Tag Archive for dangerous drivers

Morning Links: Speeding across the US at 123 mph, the once and future CicLAvia, and more post-Peloton ad hysteria

December 9, 2019 / / 7 comments

Before we start, let me take a moment to thank every who’s given to the 5th Annual BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive so far.

Since we started ten days ago, not a single day has gone by without at least one donation. And often, more than that.

So let me offer my heartfelt thanks to Mike W, Ilya G, Philippa M, Gregory S and Glen S for their generous donations to since we saw you last.

Because their open hearts, and open wallets, is what helps keep all the best bike news and advocacy coming your way every day.

Which means the only question is, who’s going to join them today?

And will it be you?

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This is who we share the roads with.

Writing for Bicycling, Joe Lindsey criticizes a culture that allows motorists to break the law with seeming impunity. And chuckle when someone gets away with it.

Like drivers in a highly modified Mercedes using every trick known to man to evade the police while speeding across the US at an average of 123 mph.

And a top speed of 193 mph.

Speeds which would be instantly fatal to anyone outside of the car in the event of a crash. And probably in it, too.

All to win an illegal, unauthorized race across the country, speeding 2,800 miles across the US in less than 27 and a half hours. And putting the lives of everyone else on the roadway at risk, in every city, county and state they drove through.

Maybe it’s here where I point out that all of this is patently insane.

It’s insane to shift-drive across the country on open roads at triple-digit speeds. It’s insane to have such arrogant disregard for the law that you heavily modify a vehicle specifically to evade the police, using technologies that are themselves illegal in many states—laser jammers are illegal in California, Colorado, and Illinois, to name three states on the route, and it’s illegal in every state not to have functioning brake and taillights. It’s insane to try to pass this off as both a bold adventure AND a paragon of driving skill and discretion. And it’s insane for the media to accept that narrative so credulously and uncritically…

Cars are the apex predator in a transportation ecosystem where menace and aggression are literally built into the grilles, and where drivers can hit and kill cyclists and pedestrians and walk away without charges, or receive laughably minimal punishment when they are brought to court. Our devotion to cars is a stuck parking brake on the economy, a pox on public health, and is killing the planet.

It’s today’s must read.

And well worth the few minutes it will take to speed through it.

………

The Los Angeles Daily News says the final CicLAvia of the year opened people’s eyes to “the sights, scenery (and) shops” in Canoga Park, Winnetka and Reseda yesterday.

But don’t worry.

CicLAvia will be back next year with a return to South LA and a first foray into Watts in February.

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It’s worth clicking on the tweet below just to read the long list of witty responses.

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San Diego is moving forward with the long-debated protected bike lanes in North Park, removing 450 parking spaces to make room for them.

At the same time, however, it’s also beginning work on a pipeline under the street, which could mess up your bike commutes for the next month.

Thanks to Robert Leone for the heads-up.

………

Leone also forwards news that parts of Camp Pendleton were closed due to flooding as of this past weekend.

Please be aware of the following closures due to flooding:

  1. BEACH CLUB ROAD REMAINS CLOSED
  2. RAMP TO WIRE MOUNTAIN ROAD FROM VANDEGRIFT BLVD  ENTERING FROM MAIN GATE CLOSED
  3. LAS PULGAS GATE IS NOW CLOSED
  4. STUART MESA RD, 41 AREA TO LAS PULGAS IS NOW CLOSED.

Roads and gates above will re-open once water subsides.

For additional information regarding these closures, please contact Mr. Sam Jammal.

Sam Jammal, Community Plans Liaison, Camp Pendleton

Osamah.jammal@usmc.mil

………

Nothing like a leisurely bike ride along the Nile.

No, on it.

………

Just when you thought discussion of the much-loathed Peloton ad had beaten the subject into the ground…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pShKu2icEYw

…actor and gin meister Ryan Reynolds takes a swing at it.

https://twitter.com/VancityReynolds/status/1203118775815622664

Meanwhile, a Fox News host insists the whole controversy stems from the actress’ expressive eyebrows. No, really, he’s serious.

Apparently failing to understand what actors do for a living, some very stupid people have been sending death threats to the man who plays the husband in the spots. And a writer for the Guardian says the actor’s attempts to prove he’s not sexist misses the point.

And not surprisingly, Saturday Night Live got in on the action, not once but twice. Although you have to watch the first one all the way through.

Unfortunately, the actor in the ad isn’t an SNL fan, either.

At least not in this case.

………

‘Tis the Season.

Inmates in an Iowa county jail refurbished 25 bicycles for local kids.

A western Pennsylvania bike drive resulted in 1,245 bike for Toys for Tots; the founder says he wants to make sure every kid has the chance to ride one like he did.

Twenty-six Long Island NY kids got new bikes and helmets thanks to a local nonprofit.

A Tampa Bay nonprofit built 900 bicycles for local kids in need.

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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes keeps gaining speed.

No, people on bikes don’t think they own the road. But evidently, the woman in this Texas truck thinks she does.

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Local

Los Angeles got a pair of state grants totaling $3.5 million to build 2.2 miles of multi-use pathways along the LA River in North Atwater Village, as well as improving habitat along the river.

If you’re carrying a garage door opener, crack pipe and several change purses on what’s probably a $5,000 stolen bike, stay off the sidewalk — and put a damn light on it.

 

State

San Diego bicyclists rode Friday to celebrate the completion of new bus and bike lanes along El Cajon Blvd.

Mind your turn signals and stop signs in Oxnard tomorrow, when the police conduct a bike and pedestrian safety sting, calling it an educational operation. The usual protocol applies — ride to the letter of the law until you get outside their jurisdiction.

San Jose pedestrian fatalities are at an all time high, with other traffic deaths not far behind.

A somewhat incredulous Sacramento reporter follows a Christmas tree delivery in three parts to prove it can be done by bicycle.

 

National

A writer for Quartz questions why women don’t ride to work when they love bikes so much.

Life is cheap in Colorado, where a dump truck driver walks with community service for killing a new mother on her first bike ride after giving birth. And apparently gets to keep his license, too.

Conservative Texas aims to eliminate traffic deaths in the entire state by 2050. Unlike progressive California, which hasn’t even discussed Vision Zero.

A Chicago alderman (alderperson?) backed down on plans to dangerously reconfigure bike lanes to make room for more parking.

He gets it. An Illinois writer says you “meet the most interesting people, see what most drivers rarely notice, and discover places you wish you had known years ago” when you ride a bike.

No surprise here, as Pittsburg drivers make like a quarterback avoiding a blitz by using bike lanes to swerve around speed humps without slowing down.

Gothamist wants to know why ebikes are okay for Amazon and UPS deliveries in NYC, but remain illegal for immigrants delivering food. And why the governor hasn’t signed a bill to rectify that.

New York’s Port Authority makes La Guardia Airport virtually off limits to people on bikes, suggesting it’s your fault for making drivers feel bad when they have to hit you.

 

International

Stats show most Toronto bicycling and walking deaths occur during the day, suggesting the free reflective armbands offered by police won’t help very much.

Life is cheap in the UK, where a truck driver will serve less than two years behind bars for killing a bike rider when he couldn’t even see her because of the tray table he built onto his dashboard.

A British woman says she’s lucky to be alive after the brakes on her bike failed during a steep descent on a 114-mile charity ride, sending her crashing into a rock.

British Prime Minister and Captain of the H.M.S. Brexit Boris Johnson says the naughtiest thing he’s ever done was ride a bike on the sidewalk. But London’s Mirror begs to differ, insisting Boris has done much worse — like using highly offensive racial slurs, for instance.

A new Austrian inner tube offers lower rolling resistance, combined with the kind of savings weight weenies could only dream of — if you’re wiling to pay the price.

An African photographer focuses his lens on Burundi’s bicycle taxi culture.

The best way to visit the Cypriot city of Nicosia is by bicycle, according to a local paper. Then again, that’s usually the best way to visit any city.

A visually impaired Japanese man can finally live his dream of racing with his wife after friends and family hand-built a lacquered bamboo and beech wood tandem they can ride together.

 

Competitive Cycling

Cyclist picks the cycling team of the decade; three of their eight picks are women — with Marianne Vos topping the list.

Eurosport considers the most controversial moments in the 2019 bike racing season.

Although maybe you’d prefer watching the top riders and their crazy bike handling skills seen below.

https://twitter.com/VelonCC/status/1202302881224896513?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1202302881224896513&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cyclingweekly.com%2Fnews%2Fracing%2Fwatch-velon-recap-shows-amazing-bike-handling-skills-pro-riders-443996

 

Finally…

When your stolen bike — and subsequently stealing it back — becomes the topic of a children’s book. If you spot a tempting bicycle sitting outside the sheriff’s office, just leave it alone, already.

And if you want to avoid ripping the skin off your penis, put some damn grips on your handlebars.

Assuming you have one, of course.

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Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Morning Links: A short CicLAvia thread, NYT op-ed says cars are death machines, and Keep LA Moving summit on video

October 7, 2019 / / Comments Off on Morning Links: A short CicLAvia thread, NYT op-ed says cars are death machines, and Keep LA Moving summit on video

I had a little different CicLAvia yesterday.

My wife, who doesn’t ride a bike, wanted to go to CicLAvia this time.

So I left my bike at home, and we walked the section through the Civic Center and Little Tokyo, then combined it with a long-planned walking tour of the Arts District, ending with lunch at Smorgasburg.

Along with a stop at Angel City Brewery on the way back for a touch of Octoberfest and a half growler of their fest martzen.

And yes, a good time was had by all. With the exception of my new knee, which has been barking at me ever since we got home.

I should have sprung for the Vibranium model.

Or maybe unobtanium.

More a few people turned out this time. Just like every CicLAvia, going back to the very first one.

Whoever scheduled a Mole fest right next to CicLAvia deserves a promotion.

Who doesn’t love the incredible craftsmanship that goes into these lowrider bikes?

Thanks to Jason for a quick rundown on Pure Cycle’s new e-cargo bike.

I’m not saying everyone went to Angel City post CicLAvia…

…but it sure as hell looked like it.

 

Meanwhile, Sam Omar-Hall offers a great thread capturing the day.

And everyone’s favorite transit advocate reminds us that the final CicLAvia of the year comes in two months.

https://twitter.com/_KennyUong_/status/1181045930595778561

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Today’s must read comes in the form of an op-ed in the New York Times.

