Day 188 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025.
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He gets it.
A Substack writer considers the bike commuters who ride LA’s Vermont Avenue, as Jonathan Hale argues they “deserve a multimodal transit artery done right.”
Taisha was riding on the sidewalk. There are no bike lanes along Vermont north of Gage Avenue. I asked her why she liked riding a bicycle around Los Angeles.
“You know, it’s quicker, it’s easy to get around,” she said. “It gives me peace of mind.”
“You ever been hit by a car?” I asked, keeping an eye on the evening mayhem in my periphery.
“Absolutely!” she exclaimed, laughing. “Yeah, everybody gets hit by cars. It’s always a victim of someone looking left and turning right. Always.”
Hale continues by pointing out that Metro is building bus rapid transit lanes on the corridor, without considering the need of people like her and others he spoke with.
And LA doesn’t seem to care.
The city of Los Angeles, meanwhile, has looked the other way, refusing to collaborate with Metro to build a truly multimodal transit corridor – even though the city is legally required to fund the project under Measure HLA. That’s why local activist Joe Linton has sued the city, alleging that Los Angeles has shirked its legal responsibility to make roadway improvements in accordance with its Mobility Plan 2035.
It’s more than worth a few minutes of your day to read the whole thing.
Meanwhile, Dr. Grace Peng points out that it’s personal for her, too.
The Vermont protected bike lane through South LA to Del Amo is personal. It connects the J line Harbor Gateway Transit Center to 99 Ranch on Artesia. What places could you go on a Vermont Ave protected bike lane? @bikinginla.bsky.social
— Dr Grace Peng (@gspeng.bsky.social) 2025-07-03T19:16:03.192Z
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That’s more like it.
A 23-year old man from Osaka, Japan have been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and obstructing traffic for stringing a rope across a city street, causing a bike rider to fall and strike his head.
About damn time someone, anywhere, took a booby trap like that seriously, treating it the dangerous, potentially deadly assault it is, instead of just a harmless prank.
Thanks to Megan for the heads-up.
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Gravel Bike California celebrates its 6th anniversary by delving even deeper into the darkest dens of the Angeles Forest.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. The Encinitas city council approved contracts for bicycle education programs from grade school to high school — but ordered city staffers to ensure they weren’t teaching “political” pro-bike propaganda.
A North Vancouver, British Columbia city councilor is calling for mandatory bells on every bike, even though drivers can’t hear them, and pedestrians don’t know what to do if they do.
Clearly suffering from a severe case of windshield bias, a member of the Irish parliament demanded that the country’s Transportation Ministry consider making hi-viz jackets compulsory for all pedestrians, bicyclists and school bus passengers.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Police in New York initially arrested a 30-year old woman for hit-and-run, accusing her of leaving the scene after crashing her bicycle into the rider of an electric unicycle — but prosecutors dropped the charges after discovering she had waited 45 minutes for the cops to show up, while speaking with witnesses and waiting for paramedics before going home.
A Washington Post reader takes the paper to task for showing a shirtless, helmet-less bike rider with a corgi in a backpack in high heat while checking his phone with no hands on his handlebars.
A London barrister posts video of his confrontation with a traffic cop after he got a ticket for riding with no hands during rush hour traffic, even though there’s no law against that in the UK.
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Local
An op-ed from the chair of Bike Long Beach argues the city is falling behind on life-saving speed cams. Just like its much bigger neighbor next door.
State
A portable pump track is making it’s way around Orange County, popping up in Buena Park before moving on to Santa Ana, after appearing already in Mission Viejo, Garden Grove, Tustin, Irvine and Huntington Beach.
Sad news from San Raphael, where a 54-year old man who was one of the mountain biking coaches at a local high school was killed by a driver in a left cross collision while he was riding his bike, at an intersection where four bike riders were struck by drivers in similar crashes over a five-year period, yet the city did nothing to fix it.
The people running Apple clearly don’t get it, donating $4 million to close a funding gap to build a Cupertino freeway interchange with funds originally planed for a bikeway project, helping fuel induced demand and climate change.
National
Bicycling considers why so many girls are giving up biking, and what parents can do to help keep them on two wheels. You can read the story on MSN if the magazine blocks you.
An architect’s newsletter says it’s time to come up with an infrastructure design solution to safely integrate ebikes.
Car and Driver recommends the best electric cargo bikes. Because who knows more about replacing your car with an ebike than a driving magazine?
Singletracks wants to know whether you think mountain bike trail difficulty ratings are accurate.
Velo explains how to find an actual, factual real deal on bicycling gear on Amazon Prime Day.
A Black father and son describe how they began biking together after the 65-year old dad underwent three heart surgeries, including the multi-day ride from St. Louis to Chicago recounted in their PBS documentary Bike Vessel.
