Tag Archive for ebikes

Morning Links: South African cyclist assaulted by park rangers, NY ebike bill vetoed, and thirsty koala begs a sip

January 2, 2020 / / 2 comments

I take it back.

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. 

So thank you all, from the bottom of my heart. 

Photo by Juan Pablo Serrano Arenas from Pexels.

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NTT pro cyclist Nic Dlamini, one of the few black cyclists on the WorldTour, had his arm broken by South African national park workers — apparently for failing to pay a $6.40 entry fee.

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.

Meanwhile, a witness says he was disgusted by the way Dlamini was manhandled; his injury could affect his racing schedule for the coming year, as well as preparations for the 2020 Olympics.

Thanks to Megan Lynch for the heads-up.

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Proving he has no idea what he’s doing — or maybe trying to outdo the windshield bias of former CA Governor Jerry Brown — NY Governor Andrew Cuomo vetoed a bill that would have belatedly legalized ebikes in the Empire State.

Mostly because it didn’t include a provision requiring helmets for ebike users, even though they aren’t required for any other adult bicyclists in the state, no matter how fast they ride.

And even though many, if not most, other states have managed to legalize ebikes without undue restrictions on bikes that travel below 28 mph.

And even though the current ban hurts lower income, mostly immigrant food delivery workers the most.

While the bill passed by overwhelming, veto-proof margins, it’s unlikely to be overridden because the legislature would have to be called back in to special session.

Meanwhile, a new study shows ebike riders are more likely to suffer internal injuries.

Which helmets ain’t gonna help.

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Proof that something can be too cute and too sad at the same time.

A koala in fire-scarred Australia flags down a bicyclist, and climbs her bike to share a little water on a 104° day.

But at least the little guy knew who to turn to for help.

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It may not be about bicycling.

But take a few minutes to read this hard-hitting, painful piece from Tamika Butler about how to survive in the planning community when you’re young, black and queer.

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Proof that Vision Zero can work.

But only if elected leaders have the courage to stand up to drivers to make real changes.

Hint: Ours apparently don’t.

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

A British woman was lucky to escape without serious injuries when she crashed into barbwire someone had strung across a bike path.

No bias here. A clickbait website lists 20 things that “guys riding bicycles” do that drivers can’t stand, including just about everything this side of merely existing.

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‘Tis the Season.

Apparently, the giving isn’t over yet.

The Pasadena Police Department teamed with the Salvation Army and Pasadena Rotary Club to give 250 new bikes to local kids this year.

Kindhearted officers with the Seal Beach police union bought a new bike and helmet for a man after a thief pushed him off his bike and into traffic, before making off with his bicycle; police arrested the suspect a short distance away.

And ex-pro Phil Gaimon kicks off a great thread of kids enjoying their new bikes this year; just click on the tweet and scroll down.

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We’ve still got a lot of ground to cover. So maybe we should just take a brief corgi break before moving on, courtesy of Mike Cane.

There. Doesn’t that feel better?

………

Local

The LAPD says they’re focusing on six Westside intersections that have seen an uptick in car crashes, including three each on Santa Monica and Sepulveda Blvds. Which would suggest that those corridors aren’t exactly safe for people on bicycles, either.

Apparently trying out for a job at the Onion, a Venice columnist insists that people who are able to bike or walk to work thanks to increased density will be more likely to die of strokes because of a lack of green space.

A writer for Bike Radar rides a $30 refurbished Univega from LA’s Bicycle Kitchen 130 miles to Tijuana to attend a worldwide gathering of DIY bicycle workshops, calling it the wrong bike for the right job. Let’s just say she’s not a fan of friction shifting.

CiclaValley celebrates one million vertical feet of climbing this year.

 

State

As of yesterday, you no longer have to merge to the left at an intersection when a bike lane becomes a right turn lane, or vice versa. But don’t try eating roadkill just yet.

California somehow continues to believe a slap on the wrist will change driver behavior, as drivers will now be charged a single point against their license for using a handheld cellphone — but only after the second offense in 36 months.

A San Diego bike rider suffered “significant” injuries when he was struck by a vehicle, which apparently didn’t have a driver. At least according to the news report.

It looks like justice denied in Bonsall, where the CHP apparently concluded that an experienced bike rider would somehow swerve into traffic without looking while surrounded by drivers traveling at highway speeds.

A Cambria writer takes up riding an ebike as an alternative to driving, and discovers he “had no idea how dangerous it is for people riding a bike” until he was one of them.

Note to self: Don’t ride around Bakersfield with a shotgun in your pants.

 

National

In a case of life imitating art — or advertising, anyway — the actor who played the husband in the infamous Peloton holiday ad gave one to his own girlfriend for Christmas. No word on whether she left him because of it, like one version of her fictional counterpart.

Streetsblog USA announces the winners of their simultaneously serious and tongue-in-cheek national Streetsie Awards, including a gridlock tweet from LA Times transportation beat reporter Laura Nelson.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is one of us. Although he might want to save that helmet for the upcoming impeachment trial, when things are likely to get rough.

A writer for Outside says she loved bike touring — until she decided to do it for a living.

How to carry your full-sized golden retriever with you on your bike.

Harvard Business Review examines why it’s so hard to change people’s commuting behavior; Treehugger laments how will we ever get people out of their cars?

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.

Your next wall rack could look like you just bagged and mounted a bike seat. Although I’m not sure just what message that sends.

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.

Oregon became the latest state to adopt a modified version of the Idaho Stop Law, allowing bike riders to treat stop signs as yields; a Portland TV station compares it to drivers rolling stop signs, except it’s for bikesl.

Well, that’s one problem we don’t usually have in Los Angeles, as Colorado beavers flood a popular Denver bike path.

Cowboy hats off to Wyoming, for claiming the title as the nation’s worst state for bike riders and pedestrians.

Once again, a bike rider’s around-the-world journey was cut short when he was run down by an American driver. A Scottish rider making his eighth attempt to circumnavigate the globe was run down from behind at 70 mph by a 60-year old woman in Texas, leaving him with 10 broken ribs, a fractured skull, pelvis and ankle, and a punctured lung. Needless to say, investigators conclude it was just an oopsie, harm but no foul.

Great idea. Michigan advocates are putting the cycle back in recycling, pedaling Christmas trees to the city’s drop-off site for a $25 donation. 

Nearly three times the number of bike riders were killed in New York this year compared to 2018, the highest rate in 20 years; the New York Times questions what went wrong with the city’s Vision Zero.

New York bicyclists are now legally allowed to start crossing an intersection during the Leading Pedestrian Interval, giving them a few seconds head start on motorists. Let’s hope that spreads here.

More proof that it it’s paved, someone will try to drive in it like this New York driver.

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

 

International

The Guardian says shifting to e-cars isn’t enough — if we’re serious about fighting climate change, it will take a shift away from car culture.

Here’s a few more rides for your bike bucket list, as Atlas Obscura gets 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.

BoJo used to be one of us. But no more, as the British prime minister’s girlfriend gives him a new offroad motorbike after security officials take his bicycle away.

A former drug addict in the UK is honored for turning his life around after becoming a bike mechanic.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo takes the lead on fighting climate change, as the city’s newly built network of bike lanes is already transforming the city; it’s the new way to get around the City of Lights, with bicycling rates up 54% in just one year. Let’s just hope LA’s climate mayor is taking notes.

 

Competitive Cycling

LA Parent discusses the Youth Cycling Association, dedicated to building the next generation of competitive cyclists.

Look’s new track bike promises to give riders a full bike-length advantage in a 200 meter sprint.

Cycling Weekly looks back on the top ten cycling news stories from 2019.

Bicycling considers how to take the race out of bike racing.

Former pro mountain bike champ Amanda Batty says going downhill fast was the least risky thing she ever did.

Swiss pro mountain biker Jolanda Neff will be competing without a spleen from now on, after suffering life-threatening injuries in a harrowing crash in North Carolina.

 

Finally…

Sometimes, a tumbleweed can be a bike riders best friend. Now you, too, can ride your bike in a CBD-infused bodysuit — which may or may not be a good idea.

And it only makes sense that the keeper of the Nice and Naughty lists would be one of us, too.

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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.

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

Morning Links: F*** Black Friday & and support your LBS instead, ebiking clergy, and handicapped people ride bikes too

November 25, 2019 / / One comment

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.

Which is why a writer for Outside clues you in on tested and approved Black Friday deals for bike riders.

But seriously, screw Black Friday.

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.

Maybe you’ll find some of these things to kick off your holiday shopping.

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.

Because it does.

Photo by Michael Gaida from Pixabay.

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A surprising common theme today: Ebikes and the clergy.

Starting with a Sacramento nun who combines her love of bicycling with her vocation to serve those in need, riding her ped-assist adult tricycle to perform outreach to the homeless.

Then there’s this Brooklyn priest, who’s nearly as evangelical about his ebike as he is the church.

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Carry this one with you to your next public meeting, when someone will inevitably insist that handicapped people can’t ride bicycles.

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This one from Spain is scary as hell. And naturally, the driver flees the scene afterwards.

https://twitter.com/Bicicleto_ZGZ/status/1198664909153812489

Maybe they forgot to make eye contact.

Let’s just hope the victim is okay.

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It’s our first ‘Tis the Season of this year’s holiday season.

And more than one.

The bighearted owners of a Santa Maria gym are raising funds for a bike rider who’s learning to walk again after losing the use of his arms and legs in a bicycling crash.

Around a thousand volunteers turned out in San Jose on Saturday to build 2,400 bikes as holiday gifts for low income kids.

Tennessee community members turned out in force to raise $2,000 to buy an adaptive tricycle for a four-year old kid suffering from an extremely rare gene disorder.