Allison Arieff writes that she used to think calling cars death machines was extreme. But not any more. 

Especially after her nine-year old niece was lucky to survive getting hit by an ice cream truck in Los Angeles.

Cars are death machines. Pedestrian fatalities in the United States have increased 41 percent since 2008; more than 6,000 pedestrians were killed in 2018 alone. More than 4,000 American kids are killed in car crashes every year – I am thankful every day my niece wasn’t one of them.

Here’s the thing: Statistics clearly don’t seem to persuade anyone of the magnitude of this problem. Not policy makers or automakers, technologists or drivers.

She goes on to quote from over 500 people who responded to her request for stories of getting hit by a driver.

And says autonomous cars aren’t going to save us.

Among the safety measures proposed by car companies are encouraging pedestrians and bicyclists to use R.F.I.D. tags, which emit signals that cars can detect. This means it’s becoming the pedestrian’s responsibility to avoid getting hit. But if keeping people safe means putting the responsibility on them (or worse, criminalizing walking and biking), we need to think twice about the technology we’re developing.

This may be the worst outcome of the automobile-centered 20th century: the assumption that it’s people who need to get out of the way of these lethal machines, instead of the other way around.

And neither are SUVs.

Because the front end of an S.U.V. is higher than the average car’s front end, it is far more likely to hit a pedestrian in the chest or head and twice as likely to kill walkers, runners, cyclists and children, compared to regular cars. And yet, S.U.V. sales account for 60 percent of new vehicle sales.

One of the easiest ways to make cars safer would be to make them smaller. Another way? Figuring out how to get people to drive less by providing safer, more sustainable alternatives to the car.

Seriously, take a few minutes to read the whole thing — including the quotes from the victims.

We’ll wait.

If you have any time left, The Guardian offers this long read on why the streets are getting deadlier for pedestrians.

And for us.

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Shameful.

The wife of an American diplomat stationed in the UK is claiming diplomatic immunity to avoid responsibility for the hit-and-run that killed a British motorcycle rider.

She was reportedly driving on the wrong side of the road when she slammed into the 19-year old victim while driving next to a US spy base.

After police tracked her down, she promised not to leave the country. Then did it anyway, presumably returning to the US.

His heartbroken parents have appealed to President Trump to return her to face justice.

But we’ll have to see if this administration has the integrity to do the right thing. Or will shield her from anything even resembling justice.

I know which one my money is on.

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Keep PDR Moving has posted a nearly four-hour video of the “national summit” for Keep LA Moving, which Peter Flax says amounted to about 25 NIMBYs and traffic safety deniers gathered in a restaurant.

He also says John Forester, aka the “father of vehicular cycling,” comes on about 30 minutes in, and proceeds to bore the room

If you have the time, and the stomach, to actually watch it.

………

The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes goes on.

A road raging Wisconsin driver got out of his car and repeatedly punched a man on a bike, then threatened to beat up the police officers when they arrived to break it up, after the bike rider made the mistake of flipping off the driver when he revved up behind him. That’s one key lesson I learned the hard way — never flip off the driver behind you.

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Local

The LA Times celebrates the permanent hold placed on the freeway portion of the High Desert Corridor through north LA County, saying building a highway that will increase the amount of miles driven, at a time when the state is committed to cutting driving miles, is the wrong move. But notes that the high speed rail and bike path portions of the project can still go through. And should.

A former member of the Pasadena Transportation Advisory Commission sets the record straight on Complete Streets, correcting the mistaken belief that Complete Streets only benefit of people walking or riding a bike.

This is who we share the roads with. An allegedly drunk Pasadena driver fled the scene after killing a pedestrian; the driver faces charges for vehicular manslaughter, DUI and driving without a license. More evidence just how desperately those Complete Streets are needed. And how desperately we need to do something to stop hit-and-runs.

 

State

The Orange County Transportation Authority, aka OCTA, and Caltrans want your input on how to transform Beach Blvd between La Habra and Huntington Beach. Banning cars and turning it into a transit, bike and pedestrian corridor probably won’t fly. But it should.

An anonymous donor is offering a $25,000 reward for the heartless coward who fled the scene after running down 53-year old Michelle Scott as she rode her bike to work at her Escondido office on Wednesday, leaving her lying on the side of the road with critical injuries.

The Ventura County Star suggests riding a bike as one option for an eco-friendly commute during the county’s Rideshare Week starting today.

A bike-riding San Francisco columnist says the solution to conflicts on the road are bicycle turnout lanes that would allow bike riders to get out of the way of trailing traffic, just like the one he and his wife used to pull aside to leet a semi pass on a narrow roadway.

Sad news from Oakland, where a 24-year old man was the victim of a dooring; he was killed when someone opened the door of a parked car in front of him, knocking him into the path of a large pickup. I’m told the street had sharrows, which were due to be replaced with bike lanes. But it’s too late to save this man.

Former pro Levi Leipheimer’s GranFondo drew nearly 5,000 bike riders from 14 countries to Sonoma County for the 11th edition of the annual ride.

USA Today picks up the story of the four bike-riding junior detectives who helped rescue a lost 97-year old Roseville woman with dementia.

 

National

Gear Patrol says their bike of the year is one you never heard of. For once, I have to agree.

A writer for Bicycling says ebiking has suddenly become his favorite new way to explore a city.

Bicycle-oriented development is the latest trend in housing targeting Millennials.

Seattle police appear to have abused their bait bike program, targeting poor and homeless people by leaving an unlocked bicycle outside of a Goodwill store; nine people were busted, but the only one that went to trial resulted in a not guilty verdict.

A Michigan woman pens a passionate plea dripping with windshield bias begging bike riders not to make her almost kill us.

NBA great Reggie Miller rode his first century in Indiana over the weekend to benefit the fight against breast cancer.

The carnage continues in New York, where a 10-year old boy was killed riding his bike with the light while in a crosswalk; the driver, who didn’t have a driver’s license, reportedly attempted to flee with the bicycle still jammed under his truck. The boy was the 24th bike rider killed in the city this year, compared to just 11 for all of last year.

Good idea. Some New York city buses will be outfitted with cameras pointed at the right side of the road to catch people illegally parking in bike lanes; the drivers could eventually get tickets in the mail. But who will get the tickets for all those police cars parked in them? 

Delaware bicyclists are looking for a private property owner willing to host a ghost bike, when they had to take down the bike honoring a fallen bike rider after just two days because the local DOT was planning to remove it from the public property it was sitting on.

Los Angeles celebrated CicLAvia just one day after bike riders in DC enjoyed the city’s first open streets event.

South Carolina bicyclists say a road widening project left them with less room, not more.

 

International

The BBC talks with people with disabilities, who say that ebikes have changed their lives.

Former Cream and Blind Faith drummer Ginger Baker was one of us; the rock legend, who died on Sunday, gave up his dream of riding in the Tour de France after he was hit by a cab as a teenager.

Life is cheap in London, where a woman walked without a single day behind bars for slamming into a bikeshare rider with her Porsche and breaking his skull.

No bias here. A UK columnist says the spread of e-scooters are proof we’re doomed as a species, insisting that riders terrorize the sidewalk and look ridiculous. Yes, the way people look while riding a scooter is certainly the best argument against them.

A British man rode a BMX bike 300 miles in a monkey suit to raise funds and call attention to the problem of stillborn births, walking the last mile after breaking his chain. And learned the hard way that a plush monkey head works better than a bike helmet.

A writer for The Guardian wants to know why women bicyclists are targeted for abuse by aggressive male drivers, saying it’s “as though female cyclists are transgressing an invisible boundary in a way that some men find intolerable.”

A full 5% of Scottish commuters regularly get to work by bike, a number most American cities would envy, let alone the whole county. But that’s just half the country’s target for next year.

Little Mix singer Jesy Nelson is one of us, too, as she goes for a bike ride with her boyfriend on a chilly UK autumn afternoon.

Finnish immigrants get free lessons in how to ride a bike in order to fit in with the bike-riding natives.

The Danish and Irish prime ministers went for a leisurely bike ride in Copenhagen, while the Dutch prime minister explains why he rides his bicycle to work nearly every day. Short answer, because he can.

Even Tehran is passing Los Angeles by promising to build 340 miles of cycle tracks over the next five years, although women can ride a little more comfortably here, without worrying about dressing conservatively or prohibitive fatwas. That compares favorably to LA, which “built or upgraded” just 13 lane miles of bike lanes — 6.5 miles of actual roadway — in fiscal year 2018-2019. 

 

Competitive Cycling

I want to be like her when I grow up. A 70-year old Bolivian woman became the oldest woman to compete in the country’s 37-mile Skyrace extreme bike race on the legendary Death Road.

Now you, too, can cheat in cycling from the comfort of your own home.

 

Finally…

If you’re going use a mountain bike as your getaway vehicle, at least wait until you get the money. If you’re playing hide and seek from the cops with a stolen motorbike, maybe find a better hiding place than behind a telephone pole — and put a damn shirt on for your mug shot.

And your bike can take you almost anywhere.

Like to a good piece of cake.

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A special thanks to Linda T and Matthew R for their generous contributions to support this site. I rely on your support — emotionally and financially — to keep the best bike news coming your way every day.

And too often, the worst, too. 

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Morning Links: Driving on the Ballona Creek bike path, shaming a helmet shamer, and cute dog on a bike

September 18, 2019 / / 3 comments

Let’s start the day with a few observations from Chris Buonomo from his weekend ride.

On Saturday morning while rolling southbound down the Ballona Creek bike path, we rounded one of the few sharp turns (the one north of Duquesne) only to encounter a silver Mercedes driver inching south on the path. When he realized there were bikes behind him, he waved us through the narrow gap between his door and the fence. I asked him why he was driving on a clearly marked bike path, and he said, “the GPS told me to go on here” and laughed it off. We told him to go to the next ramp so he could exit, and we made sure to alert all the bikes traveling in the opposite direction. I hope nobody was hurt out there.

But then we reached the Manhattan Beach Pier and their bike-hostile signage which sign shows a cyclist in a supertuck and a big red X. Pedestrians always always always have the right of way, but that sign sets up anyone who rides responsibly for failure. Roll through at 5 mph and risk getting a ticket. Do you think it’s necessary for the guy in the picture to walk his bike? Perhaps if the city didn’t offer abundant parking 3 feet from the pier and opened up that space a little more, bikes and peds could easily coexist.

