Jeff Vaughn is one of us.
The CBS2/KCAL9 news anchor spent his first few months after moving here with his family familiarizing himself as much with where to ride his bike as with the city itself.
Now he’s joined with some of his coworkers to give back to the community by forming a station cycling team to participate in fundraising events in the Los Angeles area.
Here’s what he had to say.
The CBSLA Cycling Team is training for the 2018 cycling season and is committed to the June Pasadena BikeMS ride and Malibu Triathlon benefiting Children’s Hospital of LA. We would love to attend area charity rides to spread awareness for their cause and for our cycling team. We started with four members and have grown to around ten for 2018. If anyone is interested in joining us to help local charities through fitness and donations, drop me a line at jvaughn@cbs.com. Or follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more info.
You can click here to support Jeff in the BikeMS Ride, or back other members of the CBS2/KCAL9 team.
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The Bike League released their list of new and renewing Bicycle Friendly Communities.
Coronado renewed its status at the Silver level, even if all those bike lanes look like graffiti and give local residents vertigo. Riverside and Temecula were both renewed at the Bronze level.
And yes, Los Angeles is still a Bronze BFC, even as councilmembers block needed bike lanes, motorists demand their removal, Vision Zero doesn’t seem to be going anywhere and the city’s vaunted bike plan remains nothing but vaporware.
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Today’s common theme seems to be a war on bike lanes.
A Minneapolis doctor says bikes are good, but bike lanes don’t belong on the street because most people drive cars, and all those cars get in the way of ambulances.
A Chattanooga TN columnist looks at the bikelash caused by the “horrors” of bike lanes in the city. Although what he describes sounds like the real problem is crappy bike lanes.
A New York assemblyman is demanding that the city rip out a newly installed protected bike lane put in after a bike rider was killed, which drivers can’t seem to avoid crashing into.
And a columnist in Ontario, Canada says bike lanes offer no benefits and waste tax money, and are just a needless pet project unless their success can be guaranteed in advance.
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‘Tis the season.
Nearly 300 children got new bikes in San Bernardino County, thanks to the 14th annual Doris Davies Memorial Bicycle Giveaway
An Iowa woman spent her year raising funds to buy 71 kids bikes to donate to the Salvation Army, for the 12th year in a row.
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We’ve reached the halfway point of the 3rd Annual BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive.
You can help keep SoCal’s best bike news coming your way with just a few clicks by using PayPal. Or by using the Zelle app that is probably already in the banking app on your smartphone; send your contribution to ted @ bikinginla dot com (remove the spaces and format as a standard email address).
Any donation, in any amount, is truly and deeply appreciated.
As an added bonus, frequent contributor Megan Lynch will provide a free download of her CD Songs the Brothers Warner Taught Me to anyone who makes a contribution during the fund drive. If you’ve already contributed and would like a copy, just email me at the address above and I’ll forward it to her.
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Local
The LACBC’s planned Mulholland cleanup with Phil Gaimon has been postponed until next year due to the Skirball fire.
Caltrans could give PCH a Complete Streets makeover in Wilmington, a much-needed improvement for a small section of LA County’s killer highway.
CiclaValley discovers that Burbank is outdoing Los Angeles when it comes to Valley bike lanes.
State
There’s a special place in hell for whoever stole an ebike from an 80-year old Laguna Hills man — as he was hanging Christmas lights for his pastor’s widow, no less.
Talk about missing the point. Bakersfield officials want to know how to educate pedestrians about traffic safety, after a driver jumps the curb and kills a five-year old girl walking on the sidewalk. When your stats show bicyclists and pedestrians were at fault in nearly three-quarters of fatal crashes, chances are, the real problem is with the crash investigators, not the victims.
A Bay Area TV station honors an Antioch police officers for not giving up until he found a $4000 adaptive tricycle stolen from a special needs girl.
San Francisco fast tracks bike and pedestrian improvements to a notorious tangle of highways and bikeways that had recently been overrun by a homeless camp.
Sad news from Oakland, where a man was killed in a collision as he was getting on his bicycle; the victim was thrown 160 feet by the — allegedly — speeding driver.
National
The International Mountain Bicycling Association announced that it will not support a proposed federal bill that would allow mountain bikes in some wilderness areas for the first time in 33 years.
Thanks to biomed students at Ohio’s University of Akron, a six-year old boy with a rare genetic condition can now ride a bike with his friends for the first time.
A Philadelphia petition calls on the city to speed up safety improvements under its Vision Zero plan.
A new report on health equity calls for more bike lanes in poor neighborhoods in New Orleans. Which pretty much goes for every large city, although bike lanes are sometimes seen as a symptom of gentrification.
A Miami bicyclist decided to avoid crappy bike lanes on a 3.5 mile causeway, and ride on the raised center median instead.
International
Life is cheap in British Columbia, where a truck driver killing a bike rider in a right hook is only worth a lousy $1,000 fine.
The war on bikes goes on, as someone has been tossing tacks on a popular British bike commuting route.
Distracted bicycling could be on the way out in the Netherlands, which plans to ban texting while cycling starting in 2019.
Australia’s prime minister is looking for the anonymous artist who left a rainbow colored yarn-bombed bike outside his residence on the day the country legalized gay marriage.
The Department of DIY strikes in Melbourne, Australia, where bike advocates used tape to create their own protected bike lane, on a street that only has a designated bike lane two hours a day during the morning rush hour.
Caught on video: An Aussie man throws his bike at mall security guards after one of the guards kicked his bike while throwing him out of the mall, in a racially tinged incident.
Competitive Cycling
Cycling News names Peter Sagan’s third world championship the year’s most memorable moment in men’s cycling, while a sports journalists association names Chris Froome their Sportsman of the Year.
Team Sky cyclist Luke Rowe is back to training again after shattering his leg in a rafting accident, knowing another break could mean he might never ride a bike again.
Ella Cycling Tips talks with American cycling legend Connie Carpenter-Phinney, winner of the first women’s road cycling gold medal back in the leather hairnet days at the ’84 LA Olympics; these days, she’s better known as a mother of three-time US time-trial champ Taylor Phinney.
Finally…
Seriously, this is an ebike. What to get your favorite pro cyclist for Christmas.
And don’t punch drivers, no matter how much you think they need it.
No, really.