It’s not unusual for a cop to make a woman cry. Except in this case, it was a kindhearted Louisville KY cop who dug into his own pocket to buy her a new bicycle, just 20 minutes after she told him the bike she used as her only form of transportation had been stolen.

A Louisville KY radio station held its annual bike collection drive and bike build to ensure around 2,000 children will have a happy holiday season.

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

A Birmingham, England bicyclist became just the latest victim of that country’s recent anti-bike terrorist fad of pushing people off their bikes from a passing car, shattering his arm and destroying his bicycle in the process.

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Local

Government Technology says the recent CoMotion LA conference pushed attendees to rethink the nature of mobility in a city with fewer cars.

LAist explains how Santa Monica brought order to the city’s e-scooter chaos.

 

State

The San Diego Association of Governments, aka SANDAG, is giving you a chance to put you money where your passion is, offering $3,000 mini-grants for “local programs and organizations that encourage people to choose biking as their main form of transportation.”

San Diego could be the next landing spot for Brooklyn-based Revel’s dockless, Vespa-style mo-peds; one EPA scientist says “I hope Revel users have signed their organ donor cards.” Because that sort of extreme safety judgement is exactly what the EPA does, right?

A San Diego family estimates they’ve saved as much as $150,000 by trading their cars for bikes and transit.

The annual Eroica California vintage bike ride will return to Cambria next April — assuming it can find a new home.

San Francisco’s new transportation chief wants to create a city where cars are no longer king.

Berkeley is working on its own Vision Zero plan, with a goal of eliminating traffic deaths and injuries by 2028.

Sad news from Sacramento, where a homeless bike rider was killed by a hit-and-run driver, who may have been seen swerving all over the road.

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.

Arizona’s annual El Tour de Tucson rolled on Saturday with nearly 6,000 participants, including former congresswoman and gunshot survivor Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, former astronaut and possible future senator Mark Kelly. Another participant was riding after suffering multiple skull fractures and a collapsed lung last year while training for the ride.

The newly elected mayor of Lewiston, Maine, hit a woman walking in a crosswalk with his van two weeks before the election. So naturally, it’s people riding a bicycle and a scooter in the bike lane who get the blame.

A Manhattan bike messenger shares a bike rider’s view of the streets after getting $240 worth of tickets for riding though a yellow light.

A Long Island writer tells the tale of Mile-A-Minute Murphy, who set the first bicycling world speed record by riding 61 miles an hour while drafting — and crashing into — a train.

DCist tries to crack the city’s #2 case, talking with a repeat poop smearer to try to answer why someone has been smearing crap of unknown origin on bikeshare bikes and scooters for the last few weeks.

Los Angeles continues to fall further behind the rest of the country, as Washington, DC commits to building 20 miles of protected bike lanes over the next three years.

Chris Pratt is one of us, going for a “brisk” Atlanta bike ride with semi-famous wife Katherine Schwarzenegger.

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.

 

International

Travel & Leisure says cities around the world are cracking down on e-scooters; CNN agrees, saying scooters could be running into serious trouble, in part because they disproportionately affect people with disabilities.

Cyclist says don’t let winter weather keep you from riding. Especially here in LA, where temperatures sometimes drop all the way into the 60s. Brrrrr.

Game of Thrones star Kit Harrington is credited with saving a woman’s bike from thieves, noticing she’d left it unlocked and carrying it into the pub where she worked.

There’s a special place in hell for anyone who would steal a ghost bike; a British Columbia writer found a stolen ghost bike that had been stripped of its wheels, not far from where the victim had been killed.

A British Columbia city councilor says forget drive-thrus, what the world really needs is a few good bike-thru restaurants because bicycles run on calories.

I come across a lot of horrible news, but this is the worst I’ve seen in years, as heartless Toronto motorists continued to drive around a hit-and-run victim as she lay dying in the street next to her bicycle.

Life is cheap on Canada’s Prince Edward Island, where a speeding driver got a whole two years behind bars for killing a bike rider — despite driving 25 mph over the speed limit, fleeing the scene and reeking of alcohol when police found him hiding under a house five hours after the crash.

File this one under you’ve got to be kidding. A Scottish police chief says close passes by motorists aren’t a problem, and it makes more sense to target people on bicycles because drivers aren’t causing any wrecks. Meanwhile, councilors in another Scottish city insist the real problem is those damned inconsiderate bicyclists who ride two abreast, just because they don’t want to get killed or anything.

A British man went to the market to buy some cat food, and left with someone else’s bicycle — then someone else stole it from him four days later.

A Cork, Ireland dealer will take your car in trade for a new ebike. Speaking of Santa Monica Mountains Cyclery, they beat that by seven years, working with the car dealer across the street to accept cars in trade for a new bicycle. 

India’s Congress Party promises a job for every family in one state, along with a free bicycle for every girl whose family earns less than 10,000 rupees a month — the equivalent of $139.

 

Competitive Cycling

Sometimes just riding a bike is cheating. A woman has received a lifetime ban from the Shanghai Marathon for using a man’s number and riding a bicycle instead of completing the race on foot.

French pro Elie Gesbert was lucky to escape without any major injuries when he became just the latest cyclist to be hit by a driver while training.

 

Finally…

If you’re going to ride drunk, try not to get in a crash with a police car. Who doesn’t need a Vogue-designed Shinola bike?

And no, the bicycle wasn’t invented in ancient India some 1,800 years before the first European velocipedes.

 

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

Morning Links: 49% of LA car trips doable by bike, inspiring girls with best bike quote ever, and LA River bike path reopens

September 12, 2019 / / One comment

They get it.

A new report says ebikes and e-scooters are better for short trips than cars.

Electric scooters and bikes have a “universal potential” to provide more efficient, cheaper ways to get around U.S. cities than driving a car…

Why? It’s largely because drivers in many U.S. cities are taking short trips and sitting in traffic when they could be taking another transit mode.

Not surprisingly, the study ranked Los Angeles as having the ninth-best potential to replace motor vehicle trips with micromobility — or a regular bike, for that matter — with 49% of all car trips in the city just three miles or less.

All we need is safe places to ride them.

Ebike photo courtesy of Metro Bike.

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With all due apologies to Lance, Eddy Merckx, Einstein and Steve Jobs, this may just be the best bike quote ever.

You can be feminine and girly and sparkly and be a really badass bike racer as well.

That’s from newly crowned world cross-county mountain bike champ Kate Courtney, the first American in 17 years to win the title.

And something that should be a mantra for every little girl from the time they’re old enough to ride a bike.

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CiclaValley discovers the construction barriers have finally been removed from the LA River bike path between Zoo Drive and the Riverside Bridge.

And provides a detailed tutorial on plans for the pathway, and why it’s still far from finished.

His movie making skills are improving, too.

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Washington Capitals hockey star Alex Ovechkin is one of us. That’s the good news.

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Rock star and former Amy Winehouse boyfriend Pete Doherty is one of us, too, walking his dogs on a London bikeshare bike.

https://twitter.com/JordanMolinari_/status/1170994419618713600?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1170994419618713600&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nme.com%2Fnews%2Fmusic%2Fwatch-pete-doherty-get-pulled-along-huskies-boris-bike-2547011

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

A 17-year old British bike rider may have been deliberately targeted by the 16-year old hit-and-run driver who ran him down and dragged him underneath his car, and is now facing a murder charge. This is the same crash we mentioned yesterday where bystanders picked up the car to lift it off the victim in a failed attempt to save his life.

But sometimes, it’s the people on bicycles behaving badly.

After trading blows — or mostly receiving them — with the driver of an SUV, an Aussie bicyclist picked his bike up and tried to ram it through the car’s window. Which may have been satisfying in the moment, but couldn’t have done the poor bike a lot of good.

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Local

A Palmdale letter writer says asking bike riders to pay a reasonable fee is the right thing to do, since car, truck and mobile home owners have to pay DMV fees. Never mind that DMV fees and gas taxes cover wear and tear on the roads, which bikes don’t cause. And that the overwhelming cost of local streets and roads, where bicyclists ride, come out of general tax funds, which we all pay. So in reality, he’s asking for bike riders to pay twice for damage we don’t cause. Seems fair.

A development company has proposed building a six-story, 236-unit apartment complex on environmentally sensitive land between the confluence of Ballona and Centinela creeks, just south of the Marina Freeway. The good news is that it includes plans for a much-needed bike and pedestrian bridge connecting the south bank to the Ballona Creek bike path; the bad new is, the bridge will be private.

Torrance police have finally identified the man who murdered an 11-year old girl, 47 years after she disappeared while riding her bike. And 16 years after the asshole her killer died.

 

State

A San Diego letter writer whose sole form of transportation is a bicycle says bring on the controversial 30th Street bike lanes.

Tragic news from Visalia, where a 61-year old woman was killed by a hit-and-run driver as she rode her bike, dragging her the length of two football fields under his car as he made his getaway; police arrested the allegedly drunk driver a short time later.

Monterey — which my brother should be passing through today or tomorrow on his bike tour of the left coast — is nearly finished with a new $8.5 million Complete Street makeover of North Fremont Blvd, including protected and physically separated bike lanes, as well as bike crossing signals.

They get it, too. A Petaluma newspaper says the city needs to do a lot more to make it friendly for bicyclists, calling bicycling one of the best ways to fight climate change.

They’ve got a point. Berkeley bike riders complain about hefty $238 fines for rolling stop signs — before court costs. Which is one more argument for a California version of the Idaho Stop Law; bike riders who carefully roll stops without jeopardizing anyone’s safety shouldn’t be punished that severely. Or at all.  

 

National

Bicycling takes a look at the hottest new bikes for fall.

Forbes looks at American bike part maker SRAM, saying it came out of nowhere with a single product to take on the established manufacturers.

Nonprofit bicycle registry Bike Index has introduced plugins for bike shop point-of-sales software to automatically register bikes in the background when customers purchase new bikes. Or get a free, lifetime registration with Bike Index here.