The upshot is this: Cars go wherever they want with impunity. Cars dictate how much space is allocated to non-car. Yet the onus is always on bike riders not to get the drivers angry, look out for everyone else and not get themselves injured (or worse).

Will elected officials ever chip away at this systemic double standard?

Seems like double standards are what politicians do best these days.

Especially when it comes to cars and the people in them.

………

Some people just don’t get it.

It’s funny how so many people seem to think bike helmets are magic devices that make their wearers impervious to injury from two-ton vehicles whose drivers are typically exceeding the speed limit.

Take this columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

Please.

Rex Huppke, armed with exactly zero scientific studies, and apparently averse to even a modicum of research prior to ranting in print, beyond calling an ER doc at the local hospital, transforms into older, get-off-my-lawn troll for mass helmet shaming.

No, really.

I’ve seen a lot of stupid in my day, most of it coming from politicians, but peddling around with nothing to protect your noggin? That’s high-level stupidity. What exactly makes you think your skull is dent-resistant?

You think you’re invincible? Guess what, diddlepants? You’re nothin’ but meat stuffed into a skin suit, and if a car or curb or tree or pothole decides it wants to play natural selection, guess who’s gonna lose?

DID YOU GUESS?!? THE ANSWER IS: THE MORON WHO ISN’T A WEARING A HELMET!

With all due apologies to the doctor on the other end of his phone, bike helmets were never intended to protect against a crash with a compact car, let alone today’s massive wall-fronted SUVs.

Instead, they’re designed to cushion the impact to your head from a relatively slow speed fall off your bike. And if you don’t spring for the more expensive MIPS or WaveCel models, do absolutely nothing to protect against traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs.

They also do nothing to protect any other part of the body. Which should be self-evident, but evidently isn’t.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a firm believer in wearing a bike helmet, and never ride without mine.

But I also recognize their limitations. And don’t count on it to keep me safe.

A bike helmet should never be the first — or only — means of protecting yourself. It should always be seen as the last line of defense, when all else fails.

So if you actually give a damn about bike safety, skip the helmet shaming, learn to ride defensively, and fight for protected bike lanes and safer streets.

Then decide for yourself whether to wear a helmet.

Or as someone else put it,

If finger wagging and shaming actually worked, America would be the safest country in the world.

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Seriously, there’s nothing cuter than a dog on a bicycle.

https://twitter.com/princessboibeth/status/1173800125015216128

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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes is all too real.

Enough said.

https://twitter.com/claudiascore/status/1174001056025645064

Gotta give the guy on the bike some respect for staying on his bike and maintaining a placid demeanor through all that.

………

Local

Good news on the political front, as Loraine Lundquist isn’t taking no for an answer, and running for a full term as councilmember for CD12, after losing a close race to John Lee in the special election.

Blame the geofence if your e-scooter suddenly craps out on you.

I want to be like him when I grow up. An 80-something letter writer in the LA Times says he still rides his bike for minor errands, as well as taking other steps to reduce his carbon footprint.

A USC student was hit by a driver while riding her bike on University Ave Tuesday morning, joining four other Trojans hit by motorists while riding their bikes so far this month.

Robin Wright is one of us, riding the streets of LA with her husband on industrial strength fat tire ebikes as their dog trots alongside.

 

State

Calbike lists 187 streets and highways it says would be affected by the new Complete Streets bill currently awaiting Governor Newsom’s signature, including Santa Monica Blvd, Glendale Fwy and Angeles Crest Hwy in the Los Angeles area.

Apparently unfamiliar with the concept of induced demand, Costa Mesa officials present strictly car-centric proposed designs for Newport Blvd through the city, with nary a thought towards the needs of anyone not in a motor vehicle.

A San Diego advocacy group presented their vision for a Vision Zero in four East County cities.

Outside asks if the removal of Uber’s Jump bikes from San Diego and Atlanta marks the death knell for dockless e-bikeshare. Or it could just be the result of greater popularity for e-scooters. And in San Diego’s case, overregulation.

Congratulations to the Human Powered Vehicle Team from Cal Poly SLO, who set a new collegiate land speed record of 63.68 mph.

Chico cops bust a man for riding off from a bike shop at 4:30 am with a newly purloined bicycle; police credit a witness for helping them track down the thief.

 

National

Bicycling says style matters, and you want to look good when you’re getting dropped. And they want you to drool over the vintage ’80s bikes in It: Chapter Two.

Drivers in Pittsburgh — no, the one in Missouri — get some shiny new sharrows as a reminder to share the road with people on bicycles.

I want to be like her, too. An 80-year old Minnesota woman just rode 800 miles traveling to Wyoming and back. And has ridden 25,000 miles since she turned 60.

A woman who uses her bike as her primary means of transportation will be walking for awhile, after it was stolen from a badly installed bike rack at a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Association train station. To which the transit agency responded, that’s not our problem.

Once again, a bicyclist has been critically injured in the battle for space in New York’s Central Park, as a 60-year old woman went over her handlebars trying to avoid a pedestrian. And yes, she was wearing a helmet. And no, it didn’t save her.

Speaking of helmets, New York Council Speaker Dave Carlin politely shut down a reporter from an anti-bike TV Gotham station who insisted bike riders are dangerous and suggested bike helmets should be mandatory.

Once again, New York shows Los Angeles how it’s done, presenting a plan that would add 50 miles of protected bike lanes every year, along with another 30 miles of bus lanes. That compares somewhat favorably with LA’s complete and total lack of commitment for either one.

Streetsblog wants to know when will New York accept that bikeshare has become a vital form of transit, and finally begin subsiding it.

DHL is dropping their standard delivery trucks in favor of cube-like delivery bikes, after losing a wheel to qualify as bicycles under New York law.

A DC father says he’s not taking his kid to school in his cargo bike anymore, thanks to a “perfect storm of road rage, reckless driving, terrible street design, and total lack of any kind of recourse” after being chased down the street for several blocks by a horn-honking dump truck driver.

There’s a special place in hell for whoever stole a three-wheeled bike from a Georgia Tech student, who’s suffered from mobility issues since he was hit by a car when he was five years old; kindhearted campus cops are trying to get him a new one. And remember him the next time someone says handicapped people can’t ride bikes.

 

International

Thought provoking piece from Forbes‘ Carlton Reid, who says Apple’s coming Tag chip could help you find your stolen bike and keep autonomous cars from running over your ass — as long as you can afford a new iPhone and subscription service. And could lead to the dystopian Big Brother future the company promised to smash.

Not surprisingly, London police catch a little blowback when their bike cops tweet that half of their tickets go to scofflaw bicyclists.

A London sociologist says as bicycling becomes more popular and more people compete for road space, the city must take steps to make riders feel safer on the streets.

A new British ebike folds in less than ten seconds.

Italian bikemaker Bianchi recognizes that an road ebike doesn’t have to look like one. Or feel like one, for that matter.

Students in Mombasa, Kenya have to ride across dangerous roads with no bike lanes just to get to class.

Malaysian teenagers freak out drivers by doing the full superman pose on custom chopped bicycles while riding on a major highway.

https://twitter.com/Thehulkey/status/1172461714345906176?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1172461714345906176&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.malaymail.com%2Fnews%2Flife%2F2019%2F09%2F17%2Fwannabe-rempit-kids-take-joyride-with-modified-bicycles-on-plus-highway-vid%2F1791323

 

Competitive Cycling

Very disturbing news for long time bike racing fans, as 70-year old Michael Aisner, former race director of the legendary Coors Classic, has been arrested for secretly recording men showering after renting out his Boulder CO home.

So that’s what pro cyclists keep in their jersey pockets. Spanish cyclist Jesus Ezquerra finished the final stage of the Vuelta with one more fiancé than he had at the beginning of the stage.

https://twitter.com/Eurosport_UK/status/1173279110380081152?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1173279110380081152&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fthebiglead.com%2F2019%2F09%2F17%2Fla-vuelta-proposal-cycling-jesus-ezquerra%2F

 

Finally…

Who needs Amazon when you’ve got your own private library in a cargo bike castle full of books? Presenting the love child of an ebike and a scooter, or maybe a scooter with pedals.

Or something

And if you’ve already been busted with your significant other for biking while extremely drunk, you might as well just schtup in the back of the patrol car.

 

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Morning Links: Remembering late Disney star as son of LA bike rider Victor Boyce, and driving an expert cyclist off the roads

July 8, 2019 / / Comments Off on Morning Links: Remembering late Disney star as son of LA bike rider Victor Boyce, and driving an expert cyclist off the roads

Sometimes the news hits a little too close to home.

And sometimes, it’s far too close.

That’s how Zachary Rynew is feeling today.

The man behind the popular CiclaValley website learned shortly before the world did that the son of one of a close friend had died from a seizure at just 20 years old.

Someone the world knew as Disney Channel star and rising young actor Cameron Boyce.

But Rynew knew him simply as Cameron, the son of LA bicyclist and LACBC member Victor Boyce.

And the grandson of Jo Ann Boyce, one of the famed Clinton 12 — the first black students to attend the previously all white Clinton High School in Clinton, Tennessee, following the US Supreme Court’s order to desegregate the school in groundbreaking 1956 Brown vs Board of Education case that sounded the death knell for legal segregation in American Schools.

Although in reality, far too many urban schools have become victims of de facto re-segregation in the years since.

As Rynew points out, Victor Boyce’s Instagram feed is devoted to two things: His family, and riding his bikes.

In fact, a video showing Cameron dancing in front of Boyce’s impressively organized bike collection last year has gained over 1.6 million views.

Though most of those are probably fans of his son, rather than his bikes.

And it’s with Victor Boyce that Rynew has gone gravel biking up Sycamore Canyon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NESXyJwMhjo

Rynew also adds that a few weeks ago, he was with Boyce when they spotted a couple of junk bikes someone had tossed out by the curb.

He had planned to take them home to repaint as ghost bikes. But Boyce claimed one first.

And later that same day, this photo appeared, after he had already fixed it up and given it to his wife.

So while the world mourns Cameron Boyce, the actor and rising movie star, maybe the bicycling community can take a few moments to mourn with a fellow devoted bicyclist and his family, who lost a loved one far too soon.

