Just 9 days until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025, a decade of failure in which deaths have continued to climb.
Yet no city official has mentioned the impending deadline, or the city’s failure to meet it.
………
It’s Penultimate Day of the 10th Annual BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive!
Thanks to Jame S, Paul F, Patti A, David A, Penny S, SAFE, Patrick M and San M for they generous donations to keep all the best bike news and advocacy coming your way every day!
But time is running out. So don’t wait!
Stop what you’re doing and give now!
………
We usually never hear about bike riders injured by drivers unless someone gets killed.
If then.
That was the case once again in Long Beach this past October, when a staff member with the Long Beach Beer Lab suffered a spinal injury when she was struck by a cowardly hit-and-run driver while riding her bike to work.
A crowdfunding campaign has raised over $8,500 of the relatively modest $10,000 goal, which will likely cover only a small fraction of Julie’s medical expenses.
So it’s okay if you skip donating to the BikinginLA Fund Drive this year, as long as the money goes to help her out, instead.
Thanks to James for the heads-up.
Sure. Let’s go with that.
After last week’s failure by design of the launch of the California ebike voucher program, a spokesperson for the California Air Resourced Board discussed the values of ebikes.
“E-bikes help address two pressing problems in the state: pollution from transportation sources and the need to increase mobility options for people who need the boost the most,” said Lisa Macumber, Branch Chief of CARB’s Equitable Mobility Incentives Branch. “The program is a reflection of California’s innovation in finding air quality solutions and its commitment to ensuring that no one is left behind in a zero emissions future.”
Yet somewhere around 100,000 people who qualified among those “who need the boost most” were in fact left behind, as CARB intentionally throttled the rollout, limiting it to just 1,500 applicants. Even though they knew in advance that would meet just a tiny fraction of the anticipated demand.
And by targeting the program to lower-income people who need it the most — presumably meaning those without other means of transportation — they appear to be aiming it at people who would otherwise use relatively clean mass transit, as opposed to those who drive dirty gas-burning private vehicles.
Which would have exactly the opposite effect of addressing pollution from transportation source.
Just two more example of how badly this program has been planned and rolled out.
And don’t get me started on having the program managed by a firm that is currently the subject of a criminal investigation.
………
This is why people keep dying on our streets.
A middle school teacher was convicted of the distracted driving death of a 10-year boy riding a bicycle just minutes from my bike-friendly Colorado hometown after a four-day trial.
Yet she was only charged and convicted on a misdemeanor for killing the little boy, along with a second misdemeanor count she previously admitted to for deleting texts from her phone — including one sent just 11 seconds before the crash.
Meanwhile, a friend of hers tried to help her out by getting the boy’s ghost bike removed.
………
‘Tis the season.
A formerly incarcerated Bay Area man discusses the joy he feels helping to organize an annual bicycle giveaway program, which distributed 250 new bikes this year; the Community Giveback program — formerly the Big Bike Giveaway — started 25 years ago with inmates in San Quentin who refurbished bikes for kids.
A Maui, Hawaii car dealer has given away bicycles to kids and families for eleven years, this year donating a total of 500 bikes on Maui, Lānaʻi and Molokaʻi.
Kindhearted cops in Gilbert, Arizona gave a new bike to a six-year old girl, after hers was stolen during a recent trip to the park, when officers saw a post from the girl’s mom on Nextdoor.
Equally kindhearted cops in Midland, Texas gave a new bicycle to a young girl when the one she received as an early Christmas present was somehow destroyed. Unless they were the ones who destroyed it, of course, in which case forget the “kindhearted” part.
The NFL’s Houston Texans hosted their annual bicycle giveaway for 100 local elementary school students.
Over 170 Ohio kids received new bikes and helmets through a bike giveaway program that distributed bicycles to economically-disadvantaged children in a three-county area.
Still more kindhearted cops, this time in Boston, gave a young girl a new bicycle, just because one of the officers knew she wanted one.
The annual Syracuse, New York CNY Family Bike Giveaway distributed over 2,000 bicycles to local kids.
An Alabama Baptist church gave more than 300 bicycles to local kids as part of their 4th Annual Christmas Bicycle Giveaway.
Two hundred children got new bicycles in Sweetwater, Florida when Santa Claus swooped in and gave them all a bike and a toy.
………
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
New Yorkers should all send a thank you card to New York DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez, who has come out against the mayor’s call to require license plates and registration all ebikes.
The mayor of Guelph, British Columbia is calling for a pause on any new bike lanes that require removing a traffic lane or parking spaces, after some people complained about the most recent one. Once again, prioritizing the convenience of drivers over the lives and safety of people on bicycles.
