Spontaneous fires have been an ongoing problem with lithium-ion batteries, leading some cities to ban them, while some buildings prohibit ebikes as a result.
A San Francisco bike rider became collateral damage when he was struck by a hit-and-run driver, who accelerated suddenly after stopping in the middle of the road to record an appearance by YouTube gamer iShowSpeed.
Except a news helicopter just happened to be watching from above, and followed the driver until police arrived.
Oops.
Driver hits cyclist and flees after blocking San Francisco intersection to film iShowSpeed pic.twitter.com/qlVavBKMdd
Bike riders in Copenhagen can catch the green wave, catching nothing but green lights when riding a bike at a relatively sedate 12 mph. Even if it sounds like taking a few puffs before surfing.
Twenty-four-year old Canadian Magdeleine Vallieres won the women’s elite road race in an upset at the Worlds on Saturday, becoming the first of her countrymen to wear the rainbow jersey; New Zealand’s Niamh Fisher-Black was 23 seconds back second, with Spain’s Mavi Garcia third.
The $800,000 project will fix the pathway between Chautauqua Boulevard and Entrada Drive, near the Roosevelt Pedestrian Tunnel, that was washed out by heavy rains early last year.
The popular pathway is used by upwards of 10,000 people a day.
It’s been awhile since I’ve ridden that path, but I’m told there’s also a section further south that’s been washed out, as well.
And raise your hand if you even knew that tunnel had a name. Because I sure as hell didn’t, and I used it for years.
Piloting new bike infrastructure in DTLA! Crews recently installed concrete barriers on the 3rd Street bike lane, between Main and Spring—and now we want to hear from you! Take our survey and share your feedback: https://t.co/iILOzBX92Lpic.twitter.com/YWQp7qhcpC
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass claimed she was one of us when she campaigned for office. But to the best of my knowledge, she’s has ridden a bike to work or with any member of the community ever since.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
A Texas man faces multiple charges after allegedly using a stolen truck to jump a curb and intentionally crash into a man riding a bicycle, then returning three minutes later to run over the victim where he sat injured on the ground; the driver was arrested following a short police chase, after a witness used her own pickup to halt the second attack.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
A writer for the Southern California News Groupexplains the rules governing bicycles after an Upland writer asks what can be done to stop scofflaw bike riders from breaking the law. Just wait until they find out about all those scofflaw drivers breaking the law in their big, dangerous machines.
Commenters in Victoria, British Columbia were up in arms after someone posted a photo of a man riding a bicycle with a helmet-less baby strapped to his back. Although it’s my understanding that a baby’s neck isn’t developed enough to support the weight of a bike helmet.
A Reno, Nevada bike rider was hospitalized with minor injuries after being struck by a 14-year old riding an illegal electric motorcycle on the sidewalk; the kid who caused the crash was cited for multiple violations, while a friend on another bike was released with a warning.
This is the cost of traffic violence. A second-generation Methodist paster in rural Tennessee was killed when he was rear-ended by the driver of a big rig truck while riding his bicycle.
Talk about not knowing your market. The owner of a Summerville, Massachusetts donut shop fears the removal of parking in front of his shop for a new bike lane will force him to move. Never mind that studies show bike lanes are good for business. And we don’t need any studies to know donuts attract bicycles like magnets.
A 49-year old New Jersey man will spend the next five years behind bars for killing a “selfless” nurse bicycling with her husband eight years ago, while driving under the influence of “a very high level of narcotics.” Although his two previous DWIs — aka DUIs — would have made him subject to a murder charge here in California.
But he not only takes issue with including fat Black women in the bicycling community, but with the very idea of a bicycling community, period.
By Mike McDaniel’s perspective, unless you’re actively engaged in some form of competition, we’re all just a bunch of individuals riding bikes for our own personal reasons.
Just when you think this kind of manufactured nonsense is on its deathbed, Cycling Weekly resurrects it. We’ve been told “silence is violence,” and so is pretty much everything else. Now we learn unless the cycling “community” “centers” fat black women, that community is “participating in exclusion.” Do we need to buy bikes and other cycling gear for fat black women too? How about old white guys riding old recumbents? And fine, I’ll tell a story: I read about a fat black woman who started riding bikes. Good for her. The end.