And remember that every tragedy touches someone, somewhere, very deeply.

I hope you’ll join me in offering our sympathy and prayers for Cameron and Victor Boyce, and all their family and loved ones.

Photo of Cameron Boyce, center, from the Pedalers West Instagram account. 

………

There’s something seriously wrong with our streets when a close encounter with a dangerous driver can make an expert cyclist and former national crit champ rethink his decision to bike to work.

………

This is the cost of traffic violence.

Fallen bicyclist Frederick “Woon” Frazier supported his disabled mother until a hit-and-run driver took his life.

While a crowdfunding campaign raised nearly $10,000 to give his infant son a better start in life, part of that was seized to pay his bills — including the hospital that did nothing more than declare him dead on arrival. Leaving his mother struggling to survive while she waits for any kind of justice.

Now a new crowdfunding campaign has started to help get her back on her feet.

Although sadly, in over a week, it’s received just $20 of the $10,000 goal.

We can do better than that.

Thanks to Sahra Sulaiman for the link.

………

If riding California’s coast highway is on your bike bucket list, maybe you should get a move on while it still exists.

Not the highway.

The coast.

………

The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes goes on. And on.

Someone has been laying potentially deadly booby traps on trails in a British national park, ranging from a wall of rocks across a trail and tree branches hung at head level, to pins and carpet tacks placed where they could puncture bike tires.

When a driver deliberately slams into someone on a bike, police call it assault with a deadly weapon. So what do you call it when a New York cop uses his car as a weapon to make a traffic stop by crashing into a red light-running bike rider? Needless to say, the NYPD doesn’t think he did anything wrong. In effect, it’s no different than the officer firing his gun to stop a speeding driver. In either case, it’s using deadly force for what amounts to a simple traffic violation.

………

Local

This is who we share the roads with. A pair of street racing teenagers lost control after colliding in San Marino, killing an adjunct professor at Pasadena City College and his dog as they walked on the median on Huntington Drive.

A pair of public workshops will discuss plans to revitalize the upper LA River, starting tomorrow night in Sylmar and concluding in Glendale on Thursday. Thanks to Walk Bike Glendale for the heads-up.

WeHoVille offers tips on how to get out and about on a bicycle from some of the city’s most passionate bike riders, including members of the city’s West Hollywood Bicycle Coalition.

The Long Beach Post talks with Jo Manny Silva of Compton’s Manny’s Bike Shop, calling him the godfather of lowrider bikes.

 

State

San Diego residents turn out to fight for their God-given right to parking along 30th Street, where city leaders plan to remove 420 parking spaces to make room for protected bike lanes.

Thanks in part to its growing bike infrastructure, WalletHub has named San Diego America’s best city for recreation. Los Angeles checked in at a surprising number 10. But probably not because of our bicycle non-network. 

Sad news from San Jose, where a 62-year old man was killed by a hit-and-run driver as he rode his bike; police later arrested a suspect in the case. Thanks to Robert Leone and Al Williams for the heads-up.

A San Francisco newspaper says a new three-mile Lake Tahoe bike path offers magical views of the lake.

 

National

America’s “favorite oddball motorcycle engineer” is turning his attention to making a “handsome, cohesive and convenient” 32 mph ebike with a 125 mile range.

It used to be that a fraternity road trip meant bundling a few brothers into a car and driving to Florida for spring break. Now a fraternity from a Kentucky college is biking across the US, hoping to raise $70,000 for Alzheimer’s research.

A bighearted Massachusetts deputy sheriff better known as Bob the Bike Guy has founded a charity to give refurbished bikes to underprivileged kids, many of whom don’t look too kindly on cops; the group has given away 1,200 bikes in just two years, with another 2,000 bikes in the pipeline.

A Canadian man hops on a restored Schwinn, and revisits his old paper route in Upstate New York half a century later. I used the profits from my paper route to buy my first 10-speed bike.

A Rochester, NY newspaper editor explains why bicycling matters for “women, minorities and everyone.”

They get it. The New York Daily News says Mayor De Blasio’s temporary crackdown on drivers blocking bike lanes won’t end Gotham bicycling fatalities.

New York’s recent rash of bike-by shootings continued over the weekend, as a man on a bike fired multiple shots, injuring two men sitting on a Central Park bench.

A Philadelphia cop will take part in a 65-mile bike ride to raise funds for the children of fallen or severely injured police officers, three years after he was ambushed by a gunman while on duty.

Nominally bike-friendly DC ripped out a bike lane on one side of a street so local residents could get their parking back.

More on the late Lee Iacocca, early adopter ebike pitchman, when he rode one in a Florida parade nearly two decades ago.

 

International

The head of a Winnipeg, Canada bike advocacy group says better eduction is the solution to the city’s dangerous patchwork of bike lanes, not better infrastructure.

Um, no. The annual RideLondon sportive wanted to show that it wasn’t just for white men. So they just photoshopped a black woman into a picture from the event.

After 100 years, a British author says he’s cracked the unsolved murder of a 21-year old bike-riding woman felled by a gunshot as she rode on a country lane, calling it a case worthy of Sherlock Holmes.

The UK’s popular Deliveroo food delivery service plans to switch from bicycle deliveries to motor vehicles, even though bikes are often faster.

No bias here. A new documentary examines the British bike rider who records distracted drivers using their cellphones behind the wheel, while drawing a false equivalency by showing clips of scofflaw bicyclists. It’s as if they think a single bike rider bears responsibility for every other bike rider on the roads, while failing to draw the same conclusion about lawbreaking drivers.

Bicycling experts tell Irish leaders that if they have the courage to reduce the number of cars on the street, people won’t want their traffic back.

 

Competitive Cycling

Fifty years later, the Cannibal continues to cast a long shadow over Belgian cyclists. Meanwhile, forget today’s high-tech wonders; VeloNews says the coolest bike on the tour is the orange, steel-framed classic Ernesto Colnago built for the legendary Eddy Merckx.

Sometimes it takes a pretty good bunny hop to avoid crashing in the tour.

https://twitter.com/RenaudB31/status/1147606446525296640?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1147606446525296640&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cyclingweekly.com%2Fnews%2Fracing%2Ftour-de-france%2Fwatch-tour-de-france-rider-pulls-off-incredible-bunny-hop-avoid-high-speed-crash-stage-one-429920

Now you, too, can buy the same Pinarello Dogma bike defending champ Geraint Thomas rides in the Tour de France for the low, low equivalent of a mere $15 grand. But no, it won’t make you as fast as he is.

Pakistan’s Tour de Khunjerab claims to be the world’s highest bike race, starting at over 9,000 feet and rising to 15,400 feet above sea level; over half of the 88 competitors in this year’s second edition failed to finish in the allotted time. 

 

Finally…

Oh, nothing. Just your everyday, garden variety, bike stealing, armed to the teeth antichrist. Don’t use Civil War battlements for mountain bike jumps.

And if the new bicycle you stole won’t fit in the back seat of a Kia, just dump it at a gas station.

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Morning Links: Windshield bias from CHP, widening street so Gold Line can take cars off it, and upping the bad driver stakes

May 3, 2019 / / 2 comments

Looks like the CHP should get their windshields cleaned.

And maybe get rid of the bias that’s stuck on there.

The CHP marks Bike Month by calling for everyone to share the road responsibly.

So far, so good.

The again, that’s just the headline.

Unfortunately, they follow it up by citing eight laws bicyclists are expected to obey. Yet just one for motorists, reminding them to give a three-foot passing distance.

And they get two of those wrong.

Yes, bike riders are required to “pull off the roadway if five or more vehicles are lined up behind them.” But only on roads with a single lane in each direction, and only when those drivers are stuck behind them and unable to pass.

And yes, bike riders are required to yield to pedestrians, but only under the same circumstances drivers are.

Like when crossing in a crosswalk. But not when someone just steps off the curb in the middle of the block.

Although you’re more than welcome to do either one out of courtesy anytime you want.

Photo from CHP website. 

………

Meanwhile, the CHP uses the passive voice to absolve a driver of responsibility for injuring a woman riding her bike before driving into a canal.

Investigators have not substantiated why, but say that Vega allowed his car to steer to the right, partially off the roadway onto the gravel shoulder as he approached the cyclist.

The front of the car struck the rear of the bicycle and the rider.

Evidently the car was driving itself, and the driver just didn’t stop it from driving onto the shoulder to slam into her.

But as every good Catholic knows, sins of omission are just as bad as sins of commission.

………

Seriously?

Residents along La Verne’s White Ave oppose the Foothill Gold Line Construction Authority’s proposal to widen White Ave.

The authority wants to widen the street to make room for more cars in anticipation of the Gold Line extension coming to town.

The purpose of which is to get people out of their cars.

………

The crowdfunding page for the infant son of fallen bicyclist Frederick “Woon” Frazier appears to have stalled out just $614 short of the $10,000 goal.

Which means this would be a great day for some generous person, or people, to push it over the top.

Just saying.

………

The other day, CiclaValley offered us video showing three dangerously bad drivers in just two minutes.

A very wet Chicago rider, who prefers to be anonymous, says hold my beer.

………

Culver City is kicking off Bike Month with a family friendly Walk & Roll Festival this Sunday, including free bike skills lessons and free bike repair.

………

Local

The LACBC is holding their popular Sunday Funday Ride along the LA River this Sunday, offering a preview of the annual LA River Ride.

Streetsblog is hosting its annual awards dinner on Thursday.

CiclaValley is sponsoring this year’s Ride of Silence on May 15, with a ride from Vermont and Wilshire to LA City Hall. Think any LA officials will stick around to meet them on the steps of City Hall? Me neither.

Metro is celebrating Bike Month with a $1 30-day pass and free rides on Bike to Work Day.

The popular Tour de Laemmle is taking this year off.

Pasadena Now looked forward to last night’s discussion of the city’s first proposed two-way protected bike lane; if you couldn’t make the meeting, you can still offer comments online.

Speaking of Pasadena, the Rose City’s nationally recognized Director of Transportation is moving on after 11 years.

 

State

Solvang saw a 400% increase in turnout for the faux Danish city’s annual bike ride to promote bicycle safety and call for more bike lanes. Which it would probably already have if it really was a Danish city.

