For once, police in Los Angeles didn’t wait to ask for our help.
According to a tweet/X post from the LAPD, the department is asking for the public’s help in finding a hit-and-run driver who killed a man riding a bicycle Koreatown Thursday afternoon.
The victim, identified only as a man in his late 60s, was riding south on Harvard Boulevard when he was run down from behind as he approached 11th Street around 12:30 pm.
He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The driver kept going without stopping, and was last seen driving south on Harvard. Police described the suspect vehicle as a dark green Chevy Silverado pickup truck, no model year given.
Anyone with information is urged to call LAPD West Traffic Division detectives at 213/473-0234. As always, there is a standing $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of the driver in any fatal hit-and-run in Los Angeles.
This is at least the 45th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the 15th that I’m aware of in Los Angeles County; this was also the eighth we’ve learned about in the City of LA.
Drivers have fled the scene in 15 of those fatal bicycling crashes in Southern California since the first of the year, a pace of one out of every three fleeing the scene.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for the victim and his loved ones.
Known as the God’s Influencer and the Millennial Saint, Acutis is credited with performing two miracles in response to prayers after his death — the healing of 4-year-old Brazilian boy with a serious pancreatic malformation, and the recovery of a 21-year-old Costa Rican woman who was nearly killed in a bicycle crash.
ICE officers “bull rushed” a man outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in Downtown Los Angeles while deploying lethal weapons to keep the crowd back, apparently for the crime of just riding his bike past them on the opposite side of the street.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Police in Utah are looking for a hit-and-run ebike rider who knocked a woman walking on a Salt Lake City area trail into a ravine, leaving her with multiple leg fractures.
LA County Sheriff’s deputies will conduct a 12-hour bicycle and pedestrian safety operation in West Hollywood Friday from 5 am to 5 pm, ticketing any violation that puts either group at risk regardless of who commits it. So ride to the letter of the law until you cross the city limits so you’re not the one who gets ticketed.
I want to be like him when I grow up. A 75-year old Wisconsin man is still riding over seven decades after his training wheels came off, completing his 200,000th mile last week. I may or may not have passed that mark already, since I never bothered to count miles in the first decade or so of my riding career.
A writer for Slate says Alabama is becoming a destination for bicycling with more than 2,000 miles of dedicated biking and walking trails, and a new law that was set to commit the state to further connect the state’s 67 counties — except Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” rescinded an estimated $93 million in federal funding the state expected to receive to expand the trail system.
International
Momentum offers advice on how to find a bike for short people. Which my five-foot tall wife can attest is a lot harder than you might think.
The BBC might be starting to get it. The news agency corrected a recent story to say the victim of a Scottish crash was riding an electric motorcycle, rather than an electric bicycle, after a reader complained that they had misused the term “ebike.”
That’s more like it. A British man has been jailed for 14 years for the drugged hit-and-run crash that killed a 47-year old man riding a bicycle, driving while high on coke and without a license, then burning his car in an alley to hide the evidence.
Evidently, losing a testicle to cancer really does make you faster. Norway’s Torstein Træen became at least the second cyclist to lead a Grand Tour after surviving the disease, after Lance set the standard for fellow mono-testicled cyclists in the Tour de France before being stripped of his seven wins.
Day 241 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025.
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This, too, is the cost of traffic violence.
A hit-and-run driver severely damaged a popular Hollywood sculpture Monday evening, literally decapitating a statue of early film icon Anna May Wong, widely considered to be the first Chinese American film star.
The statue is, or rather, was, part of the Four Ladies of Hollywood Gazebo at Hollywood Blvd and La Brea Ave, a popular photo site for tourists, even if it has been without the small statue of Marilyn Monroe that used to top it until an influencer stole it as a prank and broke it.
According to Beverly Press & Park LaBrea News, the unknown driver fled the scene after crashing into it around 5:50 pm Monday. He’s described only as a male in a full-size, older model, white work van.
Anyone with information is urged to call the LAPD’s Hollywood Division at 213/972-2971.
Let’s hope they find the coward and force ’em to pay for repairs.
Or rather, she wants to close it to cars so we can open it up for everyone else.
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Researchers are discovering that automated traffic cams are more popular than you think, for one good reason.
They work.
