November 22, 2023 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Burbank’s Friedman out as Transportation chair, still no stops at deadly SaMo corner, and breaking piggy bank to buy a bike
Which is a lot better way to use your hard-earned cash than joining in the mad-dash Black Friday consumerist frenzy when you could be riding your bike.
After donating, of course.
But take a little time to visit your favorite local bike shop for Small Business Saturday, and just buy something, anything, to help ensure they’ll still be here when you need them.
Just be careful out there. Ride defensively, and try to avoid the malls and other shopping meccas over the weekend, when frenzied drivers will be focused on everything but you.
Because I don’t want to have to write about you unless you rescue a kitten from a burning building or something.
We’ll see you back here bright and early Monday morning.
And seriously, have a great Thanksgiving.
Photo: State Assemblymember and Congressional candidate Laura Friedman speaks at the recent die-in at LA City Hall.
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It’s a big loss for traffic safety.
In her time as California Assembly Transportation Committee chair, Laura Friedman has been a champion for safety measures that benefit everyone on our streets, not just people on bikes.
But it was probably predictable, as her campaign to replace Adam Schiff in the US Congress will take her away from Sacramento leading up to next year’s election.
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A little kid should never have to see a ghost bike.
Santa Barbara’s on again, off again State Street bike lanes are back on again, as the city re-striped the lanes in yellow paint, just one year after removing “garish” green bike lanes just 20 months after they were installed. Let’s hope these ones last a little longer.
Life is cheap in British Columbia, where a 73-year old Vancouver driver walked with a lousy $1,500 fine for killing a 57-year old man riding a bicycle; he saw the victim enter the intersection from the opposite direction, but decided to make a left turn in front of him, anyway.
Some bicyclists in South Africa’s Gauteng province are giving up riding due to rising rates of attacks on bike riders, including one fatal shooting and another rider who who survived after being shot twice; even riding in groups of of eight to twelve riders isn’t enough to deter the robbers.
And let’s end things with a pre-holiday smile, as a South Africa boy breaks open his piggy bank to buy a new bike for a gas station worker he befriended.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
The latest controversy dogging plans to complete the long-delayed LA River bike path comes from pooch owners in the lower San Fernando Valley, who are loathe to give up a sliver of the Sepulveda Basin dog park to make room for the pathway.
Other groups and neighborhood councils have joined the dogpile, adding their own voices to complaints over the location and $58 million cost.
The city is also planning a 6′ to 8′ fence to keep bike riders from “agitating” the dogs.
To be honest, it would seem to make more sense to build it on the south bank of the LA River if they can work it out, rather than the current plan to have the path start on the south side, switch to the north bank, then move back to the south bank.
But frankly, all I want is for the city to finally complete the damn thing.
She’d never complain about a bike path encroaching on her dog park.
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Sadly, the seemingly endless series of ghost bike ceremonies goes on in the City of Angels.
Streets Are For Everyone, aka SAFE, will install a ghost bike this Thursday at 7 pm at the corner of Edgemont and Fountain in East Hollywood for Bob George, the Hollywood producer killed in a dooring while riding in the bike lane on Fountain last month.
I’m told his widow, artist Yasmine Nasser Diaz, and his sister Jennifer will be in attendance.
SAFE is the nonprofit advocacy group founded by hit-and-run survivor Damian Kevitt with a goal of improving “the quality of life for pedestrians, bicyclists, and drivers alike by reducing traffic fatalities to zero,” according to their website.
Tessier appeared to be the victim of a hit-and-run at first, but police now believe he was killed in a high-speed fall when his bike hit the curb on the steep descent.
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Let’s just hope the day finally gets here when these damn things aren’t needed anymore.
According to the New York Times, commute times are down nationwide — including a 6.3% drop in Los Angeles — due to the lingering effects of the pandemic and work from home, although transit use has declined precipitously. Thanks to HombeDeBicycle for the heads-up.
A bike-riding trauma surgeon at the University of New Mexico Hospital is credited with saving the life of another bicyclist who had a heart attack while they were both riding on an Albuquerque trail; four other hospital workers who just happened to be nearby helped with CPR and chest compressions until paramedics arrived 20 minutes later.