A San Jose writer says incrementalism in traffic safety is literally killing us.

Touring bike friendly Davis on two wheels in one day.

 

National

A new CDC study says wear your scooter helmet, since nearly half of all e-scooter injuries involve head trauma; not surprisingly, you’re most likely to get hurt on your first ride. The obvious solution is to just skip the first ride, and start with your second.

A Seattle outdoor equipment chain is the latest bike retailer to go belly up. Thanks to Megan Lynch for the link.

A Salt Lake weekly promotes Warmshowers for a safe overnight stay for touring bicyclists.

Now that’s more like it. A proposed Colorado law would automatically suspend the license of any driver who injures a vulnerable road user.

A Missouri woman writes that bicyclists should understand and obey the laws and bike etiquette. But unlike most, she actually gets it right.

One hundred fifty people turned out for a memorial ride for a “legend” of the Minneapolis bike scene, who died at just 43 after a long-time battle with alcohol.

Boston bicyclists protest the city’s glacial pace on building protected bike lanes.

New York’s police commissioner admits what everyone already knew, that a crackdown on riders without bike bells was just an excuse to stop a semi-organized ride. Even though he didn’t have one on his own bike.

New Jersey’s bicycling community is mourning the death of a longtime bike shop owner and advocate who died of cancer at 69.

She gets it. DC’s mayor calls for hiring 20 additional parking enforcement cops to ticket drivers who park in bike lanes.

More proof that drivers are the same everywhere. Tampa, Florida drivers turn sidewalks and separated bike lanes into their own personal parking lots.

A Sarasota FL artist is leaving decorated bicycles all over town as a guerrilla public art project.

 

International

Not even Canada’s most conservative provincial government sees a need for bicycle licenses.

A British man gets his nearly $12,000 tri bike back from a Polish bike shop nine months after it was stolen.

Dame Judy Dench gave a four leaf clover charm to an English cancer survivor for good luck on his four and a half month, 7,192-mile ride to Tokyo to see a World Cup rugby match.

Caught on video: A bike rider in the UK was the victim of a drive-by egging.

No bias here, either. London’s Daily Mail says for the first time, more people were killed by cyclists in Holland than by drivers. Except what they really mean is that more people were killed while riding bicycles, since most, if not all, of those victims were the bike riders themselves.

A Swiss company is preparing to introduce their 30 mph dockless bikeshare ebikes to the US. Although they’ll have to overcome laws in many cities, including Los Angeles, that limit shared dockless devices to half that speed.

Save this one for your next trip to Spain. A culinary website recommends bicycle friendly cafés, restaurants and bars in Barcelona.

New Zealand bike advocates blame efforts to promote bicycling without building safe infrastructure for a spike in bike crashes.

 

Competitive Cycling

The Wall Street Journal profiles world-class mountain bike, cyclocross and road racer Mathieu van der Poel, calling him the “unicorn prince of bike racing” — if you can get past their paywall.

Legendary Italian cyclist Gino Bartali is being honored with a bicycling academy named after him in Israel; Bartali risked his life during WWII by smuggling papers to save hundreds of Italian Jews from the Holocaust. Although the honor he really deserves is sainthood, so someone please hurry up and have a miracle or two, already. And no, making it home on your bike after too many beers doesn’t count. 

There’s a special place in hell for whoever stole the ghost bike for 19-year old fallen cyclist Tate Meintjes just three days after it was placed where he was killed while practicing for the Redlands Classic — except they brought it back, so maybe just a place in Purgatory. Somehow, this is turning into a very Catholic post today. Thanks to David Huntsman for the heads-up.

 

Finally…

When you’re reluctant to ride a bike, turn it into art. If you have to get hit by a car, try to do it when you’re sober and not carrying an open cup of beer.

And here’s a tip. If you’re going to go carfree, don’t get shot by a homeless person.

 

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Morning Links: New hope for Temple Street, more dangerous drivers, and Bird & SoCal cities sued over scooters

November 6, 2018 / / 2 comments

There may be hope for Temple Street yet.

Eight months after Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell pulled the plug on the long planned and badly needed Complete Streets makeover of Temple in the wake of the Playa del Rey disaster — and even longer after anti-bike Councilmember Gil Cedillo killed his part of the project — local residents haven’t given up the fight.

A pair of meetings will be held tonight and tomorrow to discuss what can be done on the dangerous arterial. And possibly even resurrect the Temple Street Compete Streets project.

If you live, work, ride or walk anywhere near Temple, you owe it to yourself to attend at least one of them.

Cedillo may be a lost cause, but it could still be possible to convince O’Farrel to change his mind if we make enough noise.

Thanks to Derrick Paul for the heads-up and the photo.

………

What the hell is wrong with people?

Just a day after Claremont’s Leslie Pray was allegedly murdered by a driver who internationally ran into her, a road raging San Antonio TX driver tried to do the same thing, using his car as a weapon in an attempt to run down three bike riders he’d been arguing with.

Fortunately, he only hit a fire hydrant.

But now faces three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. And a long vacation in a Texas prison.

………

Apparently, it’s not enough for some people to just run down one bike rider.

Florida residents want speed limits lowered and a traffic signal installed on the street where four bicyclists were critically injured by a 91-year old driver; two victims remain in serious to critical condition.

And a South African hit-and-run driver crashed into one bike rider on a club ride, sending him falling into the others and ended up injuring five bicyclists.

………

Australia’s bike community is in morning after a leading bike advocate was killed in a collision with an SUV driver.

Cam Frewer had helped introduce Queensland’s equivalent of the three-foot passing law and fought for the rights of riders.

Frewer had been the subject of numerous death threats for his advocacy work raises a question of whether the crash was an accident.

Meanwhile, an anti-bike drivers group says it’s not their fault if some bike rider gets himself killed.

Thanks to Frank Lehnerz for the tip.

………

More e-scooters in the news.

First Bird sued Beverly Hills for banning scooters, now a wheelchair-bound woman is suing Bird, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles and Santa Monica in a proposed class action, claiming the scooters block sidewalks and endanger handicapped people — even though they can’t be legally used in Beverly Hills.

There’s no love for scooters in the City of Brotherly Love, as Philadelphia gives Lime and Bird the bird after discovering motorized scooters are not street legal in Pennsylvania.

Last but not least, Greensboro SC gets on the scooter banning bandwagon.

………

Local

Forget the Olympics; Los Angeles beat out Budapest as host of the first ever World Urban Games next September, with events including BMX freestyle cycling; if the city doesn’t fall on its face, LA could host the 2021 games, as well.

An Op-Ed in the LA Times says what’s lacking on Los Angeles streets is manners. Thanks to Chris Giza for the link.

Over 100 people turned out for the ghost bike ceremony honoring alleged murder victim Leslie Pray in Claremont last night; her partner called Pray the kindest and most gentle person she’d ever known.

CiclaValley rides with around 50 other cyclists in honor of bicyclist Dedrick Kon, who died recently of complications from a car crash while driving at the beginning of the year.

 

State

Hard-hitting piece from the OC Register’s David Whiting, who says maybe the death of Costa Mesa fire fighter Mike Kreza will serve as a wakeup call to end SoCal’s culture of distracted driving. Although there’s been no report that the allegedly stoned driver was distracted, as well.

Work has begun to close a gap in the Bay Area’s Bay Trail between Berkeley and Albany; when completed, the trail will extend 350 mile around the San Francisco Bay, with another 150 miles to go. Nothing like that exists in SoCal; the closest thing would be the LA River bike path, which will extend 57 miles when and if it’s ever finished; San Diego is finishing work on a 27-mile path around the bay. Thanks to Megan Lynch for the tip.

 

National

A GM fan site belatedly discovers that bike riders weren’t great fans of the recent GMC truck commercial suggesting bike riders should get a real truck.

A Mesa AZ driver says he nearly killed someone on a bike because the rider didn’t have any lights or reflectors.

A new bike lane was designed to keep bike riders and drivers from crossing paths on a busy Chicago street. But doesn’t work because drivers won’t stop driving in the bike lane and bicyclists won’t stop for the stop sign. Yet another reminder that traffic planners need to keep human nature in mind when designing anything — which is the very definition of Vision Zero.

A Chicago weekly offers advice for men on how not to be a total jerk to women walking, biking or using transit.

New Hampshire residents say a new bollard-protected bike lane has made a once-safe street more dangerous. As well as heartbreakingly unaesthetic, according to one woman.

New York’s refusal to install a long-sought protected bike lane on one street leads some people to call plans for a painted bike lane a death trap.

 

International

Tech Radar looks at the next generation of bike tech.

According to an Ottawa, Canada defense lawyer, his dump truck driver client wasn’t negligent, even though he failed to signal before fatally right-hooking a woman on a bike.

A new film follows a Montreal DJ who bought a bike on a whim, and set off on an attempt to set a new world record for the longest continuous fixie ride, over 11,000 miles through the Canadian arctic.

Life is cheap and getting cheaper in the UK, where a driver saw his sentence for slamming into three bike riders cut from 45 months to just three years.

A five-day Israeli fundraising ride brought in a record $3.5 million for a pediatric children’s hospital; Madonna, Cher, Michael Bublé and Kathleen Turner saw the riders off, one third of whom came from the US.

South African bicyclists ride in honor of a 68-year old rider who was robbed and fatally stabbed by thieves who took his bike and cellphone. Proof that dangerous drivers aren’t the only risk that riders face in some places.

An Aukland, New Zealand bike advocate says the city is turning into a bicycling city, and riders need a seat at the top table.

A group of Australian riders are retracing the route of a bike-riding Aussie infantry troop across Europe’s Western Front during World War 1.

A writer for London’s Evening Standard takes a bikepacking tour from Phnom Penh to Laos.

 

Competitive Cycling

Alejandro Valverde insists he never tested positive for doping, despite serving a two-year ban for his connections to the Spain’s Operation Puerto investigation.

Bradley Wiggins says he would have had more rights if he was on trial for murder, instead of under investigation for suspected doping before being cleared.

A Saskatoon, Canada cyclist smashed the record for the 24 Hour World Time Trial Championships held in the California desert by riding 456 miles, beating the existing record by nearly 25 miles; she said afterwards she didn’t know how far she could go.

 

Finally…

Traffic calming beats deploying your middle finger. Mountain biking while very high in Kathmandu.

