Trek says it’s time to take a break from driving to the market and building picnic tables for squirrels, and buy an ebike.
No, seriously, it’s worth watching.
You might get the best smile you’ll have all day.
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This is who we used to share the road with.
Sadly, some things never change.
Twitter post
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NACTO celebrates Black History Month by sharing a tweet from last year about a little-known Black inventor who helped make all those kids and adult trikes possible.
Spokane WA bike riders say winter riding isn’t for the faint of heart, especially with the city’s lack of good infrastructure. Something LA bike riders can relate to, where the bike network sucks and winter daytime temperatures sometimes drop all the way to the 60s. Brrrrrrr.
In yet another case of authorities keeping a dangerous driver on the road until it’s too late, a two-time hit-and-run driver in Florida made it three when he was arrested for leaving the scene after killing a bike rider nearly a year ago — then deliberately crashed his truck again to hide the damage from the hit-and-run.
International
Proving once again it’s not just an American problem, English police are looking for a hit-and-run driver who t-boned a bike-riding woman in her 50s, in a crash caught on a cringeworthy security cam video. As usual with stories like this, be sure you really want to see it before you click on the video, because you can’t unsee it.
Thankfully, that led to my first haircut in three months, before I was forced to become a hermit and move to a shack in Montana.
Which doesn’t sound all that bad, given the year we’ve all had.
So thanks to everyone who opened their hearts and wallets to help keep Southern California’s best source for bike news and advocacy coming to your favorite device every morning.
Life is even cheaper for the driver who walked with community service for killing a bike-riding father, after playing the universal Get Out of Jail Free card of claiming the sun was in his eyes; the victim’s wife insists “picking up litter is not justice” for taking a human life.
Thanks to Arthur B, Eric L, John C, Stephen T, David R, Michael S, the Muir’s , Michael F, Paul F, Andrew G, Alan C, Mike B, Andrew B, Mark J, Robert K, Glenn C, Theodore F, Domus P, Patrick J. M, Michael C, Lisa G and Michael V for their very generous support to help keep bringing SoCal’s best bike news and advocacy you way every day!
Be safe, and stay healthy. And wear a mask, already.
September 29, 2020 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Lyft e-bikeshare coming to Santa Monica, Arroyo Seco bike path finally patched, and new survey on bike helmet laws
E-bikeshare is back in Santa Monica, following the demise of Jump Bikes after their sale to Lime earlier this year.
The bikes will be docked at the existing Breeze bikeshare docks, after Santa Monica’s municipal bikeshare bites the dust this November, eventually expanding to 500 bikes.
Here’s what the company has to say.
The new ebikes allow riders to travel around Santa Monica and West Los Angeles with less effort. When the rider pedals, the ebikes use a small electric motor to boost the rider’s pedal power, making longer trips easier and more accessible. Users will be able to rent ebikes in the Lyft app for $1 to unlock and $0.34 per minute – just scan the QR code and go. Riders can lock the bikes to any one of 80 Breeze stations with the attached cable, or to any public bike rack within the service area for an extra $1. For more about pricing and service area, visit the Lyft website…
Lyft also offers a Community Pass for bikes and scooters in Santa Monica. The Lyft Community Pass is a reduced-fare membership program for qualifying residents of Santa Monica and LA. Membership costs $5/month and includes discounted ebike rides at $0.05/min. The Community Pass program is available to residents ages 18 and older who qualify for the Big Blue Bus Low Income Fare is Easy (LIFE) program, Calfresh, Medicaid, SNAP, or the SCE Energy Savings Assistance Program and to qualifying Santa Monica Community College students.
Correction: I originally wrote that Jump had been acquired by Lyft, but they were actually purchased by Lime. My apologies for the error.
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Speaking of Santa Monica, David Drexler confirms that the 5 mph speed limit signs have been removed from the newly widened beachfront Marvin Braude bike path through the city.
As we noted last week, the signs with the ridiculously low speed limit were installed temporarily as part of a construction project.
