his door.
According the website, the bike rider was expected to be okay, but his vintage road bike was totaled. And the car door didn’t fare too well, either.
Bicyclists are legally allowed to split lanes like that in California. Though it’s more prudent to ride outside the door zone, for reasons exactly like that.
The road is slated to get a green, painted bike lane. However, if it’s like the bike lanes further west on the boulevard, it will still place bikes directly in the door zone.
WeHo Online ends the story like this, showing that they get it, anyway.
Dooring — when a driver or passenger opens a vehicle door into the path of an oncoming cyclist — is one of the leading causes of bicycle injuries in urban areas. California law requires drivers to check for cyclists before opening a door, but enforcement is rare, sadly, for all involved, crashes like Sunday’s are not.
There’s no word on whether the driver was ticketed. Or if, like the witness, sheriff’s deputies blamed the victim, too.
CicLAvia has announced the first two events of 2026, starting with a CivSalon next week, and a new route connecting Santa Monica Blvd and Westwood in West LA next month.
Although if they’ve posted anything about the former online yet, I can’t find it.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
A former British Big Brother winner went on the attack against people riding bicycles on park trails “at Tour de France speeds,” and getting “absolutely furious” at dogs wandering across the trail. Admittedly, as one of the commenters said, you should always slow down around dogs and children because they are utterly unpredictable, and prone to running out in front of you at any time. On the other hand, it’s up to dog owners to keep their dogs leashed and under control, if only because it’s their responsibility to keep their pet safe.
A 34-year old man riding a Class 2 ped-assist ebike suffered serious injuries in San Diego’s Southcrest neighborhood Saturday morning, when he allegedly rode through a stop sign and was broadsided by a driver crossing on the cross street; the victim suffered multiple broken bones, including a fractured vertebrae, jaw, multiple ribs and left wrist.
Seventy kids took home new bicyclists in Goleta on Saturday, thanks to the Boys and Girls Clubs of Santa Barbara County and primary fundraiser Kirk Greene, who raised close to $17,000 by riding over 6,200 miles for the 2025 Bike4Kids campaign.
Dutch prosecutors are appealing the acquittal of two manufacturers of Stint e-cargo bikes for culpability in the death of four children, who were killed when the brakes failed on the ebike while a daycare worker was taking five kids to school, and she rode into the path of an oncoming train; only the daycare worker and one of the children survived. Prosecutors can’t appeal an acquittal in the US, but it’s more common in European courts.
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.
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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.
November 25, 2025 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Metro board members propose rescue for open streets funding, and ebikes blamed in Hermosa Beach teen gang attack
Day 329 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025.
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They get it.
While I was out of commission last week, Metro considered a bizarre plan that would have virtually eliminated open streets events for the next three years, other than events tied directly to the World Cup, and Olympic and Paralympic Games, and held within a narrow two-month window each year.
Even though each of the 51 CicLAvias held since October 10, 2010 have averaged more than 100,000 people experiencing the streets of Los Angeles County in a new way, many for the first time.
Not to mention the many Active Streets events hosted by Active SGV in the San Gabriel Valley, and others funded by Metro.
It’s a plan that would mean an end, at least temporarily, to most CicLAvia and Active Streets events outside of that narrow window, with no guarantee that they would resume afterwards.
At issue is a dramatic change in the way Metro intends to fund “open streets” events in the next three years. A true “open street” event is as it sounds: Allowing people on bicycles, scooters, skates, skateboards and pedestrians to ride or walk the asphalt streets free of cars for exercise, while stopping at booths for food and games within various neighborhoods of Los Angeles County…
This round of funding includes 29 events at a two-year cost of $10 million, according to Metro.
But riding to the rescue is a proposal supported by six of the 13 Metro board members, which would commit at least $1 million to fund other events that were rejected by Metro staff for falling outside that Copa Mundial and Olympic window.
And better yet, make that funding permanent.
The group includes LA County supervisors Lindsey Horvath, Janice Hahn and Hilda Solis, as well as CD5 Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky, Whittier Councilmember and Metro Chair Fernando Dutra, and Pomona Mayor Tim Sandoval.
By my math that leaves them just one vote short for the motion to carry. Bearing in mind that I was an English major, so my calculations may leave something to be desired.
Let’s hope they find it.
Because open streets events may be a relatively recent tradition here in Los Angeles. But they have quickly grown to be the largest in the US, and are far too valuable to sacrifice.
Even temporarily.
No guarantee the Daily News link won’t be blocked by their paywall, however. It was hidden the first time I tried to read the story, but not the second. So your luck may vary.
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Once again, ebikes are in the news.