That’s a leftist view of reality, where it’s all about one’s identity, which must not only be noticed, but praised. In real reality, one doesn’t join a bicycling “community” by riding a bike. There are people with shared biking interests, largely defined by their machines, abilities and participation in types of competition. Beyond that, no one much cares about anyone not in those particular, narrowly defined interest groups.
Then again, he also has something to say about breasts, which he claims to know something about — and Sydney Sweeney’s in particular.
Oh, and he’s not a Nazi.
Good to know.
Iresha Picot’s point isn’t wasn’t identity politics, though, or some sort of DEI for the bicycling community.
It wasn’t even about fat Black women. Or whether or not there really is some sort of bike community.
It’s that our streets — and our preferred form of recreation and transportation — has to be safe and welcoming for everyone, including those on the margins, who you don’t normally see descending at 30 mph on the club rides.
And if you’re not intentionally including everyone, you are by default excluding some, whether they’re fat and Black, poor and Latino, handicapped, old or just puttering along on an old cruiser bike.
It’s a fair point.
I’ve learned over the years that the biking community includes people of every shape, color and description.
Some who charge up and down hills on carbon racing bikes, and some who ride, well, trikes.
It’s not about politics, identity or otherwise.
And it sure as hell isn’t about Sydney Sweeney. Or her breasts.
Photo: Bikes belonging to the non-existent bike community line the street.
Suburban, provincial, old fashioned views often block progress on streets where people are dying from cars. soundcloud.com/biketalk/253… #bikesky @transalt.org@cycletoronto.bsky.social@mlongfield.bsky.social@lintonjoe.bsky.social@bikinginla.bsky.social@streetopia.bsky.social@openplans.org
No bias here. A motorist in Killarney, Ireland was “irked” to actually have to slow down for a few moments because a bicyclist was riding in the traffic lane, right next to a new raised bike lane that had been built “at enormous expense.” Even though a photo clearly shows several bike riders were already using it, and the only way to get around them was to take to the street — never mind that he was hugging the curb, and would have been easy to pass.
Life is cheap in Ireland, where an 82-year old woman got off with fine and lost her license for killing a 78-year old man riding a bicycle, once again raising the question of how old is too old to safely drive a car. And no, I don’t want to see an octogenarian go to the gaol, either. But still.
The driver, identified only as Krunal Jigneshbhai Dhanani, faces felony hit-and-run charges for driving up on the sidewalk and hitting the kid, in what appeared to be an intentional act.
But police evidently didn’t think so, because it wasn’t charged that way.
The teenaged boys, who looked to be middle school-aged, rode up to the Ralphs market on South Vermont Ave around 4:30 Saturday afternoon, running out with bottled cocktails, Gatorade and other items.
At least one of the boys was pepper sprayed by a security guard, after the kids threw things at store employees.
They then swarmed the gay couple as they tried to enter their car and drive off, honking their horn to clear the way, as the kids shouted slurs.
After one of the boys slammed himself on the side of their car, the couple got out holding pepper spray and a stun gun, chasing the group off before they approached once again, hitting the car window with a rock as they drove off.
This follows numerous other similar robberies where kids would ride up to a store on their bikes before swarming the aisles, overwhelming the staff and emptying shelves.
There have also been at least three instances of teen bike riders swarming cars and attacking the vehicles and their drivers.
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The LAPD has identified the suspect accused of riding his bicycle through DTLA while chopping down trees with an electric chainsaw.
According to the Los Angeles Times, 45-year old Samuel Patrick Groft was taken into custody about 90 minutes after police released a flyer with pictures of the then-unknown suspect.
Groft stands accused of felony vandalism for chopping down at least 13 trees in less than ten days in downtown Los Angeles, as well Glassell Park and Westlake.
Eight of the those trees were estimated to be worth $347,000.
Groft has an extensive record, including DUI, assault with a deadly weapon, vandalism and a hit-and-run. He has been living on a streets for several years, and was found with the chainsaw in his possession.
In California, felony vandalism carries a penalty of up three years behind bars and a fine of up to $50,000 if the damage exceeds $10,000.
Which means if the DA charges each tree as a separate crime, Groft could be looking at more than three decades behind bars, and $650,000 in fines.
The paper also noted the protesters’ complaints over red tape needlessly holding up the fully funded and shovel-ready safety improvements promised for the park.