Brooklyn bystanders stopped a driver from fleeing the scene, physically holding her down and taking her keys, after she jumped the curb and hit a bike rider and a pedestrian, critically injuring the latter.
November 6, 2023 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Narrower and fewer lanes save lives, a weekend of traffic violence, and passing ghost bikes on to the next generation
Ride or walk carefully today.
The day after the time change usually sees a spike in traffic collisions, so ride defensively for the next few days.
Not to mention encouraging drivers to speed, which increases both the risk and severity of crashes, as we’ve learned from other studies.
Narrowing traffic lanes also provides more room for other road uses, like wider sidewalks and bike lanes.
The key findings from the study include —
Narrower lanes did not increase the risk of accidents. When comparing 9- and 11-foot lanes, we found no evidence of increased car crashes. Yet, increasing to 12-foot lanes did increase the risk of crashes, most likely due to drivers increasing their speed and driving more carelessly when they have room to make mistakes.
Speed limit plays a key role in travel width safety. In lanes at 20-25 mph speeds, lane width did not affect safety. However, in lanes at 30-35 mph speeds, wider lanes resulted in significantly higher number of crashes than 9-foot lanes.
Narrower lanes help address critical environmental issues. They accommodate more users in less space, use less asphalt pavement, with less land consumption and smaller impervious surface areas.
Narrowing travel lanes could positively impact the economy. This includes raising property values, boosting business operation along streets and developing new design projects.
Even on high-traffic corridors that exceed Federal Highway Administration recommendations that road diets should be applied to roadways with fewer than 20,000 average daily trips.
According to the authors —
We found that collisions, injuries, and deaths were lower by 31.2% to 100%, depending on the measure, whereas traffic speeds were lower by about 6.7% (peak) to 7.9% (off-peak). We concluded that in Los Angeles higher-traffic-volume road diets appeared to significantly increase safety with only minor effects on traffic speeds.
Let that sink in.
Road diets on high-traffic corridors — even right here in the automotive capital of the world, where driving is considered a God-given right and obligation — dropped traffic deaths and serious injuries by anywhere from a third, to complete elimination.
And all with a minimal impact on driver speeds, taking a typical 40 mph driving speed down to a more reasonable 36.
Which isn’t going to make anyone late for dinner or to pick up the kids, while helping to ensure they’ll actually get there in one piece.
Two people were killed when a minivan driver being chased by police slammed into a Metro bus in DTLA early Sunday morning, after police reportedly saw someone toss a gun out the window of the minivan. Two people in the backseat, who weren’t wearing seatbelts, were killed while the two people up front survived with non-life threatening injuries; three people on the bus suffered minor injuries, including the driver.
Several people suffered minor injuries, and a number of others were lucky to escape injury, when an alleged drunk driver doing donuts lost control of her car, and slammed into a large group of people standing outside a Valencia bar. And almost needless to say, she fled the scene before she and her passenger were arrested — after reportedly changing seats to hide who was driving.
Video of the crash is appalling.
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Sad to think we need to pass this on to a new generation.
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Austrian stunt cyclist Fabio Wibmer goes for a ride through my Hollywood neighborhood, among other Los Angeles area sites.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
A Fresno woman was collateral damage in an apparent political dispute between a 60-year old pickup driver and a bike rider participating in a Pro-Palestinian demonstration, after the driver, who was allegedly under the influence, tried to speed off when the bike rider began punching him through the open window; the victim was lucky to escape with just a broken ankle, while the driver faces possible hit-and-run and DUI charges, while the bike rider could be charged with assault.
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Local
LAisttalks with new LADOT General Manager Laura Rubio-Cornejo, who swears her priority is to make every Angeleno and visitor feel safe on the streets, while revisiting the city’s nearly moribund Vision Zero program — but without making a commitment to the wholesale changes to our streets required to do that.
SoCal speed cams took a step closer to becoming reality in Los Angeles on Wednesday, when City Council Transportation Committee unanimously approved a motion to create an automated Speed Camera Safety Program when a new state law approving a pilot program in Los Angeles, Glendale and Long Beach goes into effect next year.