And not in a good way.
As usual, though, the press manages to conflate non-street legal electric dirt bikes and motorbikes with the far slower and tamer ped-assist ebikes.
The problem here is not ebikes, but gangs of teens engaged in random street violence.
But by painting ebikes with such a broad brush, these stories risk the general public confusing illegal electric motorbikes with the legal ped-assist bikes being rapidly adopted by countless bike commuters and recreational riders.
So for the uninitiated — and that includes the overwhelming majority of news outlets out there — if they don’t have functional pedals, or travel faster that 28 mph, they’re mo-peds, motor scooters, motorbikes, motorcycles or dirt bikes, regardless of how they’re powered.
Or they just ain’t legal.
Period.
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Case in point, news broke yesterday that a 12-year old boy was injured in a hit-and-run while riding an ebike in Anaheim Sunday night.
KNBC-4 reports the victim was hospitalized with “a broken leg and concussions.” Which suggests that he may have more than one head, since a single head can only suffer a single concussion in a single event.
The driver fled on foot after crashing his car about a block away. Police suspect he was under the influence based on undisclosed evidence found in the car.
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Our old friend Zachary Rynew shares his take on Sunday’s Stranger Things CicLAvia.
Which, had it occurred next year, wouldn’t have been funded under Metro’s proposed new restrictions, since it would have fallen outside of the World Cup schedule, and had no connection to the soccer/football tournament.
The crash injured 30 people; only his good reflexes saved him from being one of them.
Twitter post
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Evidently, you can transport a wheelbarrow by bicycle.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
A writer for the Cornell University student paper highlights a problem experienced by bike riders almost everywhere, after bicycles are banned from the local Commons, forcing riders to choose between a busy highway and a “bike boulevard” consisting of a couple speed bumps and no protection.
Velo selects the best Black Friday road and gravel bicycling deals. Which reminds me it’s time for my annual “fuck Black Friday” campaign. Seriously, just get out and ride your bike, and let everyone else fight the crowds, virtual or otherwise.
‘Tis the season. The Toys For Tots program in Bowling Green, Kentucky got a welcome surprise when they received a donation of 400 kids bikes, while expecting just a quarter of that.
No real surprise here, as former cyclist and current team sprint coach Marcel Kittel says pro cycling is “absolutely not” clean. But the doping era is over, right?
October 22, 2025 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Melrose CicLAvia visits the Upside Down, BikeLA hosts Bike Fest Happy Hour, and it pays to pay people to bike to work
Day 295 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025.
On Sunday, November 23, fans are invited to join the Netflix x CicLAvia—Melrose Ave: Stranger Things 5 One Last Ride – an epic event bringing fans together to bike, skate, or stroll along a car-free stretch of Melrose Ave in celebration of the cultural phenomenon’s fifth and final season.
For one day only, fans will step into the world of Stranger Things with immersive photo ops, pedal-powered activations, live entertainment, merch, giveaways, and an exclusive content drop – all taking place just days before Volume 1 hits Netflix on November 26th at 5pm PT.
We’re going full 1980s, and you’re invited to join the fun: show up as your favorite Hawkins character or monster of the Upside Down, or channel peak ‘80s vibes with neon, leg warmers, windbreakers, or any retro fit.
If that’s not enough for you, fans can also choose to take part in a special quest along the route. Rack up pins by completing various activities on our quest map to unlock additional surprises.
The event is open to all and no RSVP will be needed. Just grab your bike, board, skates, sneakers… even your stroller, and head on out to Melrose Avenue for a day of fun, community, and adventure.
Meanwhile, Active Streets will beat CicLAvia to the punch with the five-mile Corazón de Valle on November 2nd, which is the perfect opportunity to bust out your best Dia de Los Muertos outfit.
Work commissioned by the Cycle to Work Alliance has found the economic benefit of the cycle to work scheme to be worth £573 million ‘across retail, productivity, health, and household savings.’
The research found that participants in the scheme saved £1,262 per year by switching out their commute from a car to a cycle, or e-bike and the incentive results in 38% of participants commuting by bike for the very first time.
That works out to $1,689 per person per year, just by ditching their car for a bicycle.
The way it works is you pick out the bicycle and safety gear you want, and your employer buys it for you. Then you pay it back through a monthly salary deduction.
So depending on the price of the bicycle and the payment period, you could turn a profit in the first year. Or pay it off quicker, and turn a profit every year after that.
Cycling Electric calls the program imperfect, because anyone who is unemployed or self-employed is left out, among other issues.
But it still beats the hell out of any bike to work program I know of in this country.