According to Bloomberg,
But writ large, the track record of automatic enforcement is overwhelmingly positive. In surveys most Americans understand and value the upsides that traffic cameras offer. A 2022 study found that a majority of American adults back automatic traffic enforcement, and that presenting it as a tool to advance racial justice can make it even more popular. Earlier research identified consistently strong support. A 2012 study of people living across 14 US cities found that two-thirds of them supported red light cameras. Papers published in 2014 and 2016 found that 76% of residents in the District of Columbia and 62% of those in suburban Montgomery County, Maryland, respectively, supported speed cameras.
Public support can transcend party lines and geography. Sarah Seo, a law professor now at New York University, found in a 2020 reportthat a majority of likely voters across the US supported “moving most traffic enforcement to traffic cameras and non-police agencies” (such as a transportation department, as Berkeley, California, has explored), including almost two-thirds of Democrats, a plurality of independents, and 42% of Republicans.
How can we make Pico Blvd safer and more accessible? LADOT is studying improvements like safer crossings, bike lanes and traffic calming measures, and we need your input! Take the survey by Sep 8! ➡️ https://t.co/Llo3i4o3yVpic.twitter.com/6xR7POOLE9
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
An 85-year old San Francisco man ended up with multiple injuries when something knocked his cane out from under him and sent him flying as he walked in a bike lane — although he has no idea if it was someone on a bicycle, someone getting out of an Uber, or something or someone else.
More on the road-raging British bicyclist who allegedly threw his bike at a car in a fit of rage after the driver “bumped” into him, causing over $1,300 in damages, even through the driver pinky swears he was only going 2 mph at the time of the crash. Which kinda stretches credibility, because most cars can idle faster than that if left in gear.
In an op-ed for the nonprofit Voice of OC, a Huntington Beach man who identifies himself as an “automobile driver, a cyclist, and an e-bike rider” says enough with passing performative ebike laws on a city-by-city basis, since state law already covers it — including defining any two-wheeled electric device without pedals as a motorbike.
Commissioners in Florida’s Seminole County are hesitating to install new green bike lanes, after receiving a letter from the state ordering them to remove green crosswalks.
More proof that bicycling is good for you, as new Italian study shows that riding your bike as little as 2.5 miles to work four to five times a week is enough to boost your heart health as much as 30%.
Day 230 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025.
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Of course he gets it.
Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Streets For All founder Michael Schneider says fourth-grader Nadir Gavarrete did not have to die in a Koreatown intersection earlier this month.
Nadir Gavarrete was riding an e-scooter along with his 19-year old brother when they were run down by a drunk driver, who was accused of blowing through a stop sign to make a left turn.
A stop sign, and an intersection, that shouldn’t have still been there.
Koreatown is one of the densest parts of Los Angeles — at 44,000 people per square mile, it’s more crowded than most New York City boroughs. Nearly every major street in Koreatown is on the city’s “high injury network” list — the 6% of streets that cause 70% of the traffic injuries and deaths. In other words, L.A. knows how dangerous Koreatown’s streets can be.
As a result, 14 years ago, in 2011, L.A. applied for a federal grant to improve safety along several city streets, specifically choosing to focus on the intersection of New Hampshire and 4th for one of its projects. The city won the grant money and kicked off community meetings to discuss installing a roundabout at the intersection, as well as adding enhanced crosswalks and other safety improvements to the immediate area.
Needless to say, a decade-and-a-half later, nothing has happened, this being Los Angeles and all.
Except for yet another needless death, added to a long and ever-growing list of failure.
What will it take for Los Angeles to have a sense of urgency in actually making our streets safer? We currently spend more on legal settlements to those hurt and killed on our streets than we do on Vision Zero, the city’s half-baked effort to reduce traffic deaths. Since Los Angeles declared itself a Vision Zero City in 2015, with the ultimate aim of having no one killed in car crashes on city streets by 2025, deaths and injuries have only gotten worse. In the last few years we’ve had at least three children hit and killed while walking to school. And yet the city’s leaders — facing a budget crisis, much of it of their own making — perpetually underfund LADOT and street safety in general.
Good question.
It’s worth taking a few minutes to read the whole thing.
Because the more things change in this city of fallen angels, the more they stay the same.
The lanes currently prohibit parking during morning and/or evening rush hours, too often turning them into high speed traffic lanes.