A Streetsblog op-ed by Jeanie Ward-Waller, former deputy director for planning and modal programs at Caltrans, relates how she was fired for doing her job, and speaking out when Caltrans officials tried to skirt the law to widen Sacramento highways. Maybe Newsom should just fire the people running Caltrans, and give her the damn job.
A Utah man gets screwed when someone stole a pair of ebikes from his garage, and his homeowner’s insurance refused to pay the claim, stating his policy doesn’t cover “motor vehicles” — even though the state classifies ebikes as bicycles.
Danish pro Jonas Vingegaard, two-time winner of the Tour de France, was awarded the prestigious Velo d’Or trophy for the year’s best cyclist, and was apparently so unimpressed he didn’t bother to show up for the ceremony; Dutch Tour de France Femmes winner Demi Vollering won the women’s Velo d’Or.
GCNtalks with Slovenian cyclist Matej Mohorič, who popularized the now-banned super-tuck position, about his upbringing and his quest to give a ‘higher purpose’ to his racing.
Remembering the good old days of the Tour de France, when doping meant raiding the local cafe to steal a little mid-stage booze.
September 15, 2023 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Culver City non-explains MOVE bike lane removal, Ethan Boyes ghost bike burned at Burning Man, and NoHo CicLAmini
Except the only time CEQA is even mentioned is in the first paragraph, and then only in passing.
At its meeting on Monday, September 11th, 2023, the Culver City City Council voted 3-2 to ratify plans to modify the MOVE Culver City pilot project, including a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) exemption. MOVE Culver City is a city-led effort that reimagines city streets as public spaces and prioritizes moving people more efficiently and safely in the design of the street.
The story goes on to add that the re-imagined project will include new bike boxes at seven locations, which wouldn’t be necessary if the city wasn’t removing the current protected bike lane, and moving to a shared bus-bike lane.
And in doublespeak Orwell would be proud of, he describes the goal of the MOVE project as improving “the infrastructure and services for mobility alternatives and to offer the community equitable, convenient, and sustainable mobility options.”
It’s hard to imagine how removing a protected bike lane, and forcing bikes and buses to share a single lane, accomplishes any of those goals.
The bike had disappeared after officials at the Presidio ordered it removed, and passed among friends until it was taken to the event to be burned.
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A reminder that the North Hollywood CicLAmini — a shorter version of CicLAvia intended to encourage walking over bicycling — rolls this Sunday.
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Joni Yung sings the praises of Pasadena’s new Union Street protected bike lane, suggesting she may have misjudged the wealthy, traditionally white and conservative city.
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Good point.
If LA schools really cared about student safety, they wouldn’t resort to part-time safety measures.
And no, burn it all down and start over probably isn’t a winning idea.
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Here’s your chance to weigh in on the long-overdue proposal to extend the Ballona Creek bike path to the creek’s eastern terminus.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. A teenaged bike rider was injured when they were struck by driver while taking part in a Salinas rideout, as the group popped wheelies and wove through traffic in front of the local high school. But despite several references to getting hit by a car, the lengthy story never once mentioned that it might have had a driver.
No bias here, either. Nowhere in this six paragraph story about a Wisconsin hit-and-run that left a 39-year old woman riding a bicycle with significant injuries, does it mention that someone was driving the vehicle that hit her.
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Local
What could possibly go wrong? The Los Angeles City Planning Commission backed a proposal to install 80 digital billboards on sites owned by Metro, which could generate up to half a billion dollars in ad revenue over a 20 year period. After all, it’s not like the flashing billboards are distracting, or anything.
A 19-year old Roseville driver faces a felony hit-and-run charge after striking a 61-year old bike rider and driving off, leaving the victim with minor injuries. Although something doesn’t add up, since California’s felony hit-and-run statute only applies in cases of major injuries or death; a crash resulting in minor injuries should be charged as a misdemeanor.
A Gold County bicycling columnist offers safety advice while reviewing bike laws, but neglects to mention under his section about taking the lane that bicyclists can legally use the full lane on any substandard lane, which means any lane too narrow to safety share with a motor vehicle — and these days that means a large truck or SUV, not a compact sedan.