And few things go better with bicycling than LA’s best donuts.

 

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Morning Links: Phil Gaimon pens his own obituary, balance bike parking, and Bike the Vote endorsements

September 27, 2018 / / One comment

Take a few moments, right now, and read this hard-hitting piece from Phil Gaimon, who narrowly avoided being turned into road kill by a salmon driver speeding around a curve on the wrong side of the road.

Just like the squirrel he passed several minutes later after he composed himself.

Of course, the squirrel did dart into traffic and he’ll get no mention in the local paper, but if I’d shared his fate I expect that would be the headline for me. I’ve made peace with the fact that this probably is how I’ll die someday and I’m choosing to still do it, but I’d like to set the record straight here. When I die on my bicycle, I didn’t do anything erratic and I didn’t make a mistake. I’m an expert at bike riding, I did it for a living among the best in the world for years, and in my retirement I ride cautiously because I had enough broken bones when it was my job. When I die it’s because of some asshole not paying attention, speeding, texting, or both, on roads where there’s no infrastructure or room for error, and most likely there won’t be much of a punishment. I’m dead, so at least they can get the story right.

I’ve long thought the same thing as Phil Gaimon describes.

Odds are, when I finally meet my maker — which hopefully will be a very long time from now — it will happen on a bike.

Not because bicycling is dangerous, but because I’ve spent far more time on my bike than I have doing anything else. And plan to continue as long as I’m able to remain upright and turn a pedal.

But now that I live it Hollywood, it seems even more likely, thanks to streets filled with aggressive and distracted drivers. Along with a near total lack of bike lanes, protected or otherwise.

And no, sharrows don’t count.

Like Gaimon, I fully expect to be blamed if that ever happens.

And like Gaimon, it won’t be true.

That’s why I use a bike cam when I ride, so I’ll have proof I didn’t run a red light or stop sign, or suddenly suicide swerve out in front of traffic.

It’s cold comfort.

But to will have to do until Los Angeles finally gets serious about Vision Zero.

And finally commits to building the bike plan its already committed to.

………

On a happier note, this tweet gave me the biggest smile I’ve had in weeks.

https://twitter.com/asausagehastwo/status/1044233989064708097

Thanks to Keith Johnson for the heads-up.

………

Get ready to bike the vote this November, as Calbike offers its endorsements in the coming election.

Interesting to note that all but one of the legislative candidates they endorse supports using clean transportation financial incentives for bike purchases.

Which translates to giving rebate to encourage people to buy bicycles, ebikes or otherwise. And actually use them to replace car trips.

Meanwhile, Bike the Vote LA has released their own voter guide for the LA area. Nice to see my own Assembly Member made the list.

………

Local

A new study ranks the 20 most congested cities in the US; for a change, Los Angeles wasn’t at the top of the list. In fact, LA ranked seventh, behind Chicago and ahead of Seattle.

It’s a busy bike weekend in DTLA this week, with CicLAvia rolling on Sunday, and the Bike! Bike! conference Thursday through Sunday at Los Angeles State Historic Park; Bike! Bike! is intended to bring bike owners, bicycle shops and bike groups together to “workshop new ideas and methods to advocate for urban bicyclists.”

Community stakeholders conducted a “slow jam” on Temple Street, where limited safety improvements are underway after Councilmembers Gil Cedillo and Mitch O’Farrell combined to kill a desperately needed road diet on the dangerous street. Although the improvements might help people on foot, it’s not a Complete Street unless it safely accommodates people on two wheels, as well.

Streetsblog visits the new purple curb extensions on the Pico Blvd Great Streets project. But how great can it really be without bike lanes?

CiclaValley races his wife from Westwood to the San Fernando Valley, pitting bike against car. You can guess who won.

Santa Clarita City Councilmember Cameron Smyth explains why you should ride in the city, and explains how Santa Clarita’s Heads-Up traffic safety campaign applies to people on bicycles.

 

State

Unsafe routes to schools. A mother and her eight-year old son were lucky to escape with minor injuries when a turning driver struck their tandem bike while they were riding to school. Police said the driver couldn’t see because he had the sun in his eyes, which makes it okay, right?

The Ventura County Star says it’s time to stop the madness, and do what you can to clean the air by car-pooling, taking the bus, walking or riding a bike.

San Francisco’s new mayor called on the city to speed up Vision Zero safety improvements for bicyclists and pedestrians. It would be nice if LA’s mayor would say the same thing. But don’t hold your breath.

 

National

A new AAA study shows 80% of drivers overestimate the technical capabilities of their car’s safety devices, especially the ability to detect bicyclists and pedestrians. Maybe because every other car commercial shows them doing exactly that.

Uber has announced a $10 million fund to advocate for congestion pricing and charging stations for dockless ebikes near transit stations.

Bicycling offers 30 bike hacks every bicyclist should know. As long as you’re willing to put up with their annoying click-through format that only shows one item at a time.

Seattle bike commuting is down to its lowest level since 2007; just 2.8% of city residents rode to work last year, down from 3.5% the year before.

The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes goes on. An Iowa woman faces a 1st degree murder charge for stalking a man who accused her of stealing, and using her car as a weapon to intentionally run him down as he rode his bike in a parking lot, while driving under the influence.

Michigan’s new three-foot passing law goes into effect today.

A road raging Ohio lawyer lost his license to practice for a year — make that six months — after he brake checked a bike rider, and stomped the cellphone of a physician who stopped to record the incident. He also skipped out on the court hearing for the misdemeanor he ended up charged with, leading to his later arrest and conviction.

Seriously? It will now cost DC drivers who park in a bike lane three times as it does to door a bike rider under the city’s new Vision Zero laws; meanwhile, a bicyclist who hits a pedestrian crossing the street will be fined $150, but just $100 for hitting someone walking on a sidewalk.

A DC council member says the city has to do more to protect bike and scooter riders, including building protected bike lanes. Meanwhile, an advocacy site says it’s been just two days since a driver killed someone biking, walking or scooting in DC.

A Tampa FL columnist says a proposed transportation sale tax, which would reserve 12% of funds for bike and pedestrian projects, is a good start to change the city’s ranking as the nation’s most dangerous place for bike riders.

 

International

This is the cost of traffic violence. A promising young Canadian ballet student was killed in a collision on Sunday.

No bias here. A deputy mayor on Canada’s Prince Edward Island says requiring bike riders to attach a license plate to their bike or helmets would make the city friendlier to bicyclists. No, really.

A writer for London’s Evening Standard says bicycling must be made safer after decades of half-hearted attempts.

Members of an Oxford, England men’s choir will ride 100 miles to Wales to remember their roots as descendants of Welsh residents who moved to Oxford during the Great Depression.

This is who we share the roads with. A British motorcyclist records a road raging minicab driver running over his parked bike after he got off to confront the man. But the motorcycle rider was no angel, either, kicking and hitting the car after threatening to break the driver’s skull.

An American Vietnam vet with an Ivy League education gave up his life in this county to live as a hermit in Ireland, using his bicycle to get around.

 

Competitive Cycling

Cyclist examines the superstitions and rituals of the pro peloton, and concludes they might give riders a mental edge.

An 18-year old Belgian cyclist insists he’s not the next Eddy Merckx, as he prepares to make the leap from the junior ranks to the WorldTour next year.

Canada’s “starry girl cyclist” of the 1930’s is being inducted into the country’s Cycling Hall of Fame, after a riding career spent leaving fellow riders and stereotypes in her wake.

After years of misfortune, Australian time trial specialist Rohan Dennis claimed the world champ’s rainbow jersey in the event.

 

Finally…

Before you complain online about a bike riding mom and her child, make sure you’re right.

And when a cop right hooks a bike rider, it’s just a “momentary lapse in attention.”

Right.

………

Join the Militant Angeleno and BikinginLA for the first-ever Militant Angeleno’s Epic CicLAvia Tour at the Celebrate LA! LA Phil 100 CicLAvia this Sunday!

Just RSVP to MilitantAngeleno@gmail.com. We want to guarantee a relatively small group to make sure we can keep the group together, and everyone can hear.

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Morning Links: South Figueroa Complete Street project opens next week, and updates on OC court cases

August 22, 2018 / / One comment

The long awaited My Figueroa Complete Streets project will finally open a week from tomorrow.

City officials will open the long-delayed makeover of the iconic South Figueroa corridor with an official ribbon cutting, as well as walking and biking tours.

Although not everyone is happy with the unprotected, cab-blocked bike lanes by Staples Center, the pedestrian beg buttons required to cross the street, and the interminable bicycle red lights that give drivers clear priority over people on bikes on a street that’s supposed to serve everyone.

LADOT has promised they’re still fine-tuning the street, but I’m hearing complaints that too many compromises were made to get everyone to sign off on the My Figueroa project.

Let’s hope they get it fixed before Angeleno bike riders write off the remade Figueroa as just another incomplete, auto-centric LA street.

Meanwhile, nothing has been done at all on North Figueroa, which remains just as deadly as ever.

………

It’s been awhile since we’ve heard from our anonymous OC correspondent, who checks in today with a number of updates on outstanding court cases.

Along with a little justified criticism of yours truly.

Hi, here’s a few overdue updates on OC cases, along with some typical ranting.

………

(Alleged) murderer Justin Scott German was released from custody on August 10th on $1mil bond. His preliminary hearing is tentatively scheduled for September 17th. No surprise that this bartender was on probation for DUI at the time of the killing.

………

Baby-faced rager Pratiti Mehta is facing a slew of charges: unsafe right turn, unsafe lane change, unsafe operation of a motor vehicle causing injury, hit and run causing injury, and oh yeah, ASSAULT WITH A DEADLY WEAPON with an enhancement for great bodily injury. And since her fleeing ass provided false information to the investigating officers, there’s another charge.

………

The Rita Faye McLaughlin case drags on and on and on. Last fall, I skipped a “pretrial” hearing. Turns out, it wasn’t yet another pretrial. It was the victim impact hearing. The victim’s siblings and daughter were there, and Rita Faye was supposed to plead. But she changed her mind. The jury trial was scheduled to begin on the 16th, but has been delayed again.

………

Jason Roy Rocha‘s case is also dragging. There will be no good outcome; he needs extensive mental health maintenance and he needs to be permanently banned from operating a motor vehicle, but neither of these things will happen.