CityLab says instead of fighting it out, cities and private mobility companies should work together for a brighter multimodal future. Or we could just wait for the inevitable collapse of our gridlocked street systems, and wave at all the people trapped in their cars as we zoom by.

Curbed takes Amazon to task for putting 20,000 new delivery vans on the streets, calling for smaller, right-sized vehicles and delivery bikes to cut emissions and improve safety.

Portland offers a five-year progress report on their 2030 bike plan, only five years late. So maybe there’s hope for LA yet. Although something tells me Portland’s made a lot more progress than we have.

There’s a special place in hell for whoever stole a three-wheeled adaptive bicycle from a 12-year old Arizona boy with cerebral palsy.

Streetsblog Chicago offers some decent advice for casual bicyclists to keep riding a bike from being intimidating.

An Ohio high school teacher will be very late for class, after she was taken to a hospital when a driver ran into her bike on the way to school.

Seriously? A Kentucky letter writer says bikes are great fun! But rip out all the damn bike lanes because cars rule the road!

As New York Mayor Bill De Blasio continues his quixotic quest for the White House, back home advocates take him to task for a recent call for mandatory bike helmets and bike licenses, and demand that he focus on the real issues killing bike riders instead, like bad streets and reckless driving.

A Virginia letter writer says more cars aren’t the answer. And for every idiot he’s seen on a bicycle, he’s seen 10,000 more in cars.

A Florida woman organized a bike ride to honor 9/11 victims on the 18th anniversary of the attack on the Pentagon and World Trade Center —including her own brother, a New York firefighter killed when the buildings came down.

 

International

Canadian Cycling Weekly discusses things you’ll inevitably have to explain to your non-cycling partner. When my wife and I first moved in together, she said my bike belonged on the balcony. I patiently explained that yes, I loved her, but I’ve known my bike a helluva lot longer. And if my bike has to sleep out there, so do I.

Vancouver cops bust a massive bike theft ring, recovering 150 purloined bicycles, including ebikes and high-end bikes. Makes you wonder how many they stole and moved or chopped before they got caught.

Employees at a British Columbia Starbucks pitched in to buy a new bike for an 18-year old Iraqi refugee after his was stolen from the patio as he worked there as a barista.

London — no, the one in Ontario, Canada — introduces the province’s first bicycle mayor, tasked with promoting bicycle infrastructure in a car-oriented city. Which sounds a lot like a certain SoCal city I could name, which hasn’t even considered appointing a bike mayor.

A Toronto man returned a stolen bicycle to its owner after the thief upgraded to his bike, slicing through the lock with a power tool in broad daylight

A UK thief gets eleven years for killing a bike rider while fleeing from police in a stolen SUV, along with another 18 months for a pair of burglaries.

No, Road.cc, it wasn’t a five-year old cyclist that got knocked off his bike by an adult hit-and-run bicyclist. It was a five-year old little boy on a bicycle.

The bike-riding, but apparently not very observant, former editor of the prestigious medical journal BMJ — formerly the British Medical Journal — says the time has come to license and register bicyclists, so they’ll obey the law like other road users. Most of whom don’t, regardless of license and registration.

After making an ill-advised pass around a group of bicyclists, a Scottish woman avoids a head-on crash with an oncoming car by steering back into the soft, squishy people on bikes instead, injuring two people.

An Irish father fights back against accusations that he put his eleven-year old son at risk by letting him ride to school without a helmet or hi-viz, saying he didn’t think a hemet would help in the event of a collision.

Philippine bike riders say banning bicycles from the bridges connecting Mactan Island and Mandaue City isn’t the answer.

A Buddhist bell maker in Kyoto, Japan is producing handmade Orin temple bell-style bike bells, designed to resonate through the bike frame to amplify the sound and warn people a bike is coming, while it drives away evil thoughts at the same time. Seriously, if anyone has me on their secret Santa list, this is what I want. Or a corgi.

 

Competitive Cycling

The Vuelta’s Wednesday stage was the fastest ever Grand Tour stage over 125 miles; riders said gusting crosswinds and aggressive tactics made the stage ruthless.

While the Vuelta lumbers on, the Tour of Britain rolls through its fifth stage.

VeloNews looks at world championship favorite Mathieu van der Poel’s murky future in road cycling, as he prepares to focus on mountain biking in the 2020 Olympics.

The Princeton Alumni Weekly profiles 77-year old John Allis, who went from novice bike rider to co-founding the Princeton cycling team to a three-time Olympian.

 

Finally…

No, really. You’re not a bike thief, you’re a bicycle collector. If you’re planning to walk out of a pawn shop with a $4,000 bike, maybe don’t leave your name first.

And why suffer in traffic when you can just drive your cab down a protected bike lane?

 

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

Morning Link: CicLAvia visits 3 out of 4 Hollywoods, 15-year old hit-and-run victim speaks, and the war on bikes goes on

August 20, 2019 / / One comment

By all accounts, Sunday’s Meet the Hollywood’s CicLAvia was another success for the open streets nonprofit group.

KNBC-4 said the event was the first CicLAvia to include West Hollywood, East Hollywood, Thai Town and Little Armenia, as well as the actual Hollywood, offering participants a carfree view of historic Hollywood icons.

Then again, Patch offers the exact same story, word for word, crediting City News Service as the source, which KNBC somehow failed to mention.

And Streetsblog’s Joe Linton provides his photos from the day.

Meanwhile, LA Mayor Eric Garcetti took part in the event, celebrating the Hollywood Great Streets project.

https://twitter.com/MayorOfLA/status/1163135803075129345

 

Except nothing of any significance has been done on the Hollywood Great Streets project, five years after it was announced.

Unless you consider a little improved lighting and a pair of scramble crosswalks a great street.

Because I sure as hell don’t.

Meanwhile a few other views of CicLAvia popped up on Twitter’s radar today.

And wins the Oscar for the cutest one of all.

https://twitter.com/HaveAGo/status/1163481543970455552

But did he say “On your left?” Or even “On your right,” for that matter?

Unfortunately, thought, you’ll have to wait another two months for the next one.

……….

Fifteen-year old Roberto Diaz remains in “tremendous pain” two weeks after he was run down by a hit-and-run driver, who dragged him the length of five football fields as he made his escape.

Diaz has endured a half-dozen surgeries just to stay alive after the driver hit him as he rode his bike in a South LA crosswalk — with the right-of-way.

And he has a message for the heartless coward who did it.

Without hesitation he says, “I just wanted to give a message to the person that did this to me… I just wanted to know why you do like what you did. You saw me. You hit me. You knew I was under there.”

“I remember everything,” Diaz says, “From like when I got hit. When I was stuck under there. I was just being dragged. I felt like all my air was being lost.”

Yet remarkably, he forgives his near-killer.

“I forgive him but I also want him to turn himself in,” he says, matter-of-fact.

Police are looking for the driver of a dark-colored four-door Honda, probably with damage to the front end.

Hopefully the standing $25,000 reward will encourage someone to speak up.

The story also notes that a bike race will be held this Saturday to raise funds for Diaz.

[Editor’s Note: A bike race is being held Sat. Aug. 24 with donations going to Diaz. Register time: 12:30 p.m., start time 1:30 p.m. Meet up at 35th and Maple. Starting point Jefferson/Maple – Ending point Angels Point]

If anyone has more information about the race, let me know; you’ll find my email on the About page.

………

Don’t try to ride an e-anything on the campus of San Diego State University, where “electric or motorized dockless scooters, bicycles, roller skates, hoverboards, skateboards and other micromobility devices” have been banned starting with the fall semester.

The Luddites at SDSU would probably even ban this one, too.

………

A British man set a new record for the fastest man on a bike.

Which is not the same as the fastest person, in this case.

Neil Campbell broke the 24-year old record for the fastest bicycle speed in an auto-assisted slipstream at over 174 mph, beating the old record by a full seven miles per hour.

But he still has a long way to go to beat the speed of American cyclist Denise Mueller-Korenek, who holds the women’s — and world — record at 189.3 mph.

………

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

It was nice while it lasted, but this unwanted feature once again rears its ugly head today.

After a man swerved his bicycle to avoid glass on a bike path, a road-raging Oregon driver followed him, then rammed his truck into his bike, got out and physically attacked him — until he realized a witness was calling police.

An Illinois bike rider was the innocent victim of a paintball drive-by when the occupants of a passing car shot him in the face with a paintball gun.

But sometimes it’s the people on bikes behaving badly. 

A Brooklyn woman was injured when she was hit by a red light-running bike rider while walking in a crosswalk with the right-of-way.

A Florida letter-writer says he suffered a broken jaw and numerous bruises when he was hit from behind while walking by a high-speed distracted bicyclist who was staring at his smartphone.

And sometimes the problem is both.

After a group of teenage bike riders surrounded a Long Island driver’s truck following a dispute, he ran over one of their bikes, nearly hitting some of the riders in the process. Naturally, the police only blamed the kids on two wheels for riding recklessly prior to the incident.

………

Local

Metro and the LACBC will be offering a free BEST class on the Rules of the Road in Gardena this Saturday.

A Sylmar nonprofit bookstore and cultural center won a $15,000 Great Streets Challenge grant to develop a plan to improve a one-mile bike and pedestrian path along San Fernando Road; they’ll get a chance to win another half-million dollar grant to actually implement the changes.

Santa Monica is gearing up for an open streets event of their own, with COAST opening two miles of streets to people — and closing to cars — on September 15th, along Ocean Ave, Colorado Ave and Main Street.

 

State

A San Diego TV station provides a preview of this weekend’s annual 25-mile Bike the Bay ride over the Coronado Bay Bridge.