National
He gets it. A Colorado writer says instead of blaming the victim, it should be up to drivers to operate their vehicles safely and not hit bike riders or pedestrians. But please, can we finally drive a stake through the overly tired “safety is a two-way street” cliche once and for all?
Let’s start with a quick update on the horrific events in Dana Point Wednesday afternoon.
The victim of the incident has been identified as 58-year old Michael John Mammone, an emergency physician with Providence Mission Hospital in Laguna Beach.
Mammone was reportedly stopped in the bike lane at the red light on PCH at Crown Valley Parkway, when a Lexus driven by 39-year old Long Beach resident Vanroy Evan Smith slammed into him from behind.
Smith then got out of his car and stabbed Mammone as he lay on the ground; Mammone died at a nearby hospital approximately three hours later.
After stabbing Mammone at least once in the back, Smith pulled out a gun and began shooting, apparently at random. Adding to the bizarre nature of the incident, there are reports that the weapon may have been a BB gun.
So far, investigators have found no link between Smith and Mammone, suggesting that it may have been a road rage attack, or possibly a case of mistaken identity.
Or it may have been completely random, which is even more frightening.
Anyone with information is urged to call the Orange County Sheriff’s Department at 714/288-6740.
I do not know what Caltrans policy is, but I would be happy to see it in kept in place until Caltrans applies their own ‘Complete Streets’ best practices to call out the Jeffrey Class II bikeway where it is merged across by their freeway entrance, or better yet removes the free-right acceleration lane across the bikeway and makes a 90° intersection to ’square off’ this old style dangerous condition.
Since that fatality nothing has been done to deal with this hazardous condition, where the bike lane turns into a shoulder of the entrance, and even a pedestrian or sidewalk cyclist can be killed by high speed accelerating motorists.
Not even an on-demand warning light for those trying to use the crosswalk, much less a curb bulb-out.
Irvine has not reduced posted or actual speeds on Jeffrey either.
Every time I ride past it I think of Barbora and her death. It’s a good reminder. I am grateful that Caltrans has not removed it for the last 2 1/2 years.
Your resident is correct – it has been out there, motionless, day and night, rain or shine, silent, for over 2 years.
If it were her friend or daughter killed, she might understand it’s value.
If there was a ghost bike located at the site of the other 16 Orange County cyclist who died in 2020, and the 7 in 2021, the 19 in 2022 and 2 already in 2023, the motorists and traffic engineers might take greater steps to slow down and make our roads safer.
We can only hope.
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After so much bad news, we have a little good news to share.
The US Department of Transportation announced the first $800 million of the five year, $5 billion — yes, with a B — Safe Streets and Roads for All Program that was established in the new federal budget.
California is set to receive $133 million of that, including six large “transformative” projects which will receive a combined $100 million, three of which are in Southern California.
Los Angeles County will receive $21 million for Florence-Firestone for All, a Vision Zero plan along corridors with high collision rates.
The City of Los Angeles will get $9 million for the La Brea Avenue Complete Streets Project. Or maybe only sort of complete, since it doesn’t include any bicycling infrastructure or improvements.
And as we mentioned yesterday, Wildomar is set to receive $2 million for the Sedco Blvd Improvements.
While we’ll miss her strong advocacy in Sacramento for active transportation, she’ll offer an even stronger voice in DC.
Thanks to Blake Dellinger and Ravener for the heads-up.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. An “avid bicyclist” says a hit-and-run Jersey City councilwoman may have been wrong, but the bike rider she hit doesn’t deserve a $1 million settlement because he’s “everything that serious bikers, like myself, detest.” Like riding in flip flops, for instance.
Four Pittsburgh cops will fight their suspensions in an effort to regain their jobs, 16 months after a man was killed when he was tased ten times in a matter of minutes, for the crime of test-riding an abandoned bicycle that had been left on the sidewalk; no charges have been filed, and prosecutors have still not released video of the incident.
This is who we share the road with. After a severed human penis was discovered in the parking lot of an Alabama gas station, investigators said it belonged to a motorcyclist who was killed in a collision with multiple vehicles on a nearby highway, and carried to the station on the grill of a truck; it fell off when the driver parked at the station.