However, the bad news is, instead of converting the lanes to full-time bus or bike lanes, the city is restoring parking throughout the day. Which doesn’t actually improve safety for anyone, just trading one problem for another.
LADOT dangles the possibility of converting the lanes to some other, better use at some undisclosed future time. Although given the city’s financial problems — due in large part to those legal settlements referenced above — that day could be years, or even decades, off.
If ever.
LADOT Begins First Phase of Peak-Hour Lane Removal
LADOT has begun implementing the first phase of a citywide initiative to improve safety and access to street parking by removing peak-hour travel lanes and restoring full-time parking. This initiative, directed by the Los Angeles City Council, aims to enhance safety, improve access, and support the City’s long-term mobility goals.
Phase 1 of this initiative focuses on low-traffic corridors, restoring street parking on corridors where traffic volume is below determined thresholds. Future phases will examine higher-volume streets and may propose alternative uses for peak-hour lanes, such as dedicated bus lanes, protected bike lanes, or expanded pedestrian zones. LADOT will conduct outreach and collaborate with community stakeholders as future phases move forward, ensuring that proposed changes align with neighborhood needs.
In addition to providing greater parking availability to support surrounding businesses, these changes are expected to have minimal impact on congestion while improving street safety, with reduced speeding, fewer collisions, and improved visibility for people walking and biking.
The specific corridors selected for Phase 1 of peak-hour lane removal are:
Alpine St, from N. Spring to Yale
Alvarado St, Northbound, from James M. Wood to 7th
Beverly Blvd, from Rampart to Witmer
Broadway, Northbound, from 2nd to 1st
College St, from New Depot to Alameda
Crenshaw Blvd, from Florence to 59th St
La Tijera Blvd, Northbound, from Thornburn to Knowlton
Melrose Ave, from Vermont to Virgil
Nordhoff St, Westbound, from Corbin to Canoga
Pico Blvd, Westbound, from Overland to Sepulveda
Ventura Blvd, Eastbound, from Farralone to Tampa
Victory Blvd, from Lankershim to Clybourn
Washington Blvd, from Vermont to Flower
Washington Blvd, Eastbound, from Redondo to La Brea and from Wellington to Crenshaw
And the first thing they noticed was the bad shape of the road around Venice and Abbot Kinney, saying it was easy to notice if you’re trying to dodge pavement problems.
The second thing seemed to be members of White People 4 Black Lives, several accident attorneys and the Venice High School Cheerleaders handing out free water along the route, the latter as they tried to raise funds.
And yes, it seems a good time was had by all.
Although I had to miss it because of my wife’s health problems, since she still hasn’t bounced back enough to go herself, or to be left at home alone.
ABC News says the deadly 85th Percentile Rule that allows drivers to set speed limits with a heavy right foot could finally be on the way out.
Great idea. The White Line — the bicycle safety group founded by the parents of fallen Team USA cyclist Magnus White — put a group of Colorado lawmakers on a bus, and drove them around for a series of mobile town halls to show them the impact crashes have on vulnerable road users.
February 28, 2025 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Hollywood meets Koreatown CicLAvia, help provide bikes for fire victims, and 2 boys arrested in mob driver beatdown
Day 59 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025.
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CicLAvia returns to Koreatown and Hollywood on the first Sunday in April, with a semi-new route traversing Wilshire, Western, Santa Monica and Highland.
Which makes it one of the easiest CicLAvia’s to get to, with Metro subway stops at either end.
Not to mention the semi-protected bike lanes on Hollywood Blvd, although they dump you off three blocks from the Hollywood and Vine Hub, leaving you to deal with the Amoeba Records and Funko traffic on your own.
The Los Angeles Times’outdoor newsletter The Wild calls out a pair of bike events this weekend we touched on earlier this week, both helping to provide bicycles to people and families affected by the recent firestorms in the LA area.
1. Walk and bike for a good cause in Culver City
Walk ‘n Rollers will host its annual Walk More Bike More Festival from 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday at Ivy Station in Culver City. The event raises money for Walk ‘n Rollers’ adopt-a-bike program, which has refurbished and donated more than 350 bikes to families in need. This year, bikes will be primarily donated to families affected by recent wildfires. At the festival, guests can participate in free bike repairs, a scavenger hunt and a prize raffle. There will also be e-bike and skateboard demos. The event is free, but registration is requested, with the option to donate. Register at walkmorebikemore.org…
3. Build bikes in Mar Vista to help Eaton fire survivors
Bikerowave Co-op needs volunteers with bike wrenching experience to prep bikes that will be donated to people affected by the Eaton fire. The repair event will be from 2 to 8 p.m. Friday at its shop (12255 Venice Blvd.). The shop has several bikes to repair but welcomes donations. All bikes will be checked by a head mechanic before they’re distributed. Learn more at the shop’s Instagram page.