San Diego is jerking Lime’s permit to operate within its borders after concluding the dockless e-scooter and ebike company hasn’t been playing by the rules.

Sad news from Elk Grove, where a bike rider was killed in a collision with a freight train. One more reminder to never go under, over or around crossing barriers or warning lights, even if you don’t see a train or one has just passed; there might be another one traveling in the opposite direction.

More sad news, this time from Healdsburg. A 61-year old former Huntington Beach resident died on Sunday, after he was struck by a hit-and-run driver last week; he’d been struggling to kick the bottle and get off the streets. Hats off to the Press Democrat for one of the most respectful stories I’ve seen about any homeless victim.

 

National

They get it. A writer for The Week says American cities need to phase out cars.

New Skip e-scooters come with swappable batteries to eliminate the need for daily recharging, making them more sustainable.

A Streetsblog writer says Denver’s 18-year plan to build out its bike network is unacceptable. But at least they’ve started work on theirs, unlike Los Angeles, which promised to complete its plan two years earlier in 2035. And has barely scratched the surface.

Meanwhile, Denver considers lowering speed limits to 25 mph to reduce traffic deaths; a local magazine questions whether it will really make a difference. Short answer, only if police enforce the new limit and drivers obey it.

A Fargo ND man reported finding syringes and needles strewn across a bike path. Or as we call that in Los Angeles, Tuesday. Or any other day that ends in Y.

More proof of the danger rumble strips pose to people on bicycles, as a 72-year old Minnesota man was killed when he was thrown from his bike after hitting rumble strips while on a group ride.

Saying bikes can damage a skatepark, a Michigan town considers issuing misdemeanor tickets to kids who try to use their BMX bikes there.

We know the feeling. Curbed New York says achieving zero traffic deaths will require radical changes to the city’s streets, but they’re still waiting for that to happen. Sort of like Los Angeles, where city officials somehow seem to think making marginal changes here and there will somehow magically reduce deaths in the city.

A longtime Philadelphia lacrosse icon was killed while riding on a bike path on Saturday; unfortunately, no details are available.

A troubled 16-year old Georgia boy took part in a 500-mile ride through three southern states in an effort to turn his life around.

 

International

A British pair says a 12-year old girl would have been killed if she hadn’t been wearing her helmet when she was hit by a driver. Which is questionable considering she suffered a fractured skull anyway; it’s possible her injuries could have been much worse without it, but it’s also possible that the helmet somehow failed to protect her.

The city of Utrecht in the Netherlands is the proud host of the world’s largest bicycle parking facility; the expanded facility can now hold as many as 12,500 bikes. Fortunately, there’s also video — in Dutch, of course.

Even in the Netherlands, elderly bike riders are at greater risk than their younger counterparts.

 

Competitive Cycling

Rising third-year star Lily Williams intends to show just how exciting women’s cycling can be at this weekend’s women’s-only Colorado Classic.

 

Finally…

Have a library card, check out a bike. Now drivers are trying to kill the dead, too.

And maybe the damn thing will wear hi-viz and a helmet next time.

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

Morning Links: PeopleForBikes leads ebike fight, CHP victim blaming, and the best 3 minutes 27 seconds of your day

July 24, 2019 / / 4 comments

I recently received the following press release from People for Bikes — or as they now call themselves, PeopleForBikes (I should talk, I know).

I don’t normally repost PR stories in their entirety, if at all. But it’s a good message and a battle worth fighting.

Besides, it’s a quarter to four, I’m tired and cranky, and the Corgi needs her beauty sleep and won’t go to bed until I do.

Research over the past year has extolled the virtues of e-biking: Studies have shown that e-bikes significantly bring down cities’ CO2 emissions, reduce noise pollution, get people active, and even have the capacity to create car-free households. Simply put, e-bikes form a certain way to help our planet as it enters an uncertain future. That’s why PeopleForBikes has made e-bike advocacy a core part of their work, working to drive the conversation that’s building towards an “e-bike revolution.”

PFB has supported pages and pages of research and resources that have been instrumental parts of legislation giving people access to and infrastructure around e-biking. PFB has generated information on state-by-state e-bike policy, easy-to-read research and statistics, and e-bikers’ favorite city-by-city routes. They’ve seen some awesome results: Through the work of advocates and legal advisors, 22 states have passed PFB’s model e-bike legislation, which regulates e-bikes like regular bicycles. This is a huge win for the health of our cities, the planet, and e-bike riders.

Of course, many challenges remain ahead. Most states have confusing laws saying where e-bikers can and can’t ride, and tariffs make bike motors and e-bikes themselves more expensive than they need to be. PFB wants to continue to be at the forefront of this conversation as we push for accessible e-biking for all.

………

No windshield bias here.

A Santa Rosa bike rider was killed when he was struck by a hit-and-run driver who continued without stopping, throwing him onto the opposite side of the roadway, where he was struck by another car.

But instead of addressing the heartless coward who murdered an innocent man, the CHP blamed the victim for possibly riding in the traffic lane instead of the bike lane, and wearing dark clothing on a dark street.

Which shouldn’t matter in the slightest if the victim had the legally required lights and reflectors on his bike, which they don’t mention at all.

And maybe someone should tell the CHP about the numerous exceptions to CVC 21208 that allow bicyclists to leave a bike lane whenever necessary.

Not to mention that it’s almost impossible to pinpoint the exact point of contact for a bike crash unless the driver braked before impact, which doesn’t seem to have happened here.

But sure, let’s keep demonstrating that notorious CHP windshield bias.

Thanks to Sindy Saito for the heads-up.

………

Watching this video could be the best 3 minutes and 27 seconds of your day.

Or maybe you have a more exciting life than I do.

But still.

………

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

Someone has been planting dangerous medieval-style booby traps on biking and hiking trails in national parks across Australia’s New South Wales; one local official called the people responsible “complete scumbags,” which pretty well sums it up.

………

Local

City Watch talks with environmental justice advocate and CD10 city council candidate Aura Vasquez, who wants to fix our streets and build more bike and micromobility lanes.

Dodger Stadium is scheduled to get a $100 million makeover next year. But that huge parking crater surrounding it will remain, despite previous plans to replace it with housing and an entertainment district. Let’s hope they at least improve bike access, and provide safer places to park your bike. Or better yet, a bike valet.

 

State

Deputies with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department busted a Dana Point bike chop shop on Tuesday; if you recently had a bike stolen in the area, they may have found whatever is left of it.

The owner of a new Encinitas gelato shop talks about his only other job as a pro cyclist in Italy until a knee injury forced his retirement at the ripe old age of 22.

A San Diego TV station considers SB 127, the Complete Streets bill currently working its way through the state legislature, which would mandate bike and pedestrian accommodations any time a state roadway is resurfaced.

Sun-baked Banning will build a bike lane crossing the entire city in an effort to improve the health and waistlines of its residents; the city expects the lane to draw 400 bike riders a day, while a Safe Routes to School Coordinator bizarrely responds they’ll be lucky to get that many in a year, because no one bikes in Banning. Maybe they would if they actually had safer places to ride, as he should well know.

Deadly Rancho Mirage has introduced a $400,000 bike and pedestrian safety plan.

After 20 years, Victorville is nearing completion of the Mojave Riverwalk, an eleven-mile bikeway with four miles of offroad shared use paths.

San Francisco bicycling and walking advocates turn out to demand safer streets and call for the declaration of a traffic emergency in the city after the deaths of 21 people walking or riding bicycles so far this year.

A woman has been charged in the hit-and-run death of a Crockett bike rider, after another woman overheard her telling the second woman’s roommate she’d been in a crash, but wasn’t sure what she’d hit because the sun was in her eyes. God forbid she should have stopped her car to find out — especially in full daylight. Let alone stopped once she realized she couldn’t see, and avoided the crash altogether. 

 

National

A new nationwide study confirms that protected and separated bike lanes improve safety for everyone on roadway, not just the people on two wheels. And that cities with the greatest number of bike riders also have the best safety records. Which brings up the whole chicken/egg thing — do safer streets attract more bike riders, or do more bike riders improve safety?

Surprise your best friend with a dog-friendly e-cargo bike, complete with his or her own set of handlebars.

Slate examines what happens to all the old bikes when bikeshare providers pull out of a city or shut down entirely. In most cases, the picture isn’t pretty.

Your next steel frame bike could be printed, not built. And have a really weird looking kink in the seat post.

You can now legally ride your bike — or your e-scooter — through any Portland fast food drive-through.

Seattle considers adopting Dutch-style intersections to improve safety for bike riders.

There’s a special place in hell for whoever stole the wheels of a disabled Nebraska man’s bicycle, in broad daylight as people walked by, leaving him without any form of transportation; fortunately, the local Trek dealer gave him a new set of wheels and tires worth up to $500. And a lock to secure them.

The Texas driver who ran over a bike cop’s bicycle while fleeing a traffic stop last month and dragging his partner by the arm, has been arrested after being identified in a photo lineup.

A Chicago bike rider was killed when he somehow fell off a train station platform and landed on the electrically charged third rail; three other riders were also injured in separate incidents last week.

Ohio State University collects over 500 abandoned bikes each year and donates them to a local bike co-op.

Four “reckless” Connecticut bike riders were busted for loitering near a park, harassing residents and blocking traffic with their bicycles. No doubt it’s just a coincidence that they all happened to be biking while black.

No bias here. New York approves a pilot program to allow bike riders to use leading pedestrians intervals to cross intersections before drivers get the green light. But the anti-bike New York Post insists on calling it a “green light for cyclists to run red lights.” Just wait until someone tells them about the Idaho Stop Law.

So much for Vision Zero under presidential candidate Bill de Blasio. New York’s death toll keeps getting worse, as two more bike riders lose their lives in collisions with the drivers of large trucks; 17 bike riders have died in the city this year, compared with ten for all of last year. Thanks to Jeff Vaughn for the link.