The lengthy delay in getting it fixed could stem from the mishmash of public agencies involved in the repair work, including, but possibly not limited to,
LADOT
Bureau of Engineering
Board of Public Works
LA County
Regional Water Quality Control Board
StreetsLA (nee Bureau of Street Services)
Maybe someone should form a single umbrella agency to manage the city and county river channel bikeways so it doesn’t take the local equivalent of a UN Security Council negotiation every time something goes wrong.
I’m told credit goes to LA Bicycle Advisory Committee member John Laue for getting this done.
You may remember Christopher Kidd from his days running the LADOT Bike Blog, which is about the last time the agency communicated effectively to the general public.
Since then, he’s been building a successful career as a Complete Streets planner in the Bay Area.
Washington bike riders will now be able to treat stop signs as yields, as the state becomes just the latest to adopt a modified form of the Idaho Stop Law. California should join Oregon and Washington in adopting the law, making it uniform throughout the West Coast.
A Nebraska bike nonprofit is looking for a new home after losing their current location; the organization rescues and restores bicycles, and allows at-risk kids to work on them to earn their first bikes.
Cycling Weekly offers advice on how to keep your bike safe at home. My best advice is to keep your bike inside your home if at all possible; if you have to use a garage, make sure it’s locked to something that’s secretly anchored.
Stardom has changed life for the better for the 15-year old Indian girl who rode a bike over 700 miles to carry her injured father home earlier this year; she now has a new home, eight bikes, two possible movie deals and an offer to train with the national cycling team when the pandemic loses its grip.
LA Mayor Eric Garcetti announced the opening of the new 5th and 6th Street bus lanes and protected bike lanes in Downtown LA yesterday.
Although he seemed to forget the work of Skid Row residents and advocates in fighting for safe bikeways through the crowded city corridor most Angelenos prefer to avoid.
As well as taking credit for street improvements that don’t seem to be happening anywhere else outside of DTLA.
Although anything that’s throttle controlled or travels faster than 28 mph requires a driver’s license, registration and a helmet under California law.
And said maybe he should have read the manual first.
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This one made me smile.
Najari Smith, the founder of Richmond’s nonprofit Rich City Rides bike co-op, made the announcement that he’s running for the local city council this fall.
Like LA’s East Side Riders Bike Club, Smith works through the co-op to aid local youths and uplift the community, as well as helping people get on bikes who might not otherwise be able to afford it.
Self talks with a couple of experts to recommend the best bikes for women. Not that their experts don’t know what they’re talking about. But there are countless others — including more than just one woman — they could have spoken with who know as much or more about the particular needs of women riders.
A Kentucky newspaper trots out a long-discredited stat to argue for a mandatory bike helmet law, calling them “a cyclist’s best line of defense,” without distinguishing between adults and children. No, the best defense is avoiding crashes in the first place through safe riding techniques, defensive bicycling and better infrastructure; helmets should always be seen as the last line of defense when all else fails. And they’re only designed to protect against slow speed falls, not high speed impacts.
Streetsblogquestions whether it’s time for the US to adopt the Madrid Model of sandwiching bike lanes — or rather, slow vehicle lanes — between higher speed traffic lanes, saying it’s already showing safety improvements by moving riders from the edge of the roadway.
An Indian writer calls for a bicycle revolution to “drastically change the socio-economic and demographic distribution” of bicyclists, in a country where bike use is too often limited to the poorest households.
Doctors continue to say Dutch pro Fabio Jakobsen could return to racing if he wants, while predicting a long and arduous path to recover from the injuries he suffered in the Tour of Poland; speaking and eating will be a challenge, along with “aesthetic damage” to his face.
Let’s start with this note from frequent link contributor Victor Bale.
I needed a break from the heat of the Coachella Valley so I spent Thursday thru today at the Balboa Peninsula of Newport Beach. I rode the length of the boardwalk all the way to Sunset Beach and other bike trails every day and I was struck by how many ebikes I saw. They were everywhere and here’s a couple of thoughts.
I love that ebikes are bringing new blood to the sport but I was bothered by the recklessness of “some” of the cyclists.