Three people, a man and two women, have been arrested in the death of a father and his teenage son who were killed when they were struck by a hit-and-run driver while riding their bikes in the UK last month; another man was arrested when the abandoned car was discovered shorty after the crash. At least one man faces a possible murder charge.
March 14, 2022 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Help raise funds for memorial to fallen bicyclist, and money for fallen cross-country rider benefits Navajo children
Let’s get this one over the top today.
Streets Are For Everyone, aka SAFE, is working in conjunction with the family of fallen bicyclist Jeff Knopp to raise funds for a permanent memorial where he was killed on Foothill Blvd.
If the sight of a rideout with a hundred or so wheelie-popping bike riders taking over Sunset Blvd doesn’t put a smile on your face, I don’t know what will.
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Help fight Alzheimer’s while you shake off some of the stress of recent weeks with a 100% carfree ride on the San Gabriel River Trail.
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How to tell when bikes are just being used for marketing purposes.
A Wisconsin letter writer says move bike lanes off main streets onto quieter side streets. Because evidently, bike riders don’t need to go to those places where all those apparently more important people in cars need to go. And don’t need red lights or otherwise safe crossings to get across busy streets.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
In a story that makes no sense, an Oceanside cop was injured in a fight with a bike rider, who crashed while fleeing from the officer, who wasn’t even trying to make a stop, then attacked the cop when he stopped to help after the crash.
Talk about not getting it. The editorial board of the Seattle Times says dropping the county’s mandatory bike helmet law was a wrong-headed decision — even though it disproportionately targeted people of color and disadvantaged riders who couldn’t afford to pay. And even though studies show helmet laws depress bicycling rates.
New York is exploiting a loophole in city regulations by installing secure bike parking pods for just 29 days before moving them to other locations, to get around a requirement for review and approval by a city commission for periods longer than that.
UK government ministers are being urged to promote ebikes, after a study shows they could result in the equivalent of $2.61 billion in health savings and cut a million tons of emissions every year. Not to mention reduce dependence on Russian oil.
This is why people keep dying in the streets. Former Manchester United star Chris Eagles is now one of us, albeit unwillingly, after he was banned from driving for three whole months when he was found in his car partially undressed, and nearly three times over the legal alcohol limit. Maybe he would have gotten four months if he was four times over the limit.
December 3, 2020 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Painful history of NY ghost bikes, Calbike unveils initiatives tonight, and Mexican shopper chains herself to Walmart scooter
Thanks to Diana R and SSK Press for their generous donations to help keep SoCal’s best source for bike news and advocacy coming your way every day! And for their kind words, which mean every bit as much to me as the donations.
Writing for Bicycling, NY bike advocate Jessie Singer captured in a few words exactly how I feel writing about a fallen rider.
What I remember most was the sadness that wafted in with the white cloud of paint. Painting that first bike, I thought of a woman I knew nothing about except that, like me, she rode a bike. I imagined her life and horrible death. I pictured the people she left behind. In the act of making, I felt mournful about something that before, I might never have known.
Then there are the lessons to be learned, including who is most likely to be killed, and how.
Which again tracks with my own experience.
The more ghost bikes I built, the more I found even broader lessons. Across boroughs, for example, ghost bikes were needed at intersections and on streets without bike lanes, because those places were where most were killed. In this way, the ghost bikes mapped what needed to be done: Fix a street. Build a bike lane. Protect an intersection. Each death was a lesson, and by marking the dead, the lessons appeared stark.
But there were other patterns too, ones that a ghost bike offered nothing for. These emerged only after years of building ghost bikes, as I met the families of the dead. The people we built ghost bikes for were disproportionately Black, Latino, and Asian. Often they were immigrants; often they were killed on the job, or riding to and from work in the dim of late night and early morning…
In New York and across the United States, transportation access is a racial and economic barrier. Today more than a million unemployed people have stopped looking for work because family or transportation issues make returning to work impossible. While other markers of the economy have improved, this number has not. With public transit budgets being cut nationwide, and even the cheapest used car costing a few thousand dollars, the simplest and most affordable transportation option is a bike. For people who ride bikes because they have no other choice, a bike can bring transportation freedom, access to a paycheck, and also vulnerability to premature death.