Which are two more reasons — the lack of progress and news coverage — explaining why people continue to die on our streets.
And the latter has a lot to do with the former.
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Streets Are For Everyone, which held that Griffith Park protest, celebrates ten years of fighting for safer streets on July 12th.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
It’s happened again, part two. A British ebike rider lost consciousness and suffered serious facial and eye injuries when he struck a rope that was deliberately strung across the trail he was riding on; police blamed a “group of youths” for the “deliberate and highly dangerous act” that could have led to “even more catastrophic” injuries.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
This is who we share the road with. A Fresno judge dismissed all the charges against a hit-and-run driver who ran down and killed a homeless woman, and dragged her body eight miles under his car — then ended up with permanent brain damage after jumping out of a top floor window trying to escape the police, leading the judge to rule he would never be competent to stand trial.
No surprise here, as Slovenian cycling star Tadej Pogačar captured his second Flèche Wallonne by attacking on a steep climb, finishing 10 seconds ahead of France’s Kévin Vauquelin, with British rider Tom Pidcock in third; Dutch cyclist Puck Pieterse won the women’s Flèche, beating countrywoman Demi Vollering by two seconds, while Italy’s Elisa Longo Borghini came in third.
April 23, 2025 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Earth Day bust for bike-riding DTLA tree-chopper, Culver City named eco-friendly city, & how to apply for CA ebike voucher
Day 113 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025.
Although I’m guessing that measure was taken before the city ripped out the protected bike lanes in the MOVE Culver City project.
The survey from Realtor.com and LocalLogic listed Hoboken, New Jersey number one; that city has now gone seven consecutive years without a traffic death, proving that Vision Zero can actually succeed with buy-in and funding from city officials.
Bay Area cities Berkeley, San Francisco and Emeryville also made the list.
A pair of bills sponsored by Streets For All moved forward in the state legislature, including one requiring speed limiters for repeat speeding drivers, and another streamlining the permit process for transit projects.
✅ PASSED SENATE TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE: SB 445 by @Scott_Wiener that streamlines permit approval process for transit projects to tackle cities that cause costly delay against transit. pic.twitter.com/UoV5xqqvMf
A hard-hitting Bluesky thread from Dr. Grace Peng demonstrates why her South Bay commute is only for the brave; click through for the rest of the posts.
The short bike ride between my allergy shots and Bafang Dumplings is only for the bravest
It starts without a bike lane, so I take the full right lane. If you look carefully, you'll see a bike stencil in that gutter bike lane too narrow to fit the stencil. I kept taking the lane rather than risk close passes by SUVs in the gutter lane@bikinginla.bsky.social @streetsblogla.bsky.social
Trump’s tariffs aren’t the only thing hurting the bike industry these days; bike burglars and hijackers are also leaving their mark, like whoever stole an entire truckload of bikes from Ari Bicycles on their way from Los Angeles to the company’s Utah warehouse.
I want to share this press release from SAFE — aka Streets Are For Everyone — about their press conference tomorrow at the Ronald Reagan Building at 300 South Spring Street in DTLA.
They need to get as many people there as possible to show their support. So if you’ve got the morning free and can handle the 100° heat, plan to be there.
I’ll be home resting my surgically repaired shoulder in hopes of getting back to work on Monday. So we’ll see you back here next week.
Calling on Gov. Newsom to Lead the US in Efforts to Combat Dangerous Speeding
Saturday, 7 September – Victims of traffic violence, activists for safer roads, and road safety organizations from across Southern California will be holding a press conference and Ghost Tire placement in front of the Ronald Reagan Building in Downtown LA, calling on Gov. Newsom to sign Senate Bill 961 (Weiner) and Senate Bill 1509 (Stern).
“Speed is the largest factor behind all traffic fatalities and serious injuries across CA. To put it simply, speed kills,” said Damian Kevitt, Executive Director of Streets Are For Everyone. “In the City of Los Angeles, those injured or killed are most likely to be pedestrians – kids going to school, parents going to work – devastating families and friends of those hit.” Per a report written by SAFE, Los Angeles City has seen an 81% increase in traffic fatalities and a 108% increase in pedestrian fatalities since 2015. In 2023, 37.8% of all collisions were caused by speeding. (Source: TIMS)
SB 1509 increases accountability for driving at dangerous speeds by assigning two points for repeat offenses of excessive speeding within three years and creating a graduated fine schedule based on the number of violations within a year. For a fact sheet about this bill, click here.