Both boys have been charged with assault with a deadly weapon, but aren’t likely to be publicly identified unless they are tried as adults. Although it’s questionable what the deadly weapons may have been, unless the DA is counting the shoes they kicked him with.
Hopefully, these two can help identify some of the other kids, who deserve to be grounded until they’re 30, at the very least.
Life is cheap in Fremont, where a 31-year old man was sentenced to a lousy year of home vacation detention — and will likely do less than half of that — for the 2019 hit-and-run that killed a man riding a bicycle, after swerving to strike the victim for no apparent reason while doing 25 mph over the posted speed limit.
This is the cost of traffic violence. The 47-year old Vallejo man killed this week while riding his bike on a deadly Napa County highway has been identified as a beloved nurse and humanitarian, as well as a Tahitian dancer.
A 78-year old hit-and-run driver critically injured a 78-year old Florida bike rider while fleeing from an earlier hit-and-run crash, while on his way to yet another crash before finally stopping. Once again raising the eternal question of how old is too old to drive, and why the hell we can’t get people off the road before this kind of crap happens.
Police in Buena Vista, Florida arrested a fake “homeland security officer” for impersonating an officer, after he tucked a loaded gun inside his jacket and rode his bicycle to an apartment complex to look for “Mexicans” in the country illegally — and handing the cops a blue ID card, which was actually his application to become a licensed security officer.
The victim was walking down a Koreatown sidewalk with his wife around 4:50 this past Thursday when the woman came barreling down the sidewalk, along with a man on a second scooter, knocking him down.
Sixty-five-year old Donny Kim fell backwards, striking his head. He refused treatment, but his condition worsened after going home; two days later, he was dead.
After stopping briefly, the woman rode off on her scooter, despite the efforts of Kim’s wife to get her to stay.
And yes, it’s illegal to ride an electric scooter on the sidewalk in Los Angeles — just like the sticker on every e-scooter in the city says.
And e-scooter riders are legally required to stick around and exchange personal information following a crash, just like bike riders, drivers or anyone else.
And the city could lower the speed limit on a number of streets, while WeHo Online whines it could make driving in the city even slower. Which someone should tell them is actually a good thing.
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North OC Bikes will host their monthly family friendly bike ride in Fullerton this Friday.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
They’re onto us, comrades. A Washington state letter writer argues that the area’s new bike lanes are nothing more than a commie plot. “Bicycles are tools of commies and socialists. These paths and lanes are for only one thing: to usher in their left wing, ‘green energy,’ fossil fuel-hating, automobile-loathing, bird-killing wind farm, solar power loving agenda.”
No bias here. A Colorado woman confronted a pair of hungry bike riders who made the mistake of stopping for a snack while riding on a path near her home in Summit County, eventually shoving one of their bikes to the ground; she later told police she doesn’t like tourists.
A Gloucestershire, England police official is deservedly under fire after arguing that a lot of people who ride bikes “don’t realize that…a close pass itself isn’t an offense,” despite reminding drivers that they’re required to give bicyclists at least a 1.5 meter passing distance, the equivalent of nearly five feet.
No bias here, either. A 24-year old man in Northern Ireland walked with the equivalent of a lousy $465 fine for riding a bike at twice the legal alcohol limit, while carrying coke and failing to stop until the cops knocked him off his bike; meanwhile, his defense attorney joked that riding a bicycle or wearing Lycra while overweight should be a crime.
About damn time. Caltrans also proposed plans to improve safety on PCH through Malibu include bike lanes and wider sidewalks, with 90% of commenters calling for better protecting bicyclists and pedestrians, as well as landscaping the center median, and adding more parking on the beach side of the highway so people won’t have to cross it.
Fountain Valley followed the lead of other Orange County cities by tightening regulations for ebike riders; however, it’s questionable whether any changes that conflict with the California vehicle code will withstand judicial review.
