Day 342 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025.
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It’s lucky Day 11 of the 11th Annual BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive!
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Because you wouldn’t want to see disappointment on that face, would you?
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We got an unexpected reminder of one of the darker periods in recent Los Angeles bike history.
Somehow, a 2013 story popped up in my daily news search on Saturday, even though the search parameters were confined to the previous 24 hours.
It was a report from Downtown LA News, celebrating what was then the new electric green bike lane on Spring Street in DTLA.
That was before Hollywood claimed Downtown Los Angeles as its own back lot, bike riders and safety be damned.
Film production companies raised hell with city leaders, insisting that the bike lanes would ruin their film shoots using DTLA as a stand-in for Anytown, USA, and New York in particular. Even though New York was getting its own green bike lanes. And even though green is the easiest color to remove in post production.
Let alone that all they had to do was lay a few asphalt-colored mats over them to make the bike lanes disappear entirely.
But evidently, that was just too much effort, minimal though it may be, and just too expensive for their massively bloated budgets.
After all, they need to find some way to pay for those martini lunches at the Ivy.
Not surprisingly, we quickly learned that film producers and production companies have a lot more clout in this city than people who ride bicycles. Before you could say “Cut!”, those electric green lanes were gone forever, eventually replaced by a much darker and less noticeable shade of green — and then only in conflict zones.
It was a fiasco of Hollywood epic proportions, and reminiscent of the initial draft of the 2010 bike plan, when “currently infeasible” entered the city’s bicycle lexicon to denote any “wished for” bike lane that would have required removing a traffic or parking lane, or anything else that might have possibly inconvenienced motorists even a little bit.
And it foreshadowed the disastrous lane removal on Deadly del Mar, when then-mayor Eric Garcetti ordered the road diet and non-existent bike lanes imagined by opponents removed, largely in response to complaints from wealthy pass-through commuters from Manhattan Beach.
I’d like to say things have gotten better, as the city continues to install new bike lanes, albeit at a glacial pace.
But if that was the case, we wouldn’t have needed to pass Measure HLA to force the city to comply with its own mobility plan, including the much-revised second draft of the 2010 bike plan.
And Joe Linton wouldn’t have had to sue Metro to comply with HLA on the makeover of Vermont Ave, as the city dares us to sue them again.
Just more reminders of our ongoing status as second-class citizens in the City of Los Angeles.
If that.
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While the city does its best to weasel out of promised safety improvements, an ordinary citizen gets arrested for painting his own DIY crosswalk, because the city didn’t.
Jonathan Hale was arrested by LAPD today for painting a crosswalk, even as the city of Los Angeles funnels more money to LAPD and does gymnastics to avoid implementing HLA.@mayor.lacity.gov, Jonny has made repeated attempts to meet with your office and has been iced out. Angelenos deserve better.
— picayune sasquatch (@pettyyeti.bsky.social) 2025-12-08T04:00:40.728Z
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That’s more like it.
Now give the kids a damn bike lane, so they can safely get to the new safety improvements.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
In a reminder of the added dangers women face on the streets, a Florida man was arrested for exposing himself to a woman riding an ebike home from work, following her in his car before pulling next to her and calling to get her attention while visible jerking off. Yet people still wonder why there’s a gender gap in bicycling.
No bias here. A London driver pulled up next to a mother taking her two kids to school on a cargo bike, and yelled out that she’s a bad mother, and it was “disgusting and irresponsible” for her to put her kids at risk like that, somehow failing to realize that he was the one putting them at risk.
Tragic news from Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, where a British resident was killed by a driver while riding a bicycle, in what was described as a “deliberate hit-and-run;” the victim was identified only 25-year old “youngster” who may or may not have been named Harry.
Once again, someone has sabotaged a bike trail, this time in New Zealand, after logs and traps were installed in a deliberate attempt to block, if not injure, riders using the trail, as bicyclists blamed pervasive anti-bike rhetoric.
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Local
LA casual and commuter bikewear maker Swrve is holding a year-end clearance sale.
State
Unless you were in San Diego yesterday, you missed out on California’s biggest bicycle swap meet at the city velodrome.
A 66-year old man was killed on Pebble Beach’s famed 17 Mile Drive Friday morning when he was hit head-on by a driver while riding salmon on his bicycle.
National
Men’s Journal says you don’t have to get rid of your car to commute on an ebike, if you just use both for what they’re best for. Which in the car’s case would be taking up valuable curb space.
Unbelievable. Life is extremely cheap in Portland, Oregon, where a cop let a driver off the hook, even though she was caught on video running a red light and slamming into a 42-year old woman riding a bicycle, leaving the victim with multiple broken bones, because “The driver felt bad and said sorry.” Oh, well okay, then.
He gets it. A former Navy sailor repairs bicycles to donate to Arizona veterans, saying “A bike means independence.”
Hundreds of Milwaukee bicyclists rolled out dressed as Santa Claus and his elves in the city’s annual Santa Cycle Rampage. Okay, make that thousands.
A group of Astoria, New York businesses successfully sued to have a new protected bike lane removed, after a judge agreed with their argument that the city didn’t sufficiently consider the safety of pedestrians crossing the bike lane, and ordered it ripped out. Because evidently, pedestrians were much safer when they had to cross lanes full of impatient drivers.
‘Tis the season. A Louisiana lawyer gave away over 600 bicycles to kids in eight cities, so boys and girls could feel the same joy he felt when he got his first bike.
International
They’ve got a point. Residents of a British Columbia neighborhood want the concrete curbs protecting a bike lane removed, after the city said they won’t be plowing bike lanes this winter, and bike riders will be required to ride in the traffic lane; last year, snow plows broke the curbs and pushed them into the bike lane, blocking them anyway.
Calgary Redditors sound off about a cop in an SUV issuing $400 speeding tickets to bicycle commuters on a local bike path.
A new electric ferry can carry 100 bicyclists and pedestrians across London’s River Thames every ten minutes, although riders complained about the “high” ticket price of about five and a half bucks.
British bicyclists are urged to join a solidarity ride this Sunday to complain about the erasure of trans cyclists from Cycling UK’s 100 Women in Cycling list.
No justice in the UK, where a driver was absolved for killing a bicyclists riding with a group, after the court agreed with the defense argument blaming the victim for poor road positioning.
Britain’s transport minister blamed London bike lanes for slowing bus travel times. Although chances are, too many cars had a lot more to do with it.
A new Finnish study says you’re more likely to be injured on an e-scooter than riding a bicycle, but that may have more to do with riskier behavior by scooter riders.
‘Tain’t the season, as an Indian government bike giveaway for high school students failed, after students and teachers complained many of the bikes were broken and missing parts, forcing students to push their new bikes to the nearest repair shop.
Taiwanese bikemaker Giant is issuing refunds to migrant workers in that country after the Trump administration briefly blocked imports of the brand over allegations of their mistreatment. Proof that our government really does care about migrants, as long as they’re in another country.
Here’s another one for your bike bucket list, as a woman writing for London’s Independent says she fell in love with a “blissful” bicycling route through rural Japan, connecting six islands via six bridges.
The opposition party in Australia’s New South Wales is promising to require license plates for all ebike riders under the age of 18 if they come into power, calling it a “sensible solution” for common community issues — once again conflating ebikes with electric motorbikes, to the detriment of everyone.
Competitive Cycling
Apparently, the Tour de France wasn’t always so darn serious.
Finally…
Why Campy’s working on his last good nerve. You could have had Tadej Pogačar’s Mont Ventoux Colnago for the low, low price of just $190,000 — or nearly $263,000 Canadian.
And your next foldie could be a rolling work of art.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