SB 961 is a first-of-its-kind bill that will be a game-changer. This bill will require vehicle manufacturers to install speed warning technology—an audio and visual alertwhen drivers are going more than 10 MPH above the speed limit—in all vehicles made or sold in California (excluding emergency vehicles and motorcycles) starting in model year 2030. This technology is not new; Toyota will already offer it as a standard feature for all new cars, and Europe requires it for all new cars. SB 961 would require it as standard for all manufacturers. For a fact sheet about about this bill, click here. For answers to FAQs, click here.
The automobile industry is opposed to SB 961 and continues to design vehicles that are dramatically faster than previous generations. According to the EPA’s 2022 Automotive Trends Report, the average American vehicle from model year 2021 could reach 60 mph in 7.7 seconds. This is about twice as fast as cars purchased in the early 1980s. Electric vehicles are even faster than the average American vehicle, with many reaching 60 MPH in only a few seconds. While advanced safety measures might protect drivers and passengers in these vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists outside of cars are getting hit and killed in greater numbers than in the past. The truth is that the US is the only industrialized nation in the world with a worsening traffic violence statistic by trend.
“If the auto industry is going to make cars and trucks that encourage drivers to go too fast, there needs to be vehicle technology that helps counteract this,” said Damian. “Sixty years ago, when states wanted to require car seat belts, the auto industry fought it. But no one would question seat belts today as a necessary safety measure. Intelligent Speed Assistance in vehicles is no different.”
In 1961, Wisconsin was the first state to mandate seat belts in all vehicles, which eventually led to a federal law requiring them. Seat belts are credited with saving more than 500,000 lives in America.
What: Press Conference and Ghost Tire Placement
When: 9:30 AM, Saturday, 7 September, 2024
Where: Ronald Reagan Building, State of California, 308 S Spring St, Los Angeles, CA 90013
Who: Victims of Traffic Violence, including Cindi Enamorado (lost her brother), Lili Trujillo Puckett (lost her daughter), Lori Argumedo (lost her niece), Darlene Smith (lost her sister), and more.
Representatives from non-profit organizations and advocacy groups, including Streets Are For Everyone, Streets For All, Car-Lite Long Beach, Street Racing Kills, Faith for SAFEr Streets, Bike Long Beach, So Cal Families for Safe Streets, SAFE Families, Move LA, Walk n Rollers, LA Walks, and more.
March 5, 2024 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Bike the Vote today, DUI death of Master’s champ Boyes worth one lousy year, and LA approves $13m Mobility Hub contract
Just 301 days until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025.
Then share it — and keep sharing it — with everyone you know, on every platform you can.
As of this writing, we’re up to 1,006 signatures, so let’s keep it going! Urge everyone you know to sign the petition, until the mayor agrees to meet with us!
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It was a busy weekend in the bike world, so we’ve got a lot to catch up on.
But before we start, if you haven’t done it yet, find the ballot you got in the mail, fill it out, and drop it off at your nearest drop box. Or hop on your bike, and ride to the nearest vote center to cast your vote in person.
While we’re waiting for everyone to get back, my brother Eric is headed east from San Dimas on Adventure Cycling’s Bicycle Route 66 today on his way to Las Vegas, and eventually on to Savannah, Georgia, after starting from Santa Monica on Sunday.
Let me give a shoutout to the folks at Trek Bicycle Beverly Hills, the former I. Martin on Beverly Blvd, for giving him an emergency valve repair Saturday to help get him on the road — and not charging a cent.
And no, they didn’t know who I am before doing it.
Eric thanking Camden at Trek Bicycle Beverly Hills for fixing his tire
Loading the bigass touring bike his daughter had custom built for him
A very sad corgi watching her new favorite human disappear up the sidewalk
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An “incredulous” federal judge questioned a proposed plea deal in the death of US Masters Champ Ethan Boyes.
Prosecutors said they were nearing a deal on a one-year misdemeanor sentence for the drunken crash that killed Boyes in San Francisco’s Presidio Park, reducing the charges to one count of unlawfully killing a human being without malice and without gross negligence.