And he sums it up this way.
What is the difference between a ghost bike for a person who chooses to ride a bike and a ghost bike for a person who must ride a bike? Nothing. And that is where the ghost bike falls short.
Take a few minutes to read it.
Because it will likely be the most moving, and challenging, thing you read today.
Then multiply that over 800 times every year, in cities and towns of every size throughout the US. And you’ll just be starting to understand the problem.
Calbike will unveil their top initiatives for 2021 in an online conversation this evening.
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Let’s hope it includes tackling California’s hit-and-run epidemic and eliminating the deadly 85th Percentile Law that lets drivers set speed limits with their right foot.
San Francisco agreed to a $330,000 settlement with Lyft, after the city solicited bids for dockless bikeshares that would compete with the docked bikeshare system operated by a subsidiary of the company.
April 9, 2020 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Guest commentary from the South Bay, LA and OC closed this weekend, and give a lot more distance when you walk or ride
Our anonymous South Bay correspondent has a lot on her mind today.
And all of it worth reading, which is why I’m reposting her email. There’s a lot to unpack here, so I hope you’ll give it a good read.
Including a couple reminders of the problems women face on their bikes that men don’t, especially at night.
Yesterday afternoon I rode to Carla Becerra’s ghost bike, with the intention of posting a little sign to remind the world that she was a registered nurse who we should have on the front lines right now, and also with a little P.S. (piece of smacktalk) addressed to the skunk who stole her jewelry.
There was a necklace hanging on the ghost bike. Just a piece of costume jewelry that the rain hasn’t been kind to. It was the bike’s only ornamentation.
It appears to have an olive green beveled stone pendant in a bronze setting, and several smaller, opaque chartreuse stones, clear glass beads, and pale blue gems on a tarnished silver or bronze alloy chain. I took it.
Can you contact the family and ask if it might be hers? If it is, they should have it. If not, I have to return it to the ghost bike.
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I am cranky not knowing how court cases are proceeding, especially the Banks and Lindsley cases.
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The speeding drivers lately are less worrisome than the speeding drivers in the rightmost lane. I swear, close calls lately have been a lot closer.
Why the f are drivers with two completely free lanes to their left still trying to share my lane, a substandard width lane that’s already occupied, at 45mph???
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On Saturday night, on a stretch of my commute through an area between the freeway and a commercial/business park, a car slowed wayyy down as it came up from behind. It had barely passed as I hit the brakes and did a track stand at its 5 o’clock. Its driver yelled, “WANT SOME CASH?”
Are.you.fucking.kidding.me.jpeg.
I bellowed my standard response, which is a loud, stern, unambiguous, “Get away from me and stay away from me.” And then swerved behind him to flood his rearview with 1100 lumens. He took off.
For the record, since it’s pertinent information, I was wearing knee-high Dr Martens with cargo pants tucked in, a long-sleeved t-shirt, a reflective jacket, and a provocatively sexy giant lump of a 45L-capacity Chrome bag. And no make-up.
The bars are closed. The strip clubs are closed. The corners & bus stops are empty of trafficked girls.
The lonely and the predatory are still out there, though.
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Much closer to home, I’ve taken to cutting through the empty parking lots of another commercial park in the past few weeks, mainly because there are cameras that can be accessed if I turn up missing.
Two nights ago, a couple of guys were vaping in front of a business, door open, lights on inside. One of them yelled at me, “Stay safe!” Last night, they were out there, so I stopped to say hi and ask them not to yell at me. The one guy is the business owner. He and his friend are sleeping inside the office with guns, just in case. They’re worried about their fledgling business and looters (and possibly saving on residential rent.) Anyway, I told them I’d alert them if I saw anything suspicious while passing through, and I expect they’ll continue to have their smoke break right about my commute time. This area is usually a ghost town but now I feel a little safer with my own personal armed bodyguards.
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Some nights I would catch a northbound bus to cut a few miles off my commute (especially if, for example, it rained), but that particular transit agency has cut its service hours to 6am-9pm. Us schlubby little wage slaves who man the warehouses & run the mini-marts & stock the shelves & bake the factory bread aren’t the ones who benefit from such operating hours. And the 9-to-5ers who could commute exclusively during these hours are now working remotely. So fuck you if you’re off swing shift at 11pm, or if you work graveyards. Just stop bein’ essential, lol.