After a DC driver was sentenced to eight years behind bars for killing a 45-year old man riding a bicycle, his survivors complain that his sentence was just a slap on the wrist. Just wait until they learn what most drivers get for killing one of us.
August 18, 2023 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on CicLAvia throws a hurricane party Sunday, and Finish the Ride calls for support for South Pasadena pilot bike lane
Let’s start with a correction.
I don’t know what the hell I was thinking yesterday when I said CicLAvia comes back to Hollywood and Koreatown a week from Sunday.
This is the 1st time a CicLAvia event has been canceled due to weather (the April 2020 event was nixed due to the Pandemic) and first to be canceled less than 48 hrs prior. https://t.co/zi0zKBoEXz
It looks like we’re going to luck out, and get Sunday’s CicLAvia in before Los Angeles gets hit with the remnants of the Cat 4 Hurricane Hillary now moving through the Pacific.
According to the National Weather Service, the storm should roll in late Sunday, bringing possible rain and thunderstorms on Monday and Tuesday.
And with that, Hilary is now a hurricane. Note: the track forecast was not updated with this advisory. Curious on how to interpret this product? Check out this video from the National Hurricane Center: https://t.co/BXWc7dshIApic.twitter.com/J9Pdya1NKX
We don’t get a lot of hurricanes here in Los Angeles; news reports yesterday said this would be just the third one in LA history.
However, the tradition in Louisiana is to throw a raging hurricane party when a hurricane approaches, because as Jimmy Buffet put it, if you’re going to get blown away, you might as well get blown away.
Let’s all turn out, and make this one a CicLAvia for the ages.
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Finish the Ride is calling for your support for a pilot bike lane in South Pasadena, in the face of the seemingly inevitable NIMBY opposition.
Bike lane in South Pasadena needs support! A demonstration bike lane was installed on Grand Ave and is supposed to stay up for at least 6 months + evaluated. A local group is urging immediate removal. Please email the City to support: ccpubliccomment@southpasadenaca.gov pic.twitter.com/R8vT2tqGx5
Gravel Bike California celebrates the annual Tour de Big Bear, calling it “perfectly timed and extremely well-organized” and complementing “a fantastic course which is hard to imagine being so close to LA.”
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More proof that a bike is your best way to get around before, during or after a disaster.
There's a lot going on in this picture. I stopped to look for a while. Most of all for me, there's a major part of the solution in the middle of the problem pic.twitter.com/Vh5ie76zff
— League of American Bicyclists (@BikeLeague) August 17, 2023
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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 writer for Britain’s conservative The Spectatorwarns about the dangers of cargo bikes, calling them hell for motorists “piloted either by smug yet very stressed parents or by delivery hipsters with ironic facial hair, retro clothing, flexible sexuality and a heavily-worn social conscience.” And yes, he claims to be a bike rider himself — a “member of the Lycra lancers” — which is always a red flag.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department says thieves are targeting ebikes in North County cities, as riders run into Target or Walmart stores without locking their bikes. Which is yet another reminder to always lock your bike everywhere, unless you take it with you.
According to the paper, the Fountain Ave proposal is planned for two phases.
The first phase of the study, known as Phase 1 PS&E (Planning, Specifications, and Estimates), focuses on the design of protected bike lanes, with specific plans to reduce travel lanes from four to two and remove approximately 150 on-street parking spaces on the north side of Fountain Avenue. This phase includes an 11-month timeline, with an expected conclusion in July 2024. The construction phase is anticipated to begin in early 2025, taking another 4-6 months. The preliminary construction cost for Phase 1 is estimated to be between $5 million and $10 million…
As the study progresses to Phase 2, the focus shifts to the permanent installation of protected bike lanes and the redesign of sidewalks along Fountain Avenue. The timeline for Phase 2 spans 16 months, starting in January 2024, with potential construction beginning in Q1 or Q2 of 2026. The construction of Phase 2 is estimated to be between $30 million and $35 million.
Meanwhile, the council directed the city to study the feasibility of upgrading the existing painted bike lanes on the western portion of Santa Monica Blvd to protected bike lanes.
City staff were also told to conduct a block-by-block analysis of the feasibility of installing painted bike lanes on the narrower eastern segment of the boulevard, which would likely involve narrowing traffic lanes and the removal of parking spaces.