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Streetsblog takes a look at the new Toronto barrier on the 3rd Street bike lane in DTLA.
Bluesky post
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
The mean streets of America are getting meaner.
A Portland driver was caught on video repeatedly ramming his SUV into a bike rider protecting a “No Kings” protest rally, yet the cops refused to even cite the driver because they said the victim shouldn’t have been blocking the street in the first place. Which is kinda like saying you can punch someone in the face if they’re jaywalking.
The bike lanes on the Bay Area’s Richmond-San Rafael bridge will now only be open to bicycles on Thursday evenings through Sunday, serving as a breakdown lane for cars the rest of the week. Because apparently, cars only break down on weekdays, and people only bike on weekends.
They get it. New York Streetsblog says the problem with ebikes isn’t the relatively sedate ped-assist bikes, it’s the super-fast illegal ones.
A 71-year old North Carolina man was critically injured when he was struck by a driver after swerving into the car’s path — which actually seems to be the case for a change, since the crash was caught on a doorbell cam. The usual warning applies, so be sure you want to see it before you click on the link, because you can’t unsee it afterwards.
A group of Dutch tourists learned the hard way to avoid local protests, when their bike tour took them into Valencia, Spain’s Old Town and they were surrounded by angry anti-tourism demonstrators yelling “Fuera, fuera!” (“Out, out”).
October 14, 2025 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Good time had by all at CicLAvia, Austin Beutner runs for LA mayor, and Pasadena considers Vision Zero in all but name
Day 287 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025.
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It looks like lots of people loved Sunday’s Heart of LA CicLAvia.
One that I missed out on, since neither my wife or corgi were up to it — one because still recovering from a heart attack, and the other after getting a bunch of shots at the vet.
I’ll leave it up to you to decide which was which.
Beutner was a big supporter of bicycling when he first ran for mayor a little over a decade ago, following a bike crash led him to change careers from building a successful business to serving as Antonio Villaraigosa’s deputy mayor.
We’ll have to see if that’s still a priority for him this time around.
This is shaping up to be our best Santa Clarita event ever, and we can’t wait to see you there.
As a reminder, advance registration prices end at midnight on October 25—register now to lock in the best rate!
Whether you’re riding or running, you’ll be supporting Streets Are For Everyone’s mission to make our roads safer—and we couldn’t be more grateful for your help.
As usual, there will be an amazingraffle at the event! You can pre-purchase tickets, pick them up at packet pickup, or at our merchandise table during the event!
Thank you for being part of this important cause. We can’t wait to see you at the starting line!
♂️♂️ Costumes are encouraged, but optional for participation! ♂️
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
It’s happened once again, again. A day after we discussed a Massachusetts driver who used his car as a weapon to run down someone on a bike, we learn that police in the UK are looking for a hit-and-run van driver who ran over a 49-year old man’s bicycle after first “racially abusing” the victim, then deliberately trying to run him over.
Fullerton residents called for protected bike lanes and better street lighting at last week’s city council meeting, after two Cal State Fullerton students were critically injured when they were struck by a truck driver while sharing an e-scooter. Although someone should tell the CSUF student newspaper that most trucks still usually have drivers.
National
NBC News offers video of Portland’s rain-soaked emergency naked bike ride to protest Trump’s militarization of the city; the reported thousands of riders were also confronted by a few dozen counterprotestors. But if the riders are wearing clear rain ponchos, are they really naked?
A college senior in my bicycle-friendly Colorado hometown credits a free bike helmet she got as a freshman with saving her life when she went headfirst over her handlebars, returning to the same event as a volunteer four years later to hand them out herself. And yes, that’s exactly the kind of relatively slow speed crash bike helmets are designed for, not protecting riders from massive SUVs as most drivers seem to assume.
The Guardian looks back on Tadej Pogačar’s total domination of the cycling season, despite battling a bout of mid-season depression, while Tour de France Femmes champ Pauline Ferrand-Prévot’s extreme weight loss proves almost as divisive as trans women in amateur bike races.
The University of Colorado highlights the return of paracyclist Jason Macom, whose track cycling career ended with a severe knee injury that eventually resulted in an amputation, then a second career as a paracyclist ended when his prothesis irritated his knee; a new procedure that grafted a prothesis directly onto the bone has allowed him to make a comeback, qualifying for this week’s 2025 Para-cycling Track World Championships in Rio de Janeiro.
Day 258 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025.
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I got a little dose of inspiration yesterday.
My wife, the corgi and I attended the first part of SAFE’s 10th anniversary celebration yesterday evening, before we had to leave for a family commitment.