………
………
Local
Streets For All posted their annual report card grading every state legislator’s efforts on improving safety and mobility.
Metro closed out the latest round of comments on the “underwhelming” Vermont Bus Rapid Transit project on Friday.
Malibu remains committed to improving safety along Southern California’s killer highway, prioritizing safety over access in PCH transformation plans. Meanwhile, the Mountain Resource and Conservation Authority and sister organization the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy are attempting to derail the plans in order to protect access to parking, while blaming crashes on drunk drivers.
State
Not everyone on the road is supposed to be there. A bike rider in Victorville was hospitalized after he was struck by a 16-year old driver without a license. Even if the story said a red bicycle was hit by the maroon car, apparently with no humans involved
A Palo Alto advocate calls for less parking and more homes for a better environment.
Sad news from San Francisco, where a man in his 30’s was killed when he was struck by the driver of a massive Chevy Tahoe while riding his bike near a freeway off-ramp, then hit by multiple other drivers. Although the news report identified the initial driver merely as “the Tahoe man.”
San Francisco cops fatally shot a security guard as he worked outside the Dior store in Union Square, after a bizarre chain of events that began when an ebike rider allegedly scratched his SUV; he then hit two girls coming out of a Chipotle when he jumped a curb while chasing the bike rider with his car.
The Los Angeles Times considers the furor over the planned closure of San Francisco’s beachfront Great Highway, which will be transformed into a walking and biking path, as auto-centric residents launch a recall attempt against a local councilmember who backed the plan — apparently forgetting that the proposal was approved by city voters in not one, but two recent elections. Never mind that part of the highway is already falling into the sea.
National
Cycling Savvy posts ebike resources for parents.
Construction began on a “controversial” protected bike lane in Denver, after the city scaled it back to preserve parking spaces; a driver crashed into a home on the street Thursday night, which could have been prevented if the bike lane had already been in place.
Organizers of Cleveland’s St. Paddy’s Day parade claim they’re being pushed off their preferred street by a new bike lane, which the city’s mayor termed a “$25 million…once-in-a-generation infrastructure investment to improve traffic safety, provide equitable transportation options, and beautify the street.” Seriously, how much room do a bunch of drunk people need to stumble down the street, anyway?
An Atlanta man was robbed when two masked men pulled up in a car and demanded his backpack and ebike while he was riding to work, then shot him in the leg afterwards for no apparent reason; a crowdfunding campaign to help replace the stolen items has raised just $730 of the $5,000 goal.
International
Momentum explains why it makes sense for governments to pay people to bike to work.
Canadian Cycling Magazine recommends new things to try on your bike in the coming year, from Everesting to a group ride.
If you think biking to work can be a challenge in sunny Los Angeles, trying carrying a tux and a double bass to work in the Canadian winter, as a professional musician with the Winnipeg, Manitoba symphony does on a daily basis.
Yet another study has confirmed that people who bike to work tend to live longer — this time an 18-year study involving more than 82,000 Scottish adults, which showed that bike commuting “significantly lowers the risk of early death, hospitalizations, and a range of chronic illnesses.”
A British bike rider says potholes are making the roads around Shropshire a “deathtrap,” after a fried suffered serious injuries hitting one on his bike.
A Gazan paracyclist says he still has hope, even if he couldn’t make it to the Paralympics this year. Thanks to Megan Lynch for the link.
A Thai social media influencer learns that hard way that if you’re going to film a video on the train tracks to promote bicycling to your followers, maybe do it after all the trains have passed.
Australia’s Bicycle Bandit’s nearly two decade reign of terror is apparently over.
Competitive Cycling
Team Visma|Lease a Bike has signed the youngest-ever rider to a WorldTour contract; 17-year-old junior rider Ashlin Barry will join the team’s developmental squad, following victories in the U.S. national road and time trial races in his first year as a junior.
Mathieu van der Poel is considering skipping next year’s Tour de France to concentrate on winning a world title in mountain biking, after underwhelming performances since making his debut in 2021.
Hats off to American BMX star Hannah Roberts, who won her fifth consecutive freestyle world championship.
Bike Magazine looks back at “amazing” footage of the evolution of Downhill World Cup Racing.
Finally…
That feeling when local officials ban parking in a bike lane, only to realize it was a typo. We may have to deal with flighty LA drivers, but at least we don’t have to worry about getting chased by an ostrich; thanks to David Wolfberg for the heads-up.
And now you, too, can finally have the Schwinn Sting-Ray you coveted as a kid, complete with five-speed stick shift and death-defying handlebars.
Or was that just me?
………
Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