“Isn’t being intoxicated gross negligence in itself?” the judge said, incredulous.
That question, (Assistant U.S. Attorney George) Hageman said, was “up for interpretation.”
The judge replied that interpreting the severity of the alleged crime was Hageman’s job as federal prosecutor…
Eighty-one-year old Arnold Kinman Low is currently facing one count of vehicular manslaughter and one count of driving under the influence of alcohol in the fatal crash.
Felony vehicular manslaughter and felony DUI causing death could result in a maximum sentence of 16 years behind bars, while dropping the DUI count could reduce it to just 12 months.
For killing someone while too drunk to drive in a straight line.
“You got nothing better to do than film people? You’re a bike Nazi! I bet you got beat up in high school. That’s why you’re out here. I’m glad you got beat up in high school!”- unhinged older guy in a pickup to me at NE 72nd drive just now, before he peeled out. pic.twitter.com/vYfRFVHLWf
An English town dealt with “anti-social cyclists,” as police responded to complaints from the public for such horrendous activities as riding without lights. Which isn’t exactly what I would describe as antisocial, but still.
South Pasadena residents learn the hard way what happens when only seven people out of 104 bother to return a resident survey — and all of those ask for bike lanes on Grand Ave. And the city is apparently all out of temporary street paint. Thanks to Wesley for the heads-up.
A campaign by disabled bicyclists in the UK tackles Shedgate, arguing that disabled riders should be allowed to build a bike shed in their front garden if they don’t have a back one, after several people were fined or ordered to remove them.
It should be an extra spooky Friday the 13th on the mean streets of LA today, coming just over two weeks before Halloween.
While a little triskaidekaphobia never hurt anyone, it couldn’t hurt to use a little extra caution today, so your ride doesn’t turn into someone else’s bad luck.
And if you see someone in a hockey mask coming your way, maybe ride the other direction just to be safe.
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CicLAvia returns to its DTLA roots this weekend, nearly 13 years to the day after the first one.
However, Sunday’s Heart of LA CicLAvia follows only portions of the original route, traveling 7.8 miles through downtown with stops in Chinatown and Little Tokyo, while adding extensions to South Park, and Boyle Heights and Mariachi Plaza across the new 6th Street bridge.
That will be followed by the year’s final CicLAvia, in South LA on December 3rd, offering a route stretching from Historic South Central to Leimert Park, primarily along Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I see a side trip to Harold and Belle’s in my future.
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Streets For All will follow Sunday’s CicLAvia with an afterparty at a super secret location in DTLA.
Are you going to Ciclavia this weekend? Come join us for an afterparty downtown near Historic Broadway Metro Station from 4pm to 6:30pm! RSVP at https://t.co/UYRpGuUGXp for location info. pic.twitter.com/RBcLISO4S2
No bias here. An Ottawa, Canada writer places tongue firmly in cheek, and announces that the country’s bike riders were mortified to learn they’re not “actually allowed to run every red light and stop sign they come across.”Just wait until someone tells him about all those entitled drivers who pick and choose what traffic laws they want to obey.
Governor Gavin Newsom signed two bike bills authored by Burbank state senator and US House candidate Anthony Portantino to require landlords to allow tenants to store and charge ebikes and e-scooters in their apartments, and require Caltrans to appoint an active transportation safety czar. Although it doesn’t require the state transportation agency to actually, you know, listen to them.
A proposed class action lawsuit has been filed against Shimano, Specialized and Trek following the massive Hollowtech crankset recall, alleging that by failing to recall all Hollowtech cranksets, the companies are attempting to limit costs at the expense of consumers. Or maybe the ones they recalled were just the only ones that were defective.
New York announced plans for another 40 miles of protected bike lanes, with two new bikeways in Queens and one each in Brooklyn and the Bronx, as well as a 10-mile protected bike lane on Staten Island between Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge and the Goethals Bridge.
The European Union Court of Justice has officially ruled that ebikes are bicycles, not motorcycles, because they are not exclusively motor driven and don’t require insurance to cover damages. Although that would seem to leave throttle-driven ebikes in question.