The nonprofit group known as Streets Are For Everyone was born from Damian Kevitt’s first Finish the Ride, after more than 600 people turned out to ride with him to finish what started out as a pleasant bike ride with his wife, before it was interrupted by a heartless hit-and-run driver.
But in time, it became clear that Kevitt had been struck by the driver of a van while riding on Zoo Drive, and dragged hundreds of feet onto the northbound 5 Freeway by the fleeing driver.
He freed himself from under the van by sheer force of will. And likely survived only because the trailing drivers saw what was happening and stopped to protect him, and because some of those cars has people with medical training, who began treating him at the scene before paramedics arrived.
The odds that he would survive his multiple life-threatening injuries were somewhere between slim and none. But his mother refused to give up and fought for him at every turn. And Damian’s sheer will to live was evident when he told her and his wife that he would one day finish that ride, whatever it took.
In those ten years, Damian has gone from a victim to founder of a successful organization that has spawned other traffic safety groups and shepherded a number of important bills through the state legislature, as well as memorializing victims and calling attention to our most dangerous streets.
He has become someone I truly admire and consider a good friend. And along with Streets For All founder Michael Schneider and Streetsblog’s Joe Linton, he’s one of the first people I reach out to with any bike or pedestrian safety problem that demands a solution.
We are lucky to have people and groups like that fighting for us every day.
Listening to the inspiring stories from other victims of traffic violence, along with SAFE staffers and volunteers, it coalesced in my own mind just why I do what I do, and what keeps me fighting when our mean streets and uncaring officials continue to drag me down and break my heart.
For the first time in a long time, or maybe ever, I can now sum it up in two simple sentences.
I want everyone who wants to ride a bicycle to be able to ride one, regardless of who they are or where they live.
And I want everyone who leaves home today on a bicycle to get home safely.
That’s it.
I’ll keep fighting for that as long as I have any fight in me. Sometimes I think that day was yesterday. And sometimes I think I’m just getting started.
One other note before we move on.
One of the speakers yesterday described how he was struck by a driver and badly injured just five months after moving to Los Angeles. And yesterday’s CicLAvia was the first time he had ridden a bike in this city since.
It was a reminder just how important CicLAvia and other open streets events like Beach Streets in Long Beach, and Active Streets in the San Gabriel Valley, are to all of us.
Because without them, many people in the this car-choked megalopolis wouldn’t ride bikes again.
Or at all.
Top photo: Damian Kevitt speaking at SAFE 10th Anniversary event.
And it’s important to note that Linton’s lawsuit is a personal matter, unrelated to his work for Streetsblog.
In a very narrow ruling, the judge concluded that Metro could join the suit, but could only focus on the Vermont case, and not any other possible cases.
In the discussion in court, the judge engaged Metro’s lawyers regarding how expansive this case would be. Metro’s earlier filing noted that my lawsuit “attacked” Metro’s authority to build “the Vermont Project and other Metro projects.” The judge asked Metro’s lawyer if it was ok to strike references to other projects, and just focus on Vermont. Metro’s lawyer agreed. Towards the end of the discussion, the judge summarized that this trial would focus on one project on Vermont, and that another day could focus on another project on, for example, Western or Alameda
That’s it for now.
Going forward, Metro will undoubtedly argue that HLA is a city ordinance that does not apply to them as a county agency, while Linton’s attorneys will argue that Metro is working for the city on a city project, on a city street included in the city mobility plan.
It will be interesting to see how this develops from here.
Although I’m not sure if they were more appalled because of the Instagram posts or the gender identity of the person behind them.
I haven’t commented about the shooting here because it falls outside of the scope of this site.
But as someone who lived through the killings of both Kennedys and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as well as the attempted assassinations of Presidents Ford and Reagan, and the near-fatal shooting of Alabama Governor George Wallace, I can attest that no good ever comes from political violence.
And you can’t kill an idea, good or bad, with a bullet.
Known for high-performance gear and a culture-first approach, the company’s MAAP LaB Los Angeles landed on iconic Abbot Kinney Blvd in Venice, their eighth location outside of Australia.
According to StupidDope, it’s designed to be a creative hub for bicyclists and creatives.
At its heart lies a social coffee bar, an anchor point meant to bring riders together before and after their rides. It’s more than a retail space; it’s a venue where cyclists and Venice locals alike can gather, share stories, and connect over a shared passion for performance and design. This approach reflects MAAP’s “Life Around Bikes” philosophy — a reminder that cycling culture is about more than the ride itself.
They’re not the first to try that approach.
And Abbot Kinney is littered with the gravesites of other high-end bike brands who thought they had a “can’t miss” concept in the ideal location.