The driver who killed longtime DC bike advocate Dave Salovesh while fleeing a traffic stop pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter Tuesday, after the DA reduced the charge from second degree murder. The city will install a road diet and bike lanes that Salovesh had long fought for on the street by 2021 — just a tad too late to save his life.

A new study shows drivers are actually less likely to stop for bike riders who activate a crossing signal on a New Orleans greenway than if the riders simply crossed the street without it.

Shameful. Florida police use deadly force to stop a fleeing teenage bike rider, ramming his bicycle for the crime of, yes, popping wheelies. And yes, biking while black.

 

International

A Victoria, British Columbia letter writer insists the city’s newly appointed bike mayor is crazy for thinking that safer streets will improve bike safety more than requiring bike helmets. And somehow feels the need to inform her she’s not in Amsterdam, in case she was unaware.

An Australian driver insists on demonstrating that fatal hit-and-runs against bike riders aren’t just an American phenomenon. Although unlike most Americans, he turned himself in 40 minutes later. Thanks to Steve Messer for the tip.

Make a good impression on your next trip to Korea by talking bikes in the local lingua franca.

An English language website makes the case for bike commuting in Hong Kong, where most people only ride recreationally.

 

Competitive Cycling

The Tour de France riders adopt the risk and rewards of the super tuck to increase downhill speed. And prayers to make it down safely.

Defending TdF champ Geraint Thomas hit the pavement for the third time in 16 stages, saying he was thrown from his bike when the gears jammed. Meanwhile, Denmark’s Jakob Fuglsang crashed out of the race.

Rising Belgian star Wout van Aert left the hospital following successful surgery to repair a deep cut to his upper thigh acquired when he caught a retaining barrier during the individual time trial in this year’s Tour; doctors want him to stay off his bike for another two months.

Esquire asks pro cyclists what it feels like to ride in the Tour de France, while London’s Telegraph examines the not-so-secretive inner workings of the race.

A former Tour de France reporter looks back on Greg LeMond’s remarkable comeback victory exactly 30 years ago yesterday, after he was nearly killed by his brother-in-law in a hunting accident.

Rouleur makes the case for Tour de France announcers Phil Liggett and the late Robert Sherwen to be inducted into the Cycling Hall of Fame.

 

Finally…

Your next water bottle could come back as a collapsable bike helmet. That feeling when your eight-year old gets his low-rider bicycle back after it was stolen — both times.

And every bike ride should end with pie.

Or beer. Or maybe both.

 

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

Morning Links: 21-mile street fest coming to OC, LA 9th most dangerous bicycling city in US, and RuPaul gets it

July 10, 2019 / / 2 comments

Sounds like fun.

Seven Orange County cities will team up to reimagine Beach Blvd with a massive 21-mile open streets event on November 17th, featuring a number of festivals along the route.

Correction: Well, it would have been nice. But a comment from Mike Wilkinson clarifies what this event is, and isn’t. 

And it isn’t what I thought from the article above.

A 21 mile open streets event along Beach Boulevard in Orange County would be impressive and fun. Unfortunately, the event planned for November is definitely NOT an open streets event, and it’s definitely not 21 miles long.

The Meet on Beach event will feature “..live performances, food, giveaways and much more…” according to the MeetOnBeach.com website. That will give families fun reasons to enjoy the outdoors, and that’s a good thing, but it’s not an open streets event.

Beach Boulevard runs about 4.4 miles through the City of Buena Park. The city will close about 0.8 miles of the boulevard, which is less than one-fifth of the total, but just in one direction. Traffic on the busiest street in Orange County will still be rushing past in the other direction. Anaheim has about 1.4 miles of Beach Boulevard and will close about one-third of it (0.5 miles), again in just one direction. So far as I know, the other participating cities aren’t planning to close their parts of Beach Boulevard at all!

Joel Rosen, Buena Park’s Director of Community Development say’s it right. “… we hope to promote economic development and healthy communities along the historic 21-mile stretch…”. That sounds like a good thing to me, but it’s not an open streets event, where people can walk, run, skate, scoot or ride on empty streets and imagine what it would be like to be car free, even for just a day.

Photo courtesy of Daria Shevtsova from Pexels.

………

Insider listed the 20 most dangerous US cities for bike riders.

New York was named the nation’s worst place to ride a bike, while San Jose and San Francisco tied for fourth.

So is it good news that Los Angeles only placed ninth?

In a word, no.

Meanwhile, the Bob Vila website ranks the nation’s top 20 cities for bicycling.

Santa Barbara was the highest rated California city at number 11, while Santa Monica checked in at 15.

Somehow New York managed to make both lists, coming in fourth this time, while my hometown was second to neighboring Boulder CO.

And needless to say, Los Angeles didn’t make this list at all.

………

RuPaul gets it.

https://twitter.com/RuPaul/status/1148592721994498048

………

Now that’s a bottle cap challenge.

………

There are a couple of ebike recalls in today’s news.

Trek is recalling some of their Super Commuter+ 8S ebikes due to a manufacturing error that could cause the front fender to fall into the wheel.

Santa Cruz-based Faraday is recalling 4,450 of their distinctive-looking ebikes due to the risk of a broken seat post.

………

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

When an Ottawa, Canada bike rider complained to a driver about a too-close pass, the road raging driver responded with a punishment pass that clipped the mirror on his handlebars.

………

Local

Streetsblog’s Joe Linton takes LADOT, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and several members of the city council to task for the city’s “dismal” trend of bikeway implementation, saying installing or upgrading just 13 miles of on-street bike lanes is nothing to celebrate.

Curbed says the North Atwater Bridge is slowly taking shape, and should connect bike riders and pedestrians with Atwater Village and Griffith Park over the LA River by the end of this year.

LA County approved a half-million dollar grant for Pasadena’s One Arroyo Seco Trail Project.

 

State

A proposed bill in the state legislature would triple the current $2,500 rebate for buying an electric car or SUV. The problem is, an electric car is still a car; the state should make the rebate apply to ebikes and transit passes, as well, to help get more cars off the streets.

A popular DIY bike track in San Diego’s Point Loma neighborhood could become a victim of the need for affordable housing.

Santa Barbara officials have identified the victim in last week’s fatal bicycling crash as a 54-year old homeless man who lived in the area; he was riding in the middle of the night without lights or reflectors.

Menlo Park proposes trading 165 parking spaces for bike lanes to help get people out of their cars.

There’s a special place in hell for whoever stole a Bay Area Alzheimer’s patient’s custom ebike that was his only form of transportation.

 

National

A law professor writes that Americans shouldn’t have to drive, but the country’s legal system virtually forces them into their cars by squeezing out the alternatives.

A Harvard professor says less driving, more thriving in a call to reduce the number of cars in urban areas and increase the number of pedestrians.

Writing for Outside, longtime Bicycling writer Joe Lindsey says not only are bike riders not freeloaders on the streets, the bike lanes so many drivers insist we should pay for actually improve safety for everyone — not just the people on two wheels.

A new ebike currently raising funds on Kickstarter promises virtually unlimited range by recharging automatically as you pedal or coast downhill.

A Portland bike dance team is hanging up their BMX bikes after 15 years.

A pair of Good Samaritans are pushing the need for CPR training after saving the life of a 57-year old Texas man who suffered a massive heart attack while taking part in a 64-mile sportive ride.

A Minneapolis TV station asks whether an ebike can really replace your car. Short answer — for many people, yes.

Now the trees are out to get us. A Columbus, Ohio man suffered nearly a dozen fractures and a collapsed lung when a massive tree fell on him during a downpour as he was riding home from work.

Now that’s a good kid. When a young Maine boy won a new bike in a school drawing, he gave it away so another kid could “experience the joy a bike brings.”

An op-ed in the New York Daily News says the time to build more bike lanes is before someone gets killed, not after.

Hundreds of New York bike riders turn out for a die-in to protest the 15 people killed riding their bikes already this year — five more than were killed in the city all of last year. That’s the difference between New York and LA, where we’ve also seen 15 people killed riding bikes in the county, but hardly anyone seems to notice, and far fewer seem to care.

New York’s police commissioner says it’s perfectly okay for one of his cops to use deadly force to stop a bike rider for running multiple red lights. Maybe next time the NYPD will just shoot scofflaw bicyclists instead of using a car.

Great idea. Arlington County VA will conduct a Natural Disaster Trial to see how residents can survive and take care of their families by using bicycles after a disaster wipes out the region’s crucial infrastructure.

 

International

London’s Independent celebrates the joys of slow travel.

Britain’s eleven-time world track cycling champ Sir Chris Hoy gave a video shoutout to a nine-year old boy after he suffered a concussion hitting a pothole on a charity bike ride.

A British ex-cop’s alibi for killing a highly visible bike rider in a crash is that he was too stoned on meth to have any idea what the hell he was doing. No, seriously.

It took an Irish woman eight long years to get justice, as a court awarded her the equivalent of $280,000 after her postman husband was killed in a crash while delivering mail by bike.

Serena Williams is sort of one of us, relaxing between matches at Wimbledon by riding a bike with her young son in her arms. Except her bike doesn’t move.

An Indian bicyclist remembers four extraordinary locations he saw on a 400-day solo bike tour from the Arctic to the Andes.

Roll a stop sign in one United Arab Emirates city, and you could see your bike permanently confiscated. Same goes for not wearing a helmet, or a fluorescent jacket after dark.

Um, no. A 20-year old Australian man wants to become a cop — despite killing a 28-year old woman riding a bike while driving at twice the legal speed limit on the wrong side of the road, hitting her head-on.

 

Competitive Cycling

Forget those guys riding their bikes around France. A comment from Mellisa informs us that you can catch a free one-hour recap of the Giro Rosa women’s stage race every day, courtesy of Trek.