WATCH: Video appears to show murder suspect Kaitlin Armstrong running from corrections officers. The attempted escape, which lasted around 10 minutes, took place in south Austin Wednesday morning, officials said.https://t.co/5bvsLufKnIpic.twitter.com/H9PcGJGQcl
June 9, 2023 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Metro considers Alameda mobility options, 10th Anniversary of Finish The Ride this weekend, and writers bike the strike
Anyone who has tried to walk or bike Alameda Street south of Union Station in DTLA knows it’s just this side of a traffic choked living hell.
The options range from closing or moving offramps and widening sidewalks, to converting Arcadia Street to a pedestrian walkway and capping the 101 Freeway to create a new park.
Let’s hope our officials have the courage and foresight to make the choice that will most dramatically remake Downtown Los Angeles.
This weekend marks the tenth anniversary of Finish The Ride, which began when Damian Kevitt invited the public to join him in finishing the Griffith Park ride that was interrupted by a hit-and-run driver, who has never been caught.
More than 2,000 “cyclists, runners, walkers, challenged athletes, veterans, first responders, civic and community leaders, and safe streets advocates from across Southern California” are expected to turn out to demand safer streets for everyone.
This year’s event has been divided into two parts, with Finish The Run on Saturday, and Finish The Ride on Sunday.
You’ll also have a chance to meet two highly qualified candidates to replace Adam Schiff in California’s 30th Congressional District, in Laura Friedman and Anthony Portantino.
I’ll let the folks at Finish The Ride take it from here.
Finish The Ride (www.FinishTheRide.org) was founded in the aftermath of a vicious hit-and-run crime in 2013 that saw cyclist Damian Kevitt lose his leg after being dragged under a car from the streets of Griffith Park onto and down Interstate 5 for nearly a quarter mile. A year later, Kevitt was accompanied by hundreds of cyclists, street safety advocates, and community leaders as part of a campaign to raise awareness of an epidemic of hit-and-run crimes in Los Angeles.
Last year participants in Finish The Ride and Finish The Run demanded that Griffith Park be made safer for the tens of thousands who use it weekly for recreation and exercise. As a result, only a couple of months later, a section of Griffith Park Drive was transformed from a road into a closed pedestrian, bicycle, and equestrian path, and 4 million dollars of funding was approved for additional safety renovations across the park.
According to a report by the non-profit Streets Are For Everyone (known as SAFE), the City of Los Angeles saw a record 312 fatalities last year, most of them pedestrians, and tens of thousands more seriously injured. The primary factor in all these collisions was reckless speeding. SAFE has been involved in a massive state-wide campaign to educate about and advocate for the need to reign in reckless speeding to save lives. Part of this campaign has demanded that legislators pass AB 645, a pilot program that would allow the limited use of speed safety cameras in school zones and on the most dangerous roads in 6 cities across the state. Over 1800 have signed a petition to demand that legislators support AB 645. As a result of this campaign, AB 645 just passed the Assembly with overwhelming support (58 to 7).
This year’s Finish The Ride and Finish The Run event brings together people from all walks to continue the call to demand that roads be made safer and reckless speeding be addressed as the public health crisis that it is.
Finish The Ride and Finish The Run is now in its 10th year and will be held over two days – runners and walkers on Saturday and cyclists on Sunday. On Saturday, there will be the usual 5K/10K run/walk and half-marathon run. On Sunday will be the usual 15-mile, 25-mile, 35-mile, and 50 miles rides. New additions to this year’s event are the Los Feliz Neighborhood Council 1K Kids Run and a Puppy Run on Saturday and the Bahati Foundation Metric Century on Sunday.
Saturday, 10 June 2023 – Finish The Run
(1200 runners and walkers expected)
Time: 7:30 AM Griffith Park Half-Marathon starts
8 AM Finish the Run Opening Ceremony with Civic Leaders and other Victims of Traffic Violence speaking (All other events depart following the opening ceremony)
Where: Griffith Park, Crystal Springs Area
4663 Crystal Springs Dr, Los Angeles, CA 90027
Who: Asm Laura Friedman
Councilmember Nithya Raman
Damian Kevitt, Founder of Finish The Ride/Finish The Run and Streets Are For Everyone
Cindi Enamorado, sister of Raymond Olivares, who lost his life in February 2023 at the hands of a driver engaged in street racing.