Many were traveling at speeds totally inappropriate (the speed limit on the boardwalk is 8 MPH) to a narrow boardwalk full of families walking, cyclists on beach cruisers, very young kids cycling or on scooters and seniors out for a lesurely stroll.
I watched as a young man knocked over a woman riding a beach cruiser. No harm to her other than road rash but she was lucky. When he passed me he was using throttle only and exceeding 20 MPH. I watched as people were cut off. I watched as ebikes rode on the boardwalk paperboy style at high speeds just to show off. It was crazy. I’m surprised high profile accidents haven’t happened yet.
Nobody likes onerous regulations and enforcement but I worry about what the future will bring if something isn’t done now about regulating ebikes and ebike usage. It’s only a matter of time before an ebike rider kills a pedestrian (if it hasn’t happened already).
Take that as a warning.
Coastal cities have cracked down on bike riders exceeding the admittedly exceedingly low speed limits on the beachfront boardwalks. And will undoubtedly do it again if they think things are getting out of control.
Never mind that it takes a major jerk to zip blithely along while putting everyone else at risk.
And while I’m not aware of anyone being killed or seriously injured by an ebike rider in Southern California, it has happened in other cities.
There’s something seriously wrong when a movie critic for the LA Times equates an “[expletive], entitled bicyclist who scuffs Buggin’ Out’s pristine Jordans,” with cops killing Black men with chokeholds.
Maybe someone should tell him there’s a difference between being an obnoxious jerk and, you know, actually killing someone.
Or maybe the Times should just do the right thing and remove this one.
Thanks to Sean Meredith for the heads-up.
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If you can’t afford to fix your bike, Pasadena wants to help.
Twitter post
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The Black Lives Matter movement isn’t stopping, with at least two bike rides to honor Breonna Taylor this weekend, in Richmond VA and Grand Rapids MI.
There was a similar ride in Los Angeles over the weekend, but it doesn’t seem to be online yet.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
An ugly incident caught on video, as a couple of bicyclists confronted a Florida driver who passed too close, and told them to stay the fuck off the road — and brandished a gun as he got out of his SUV. Or maybe not; it’s possible he was just putting it in his pocket as he got out, as he claimed.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Caltrans and Malibu will host a Zoom meeting Wednesday evening to discuss replacing the narrow bridge over Trancas Creek on PCH, including bike lanes and shoulders in both directions, as well as a westbound right turn lane onto Trancas Canyon Road.
Forbessuggests the best bikewear and accessories for women, apparently based on the mistaken assumption that everyone wants to sport spandex and ride roadies. And despite what the caption says, a bicycle is all you really need to start riding. So don’t let that other crap get in your way; you can always get it later if you want.
A New Zealand woman tells drivers an extra minute won’t kill them, but it could kill someone else — like it did her late husband, who died five days after he was run down by a truck driver. They’d been riding together ever since they met while bicycling across Canada 23 years ago; now she doesn’t know how she can ride again without him.
April 3, 2020 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Funds pour in to aid cargo bike mugging victim, ebike maker donates medical masks, and bikes are bliss on two wheels
Let’s start with a little good news for a change.
Because there are still a lot of very kind and generous people in this world.
Speaking of generous people, I was happy to find this announcement in my inbox yesterday.
Luis Razo, Manager of Operations at Aventon Bicycles, an Ontario, California-based E-bike manufacturer & retailer, says the community has supported the company, so now it’s time to give back four thousand surgical masks and one thousand N95 masks to Loma Linda University Medical Center and Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center, where supplies are running short.
The company will also donate two E-bikes to Loma Linda University Medical Center. It’s a personal mission for Luis Razo. His wife Gracie is an RN at Loma Linda Hospital, on the front lines of this pandemic.
Nice to see so many members of the bike industry pitching in to help when our entire world is in crisis.
Of all avocations, riding a bike is, almost beyond dispute, the finest. With endorphins and all, it is as much exercise for the brain as the heart, lungs or legs, a way to solve all the world’s problems while seeing the world.
Which is about as good a description as I’ve ever come up with.
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Phil Gaimon remembers what it was like to ride with other people.