On Sunday, August 20; between 9 a.m. – 4 p.m., CicLAvia – Koreatown meets Hollywood, presented by Metro, and in partnership with LADOT, welcomes everyone of all ages and abilities to its 47th car-free open streets event connecting Hollywood and Koreatown along Vine St, Melrose Ave, Western Ave, and Wilshire Blvd, for participants to jog, ride, bike, skate, run, walk, skateboard, spectate, play, to enjoy the 5-mile route. Always free, CicLAvia participants just show up anywhere along the route at any time to enjoy the open streets and to take the time to explore two of L.A.’s iconic communities. Participants are encouraged to take Metro.
There are many local gems, activities, and businesses to check out near and along the route – discover them through CicLAvia’s new Interactive Digital Map. Hubs have family-friendly activities, restrooms, free water refilling stations, free basic bike repair, bike parking, and first aid. In addition, free pedicab rides, sponsored by AARP, are available at each information booth. Activities along the route can be found here.
A press conference kicking off the event will be held starting at 8:30 am on Sunday, August 20th, at 1750 Vine Street, at the Hollywood Hub next to Capitol Records.
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Adventure Cycling announced the launch of their Short Routes Program, featuring shorter bike touring routes designed to break down barriers accessibility and make bike travel more approachable, regardless of experience level or how much time someone has available.
The program launches with routes starting from Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Atlanta, Boston, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Austin and Seattle.
Anyone can submit a route in the US that a beginner can bike in two to five days, with approximately 20-50 miles of riding each day.
According to the group, there are three short routes currently available in the Los Angeles area:
Carpinteria to Refugio
Created by tour leader, Johnny Lam, this route has camping available at both ends, in Carpinteria — where riders can easily get to by Amtrak or car with many amenities including a great coffee shop and various restaurants — and Refugio, where the hiker biker site is given the best plot of land looking over a beach and the Pacific Ocean.
LA to Catalina Island
Created by local transportation planner Danielle Parnes, this is a fun bikepacking trip full of beautiful beaches, mountains, and wildlife. It’s relatively easy to get to from L.A. via a ferry departing near Long Beach but feels like a faraway destination. Campsites on this route are only accessible by hiking or biking, making for calm, quiet evenings, and the dirt roads have few cars.
Santa Monicas Overnight
Also created by Danielle Parnes, the Santa Monicas Overnight route leaves from West LA and goes up fire roads into the Santa Monica Mountains, camping in Topanga State Park, and then down to the beach, with a mix of city, desert mountains, and ocean views and swims. This route starts and ends at Expo line light rail stations in West LA, for easy access from downtown or other parts of the city.
Lol @LADOTofficial . If you’re going to use social media to brag about a stripe of paint, at least move the trash cans out of the way for it. Sh*t, maybe go talk to the residents about it. You know, so that your “bike lane” is at least sort of usable. Sorry, am I asking too much? pic.twitter.com/kg4IlgQDMz
A Scottish man is called the “unluckiest cyclist in Scotland” when he was run down by a driver for the third time in two years, but at least this driver stopped, unlike the first two. Although considering he survived all three, I’d call him pretty damn lucky.
Former Syracuse basketball player Terrence Roberts suffered three broken ribs and a collapsed lung after crashing with another bicyclist on a June training ride, just three days after the 6’10” former forward completed in his first crit with LA’s Major Motion Cycling team.
December 9, 2022 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Baldwin Park gets grant for new mini-park, bike rider collateral damage in police chase, and Streets For All party tonight
Miss this one, and there’s just two more weekends to show your love to and for this site, while you help keep all the freshest bike news coming to your favorite screen every morning. And make yourself a hero to everyone who visits this site.
Whether or not they know it.
So let’s take a moment to thank the generous people who gave from the heart yesterday so you could read this today, like Ben F, Michael F, Domus Press, Stephen M, Patrick M and Kristoffer M.
No relation, I should add, despite the abundance of Fs and Ms.
So don’t wait.
Donate today via PayPal or Zelle. And keep all the best bike news and advocacy coming your way today, and every day.
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Baldwin Park announced they’ve received a $761,000 grant from the San Gabriel & Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy to build a new mini-park on Maine Ave.