Um, okay. Hundreds of Portland bike riders were expected to turn out for the “We’re Better Than You” bike ride to raise awareness for “their superior lifestyle choices,” riding at exactly 6 mph to send a message that “Cars are murder machines, walking is inefficient, and public transit is for people who haven’t maxed out their REI credit cards yet.”
Denver bike riders spent their 4th of July riding in silence to honor the victims of traffic violence, following a 78% jump in bicycle and pedestrian deaths in the past ten years.
An Ohio driver faces multiple charges for the alleged DUI hit-and-run that seriously injured two of three kids riding a “three-wheeled bicycle.” Which sounds a lot like a tricycle, although they don’t mention the age of the victims.
A New York news site says the Parks Department is trying to have it both ways by allowing ebikes and e-scooters in parks and pathways, while restricting cars in parks to protect people on bicycles, arguing that reckless ebike riders pose as much risk to pedestrians as drivers do.
Once again, a motor vehicle was a weapon of mass destruction, when a North Carolina dump truck driver crossed the center line and hit three bike riders head-on, killing two men and injuring the other; an Asheville bike shop planned a memorial to remember the victims, one of whom had worked there for four years.
International
Momentum tries to explain People For Bikes’ seemingly inexplicable ratings for the world’s most bicycle-friendly cities.
Thirty-one-year old British cyclist Molly Weaver set a new record by circumnavigating the country in 21 days, 10 hours and 48 minutes, shattering the previous record by 17 hours.
Students from the vocational school founded by the two Václav’s who founded Czech carmaker Škoda as bikemaker 130 years ago transformed one of the company’s cars into a bike race support vehicle as their graduate project.
An 18-year old man with dual French and German citizenship disappeared while riding his bike through Iran on a 400-day bicycling trip across Europe and Asia; he went missing on the third day of the recent Israeli bombardment, and could be one of the estimated 20 foreigners being held by Iran on suspicion of spying.
The best places to ride your bike in Tokyo for your next trip to Japan.
Bicyclists and traffic safety advocates staged a protest in Manila over the weekend, demanding the Philippine capital cancel plans to remove a protected bike lane to make room for motorcycle lanes.
China is experiencing a boom in ebike sales thanks to a generous nationwide “cash for clunkers” style trade-in program.
This is the cost of traffic violence. An Australian race car driver described as a “extraordinary figure” in Australian motorsports, and who recently competed in the 24 Hours of La Mans, as well as backing the careers of several young racers, was killed by a bus driver while he was riding a bike with his wife near the local zoo.
Competitive Cycling
Mathieu Van der Poel ended the first weekend of the Tour de France in yellow after outsprinting Tadej Pogacar in a photo finish to win the second stage, with Jonas Vingegaard third; Cycling News offers a moment-by-moment recap of how the stage unfolded.
The Cofidis cycling team was hit by thieves before the second stage, breaking into one of the team trucks to steal 11 Look bikes worth an estimated $170,000, as well as the team mechanics’ tool sets.
Trine Marie Vingegaard Hansen, the wife of Jonas Vingegaard, stirred up a hornet’s nest by publicly criticizing the training methods of her husband’s Visma-Lease a Bike cycling team, as well as the time away from family demanded by the team, though the team insisted it was blown out of proportion.
Former world time trial cham Filippo Ganna’s Tour de France experience didn’t even make it through the first stage, becoming the first rider to abandon the race after suffering a concussion in a crash.
Cyclist profiles the seven North American cyclists taking part in this year’s Tour — two of whom came up through the same Boise, Idaho youth cycling program.
Road.cc offers a definitive guide to what all the pros are riding at the Tour, while your favorite cyclist could now risk getting a yellow card for bad behavior, just like soccer players.
The Tour de France is overshadowing the Giro d’Italia Donne, aka the women’s Giro, where Swiss individual time trial champ Marlen Reusser won the Giro’s first stage ITT to take the pink leader’s jersey.
The final day of the German Track Cycling Championships was cancelled when two cyclists crashed over the track barriers on final bend of the men’s keirin semi-finals, injuring seven spectators, two seriously enough to be airlifted to local hospitals; the two racers escaped with minor injuries.
A 19-year old British pro apologized for causing a massive crash after hitting a pothole in the country’s national road championships, while reporting that he fractured a vertebrae in his neck, and suffered a “fair amount” of road rash.
Finally…
Achieving world peace by sharing an off-road tandem. Your next e-recumbent could look like a velomobile, with a removable roof and a trunk in the back, or maybe it could be powered by a hydrogen fuel cell — but is it really a bicycle if it doesn’t have pedals?
And that’s one hell of a polka dot tan line, dude.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