No change at the top of the Tour de France leaderboard after yesterday’s stage four.

Drink your way through the Tour de France.

Canadian pro Michael Woods says he still runs, despite competing in his first Tour de France, because doing nothing but pedaling for 3 weeks makes you “a better bike racer but a worse human” physically.

A writer for Bicycling tries to stare into the soul of the great Eddy Merckx, and finds an abyss staring back. And no, I don’t know what that means, either.

A vegan Aussie endurance cyclist set a new record for the cross-country Trans Am Bike Race on a diet of hash browns.

A Kenyan website talks with the mother of professional cyclist James Mwaura, aka The Lion of Africa; Mwaura was shot four times as a child in an assassination that killed his father. 

 

Finally…

Sharrows do not a Complete Street make. It’s hard to keep a bike shop going these days; harder still if you don’t pay your back taxes.

And if you’re going to roll a red light, try not to crash into the lampposts.

 

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

Morning Links: Cedillo pulls fast one on Eagle Rock Blvd, Metro Bike goes ebike, and USC prof gets it wrong on road diets

May 31, 2019 / / 7 comments

Looks like Gil Cedillo is up to his old tricks.

The CD1 Councilmember is notorious for sandbagging bicycle and safe streets advocates following his flip flop on promises to support a fully funded and shovel-ready road diet on North Figueroa.

Shortly after taking office, he sponsored a series of public meetings carefully crafted to make it look like opposition to the road diet outweighed support, when just the opposite was true.

Then ended up demanding that the city council remove all bike lanes in his district from the mobility plan.

An attempt that failed miserably.

Now he’s suddenly called a public meeting to discuss plans to improve safety on Eagle Rock Blvd on exceptionally short notice.

Neale Stokes reports that hand-scrawled posters have just gone up around Cedillo’s Verdugo field office, announcing a last minute public meeting to be held on Saturday to discuss crosswalks, bike lanes and traffic safety on the busy boulevard.

Never mind that no other notice mentioning a meeting regarding Eagle Rock Blvd has appeared online or in local publications to give more than a handful of people a chance to offer their input.

It’s almost like he wants to hold a public meeting without the public actually showing up.

Except for the ones who’ll support his predetermined position, of course.

It’s hard to read from the photo, but the Eagle Rock Blvd meeting will be held tomorrow from 10 am to noon at the Glassell Park Senior Center, 3650 Verdugo Road.

You owe it to yourself to attend if you live, work, walk or bike in the area round Eagle Rock Blvd to demand a safer street for everyone.

Or just accept whatever it is the city’s most notoriously anti-bike and anti-safety councilmember wants to shove down our throats.

………

LA’s Metro Bike bikeshare will be adding over 300 ped-assist ebikes to its fleet to serve 20 new docking stations stretching from Exposition Park to Koreatown and Silver Lake.

………

LA Times readers react to a recent article questioning the spending of gas tax money on road diets by pointing out the need for them.

Except for the director of USC’s Transportation Engineering Program, who argues that moving cars by maintaining the outdated Level of Service standard is more important than saving human lives.

No, really.

To the editor: Road diets are a travesty regardless of how we pay for them.

Proponents of reducing road capacity invariably claim that lane reductions can be executed with little impact on traffic volumes. They can, but traffic volumes do not describe level of service. A given traffic volume can be achieved with denser, lower speed flow; or with sparser, higher speed flow.

Initiatives like Vision Zero focus worthy attention on pedestrian safety but deliver far too few safety improvements in exchange for potentially crushing increases in network travel delays. Lives have value. Time has value. Mobility has value. Vision Zero mismanages the trade-offs.

Put fuel tax revenues into capacity, maintenance, repair and congestion pricing tools.

James E. Moore II, Los Angeles

The writer is a professor in USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering and Price School of Public Policy and director of USC’s Transportation Engineering Program.

Yet another reminder that the old, entrenched attitudes are hard to defeat.

………

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

A Pennsylvania mountain biker was lucky to avoid serious injuries when he crashed into a rope that someone had strung across a bike trail next to a steep embankment.

Apparently, someone doesn’t like bike races, either, tossing a broken bike into the path of the Giro riders in an apparent attempt to cause a mass pileup.

………

Local

LA’s Exposition Park is in line for a people-friendly makeover, including plans to de-emphasize cars and build more bike racks.

LAist wonders what would happen if Los Angeles banned right turns on red lights. Meanwhile, a San Jose paper says right-on-red bans are spreading through the Bay Area, even as red light cameras are being removed.

A writer for the Daily Bruin says partnering with an e-scooter provider won’t save UCLA’s failing bikeshare system.

A bike-riding YouTube star competes in a Malibu beauty contest, and concludes they have some value, after all.

 

State

The rich get richer. San Francisco announces plans to extend the three-block parking protected bike lanes on Valencia Street another eight blocks.

A Bay Area bike rider lists all the specialized — or Specialized — gear you’ll need for your first bikepacking ride. Or you could just a sleeping bag and a tent, strap ’em onto the bike you already own, and just go.

A Stockton man was shot several times in an apparent robbery attempt while riding his bicycle on a local bike path.

 

National

Bike Snob makes the case that horns don’t belong on cars, either, calling them “inherently stupid and profoundly antisocial.”

Reno firefighters surprised a teenage boy with a new bike after they had to rescue him when his bike slipped off a path, and he got stuck in a culvert.

An Arizona history professor says the lowly bicycle has had an impact on labor, travel, technology, fashion and marriage.

Now that’s more like it. A Wisconsin bike shop is enticing people to get on their bikes with a Bike Week spread offering up fresh bacon and coffee, along with fruit, donuts and an unspecified vegan option. They had me at bacon and coffee.

Streetsblog New York complains about a road resurfacing project that removed all the markings for a protected bike lane, leaving riders to fend for themselves for weeks.

Your move, Los Angeles. New York passes an ordinance making it illegal to block bike lanes for construction work.

A Trenton, New Jersey columnist says the mayor’s Bike Month bicycle ride should have gone through the city’s impoverished neighborhoods, where 18 people have died from gun violence in recent days. A reminder that traffic violence isn’t the only risk far too many people face on a daily basis in this country.

DC decides that flexposts just aren’t good enough for protected bike lanes.

Baltimore is ripping out a section of a protected bike lane to restore twelve parking spaces in front of a church, while the city’s mayor denies remarks attributed to him saying that black people don’t ride bicycles.

A New Orleans writer argues that bike lanes make economic sense for the city.

 

International

A Costa Rican website considers what it will take to get the country’s people on bicycles.

Here’s a few more for your bike bucket list. A Canadian website lists what they consider the five best road bike rides in the western part of the country.

A pair of bike riders raised the equivalent of nearly $38,000 for charity by riding the length of Great Britain — although one man had to finish alone after his partner was seriously injured when he was run down by an older driver with a suspended license.

A travel writer bikes around Taiwan for just $29 a day.

The LA Times former Beijing bureau chief recalls riding his bicycle to witness the Chinese army crush the demonstrators at Tiananmen Square.

 

Competitive Cycling

Cyclocross Magazine offers a preview of this weekend’s 202-mile Dirty Kanza 200 gravel race.

Then there’s the 350-mile, unsupported, ultra endurance Dirty Kanza XL, featuring the 28-year old woman who won last year’s 2,745-mile Tour Divide — even she didn’t even learn how to ride a bike until she was 20.

 

Finally…

Your next bike tires could come from Russian dandelions. And now you can wear your sweaty bike shorts everywhere and be totally trendy.

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

Morning Links: Pasadena anti-bike lane bias, sharing shared scooter helmets and return of LaGrange Grand Prix

May 2, 2019 / / Comments Off on Morning Links: Pasadena anti-bike lane bias, sharing shared scooter helmets and return of LaGrange Grand Prix

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

I accused the Pasadena Star-News of showing an anti-bike lane bias for a story that said protected bike lanes would come at the expense of traffic lanes, even though city’s the first one, on Union Street, wouldn’t.

Except it does. 

My understanding was that only parking spaces would have to be removed to make room for the bike lanes. But the truth is just the opposite. 

Advocacy group Active SGV informs me that local residents and business want to preserve as much parking as possible, preferring to give up a largely unused traffic lane to losing parking spaces. 

I’m not sure how I got it wrong, but clearly, I did. 

My apologies to the Star-News for the error. And thanks to Active SGV for the correction. 

Here’s what I originally wrote:

No bias against bike lanes here.

The Pasadena Star-News considers the proposal for Pasadena’s first two-way cycle track, imagining that protected bike lanes must come at the cost of traffic lanes — even though the one proposed for Union Street won’t.

They also suggest that the protected bike lane on Temple City’s Rosemead Blvd is a failure, because one councilmember says he seldom sees more than one or two riders using it at any given time.

Which would actually make it pretty busy, given the few seconds a passing driver can devote to noticing it.

And bearing in mind that anecdotal evidence isn’t worth the traffic study it’s not based on.

Credit Joe Linton with the photo, which was shamelessly stolen, uh, borrowed from LA Streetsblog.

………

Unfortunately, the story is hidden behind a paywall.

But evidently, LA-based sit-down scooter company Wheels has applied for a patent to build a detachable helmet directly into the scooter itself.

Which means you’ll share that helmet with whoever used it before you. And unless they can also build some sort of disinfectant and insecticide into the scooter, whatever was on their heads and in their hair.

I’ll pass, thanks.

………

I’ve been expecting someone to introduce this sooner or later.

A new clip-on device promises to turn any bicycle into an ebike, yet is small and light enough to fit into a backpack. Allowing you to carry it with you, and snap it on when you need a little extra boost to make it up a hill or get back home.

