Day 148 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025.
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Calbike and California Walks called on cities yesterday to implement the state’s daylighting rules.
A 2023 bill passed and signed into law sought to improve safety by prohibiting drivers from parking near intersections, providing better sightlines for drivers approaching them, as well as bike riders and pedestrians.
And better enabling those last two to be seen by the former.
The bill provided a built-in one-year grace period before full implementation. But as of the first of this year, cities were allowed — but apparently not required — to ticket drivers who parked within 20 feet of a crosswalk.
And in California, every intersection is presumed to have a crosswalk, whether or not it’s painted, unless crossing is specifically prohibited.
Yet few, if any, cities in the state have begun issuing tickets. Meanwhile others, such as San Francisco, have watered down the requirement by painting red curbs extending 10 feet from the crosswalk, instead of 20. Something cities are allowed to do if they pass an ordinance justifying the need for the change — which San Francisco hasn’t done.
According to a press release from the groups,
CalBike and California Walks urge municipal leaders and public works departments to:
- Educate parking enforcement officers and empower them to write citations for parking within daylighting zones. No signage or curb paint is required to take this step.
- Educate residents about the need to leave sightlines clear near crosswalks as an act of community care.
- Install signage and red curb paint marking the 20-foot no-parking space wherever feasible.
- Harden daylighting zones as much as possible by adding bike parking corrals, bike or scooter share docks, benches, planters boxes, bioswales, or other community amenities.
- Use planned road maintenance projects as opportunities to demarcate and harden daylighting zones.
They’ve got a point.
We can pass all the safety measures in the world. But they won’t save a single life if no one uses them.
Photo by Labskiii from Pexels.
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California Senator Adam Schiff will be the first sitting US senator to take part in the annual AIDS/LifeCycle Ride.
Make that the final AIDS/LifeCycle Ride.
Which is kind of sad, on both counts.
Schiff was the first member of Congress to take part in the annual ride in 2014 — and will be the last, even if he only completes the final leg into Los Angeles due to votes in the senate.
The ride has raised over $300 million over its all-too-brief 31-year history to support the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the Los Angeles LGBT Center.
Meanwhile, a writer for Daily Kos expresses his sadness that this year’s AIDS/LifeCycle Ride marks the end of his own 26-year history with it.
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CARB, aka the California Air Resources Board, is back with another attempt at a second round of ebike incentive vouchers, after totally screwing the pooch the last time around.
So what’s the over/under on whether they somehow manage to screw it up again, given their pathetic track record and intentionally throttled funding?
Asking for about 150,000 friends.
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Metro will hold a series of community meetings this week to release the latest plans and cost estimates for a new rail line along the Sepulveda Transit Corridor, traveling under and/or over the Sepulveda Pass.
Although any plan that doesn’t provide a direct connection to UCLA will be an abject failure out of the gate.
- Wednesday, May 28: 5:30–7:30 p.m., Presentation will begin at 6 p.m., Veterans Memorial Building Rotunda Room, 4117 Overland Avenue, Culver City, CA 90230.
- Thursday, May 29: 5:30–7:30 p.m., Presentation will begin at 6 p.m., Westwood United Methodist Church, 10497 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90024.
- Saturday, May 31: 3-5 p.m., Presentation will begin at 3:30 p.m., Sherman Oaks East Valley Adult Center, 5056 Van Nuys Boulevard, Building B, Sherman Oaks, CA 91403.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. In a prime example of a grand jury run amok, a Bakersfield grand jury questions whether the city’s green bike lanes are more of a nuisance than a benefit, and says Bakersfield shouldn’t install any more unless they cost less than $15,000 a mile. Which is about what it costs to stripe a two-lane street, without any bike lanes.
Life is cheap in North Carolina, where a man walked without a single day behind bars when a judge imposed a lousy 45 day suspended sentence for intentionally crashing an ATV into 56-year old man riding on a bike path, leaving the victim with serious injuries.
A British jury saw a doorbell cam video capturing the events leading up to the allegedly intentional crash that killed a 25-year old mother riding an ebike with another person; prosecutors allege the 23-year old driver finally succeeded in ramming the bike on his fifth attempt.
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Local
USC Annenberg Media examines the opening of the first 5.5-mile segment of the Rail-to-Rail Active Transportation Corridor, a rail-to-trail conversion connecting Metro rail lines in South LA.
The Glendale City Council got an update on the city’s “slow and methodical approach” to its Vision Zero Action Plan.
Pasadena, Day One and the Pasadena Complete Streets Coalition are wrapping up Bike Month by hosting the family-friendly Pie & Ice Cream Are Friends Ride this Saturday, for anyone with a sweet tooth and a bicycle.