A San Jose man writes in to complain that Millennials and their dogs are ruining bike trails for everyone else. Seriously? There are just as many jerk and jackass Baby Boomer and GenXers as there are Millennials — and just as many kind and considerate people, too. It’s no more fair or accurate to blame every member of any generation for the actions of a few than it is any other social, ethnic or religious group.
After the country went into a coronavirus lockdown, New Zealand’s Health Minister stirred up controversy by bending, if not breaking, the rules by driving to get out for a mountain bike ride.
While I’m told the first South LA CicLAvia had a smaller turnout than some of the other CicLAvias, several people have said it was one of their favorites.
Unfortunately, I missed it when I was first diagnosed with diabetes and neuropathy. I don’t plan on letting that happen again.
Whether this tragic shooting was justified will undoubtedly hinge on the officer’s dash cam and body cam videos, and whether they show the victim brandishing the part like a gun, or merely holding it in his hand.
Either way, it once again points to our society’s continuing failure to care for the homeless and mentally ill.
Thanks to everyone who sent this for the heads-up.
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You might need to find another route through Culver City to the coast for the next three weeks.
Twitter post
During January 21 through February 14 certain bike path entrances/exits will be closed due to a site improvement project. The schedule is below:
January 21 – January 24: East Sepulveda Bike Path Entrance/Exit
January 27 – January 31: Overland West Bike Path Entrance/Exit
February 3 – February 7: Overland East Bike Path Entrance/Exit
February 10 – February 14: Duquesne Avenue Bike Path Entrance/Exit
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Evidently, I’m a bad influence on my local neighborhood council members.
Twitter post
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Once again, authorities do their best to keep a dangerous driver on the streets until it’s too late, as Chris Willig forwards news of a Bay Area man who was busted for drunk driving – while he was out on parole for his 11th DUI.
Yes, eleven.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps going on.
A Long Beach man is on trial for murder after shooting another man in the face during an argument over a bicycle and which of them owned it. Once again, no bicycle is worth your life; if it comes down to that, just let them take it. And no bicycle is worth killing for, either. Thanks to John Damman for the tip.
About damn time. A Colorado state senator proposes a bill that would give people on bicycles the unquestioned right-of-way in a bike lane. There’s simply no excuse for making bike riders second-class citizens in our own traffic lanes. So how about doing the same thing here in California?
The Scottish round-the-world cyclist who was nearly killed when he was run down by a Texas driver should finally be flying home this week, despite a fractured skull.
Life is cheap in Wales, where a driver got just 27 months behind bars when detectives tracked her down for fleeing the scene after slamming her car into four family members riding their bikes, seriously injuring three of them — including one woman who nearly died from a pair of heart attacks while waiting for paramedics.
Scottish bicyclists took matters and rakes into their own hands to remove dangerously slick leaves from a bike path, doing in two hours what the local government couldn’t get done in four months.
January 6, 2020 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: Bike rider watches plane fall from sky, trade your car for an ebike, and this is who we share the roads with
We have a lot to catch up on today. So grab some coffee, make yourself comfortable, and lets get started.
Image by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay. It will make more sense when you scroll down a little.
A Hermosa Beach man decided it was too stressful to sit facing the Strand bike path after watching an elderly bike rider get injured in a crash with another rider. So now he sits under the Pier Plaza clock every afternoon.
State
A state-ordered analysis of traffic stops shows that Driving While Black is a real phenomenon, with black drivers accounting for to 15% of all traffic stops in California, despite making up just 6% of the state’s population. I haven’t heard many similar complaints about people of color stopped for biking while black or brown; if you believe you’ve been a victim of a traffic stop because of your race, I’d like to hear from you.
A 25-year old man will face vehicular manslaughter and hit-and-run charges in the death of a Fremont man who was riding his bike to work at Facebook last August. Thanks to Ralph Durham for the heads-up; nice to see he’s still coming here, even though he does his riding in Germany these days.
Bike Snob wants you to try building your own wheels.I built the steel-rimmed wheels on my previous bike, and rode them for 25 years. Unlike the composite Bontrager wheels on my current LeMond, which have been replaced four times in the 15 years I’ve had it. And should be again when I get the extra money.