………

LA’s Velo Club LaGrange has set a date for the return of the bike club’s formerly annual Grand Prix, which will now be held in Carson, rather than Brentwood.

………

Local

LA Times letter writers says traffic deaths won’t end until drivers change their attitudes. Meanwhile, the Times’ Steve Lopez says a carfree future doesn’t sound all that bad.

Metro talks Bike Month in a sponsored Streetsblog post.

Santa Clarita jumps back in the saddle with a number of events to celebrate Bike Month.

 

State

San Francisco is getting new red light cameras to help stop dangerous drivers. Meanwhile, Los Angeles isn’t, after they were yanked out several years ago to appease angry drivers.

A new study shows that capping the number of e-scooters in San Francisco just drives more people back into cars, while Bird announces a monthly rental program to get around those restrictions.

Alaska Airlines is offering Bay Area residents airline miles to bike their commute on Bike to Work Day.

 

National

The Oregon house passes a bill to correct a bizarre court ruling that concluded bike lanes don’t exist in intersections unless they’re striped all the way across.

A San Antonio TX public radio program looks at the city’s Vision Zero, and concludes its roads aren’t safe for people on bicycles.

Auto-centric Houston TX puts Los Angeles to shame, building 50 miles of bike lanes in the past 12 months, while LA’s mayor is only willing to commit to ten. And “commit” may be a strong word.

Great idea. A Milwaukee ferry company offered free tickets worth $161 to anyone who brought in a gently used bicycle they could donate to local kids for Earth Week, even though they exceeded their own 500 bike limit.

A Memphis morning news anchor was lucky to escape with a leg broken in two places when her bike was hit head-on by a driver.

Streetsblog talks with the mayor of Cambridge MA, crediting him with finding a way to neutralize anti-bike lane NIMBYs.

New York police are looking for a hit-and-run bike rider who collided with a woman in Queens, leaving her with a broken arm.

The father of a fallen bicyclist calls on New York’s mayor to stop senseless traffic deaths.

A New York cop was busted for beating an ebike delivery rider who nearly hit the officer’s little girl. Which may be understandable, but is still wrong. And illegal.

A DC website says the Red Cup Project shows how vulnerable people are riding without protected bike lanes.

A Baltimore letter writer says a parking protected bike lane is a disaster waiting to happen, and should be ripped out because there are more children, parents and grandparents than there are bike riders. Because evidently, children, parents and grandparents don’t ride bikes. Or care about safety.

The stumbling drunk driver who killed two bike riders and injured seven others near a New Orleans Mardi Gras parade was indicted on two counts of vehicular homicide and seven counts each of hit-and-run and vehicular injuring.

A Florida safety expert explains why it’s the deadliest state in the US for people on bicycles.

 

International

A British grocery chain refuses to let bicyclists leave their bikes inside on “hygiene grounds.” Yet allow people to walk inside with their shoes on, which touch the same dirty streets bike tires do.

Pink Bike looks at eight “gorgeous” bikes from the Aussie Handmade Bicycle Show.

No bias here, either. The Japanese edition of Stars & Strips relates the rules of the road for the bike riders, while saying most most riders are oblivious to the laws, and many are crazy.

 

Competitive Cycling

Bicycling calls Nebraska’s Ashton Lambie the most interesting bike rider in America, as he prepares for the Olympics after just two years of racing.

 

Finally…

If you know when and where a group ride will be coming by, just stay out of their way, already. That feeling when your massive corporation somehow feels the need to fight a bike path logo that no one would ever confuse for yours.

And more proof bikes can go where cars can’t.

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

Morning Links: New Spring Street bike lane goes both ways, red cup protected bike lanes, and ebikes up in smoke

April 29, 2019 / / One comment

Before we start, congratulations are in order for frequent BikinginLA contributor and behind-the-scenes proof reader Mike Wilkinson, who was recently elected to the Orange County Bicycle Coalition Board of Directors.

Couldn’t happen to a more passionate or deserving person.

Even if he does ride a tandem.

………

Los Angeles’ first two-way protected bike lane is coming to Spring Street in DTLA, with a companion lane to follow soon just one block east on Main Street.

Actually, they’re already here.

https://twitter.com/NeelSodha/status/1122324668134744064

https://twitter.com/LAcycleHelper/status/1122655540373364736

Here’s how both the Spring Street and coming Main Street bike lanes are supposed to work — if LA drivers can resist the urge to park in them, which is a big if.

………

Bike riders across the US took part in Friday’s Red Cup Project by placing red plastic drinking cups on existing bike lanes to make their own DIY protected lanes.

And sending a message that paint is not enough. Such as the Pittsburgh advocates who called for more parking protected bike lanes.

Although not surprisingly, many didn’t last long before drivers ran them over, either failing to see the bright red cones, or simply not caring.

Like in Denver, where tomato-capped cups were soon turned into marinara. And where the project got its start, in honor of fallen DC bike advocate Dave Salovesh, who was riding in a painted lane when he was killed.

Meanwhile, hundreds of DC bicyclists converged on city hall to hold a die-in to demand streets that don’t kill people in the wake of Salovesh’s death. Although one local TV station seemed more concerned with scofflaw bicyclists than keeping law abiding ones alive.

And yes, the Red Cup Project even touched down in auto-centric Los Angeles.

And on the other side of the Orange Curtain, as well.

………

Traditional bicycles seldom catch on fire.

Ebikes, not so much.

An Australian woman’s home was gutted by fire when the battery on her ebike unexpectedly burst into flames.

A Singapore woman and her son were injured when the ped-assist ebike they were riding burst into flames after they were struck by a van driver.

………

Local

British singer Pixie Lott is one of us, following up on her recent Coachella appearance with a Dutch bike ride on the beachfront bike path in Venice. Maybe she ran into Simon Cowell while he was riding in Santa Monica.

Pasadena’s first-ever human sculpture took the shape of a bicycle at the Rose Bowl on Friday, in anticipation of the Pasadena finish of the Amgen tour of California next month.

The city managers of Alhambra, Pasadena and South Pasadena accuse Metro, which should know better, of ignoring people-powered transportation in favor of more cars after pulling the plug on the 710 Freeway extension through those cities.

A group of bicyclists set out from the Santa Monica Pier on Friday, hoping to raise a thousand dollars per mile for their 2,499-mile ride on Route 66 to Chicago, which would bring in $2.499 million for the fight against pediatric cancer.

The Coastal Commission gives Long Beach the okay to move palm trees along Marina Drive to make room for sidewalks and bike lanes, but only if it doesn’t bug the birds.

 

State

A Garden Grove man was sentenced to 26 years to life behind bars for the unprovoked attack that left a passing bike rider dead; 19-year old Bryan Ortega was knocked off his bike and repeatedly stabbed by 23-year old Troy David Son, even though there was no history between the two men, who did not appear to know each other.

Pro mountain biker Jeff Lenosky had $30,000 worth of bikes, cameras and other gear stolen when someone broke into his team van at a Santa Ana Holiday Inn.

A Ventura bike rider calls the city’s crumbling streets an embarrassment, complaining that the state’s gas tax money doesn’t seem to be fixing them.

Thanks to the help of a fellow church member and musician, a Bakersfield man is continuing to ride a bike despite losing his eyesight.

The news from Sunnyvale just keeps getting worse. In the story we’ve been following since last week, police now say the speeding driver who intentionally steered his car into eight pedestrians and bike riders at a Sunnyvale intersection did it because he thought they were Muslim; the FBI is now investigating it as a hate crime.

The Trader Joes of bike shops is making its second foray onto American shores with a new store in Emeryville, after pulling out of the US market thirteen years earlier.

 

National

A bipartisan bill pending in Congress would extend and expand the successful Transportation Alternatives Program (TAP) to build bikeways and sidewalks to reduce traffic congestion and support safe routes to schools. Unfortunately, bipartisanship is out of fashion in DC, so its immediate prospects could be questionable.

Bicycling examines the mechanical failures that led Lyft to lift its ebikes from city streets across the US.

This is what happens when you try to drive your pickup camper over a Portland bike and pedestrian bridge.

A writer from Cheyenne, Wyoming heads south to my hometown to ride the bike path along the Cache la Poudre River, which I used to ride on a near daily basis back in the day. Cheyenne is where I used to go to buy booze before I turned 21, or whenever I wanted to get beat up by a cowboy for looking at his girl the wrong way. Good times. 

Omaha NE has completed a 38-mile interconnected bicycle network just in time for next month’s Bike Week. But those damn bike riders are just never satisfied, saying it’s not enough. Unbridled sarcasm aside, at least they have an actual network, unlike LA’s disjointed and inadequate patchwork of bikeways that don’t connect to anything or go anywhere.

An Iowa letter writer calls for bicyclists to pay their fair share, and get a motorcycle license because they move too damn fast. Because evidently, it’s not enough for bike riders to subsidize drivers with their tax money.

This is what can happen if you do bikeshare right. Houston’s booming bikeshare system is reshaping the car-centric city, with the biggest jump in ridership coming from people who swapped car rides for bike rides.

Apparently, it takes a village to find a stolen Michigan girl’s bicycle.

Massachusetts legislators advanced a bill creating a three-foot passing law and 25 mph speed limits, but rejected a clause that would have expanded the use of interlock devices to fight repeat drunk driving. There’s no excuse for driving drunk, ever. Some people will tell you anyone could get caught after having a few drinks, but the easy solution is just don’t drink if you have to drive.

A group of 26 bicyclists are riding from Newtown, Connecticut to Baltimore, then back up to Pittsburgh to remember the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre and call for an end to gun violence.

The New York bike rider who allegedly blew through a red light and seriously injured a pedestrian was a homeless man, who told police his gears and brakes weren’t working right. The victim’s boss issued a statement calling for license plates for people on bicycles, saying lawbreaking bike riders put peoples lives in peril. Never mind that the last time a person was killed by a bike rider in Gotham was 2014, while 64 people have been killed by cars this year alone.