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Last Friday shortly before 11pm, a rider was hit and left for dead on El Segundo Blvd, just a half mile west of a corner where a house was hit by a drunk driver on March 29th. And Monday about 7:45pm, a driver with a previous DUI hit a cyclist in East LA. Nothing in the news. And I wonder if these drivers are simply released, despite the violent nature of their crimes.
This is why people keep dying on the streets. An Alberta judge acquitted the driver who killed an off-duty Mountie as he rode his bike on the shoulder of a highway, blaming the sun and shadows for making the victim hard to see. Even though the driver shouldn’t have been driving on the shoulder in the first place. Never mind that he refused to take an alcohol test after an officer smelled it on his breath.
Piers Morgan, host of Good Morning Britain, apologized to a Member of Parliament for the “complete moron” on a bike who kept riding through the background of their TV interview. He also blamed the bike rider for violating the county’s three-foot social distancing requirement, even though he doesn’t appear to come that close.
A London woman with cystic fibrosis will ride the equivalent of 62 miles in her garden this weekend to celebrate the third anniversary of the lung transplant that saved her life, after the country’s lockdown forced her off the streets. And despite the fact her new lungs are failing.
April 1, 2019 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: LA approves memorial signs instead of fixing streets, BAC agenda, and Yerba Buena Road closed
I honestly don’t know what to think about this one.
The signs can be requested by the families of fallen bicyclists, memorializing the victim while offering a general nod to bike safety.
They’ll stay in place for five to seven years, after which families can pay to have them replaced.
However, a maximum of just 20 signs will be installed each year, which will barely keep up with the number of riders killed on an annual basis in Los Angeles.
In an interview withKPCC’s Take Two, (Councilmember Bob) Blumenfield explained how the idea for the signs was borne out of a tragedy in Woodland Hills last April. On Easter Sunday, 15-year-old Sebastian Montero was struck by a car and killedwhile riding his bike on Burbank Boulevard.
Blumenfield was in contact with the boy’s family, as well as local police officers— together, they discussed ways to prevent future tragedies.
“I’ve been to too many of those ghost bike ceremonies, and they’re heartbreaking,” Blumenfield said.
After one officer, Duke Dao, suggested the idea for the memorial signs, Blumenfield ran with it.
I’m told be someone who worked closely with Blumenfield on the proposal that he’s absolutely sincere in wanting to do something to both remember the victims of traffic violence, and keep it from happening again.
But a simple sign’s not going to do that.
Blumenfield is one of the city’s better councilmembers on traffic issues, and is working to get a bike lane installed where Montero was killed.
But many of his peers have taken active steps to block desperately needed, potentially life-saving bikeways.
Despite the unanimous vote to establish the memorial program, we have to wonder how many of the councilmembers voted for memorials to fallen bicyclists instead of taking active steps to prevent their deaths.
Because it’s a lot easier to put up a small memorial sign than to fix the roads to avoid the need for them.
Among those voting yes,
Gil Cedillo has blocked road diets on North Figueroa and Temple Street, as well as trying to remove his entire district from the bike plan.
All voted to approve the memorials, while helping create — or at least not alleviate — conditions likely to require them.
Meanwhile, there’s a reasonable fear that the memorial signs will just blend into the streetscape, no more noticeable than the street signs indicating where police officers have been killed.
And if you haven’t seen those, that’s exactly my point.
Ghost bikes are intrusive and evocative. Granted, many drivers don’t know what they are. But once they do, they notice them every time they pass, and that drives the meaning home.
I’m not sure that will happen with these.
Especially if the limit of just 20 a year stays in place. It should be expanded to include not just those riders killed in the future, but the many riders who have needlessly lost their lives in the past.
And it should include pedestrians, as well, since they die in much greater numbers on LA’s mean streets than we do.
Maybe if hundreds of these memorial signs started to appear every year, blanketing every part of the city, people might finally get it. And realize that too damn many people are getting killed just because they rode a bike or went for a walk.