A Baltimore bicyclist was the victim of a bizarre bike theft when he got into a dispute over paying for having his car’s windshield cleaned by a teenager with a squeegee, and another boy ran up and stole the high-end bike off his car’s rack. Another reminder to always lock your bike to the rack whenever you transport it. And register it, already.
He gets it. An English city councilor says elected leaders have to make unpopular decisions to get people out of their cars and onto bicycles. There will always be opposition to any changes to the streets, no matter how beneficial they are; elected leaders need to be willing to take the heat for doing the right things until they prove popular in the long run. Unlike, say, LA’s city leaders.
Extremely forgiving Scottish round-the world bicyclist Josh Quigley says he’s glad a Texas driver won’t face any charges after the crash that left him with a punctured lung and ten broken ribs, as well as a factored skull, pelvis and ankle.
Even though the door officially closed on the 5th Annual BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive before Christmas Eve, some very kindhearted people pried it back open anyway.
So thanks to Plurabelle Books, Phillip Y and Michael D for their generous contributions to help keep SoCal’s best bike news and advocacy coming your way every day.
Thanks to their last-minute gifts, we hit record 61 donations totaling $2,567, topping last year’s total of nearly $2,500.
To put that in perspective, that represents nearly 25% of my total income for all of last year.
Reports from the scene indicate that the workers lay in wait for him and grabbed his handlebars without warning, knocking Dlamini off his bike.
Thinking he was being robbed — not an unusual occurrence for South African cyclists — he tried to grab his damaged bike back, leading his attackers to conclude he was resisting arrest.
With predictable results.
Note: You can literally hear the bone in Dlamini’s arm snap in the flowing video, so you may not want to view this if you’re squeamish. Or at least turn the sound down.
He gets it. A police sergeant and CyclingSavvy instructor says no law requires you to endanger yourself, so stay out of the door zone. Just try explaining that to some of his less-enlightened compatriots, though.
A self-professed Portland driver, off-roader, motorcyclist, bicyclist, runner and pedestrian says the city should end its war on cars, somehow mistaking carving out a little room for his other means of transportation as an attack on the first one.
Heartbreaking story from Florida, where a family marked what should have been a little girl’s second birthday. She was killed on a family bike ride when a driver, stoned on coke, fentanyl and a laundry list of other drugs, jumped the curb and ran them down on the sidewalk; six months later, her father remains hospitalized with a brain injury
Here’s a few more rides for your bike bucket list, as Atlas Obscuragets rolling on seven “dreamy” European bike paths. Soon to be six, since the UK has decided it doesn’t want to be part of Europe anymore.
That almost catches us up on everything we missed during my annual sabbatical. I’m going to keep my promise to actually try to get some sleep every now and then; we’ll catch up on the rest tomorrow.
I doubt I have to tell you Thanksgiving is coming.
Which means the unofficial holiday dedicated to worshiping unbridled consumerism and spending will inevitably follow, as day follows night, and doping allegations follow cyclists.
Get out and ride your bike instead, to burn off that Thanksgiving dinner and restore some semblance of post-holiday sanity, then go spend some money at your local bike shop the next day for Small Business Saturday.
Speaking of which, a few years back, David Kool, owner of Santa Monica Mountains Cyclery, wrote what remains the best explanation I’ve seen for why supporting your local bike shop matters.
Once again forgetting the lessons of induced demand, a Sacramento-area highway project would remove bike lanes from a causeway to widen I-80, replacing them with a separate bike/ped crossing. Thanks to Megan Lynch for the tip.
National
Somehow we missed this one, as The Verge ranks the transportation modes in the Wizard of Oz; surprisingly, the bicycle came in second behind the ruby slippers. Personally, I would have gone with the witch’s flying broom. And maybe toss in a few of those flying monkeys, too.
Palm Beach FL authorities make an extremely belated arrest in a six-year old case where a driver killed a homeless vet riding a bicycle, while traveling at twice the speed limit. And tried to let the woman he was with take the blame. Be forewarned, this was a horrifying crash, and the story gives a graphic description of it.