Rapper J Cole is one of us, too, riding the streets of New York to get a haircut.

A Jackson MS man faces a murder charge after fatally shooting a 14-year old boy who may have been attempting to steal his bike.

After a group of Florida mothers got suspicious of a man who kept riding his bike past an elementary school when kids were getting out, they discovered he was a registered sex offender.

 

International

Kicking your car to the curb in favor of an active commute could help cut the risk of death for overweight people.

Environmental activists swarmed central London and held a die-in at the Tate Modern museum to protest insect die-offs linked to climate change.

Britain can’t seem to figure Brexit out, but they are turning a 1790s Scottish cashmere mill into a world-class mountain biking research and development lab.

Despite earlier reports of a decline in bicycling, the UK enjoyed a record year for bike commuting last year, as new bike superhighways and improved networks helped bike lane usage boom across the country.

The BBC belatedly discovers that bicycling is not just for MAMILs. Although it’s hard to call women bicyclists rare when they make up nearly a third of Irish riders.

A Chinese bike factory town is dealing with the fallout after the bust of the bikeshare boom.

 

Competitive Cycling

Sadly, Dutch Continental cyclist Robbert de Greef has died, three weeks after suffering a heart attack while competing in a race.

Santa Clarita Magazine looks forward to next month’s Amgen Tour of California visiting the valley, calling it America’s greatest cycling race.

 

Finally…

In Los Angeles, we have car chases; in Indiana, hot bike chases. If you’re just riding around the perimeter of Great Britain, is it really a world record?

And apparently, your love of bicycling is nothing more than a basic, garden variety Satanic possession.

Which totally explains that whole N+1 thing.

 

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

Morning Links: Lime wins LA approvals, other cities fight climate change while LA does nothing, and snipping Ottolock

December 13, 2018 / / 2 comments

Lime has become the second company to win official approval to deploy scooters in the City of Los Angeles. 

The company follows Uber-owned JUMP, which received its permit a month ago. 

However, the hopes of many Angelenos that Lime would bring its dockless ebikes to the streets of LA may remain unfulfilled, at least for now. 

This is the press release Lime sent out yesterday announcing the approval

Scooter photo from Lime website.

………

Leave it to Minnesotans to show LA’s supposedly progressive leaders how to deal with traffic and climate change.  

As part of the city’s new housing and transportation plan, Minneapolis is eliminating parking minimums throughout the city. 

But that’s just the beginning. 

The plan calls for discouraging new surface parking lots, and prohibits new gas stations and drive-throughs. It also bans auto-oriented land use, such as auto repair shops, near transit stations, along with even stricter parking restrictions.

And in a move that would send Los Angeles NIMBYs running to their lawyers, it calls for increased density near traffic, and allows triplex apartments in every neighborhood — even those currently zoned for single family homes. 

The goal is to — wait for it — cut the number of local driving trips by 40%, while reducing emissions 80% in the next 30 years.

Compare that to the current Los Angeles policy, which is to hope that self-driving electric cars will somehow magically save us from having to make any tough choices. 

Good luck with that. 

These are all actions LA should take as quickly as possible, since California is already failing to meet its climate change goals.

And would, if the actions of our “progressive” leaders equalled their pro-environment, anti-climate change words. 

Instead, they’ll continue to fiddle while Rome burns in fear of further aggravating already angry drivers, and the dwindling number of homeowners who can actually afford a million-dollar single family starter home. 

Never mind making the hard choices the city, and our world, demand. 

………

A little closer to home, Sacramento followed the Minneapolis model by voting to ban new gas stations, drive-through restaurants and auto repair shops within a quarter mile of light rail stations, while requiring a conditional use permit with a half mile. 

The city will also eliminate off-street parking requirements within a quarter mile, and loosen restrictions in a half-mile radius around transit stations. 

Meanwhile, here in Los Angeles, 

<crickets>

………

Evidently, the popular Kickstarter sensation the Ottolock may be pretty and convenient, but may not protect your bike from thieves. 

In fact, it can apparently be cut through in just seconds. 

………

It may not be the Twelve Days of Christmas yet.

But it is first day of the last 12 days of the 4th Annual BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive, as we begin the final countdown on our year-end fundraiser!

Please take a few moments to join the 34 others who’ve already given their hard-earned money to support SoCal’s best source for bike news and advocacy, and help keep this site coming your way every day.

You can donate via PayPal, or through Zelle with the banking app that’s already on your phone, using the email address you’ll find on this link.

Anything you can give helps, and is truly and deeply appreciated, no matter how large or small. 

Or if you own a business, consider buying an ad on BikinginLA to show your support, while you spread your message to thousands of bike riders in Southern California and around the world. Then write off the full cost on your taxes next year!

………

Local

LA County approved 58 miles of multi-use, hiking, mountain-biking and equestrian trails in the Santa Susana Mountains near Santa Clarita. 

Bicycling looks at the international manhunt that belatedly brought Andrea Dorothy Chan Reyes to justice in the hit-and-run death of Agustin Rodriguez, Jr. as he rode to work in Whittier nearly two years ago. 

CiclaValley continues his tale of ‘cross crashes and victory. 

State

San Diego bike advocates cautiously support the creation of a new mobility board that combines the previous bicycle advisory and parking advisory boards. Yes, parking.  

The planned Complete Streets makeover of San Francisco’s Market Street gets a $15 million infusion from the feds. 

Marin residents debate whether to allow ebikes on the trails recognized as the birthplace of mountain biking, as bike riders explain how the bikes allowed them to return to the activity they love, despite advancing age, illness and injuries. The local paper sort ofendorses approving ebikes, while saying safety is paramount. 

Napa bicyclists are giving back with their time and money to help maintain the Napa Valley Vine Trail.

National

People For Bikes calls for mobility for all. 

Steve Carell is one of us, describing his “fun fan encounter” with the woman who ran him down from behind on his bike. Eighty-eight-year old Gene Hackman is one of us, too.

Clean Technica says urban planners should ignore the reactionary anti-ebike steps taken by Israel and New York, because ebikes offer strong benefits to cities and counties. 

Pink Bike considers the future of bike industry trade shows in a wake of Interbike’s announcement it won’t hold a show in 2019. Or maybe ever. 

No surprise here. Oregon’s $15 tax on the sale of all new bicycles over $200 is bringing in far less revenue than expected, collecting less than half of the projected $2.1 million. 

This is why people continue to die on our streets. After a 92-year old holocaust survivor was killed by an Oregon motorist, the local police rushed to blame the victim and exonerate the driver.

The Seattle Times endorses plans to complete the missing link in a 20-mile bike trail with a protected bike lane in the public right-of-way, despite alternative facts from area business owners. 

A Washington man who helped preserve the area’s last undeveloped natural space will be honored with a permanent memorial where he died after suffering an aneurism while mountain biking. 

The usual debate over bike lanes and road diets rears its ugly head in Colorado Springs CO, as supporters and opponents confront the topic at a city council meeting. 

‘Tis the season. Residents at a Wisconsin retirement home received two three-wheeled pedicabs from the Cycling Without Age program as an early holiday present. 

Boston bike riders want to city to cancel plans to remove flex posts that mark a protected bike lane on a bridge over the Charles River; the city plans to take them out to make it easier to salt and plow the bridge for motorists. 

The usual battle over who owns the streets is heating up in Harrisburg PA, as the city installs a number of projects intended to slow traffic and give more space back to local residents, bicyclists and pedestrians. 

International

A lawyer and former paramedic describes what it’s like to be on the receiving end of emergency treatment after experiencing the dreaded death wobble while descending on his bike at 40 mph. 

Not only did the authors of Vancouver’s Modacity bring their own Christmas tree home by bicycle, they’re collecting photos of other people around the world doing the same thing. 

Victoria, British Columbia asks the court to dismiss a lawsuit from the Canadian Federation of the Blind alleging that the design of the city’s protected bike lanes violate the human rights of sightless people. 

London plans to remove parking to make room for the first of the city’s cycle superhighways in South London.  

No bias here. A British paper automatically concludes a bike rider was at fault in a road rage dispute with a London cab driver who accused him of riding off after crashing into a pedestrian. From what I can see, they both come off as a pair of total jerks. 

The UK’s Cycling magazine offersa reminder that booze and bicycling don’t mix. 

Oslo crowdsources traffic data using children biking and walking to school. And discovers it works better than expected. 

Bikeshare comes to the streets of Tehran. 

A Syrian social movement has gotten over 4,000 women on bicycles, despite harassing catcalls and a country disrupted by civil war. 

This is the cost of traffic violence. The curator of South Africa’s world-famous Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden died after he was hit by a car while riding his bike earlier this month. 

A pair of ill-prepared roadies take part in The Pioneer trail race in New Zealand, part of the grueling Cape Series. 

No shit. The widow of an Australian bicyclist complains about the inadequate charges against a road raging driver who caused his death after getting out of his car to confront him; he faces a maximum of a lousy two years for three traffic offenses. 

Competitive Cycling

In a surprise announcement, British broadcaster Sky is pulling the plug on its sponsorship of Team Sky after next season, leaving the future of the cycling’s most dominant team up in the air.  Meanwhile, the BBC asks why now and what’s next?

As Sky leaves, McLaren moves in. The English Formula One giant will become half owner of Vincenzo Nibali’s Bahrain-Merida team.

Rouleur continues its interview with cycling great Bernard Hinault. 

Finally…

Forget Rapha; now you can wear Peter Sagan.  Bicycling’s most WTF moments of 2018.

And now you’ll be able to get a safety warning from the driverless car that’s about to run you down. 

………

Thanks to Michael W for his generous donation to the BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive to help keep this site coming to your screen every morning! 

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