Then the council might finally do more than put up a sign.
Maybe.
Thanks to everyone who sent me links to this story.
No word on whether the alleged speeding driver who killed him was ever charged.
Photo by Steve S
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The Los Angeles Bicycle Advisory Committee will hold its bimonthly meeting this Tuesday. As always, the meetings are open to the public, and you are encouraged to attend.
Twitter post
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Don’t plan on riding Yerba Buena Road anytime soon.
I’d like to think that might actually make someone think twice before getting behind the wheel after drinking, smoking or downing pills.
But the threat of the death penalty hasn’t seemed to stop anyone from murdering other people.
So there’s that.
Thanks to Evan Burbridge for the link.
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Local
LAistnotes the problems with LA’s troubled Vision Zero program, including a lack of social media presence for the past seven months. What the city doesn’t seem to get is that most of us really, really want to support Vision Zero LA — if they ever get their shit together.
The San Francisco Chronicle complains about the mythical war on cars, exemplified by a discussion of congestion pricing. Never mind that congestion pricing is intended to help improve traffic flow, which is hardly anti-driver. Or that nearly 100% of the roads are already dedicated to motorists, and the rest of us are just hoping for a few crumbs.
Two Kansas men were killed when a driver slammed into their bicycles from behind. No word on why the driver apparently didn’t see a couple grown men on bikes directly in front of him, but I’m sure we could all take a pretty reasonable guess.
An Oklahoma man learned the hard way not to wear a skull mask while carrying meth and weed on his bike. Although his lawyer might want to argue that simply wearing a mask, scary or otherwise, on a public street is not probable cause for a traffic stop. Which makes everything that followed moot.
The upstate New York jerk who wrote a ten-year old boy a letter of non-apology after a judge let him off easy for sideswiping the boy’s bike will now have to perform community service.
Taking a cue from LA Mayor Eric Garcetti’s playbook, Baltimore’s mayor decides to rip out a protected bike lane, and says no way to a planned road diet. Although to be fair, she’s replacing the protected lane with a painted green lane. And she gave it four years, while Garcetti removed the non-protected bike lanes and road diets in Playa del Rey after just one month of driver complaints.
Only after he passed away at the ripe old age of 93 on Saturday was it revealed that a Montreal man was the secret “Mr. Bike Man” who gave away over 1,700 bikes, helmets and locks to children in the Montreal area for the past 34 years.
French drivers are apparently vandalizing speed cameras, costing the country the equivalent of nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars. And it may have contributed to a jump in traffic deaths.
Sydney, Australia residents rise up against what they term a “nonsensical” bicycle superhighway, fearing it would somehow jeopardize pedestrians more than all those cars zooming past. Seriously, why is it that people continue to fight bike lanes that have repeatedly proven to be a net benefit to the surrounding community, regardless of any loss of parking?
Thanks to Matthew R for his generous monthly donation to support this site, and keep SoCal’s best source for bike news and advocacy coming your way every day.
Maybe Los Angeles is finally getting fed up with traffic deaths.
Steve S reports at least 100 people turned out last night for the ghost bike installation honoring 15-year old Sebastian Montero, who was killed by an alleged speeding driver in Woodland Hills yesterday.
Montero’s bike was installed on De Soto Ave and Burbank Blvd, across from the entrance to the Kaiser medical center.
Let’s hope the turnout leads to demands for safer streets, so some good can come from this heartbreaking tragedy.
The San Diego Union-Tribuneprofiles a former software engineer who quit his job, gave up his car and now works part-time for the San Diego County Bike Coalition.
Life is cheap in Kansas, where a drunk driver gets just three and a half years for falling asleep behind the wheel and running down a bike rider before fleeing the scene, leaving the victim on the brink of death for weeks.
No bias here. If a Boston truck driver couldn’t even see a bike rider due to the truck’s massive blindspot, why the hell does it matter if the victim didn’t signal? And why the hell are trucks that blind their drivers to human beings in the roadway even allowed on city streets?
The New York Times says city planners are getting distracted by the bright, shiny objects that are self-driving cars, rather than focusing on proven safety measures.