………

Taylor Russell Evans pleaded guilty in June and is currently serving 364 days in County. His prelim on June 11th was canceled because he accepted a plea bargain, and sentencing was the following week (I skipped both because I had that gimongous facial hematoma)*. He’ll probably be out by Thanksgiving, and his victim will probably still be dead.

*(Editor’s note: Our correspondent was hit by a driver while riding, suffering what the police consider minor injuries.)

………

Not bike collisions, but Bani Duarte, who was interrupted by officers as she was packing her suitcase to flee the country, will be allowed out if she raises $4mil bail.

And imagine if Garrett James McKinnon injured 12 people in two separate firearms incidents, instead of using a car.

………

Can you stop lauding the OCDA sooo highly? I remind you that killer Becki Lee James was acquitted after she ran down a cyclist, from behind, in broad daylight, inside a 23′ lane, even though her victim was riding in the door zone. The deputy DA at the trial sprawled out in his seat like Dwight the Surly Teen and was clearly irritated to be in the courtroom. The DA absolutely failed to provide the level of prosecution the case deserved, and James is still out there driving around.

Young Dylan Rand-Luby served his 90 days in the cushy pay-to-stay section of Santa Ana’s jail, and is going on about his life.

I was sooo hopeful that the OCDA’s Vehicular Homicide Team would be be brave enough to set some precedent and prosecute on murder/DUI-marijuana charges, but they’ve decided not to go for murder, and so far there are no charges at all.

There’s more, but we’ll save it for another day.

………

BikinginLA sponsor Josh Cohen offers a good explanation of California’s comparative liability law, which could cut the amount you receive in any settlement if a jury finds you’re partly at fault in a crash.

On the other hand, it could also allow you to receive something, even if you’re the one who screwed up.

………

Local

The Los Angeles Public Library has a bouncing baby bakfiets book bike, which was donated to the Baldwin Hills branch by the LACBC.

LADOT and CD3 Councilmember Bob Blumenfield are hosting a public workshop to discuss street improvements for Winnetka Ave between Vanowen St and Victory Blvd next Wednesday.

Bloomberg says forget vaporware tech promises, and just build a decent sidewalk that would allow fans to walk to Dodger Stadium.

A bill just signed by Governor Brown will allow the County of Los Angeles to develop a program to get employers to encourage their workers to use alternative forms of transportation, including bicycling.

 

State

No surprise here, as the San Francisco driver who allegedly admitted he was drunk after running down and killing a bike rider has pled not guilty, with his attorney calling it just a “tragic accident.” He faces a murder count due to two previous DUI convictions, which led to a warning under state law that he could be charged with murder if he killed someone while under the influence.

San Francisco bike advocates want to end the city’s cap on bikeshare ebikes.

Police in Elk Grove turned to Facebook to find the owner of a Colnago Extreme C racing bike after busting a burglar. Seriously, register your bikes, already. It doesn’t cost anything, and will give police a much easier way to find you if something like this happens.

 

National

The national Vision Zero Network says it will focus on managing and reducing speeds, while defending the program against cities that treat it like a tag line or a PR campaign. Like Los Angeles, for instance.

Bicycling says bicycling — lower case — is the best way to banish the blues. Unless, of course, you’re sad because you can’t ride for some reason, in which case you’re screwed.

A writer for Bicycling says keep your feet out of our bike lanes.

DIY advice on how to wall mount your bike.

Portland’s Community Cycling Center is looking for a new Director of Equity, Engagement and People.

A Utah man suffered cuts and bruises, and broken glasses, when he was assaulted by a bike rider who objected to the man’s dogs being off-leash on a shared use trail. Seriously, just… don’t. No matter how justified you may think your anger is, violence is never the answer.

No bias here. A Colorado music professor is being blamed for a fatal suicide swerve into the side of a passing tanker truck. A more likely explanation is the truck driver passed too close at too high a speed, in violation of the state’s three-foot passing law, and the victim got sucked into the truck’s slipstream.

The subway apocalypse predicted for New York when the L-train shuts down for 15 months of maintenance next year could be a boon for buses and bicycling in the city.

A group of DC Eagle Scouts just earned their bicycling across the US merit badge.

This is how Vision Zero is supposed to work. DC is fixing a bike lane and intersection where a bike rider was killed earlier this summer.

Arlington VA is conducting a trial next month to see how well bicycling volunteers can deliver emergency supplies and messages following a disaster. But oddly, they’re charging people to participate.

A North Carolina newspaper says if the city is bike friendly, where are the bike lanes?

 

International

The Guardian says urban walking could save humanity.

Bike riding is growing in Toronto, even as the BBC calls it the worst city in the world for bicycling.

London’s Scotland Yard has developed a “shocking” 360° virtual reality film to show the dangers of riding a bike near large trucks.

A member of the British Parliament accepted an invitation to ride with a bicyclist after his Conservative party sent out a since-deleted tweet promising a crackdown on dangerous bicycling. Many, if not most, of LA’s elected officials agreed to meet and ride with bicyclists when they filled out candidate questionnaires from the LACBC, but to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever held them to that. Maybe we should change that.

Seriously? A UK study shows Millennials are spending more on hobbies, including bicycling, than their elders, because they have to have the latest fashionable gear and most up-to-date equipment. Which is the exact opposite of most bike riding Millennials I know, but sounds like a lot of older riders.

A pair of British men now officially own the world record for circumnavigating the globe by tandem, riding over 18,000 miles in a little more than 290 days. Speaking of which, tandems are in again.

This is why you have to ride carefully around horses. A woman in the UK suffered a punctured lung when a bike rider tried to pass between her horse and the curb without announcing his presence. Seriously, equestrians can be self-righteous jerks when it comes to demanding exclusive rights to trails and bridges, but both rider and mount can be seriously injured if the horse gets frightened.

The London driver caught on video deliberately swerving at a group of bike riders wasn’t lying when he said the car was stolen; he faces multiple charges for car theft and driving without a license.

A new British government program will spend the equivalent of $645,000 to train driving instructors to teach bicycle awareness to their students.

 

Competitive Cycling

The Continental Jelly Belly-Maxxis team could be on its way out after 18 years, after Jelly Belly announces it’s pulling out at the end of this year.

An Indiana mountain biker is still winning races after 25 years.

 

Finally…

Apparently, you ride like a moose. An injured goose’s goose isn’t  cooked, thanks to a pair of bike riders.

And evidently, there were no major advances in road bikes before 1948.

 

Category: Legal Cases, Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , , ,

Morning Links: Koretz proposes ban on e-scooters in Los Angeles, and keeping drivers on the road until it’s too late

August 1, 2018 / / 6 comments

In a move that probably shouldn’t have surprised anyone, LA’s self-proclaimed environmentalist councilmember has called for a temporary ban on dockless e-scooters.

Yes, Paul Koretz, the councilmember who singlehandedly blocked desperately needed bike lanes on Westwood Blvd — as well as on other major corridors throughout the Westside — has taken action to force people of their e-scooters and back into their cars, rather than allowing a viable first mile/last mile solution to take root.

This is the same councilman who has called for a Climate Emergency Mobilization Department. Yet can’t seem to see the logical disconnect in fighting alternative forms of transportation while paying lip service to climate change.

Then again, he doesn’t seem to see any problem with blocking increased density, either.

Evidently, he’s all for emergency action to address climate change, as long as it’s in someone else’s district.

Never mind that, as someone else pointed out, blocking bike lanes is just climate change denial in action.

Then there’s this disconnect, from the report by KFI radio.

“When we had a hearing in our Transportation Committee, at the time I had seen about three of them and I thought it wasn’t a big deal,” Koretz said. “I’ve probably seen a thousand since just on Beverly Boulevard where I live, and 100 percent have no helmet usage. … I’ve seen probably 20 go by with double on the scooter, which is very dangerous. On the commercial streets, everyone is illegally on the sidewalk.”

Which was followed by,

As for the public’s reaction, Koretz said he believed most residents want the scooters off the streets. He said his office has receive hundreds of complaints about them in recent weeks.

Yes, that is the scientific way to gauge public opinion, especially since people who support the scooters aren’t likely to call to say so without some compelling reason.

Like a stupid proposal to ban them, for instance.

And how is it that “hundreds of complaints” somehow outweighs thousands of users — by his own observation?

As for Koretz’ “better safe than sorry” concerns, there’s this from the Hollywood Reporter’s overview of the response, legal and otherwise, to e-scooters in the LA area.

Scooters have shown to pose safety hazards while operational and parked. According to injury attorney Catherine Lerer of L.A.’s McGee Lerer & Associates, who has written extensively about electric scooters, the top two seen in her office are people hurt when a scooter malfunctions — when a brake line is cut by disgruntled L.A. residents, for instance, or the scooter’s main post collapses — and pedestrians tripping over the scooters. “I’ve gotten calls from elderly people exiting businesses…people leave them right outside the front door,” Lerer notes.

Doesn’t exactly sound like a disaster in the making. Especially when one of the leading causes of injuries is sabotage by scooter-hating NIMBY terrorists.

The proposal was seconded by San Fernando Valley Councilmember Mitch Englander, who has also proposed a ban on dockless bikeshare until the city can work out a permitting process.

This follows the misguided bans on e-scooters in West Hollywood and Beverly Hills; the latter banning even riding bikeshare bikes or e-scooters through the city, which most likely violates state law.

Of course, this kind of hysteria about a new form of transportation is nothing new.

And something tells me Koretz would have been one of the first to call for a ban on bicycles had he lived in the 1890s. Although he probably would have been fine with the Model T chasing everyone else off the roads.

Of course, Los Angeles could take a more rational approach, like working with Lime and Bird to address any issues while they work the bugs out, as Culver City and Long Beach are doing.

But that would make too much sense.

Especially for an environmentalist who seems determined to keep Angelenos in their smog and greenhouse gas-belching cars.

https://twitter.com/LAMetroBlueLine/status/1024492126694866944

………

As long as we’re talking about e-scooters and dockless bikeshare, let’s look at a few more stories on the subject.

Curbed offers everything you need to know about renting e-scooters and dockless bikeshare in Los Angeles. While you still can, that is.

When a Portland-area website went fishing for complaints about e-scooters, what they got were complaints about cars.

