BikinginLA

You might want to put off that Griffith Park ride for a few weeks.

Or maybe find another route. 

The roads leading to and around the famed Griffith Observatory will be closed to all traffic for the next two weeks for construction work.

And yes, that includes bicycles.

KNBC-4 has a map showing which roads are closed. 

Photo from the Griffith Observatory’s Facebook page.

………

They get it.

Lyft will start sending its customers a notice ten minutes into their rides telling them to watch for bikes and scooters at the end of the ride. 

They’ll also encourage ride hailing users to employ the Dutch Reach when they open the door to get out, to avoid dooring anyone. 

Which only makes sense, since some of those people at risk of dooring could be their own bikeshare and e-scooter users. 

………

No, the solution to traffic safety is not to make bike riders and pedestrians wear transponders so we don’t get killed. 

But congratulations to a pair of Florida university students who won second place with the idea. 

Now, if they could just invent one to create a force field that would repel any motor vehicle that came within three feet of me and my bike, I’m in. 

………

More on the heartbreaking death of DC bike advocate Dave Salovesh. 

A DC website gives a glimpse of just how much his death impacted the city, including a statement from the local Bicycle Advisory Council, as well as comments from a number of city council members. 

The Greater Greater Washington website relays the grief of the bicycling community. 

Streetsblog says Salovesh’s death shows the slow progress DC is making towards safer streets. 

DCist says frankly, it’s personal this time, as the cycling community ramps up activism in the wake of the crash. 

An American expat and former DC resident now living in the Netherlands talks about the loss of her friend.

And a woman writes that no one should lose a friend to a traffic crash. 

Meanwhile, an advocacy group will hold a Portland, Oregon rally calling for no more traffic deaths after a woman was killed crossing the street. 

Sadly, things like that happen in Los Angeles nearly every day. But except in very rare cases, no one does a thing. 

That has to change. 

Now. 

………

Local

A gang member convicted of killing an LA cop was found dead in his Death Row cell Saturday morning; he was convicted of killing Los Angeles County Office of Public Safety Capt. Michael Sparkes while the off-duty officer was out for a bike ride. 

A writer for Wired says your cellphone could help Metro with a radical remake of the LA bus system, showing when, where and how far Angelenos actually travel, regardless of mode; surprisingly, it shows that only 16% of trips in the city are longer than ten miles. 

Bicycling looks at LA’s new plan to install permanent signs as memorials to fallen bike riders. 

LA Taco wants to know if you can live without your car for a day. 

After moving from New York to Pasadena, a bike commuter suddenly finds his coworkers riding to work because they didn’t want him to show them up. 

A chef at Gladstones in Long Beach is riding in this year’s 300-mile Chefs Cycle for No Kid Hungry.

 

State

The Santa Ana River bike trail will be closed off and on for the demolition of a bridge on the 405 where it crosses the river; OCTA promises there will be a well-marked detour in place when the trail shuts down. 

An arrest has been made in the hit-and-run crash that killed a Jurupa Valley bike rider Saturday night. 

A man ran off after he was caught spray painting a bike path on the Santa Barbara City College. No word on what he was painting. 

A San Francisco columnist says the best of the outdoors is always a surprise after encountering a pride of peacocks while riding with his wife. 

You’ve got to be kidding. The case against a 75-year old Healdsburg driver for killing a bike rider ended in a hung jury — even though the man was driving on the wrong side of the road to pass a slow-moving truck when he struck the woman as she was participating in a charity ride. 

 

National

Great idea. In addition to rating cities for bike friendliness, People for Bikes is now providing user generated bike routes in cities around the US. You can download the app here. Do I really need to mention that the bicycle advocacy  group ranks my hometown as the country’s best bike city. Which only happened decades after my last ride there. 

A website devoted to fighting poverty says fining poor people for jaywalking won’t stop traffic fatalities when the real problem is dangerous streets and drivers.

Bike Portland’s Jonathan Maus explains why Oregon should adopt the Idaho Stop Law the third time around. The same argument holds for California. And pretty well everywhere else. 

No bias here. After a woman drives onto the shoulder of a highway and kills a man on a bike, the Idaho state police feel compelled to point out that he wasn’t wearing a helmet, as if that somehow contributed to the crash. And at highway speeds, a crash like that probably wouldn’t have been survivable, with or without one. 

Houston is adding 19 miles of bike lanes, many in underserved communities where people rely on their bikes to get around. 

Speaking of Houston, there’s a special place in hell for the bike-riding man who stole a 94-year old woman’s wheelchair. Fortunately, her neighbor was able to record the theft, and chase the man down to get it back; police recognized the man in the video, and made a quick arrest. 

Bicycling will now be an official part of PE classes in Tulsa OK elementary and middle schools. 

Los Angeles bike riders will be happy to learn bike lanes are coming to Melrose. Except in this case, the Melrose is in the Boston area. Meanwhile, the Boston Globe says instead of redesigning streets for people on bikes and on foot, we should wait so they’ll accommodate vehicles that don’t even exist yet.

The NYPD continued its bike-unfriendly ways, arresting the organizer of an informal bike relay race and baked goods ride for a four-year old open container violation before the race could even start. Then confiscated participants bicycles for not having bike bells. 

New York Streetsblog relates the story of a bike rider who was hit by an apparent cop in an unmarked car making an illegal U-turn, and the uniformed cops who showed up refused to do anything about it before the man drove off without identifying himself. Naturally, the NYPD denied he was one of theirs. 

New York bikeshare users are getting lawyers after suffering “grotesque” injuries caused by the braking problem on ebikes provided by Lyft, which operates the city’s Citi Bike docked bikeshare. 

The case against a Virginia landscaper will go before a grand jury; he’s accused of helping one of his employees coverup the hit-and-run that killed a bike rider, fixing the company truck and telling his staff to swear it was a deer. And to stick to their stories. 

There’s a special place in hell as well for the 41-year old man who fatally shot a 14-year old Jackson MS boy to take his bicycle. 

Jimmy Buffett’s hometown of Mobile, Alabama is getting a new green bike lane, as the mayor works to make the city’s waterfront more welcoming for bike riders and pedestrians. 

A Georgia bike rider was busted for beating up another man who was riding on a bike path with his wife, after swearing at them about the “rules of the trail.”

 

International

Once again, dozens of dockless bikes end up in a trash heap, after a bikeshare provider in Kingston, Ontario replaces them with a newer model. And once again, dozens of kids and low income people who could have put them to good use won’t. 

A writer for the New York Times rents a Dutch bike, and rides through Holland in search of Rembrandt’s tulips.

A New Zealand automotive website wants to know why Aukland is hiding crash data.  

Chinese dockless bikeshare provider Ofo has officially gotten the boot from Singapore. 

 

Finally…

From pro cyclist to Goblin-inducing healer. No, a 16-person boat is not a bike, pedal-powered or otherwise. 

And if you’re riding drunk, try not to pound on a driver’s window and rip off a windshield wiper after a close pass. 

Then again, don’t do it sober, either.