Active SGV will host a community bike ride this Sunday leading to and from a public meeting to learn more about the Rio Hondo Ecosystem Reclamation Project to create multi-use bike and walking paths, along with other environmental benefits.
Long Beach will mark the end of Bike Month with the official unveiling of the Great Artesia Boulevard Project on Saturday, complete with a bike rodeo and free bicycle tune-ups.
State
The San Diego Union-Tribune says bike lanes proposed by SANDAG, aka the San Diego Association of Governments, are still hamstrung by delays, as they finally green lighted a $27 million project on University Ave that began planning in 2013.
No bias here. According to the New York Times, the anger over converting San Francisco’s Great Highway into a park remains, with the transformation into a pedestrian promenade setting off a clash over the city’s anti-car culture. Or maybe, just maybe, they could have talked to the many people who love the new linear park, a large percentage of whom undoubtedly drove to get there and have nothing against cars, but recognized that the former highway was no longer needed.
A lawsuit filed by the California Native Plant Society, Marin Audubon Society, and Marin Conservation League that was settled last year is blocking ebikes from using a trail on Mount Tamalpais, regarded as the birthplace of mountain biking.
National
A Tulsa, Oklahoma man will take part in the 1,645-mile Black Wall Street to Wall Street Ride for Equity, connecting Tulsa’s Black Greenwood District destroyed in a 1921 race riot with the nation’s financial center; the ride is organized by Black Leaders Detroit to “amplify national conversations about racial wealth gaps, Black entrepreneurship and community resilience.”
Security cam video captured the moment a three-year old girl darted into the path of a man riding an ebike in a New York bike lane, giving the man no time to avoid a crash after she ran out from between two parked cars; fortunately, she only suffered minor injuries.
The Transportation Committee of a West Side Manhattan community board — equivalent to LA’s neighborhood councils, but with more power — voted unanimously to oppose giving criminal summons to scofflaw bike riders, arguing that more enforcement of lawbreaking bicyclists may be needed, but the NYPD policy is too extreme.
Speaking of New York, the city’s DOT, police and community organizations have been collecting bicycles to donate to people in underserved communities, with 253 bikes collected so far this year.
Atlanta was selected as the first city to get Lime’s new LimeBike ebikes, which the company says is geared towards women, older riders and commuters who need extra room for storing stuff when they ride.
International
A writer for Tom’s Guide explains what to consider when buying a bike helmet. All of which you could probably have figured out for yourself.
No surprise here. A French travel writer says a bike is the best way to find the secluded beaches on St. Mary’s Island, off the coast of Cornwall, England.
The Irish taoiseach, or prime minister, apologized before the country’s parliament, along with his chief deputy and the country’s justice minister, for the failures that allowed a driver with 40 previous convictions to remain on the road 14 years ago for the hit-and-run crash that killed a 23-year old man riding a bicycle, despite a court order that should have kept him behind bars. And if you wonder why people keep dying on our streets, that’s a good place to start.
A newspaper in the Czech Republic city of Brno — apparently founded during a Middle Ages vowel shortage — takes stock of the city’s bike infrastructure, or the lack thereof, arguing that the city should be a haven for bicyclists due to its short distances, but isn’t. Sort of like Los Angeles should, thanks to our mostly flat terrain and ideal weather. But isn’t.
Competitive Cycling
It was a brutal day in the Alps for most of the Giro peloton on Tuesday, following an attack by Richard Carapaz that helped the Ecuadorian cyclist leap up the GC standings, leaving 21-year old Mexican phenom Isaac del Torro still leading, but just 26 seconds ahead of Brit Simon Yates, with Carapaz another five seconds behind in third.
Carpaz vows to fight all the way to Rome after emerging as the race’s biggest disrupter. Unless you count del Torro, who already disrupted the race a week earlier.
Pre-race favorite Primoz Roglic abandoned Giro Tuesday, after being caught in yet another crash.
Italian cyclist Alessio Martinelli was conscious and in stable condition following a frightening 50-foot fall down a ravine, after he slid off his bike crashing on a rain-slicked curve during Tuesday’s stage of the Giro.
Joe Goettl and Flavia Oliveira Parks won the men’s and women’s editions of Utah’s Belgian Waffle Ride, with Carter Anderson and Courtney Sullivan finishing second.
Finally…
Great moments in bad headline: No, a man isn’t riding 480 miles for pancreatic cancer, he’s riding to fight it.
And that feeling when you feel compelled to prove your street cred by hating on bicycles.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