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Sunday, 11 June 2023 – Finish The Ride
(800 cyclists expected)
Time: 7 AM Olympic Silver Medalist Nelson Nails leads the Bahati Foundation Metric Century and Andrew Jelmert Half Century Ride
8 AM Finish the Ride Opening Ceremony with Civic Leaders and other Victims of Traffic Violence speaking (All other events depart following the opening ceremony)
Where: Griffith Park, Crystal Springs Area
4663 Crystal Springs Dr, Los Angeles, CA 90027
Who: Senator Anthony Portantino
Damian Kevitt, Founder of Finish The Ride and Streets Are For Everyone
Curtis Townsend Sr., who lost his wife, Trina Newman-Townsend, in a hit-and-run on Christmas Eve in 2022.
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Seen on the street: A WGA writer bikes the strike.
David Drexler shares video showing the full length of the new Mark Bixby bike/ped path on the International Gateway Bridge, taken on last month’s opening day.
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Gravel Bike California accepts the challenge of biking the Desert X biennial art installation across the “vast & sandy” Coachella Valley in a single day.
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A UC Davis bike rider is on the hunt for a hit-and-run e-cart driver.
And yes, it’s legally hit-and-run if you just cause someone to fall, even without making contact.
Ocean City, New Jersey tabled plans to ban ebikes from the city’s boardwalk, instead creating a committee to study the issue. If they’re anything like Los Angeles, having a committee study something means no one will ever hear about it again.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Pasadena is launching its own ebike rebate program on July 1st, with rebates up to $1,000 for city residents. Meanwhile, Los Angeles hasn’t even discussed any program to get motor vehicles off the streets, with ebikes or otherwise.
Laguna Beach is requiring students to complete an ebike safety course in exchange for a permit to park their bike on campus. Which is a great way to discourage bike commuting, and force people without permits back into cars.
Colorado officially announced their new program to provide ebike rebates for residents earning less than 80% to 100% of their county’s median income. Just the latest city, state or province to provide ebike rebates before California’s vastly underfunded, fomerly-first-in-the-nation program gets off the ground — which should finally happen soon.
Huh? A Columbus, Ohio TV station says many people are priced out of bicycling by the high cost of bikes, even while mentioning a nonprofit shop that sells refurbished bikes for around a hundred bucks. Seriously, cost should never be a barrier to bicycling, when there are countless options for low cost bikes. Or even free ones like the one above.
No wonder nothing ever seems to get done in Los Angeles.
As we’ve seen far too many times, even the most minor improvement can get bogged down in an endless series of public meetings, in which every resident and pass-through driver has an equal voice, no matter how misinformed.
And people who bike, walk or take transit usually don’t count.
Which brings us to former LADOT head and current LA Metro Chief Innovation Officer Seleta Reynolds, who seems to think removing a traffic lane to improve bus headways “without extensive community engagement and consent” is equivalent to bulldozing homes to build freeways.
Never mind that one destroys the residences of people living in underserved communities, while the other simply removes peak hour lanes or street parking to move more people more efficiently.
No wonder so little happened in Los Angeles under her leadership.
I wouldn’t count on a lot of innovation from the LA County transportation agency going forward, either.
While we agree outreach and community engagement is a good thing, to equate installing bike and bus lanes with bulldozing homes through mostly Brown and Black communities to build freeways is an absurdly false equivalence. @seletajewel https://t.co/Mv15wguEeS
LADOT wants your input on the Downtown Mobility Plan, where pedestrians have long been second-class citizens on car-choked streets, and the city is just now forming an actual bike network to safely get you from here to there.
Looks like work is well underway on Pasadena’s Union Street protected bike lane.
This project will provide a 1.5-mile protected bicycle lane along Union Street, from Hill Avenue to Arroyo Parkway. The anticipated completion date is July 2023. For additional project information, visit: https://t.co/rAQiYXWIXchttps://t.co/Z9yHiL56WX
A Palo Alto columnist says plans for a bike on El Camino Real connecting Redwood City, Menlo Park, Palo Alto and Mountain View are a bad idea, because the street is too dangerous for people on bicycles if it keeps parking, and too inconvenient for shoppers who might have to walk a little bit without it. Never mind that bike lanes — particularly protected bike lanes — improve safety for everyone.
National
They get it. Bicycling says the best bike is the one that brings you joy. Unfortunately, you won’t get any joy from reading it if the magazine blocks you, since this one isn’t available anywhere else.