And a St. Louis website gives Lime scooters a test ride, and comes back with 13 things they learned. Including that they’re fun as, well, you get the idea.

………

This is who we share the roads with.

Life is cheap in British Columbia, where a driver gets just 45 days behind bars for killing a van driver while speeding, tailgating and driving recklessly — despite receiving 40 tickets over the last 20 years.

And a Tuskegee University football player will never play the game again, after his leg was severed when a friend’s car he was helping to jump was hit by a driver with a “criminal history dating to 1989 (that) ‘shows a pattern of driving offenses and felony arrests.'”

Just two more examples of authorities keeping dangerous drivers on the road until it’s too late.

………

More on the American couple killed in a terrorist attack in Tajikistan on Sunday, who had quit their jobs to bike around the world.

The couple from Washington, DC had written about their trip on a blog that sadly will never be finished.

And authorities blamed the attack on members of the blacklisted Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan.

………

Local

As we noted last week, fresh green bike lanes are finally going down on Santa Monica Blvd in the former Biking Black Hole of Beverly Hills, which had fought the lanes for nearly a decade before surprisingly embracing them last year.

Today Santa Clarita sheriff’s deputies will step up enforcement of traffic violations that put bicyclists and pedestrians at risk, regardless of who commits them. So ride to the letter of the law until you leave their jurisdiction.

 

State

A Cambrian man accidentally became the first bike rider to travel Highway 1 in Big Sur after it reopened last month.

San Francisco approves plans for a curb-protected bike lane the promises to be the safest in the city.

Sad news from Del Norte County, where the CHP is looking for a hit-and-run driver who killed a woman as she rode her bike; the victim wasn’t carrying ID and still hasn’t been identified. One more reminder to always carry some form of identification when you ride; I never leave home without my RoadID, which doubles as a medic alert bracelet.

 

National

A writer for Forbes says cities must take advantage of the opportunities presented by bikeshare.

Bloomberg says Uber and Lyft may not be the solution to traffic congestion, but they’re probably not the cause, either.

Bicycling profiles BMX star Nigel Sylvester, saying the “rebellious superstar is breaking all the rules,” and doesn’t need your permission, thank you.

A writer for Fox News blames “big-spending liberals” for pushing Seattle bike lane and streetcar projects that have been plagued with cost overruns.

A Washington writer gets a detailed education in why many bicyclists prefer to ride on the highway, when there’s a perfectly good bike path nearby. Which should be required reading for planners before they’re allowed to design any offroad path.

Evidently, Los Angeles isn’t the only city where councilmembers have the power to block bike lanes. A Chicago bike rider was killed when he was doored on a street that was supposed to have a protected bike lane, which was halted by the local alderman.

After Ofo pulled out of White Plains NY, they donated over 100 bike for use by low income families.

An Albany NY TV station raises concerns about the structural integrity of an old railroad bridge that now used by over “200,000 bike riders, joggers and dog walkers” every year.

Charlotte NC is planning its first two-way, protected cycle track.

 

International

Curbed looks at 14 gorgeous carfree cities around the world. Anyone one of which I’m just about ready to move to. Although bike riding on the Venice canals might be a bit of a challenge.

No surprise here, as a study shows the noxious fumes in London’s air disappeared during the annual carfree Ride London event.

A British lawyer who calls himself Mr. Loophole suggests revising the country’s traffic laws, including requiring all bike riders to pass a proficiency test, and have their bicycles inspected annually for safety violations (aka an MoT, or Ministry of Transport exam).

Talk about lessons not learned. Bike Biz reprints a speech in the British parliament that calls for a revival of bicycling in the national interest — which was given sixty years ago. And clearly not acted on.

Egyptians are being encouraged to leave their cars behind in an effort to spread bicycle culture throughout the country.

Shimano has apparently overcome the losses from the factory fire in Japan earlier this year, with sales up 6.8%.

 

Competitive Cycling

Forbes calls bicycle racing the best sport to combine spectating and active participation.

A French newspaper calls for a budget cap for pro cycling teams following Team Sky’s dominating performance in the Tour de France; the president of cycling’s governing body calls for limiting teams to a maximum of six riders instead.

After successful surgery to repair a fractured vertebrae suffered during the Tour, Vincenzo Nibali hopes to return in time for the Vuelta a España later this month.

VeloNews talks with a sports psychologist about whether the abuse Team Sky riders suffered from fans during the Tour had any effect. Apparently not, since they led most of the way and placed two riders on the podium; cutting back on salbutamol probably had a bigger effect on Chris Froome.

Speaking of VeloNews, the magazine also talks with the head of the Dimension Data team about his efforts to build an African team; while several African riders have competed on the WorldTour with the team, no black African has yet won a stage at the highest levels.

And completing our VeloNews trilogy, the magazine offers a beautiful photo essay of the Tour de France from the Pyrenees to Paris.

A 60-year old Australian woman won the masters mountain bike world championships just one day after suffering a major crash.

 

Finally…

Evidently, the more bikes change, the more they look the same. Doing the Tour de France without a bicycle.

And sometimes, doing the right thing gets rewarded.

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Morning Links: Crosswalk running parking cop, talking bike theft on Bike Talk, and Blessing of the Bicycles set

March 6, 2018 / / 2 comments

Curbed says city officials think Angelenos don’t understand how dangerous our streets really are, while bike and pedestrian advocates just wish they’d commit to fixing them.

On the other hand, our streets might be safer if LADOT’s parking enforcement officers stopped for people in crosswalks, too.

………

The latest edition of Bike Talk feature’s Bryan Hance of Bike Index talking bike theft and prevention with yours truly and Carlos Morales of Stan’s Bike Shop.

………

My favorite event of the annual LA Bike Week is set for May 15th, with the nondenominational Blessing of the Bicycles at Good Sam Hospital.

This year they’ll be honoring Metro with the Golden Spoke Award.

Here’s the spoke card for the event.

………

It was a bad day for a bike-riding refugee kid in Texas, and stroller-riding kids in New York.

The Netherlands became safer when they got tired of burying children killed by cars. But you have to wonder if America’s kindermord moment will ever come, if it hasn’t already.

Then again, we don’t seem to place much value on kids killed by guns, either.

………

Local

The LAPD is looking for a missing 16-year old girl suffering from autism and depression, who may be riding a bicycle.

The Capital & Main website says Elon Musk’s Boring Co. tunnel could just make things worse for Los Angeles by amplifying existing inequities. And the real solution is to get more cars off the road, not trying to reinvent the subway.

A new ranking of America’s best fondos rates Phil Gaimon’s Phil’s Cookie Fondo #8 in the US in just its 3rd year; last weekend’s Malibu GRANFONDO was ranked 13th, and the Campagnolo GranFondo San Diego was 3rd.

Maybe there really will be a Marathon Crash Ride this year after all.

 

State

Officials have broken ground on bike and pedestrian projects in Encinitas designed to provide safe routes under an I-5 overpass.

A Santa Cruz writer says safe and convenient biking and walking can reduce the county’s deep social inequality.

The National Park Service could reopen an off-road trail to give bicyclists crossing the Golden Gate Bridge a safer route into Sausalito.

An Oakland letter writer says putting in a road diet is an “experiment by the traffic calming industry that is using social engineering and behavior modification” to force people onto bikeshare bikes. They’re onto us, comrades.

A Sacramento paper says dockless bikeshare could reduce traffic and ease commutes on a local highway.

Chico bicyclists ride to remember a man who remained a dedicated bike advocate up to his death five years ago, even after a collision that left him a quadriplegic.

 

National

Hawaii bicyclists are calling for the passage of a three-foot passing law. Twentynine states currently require at least a three-foot distance to pass a bicyclist, including California.

It takes a major schmuck to steal a ghost bike for a Las Vegas mom.

Would you want to ride on the Donald J. Trump Utah National Parks Highway?

A road-raging Santa Fe NM driver admits to slamming on his brakes and backing into a senior citizens bike club, sending one rider to the hospital. Of course, in his telling, he’s the innocent victim of the rude and offensive riders who slammed into his car, then wanted to fight him; fortunately, he fled the scene before granny could kick his ass. And needless to say, he got off with a just a traffic ticket. 

Oklahoma City opens a new eight-mile bike path named after the late, great Will Rogers.

In what could be a huge leap in rehabilitation, a man who was paralyzed from the shoulders down in a bike crash was able to feed himself with his own hand and arm at an Ohio University, thanks to electrical brain implants connected to a computer system.

A Charlotte NC business site says developers have to do their part if it’s going to become a bike city.

A North Carolina man gets 28 years behind bars for beating a bike rider to death after the victim complained about a too-close pass — and possibly used racial slurs. The driver’s son, who was 16-years old at the time of the attack, faces charges for joining in the road rage attack.

 

International

Cycling Tips unwraps the mysteries of handlebar tape.

Carlton Reid of Bike Biz says bike mechanics are worth their weight in gold. Seriously, when you find a good wrench, you should treat him or her like your bike’s best friend. Because they are.

Great idea. An English community group is looking for volunteers to help disabled riders go mountain biking on adult tricycles and three-wheeled handcycles.

The Evening Standard offers tips on how to travel with your bike.

Britain’s proposed law banning dangerous cycling could carry a life sentence for fatal crashes; drivers currently face a maximum of 14 years, though that may be raised to match the bike bill.

Unbelievable. An Irish court rules that a driver had no obligation to back out carefully from a walled-off driveway with no view of the sidewalk, after bicyclist crashed into the side of his car.

Even in the Netherlands, you need to know how to ride your bike safely.

The UN is getting into the bikeshare business, opening a system for staff and visitors at their Nairobi office.

Britain’s Daily Mail says an “activist” cycling group in Melbourne, Australia, is fighting to remove fines for not wearing a bike helmet.  Which seems like a perfectly reasonable thing for “activists” to advocate for.

 

Competitive Cycling

Former Tour de France winner Bradley Wiggins says allegations that he doped are part of a malicious smear campaign. Which is pretty much what everyone who has been caught doping has said.

The Guardian says the evidence of doping around Team Sky cyclists and other pro athletes shows deep corruption and a “culture of studied evasion.”

 

Finally…

If you can’t get a bikeshare bike in Paris, just buy one already. How do you take the lane when you’re riding in boat traffic?

And evidently, you need to put turn signals on your bike. Because those darn hand signals are just so 2017.

 

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