According to a press release from the city,
The Maine Avenue Mini-Park will join a series of new mini-parks along the soon-to-be-extended Big Dalton Wash Trail and the Susan Rubio Zocalo Park in Downtown Baldwin Park, which will come on-line over the next couple of years and promote public health, mental health, climate resilience and educational and employment opportunities for youth…
A bioswale, smart water irrigation system and stormwater capture improvements will ensure the sustainability of the mini-park. Additionally, its proximity to the San Fe Dam Recreation Area and the region’s extensive trail network support active transportation, furthering local and regional sustainability goals…
When completed, the park will include various passive and recreational amenities for the community, including 14 shade trees, an outdoor fitness area, shade structures, picnic tables, a grill, benches, accessible play equipment for kids and restrooms.
A spokesperson for the city suggests it will be great stopping point for bicyclists using the Santa Fe Dam Recreation Area.
The park will be built using an additional $346,000 in matching funds from LA County Measure A. It’s expected to open to the public in 2024.
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A Koreatown bike rider was collateral damage in a police chase.
The California Transportation Commission — no, not Caltrans — is investing a billion bucks in boosting bicycling and walking with 93 projects targeted to low-income areas.
— California Transportation Commission (CTC) (@California_CTC) December 8, 2022
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No one who’s spent any amount of time on a university campus should be surprised that college administrators can’t manage to differentiate between safe, high-quality lithium-ion ebike batteries, and the fire-prone, secondhand junk ebike and scooter batteries.
Gravel Bike California grinds to the highest point in the City of Angels, at a whopping 5,079 ft.
Which sounds impressive, unless you’re from Colorado, like me.
But still.
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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 report from the uncomprehending National Transportation Safety Board, aka NTSB, incomprehensibly blames the victims for the meth-fueled crash that killed five bicyclists outside Las Vegas last year, for the crime of riding their bikes in the right lane of the highway. In other words, exactly where they were supposed to be. Las Vegas hospitals are about to be overrun with facepalm injuries.
Or here. A New Jersey columnist compares mandatory bike helmets to seat belts, saying he can’t understand why bike advocates would be against a helmet law, while ignoring the reasons advocates gave to opposite it. He also compares that opposition to bike helmets to opposition to motorcycle helmet laws, even they were opposed for diametrically differing reasons.
Sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
A British court dropped the charges against a road raging, 68-year old former Olympian, who called a woman fat and blind in an expletive-laden tirade, and reached into her car as she begged him not to hit her, all because she cut his bicycle off in traffic; the case was dismissed due to his PTSD resulting from an earlier crash.
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Local
Curbed’sAlissa Walker writes about LA’s outgoing Climate Mayor, who’s leaving the city’s broken sidewalks just as bad as when he found them, if not worse — thanks in part to his habit of getting distracted by shiny objects like a potential presidential run that never launched, and a nomination to be ambassador to India that crashed and burned. Eric Garcetti could have been a good mayor, if he had actually been interested in doing it.
A 44-year old man was seriously injured in San Diego’s Point Loma neighborhood Thursday evening, when his bike was left-crossed by a pickup driver while allegedly riding in a crosswalk against the Don’t Walk signal. Although once again, it depends on whether there were independent witnesses to the crash, or if police are relying on the driver who hit him.
A Paso Robles woman faces six years behind bars for pleading guilty to DUI after crashing into several parked cars while driving with a blood alcohol content of .30 — three and a half times the legal limit. She apparently hadn’t learned her lesson about drinking and driving, despite receiving an early release from prison for a ten-year sentence for the drunken, hit-and-run death of a bike-riding Cal Poly student in 2017. If there were any justice, she’d have to serve the remainder of her original sentence, consecutively with the new term.
Apparently, you can make an illegal U-turn while driving on the wrong side of the road, killing a British motorcyclist, then flee to the US under the cover of diplomatic immunity, and still walk without a single damn day behind bars, like the wife of an American diplomat/spy did in the death of 19-year old Harry Dunn.
Life is cheap in the UK, where a driver walked without a day behind bars for the hit-and-run crash that left a bike-riding man barely conscious and struggling to breathe; he later told investigators he thought he hit a traffic cone. Trust me, if anyone runs me down, they’re going to hear enough choice words to know exactly what they hit.
Nice. Dublin, Ireland opened a new community bike hub, providing free use of adaptive bikes for people with disabilities or mobility issues, a project to repair old and unused bikes to donate to community members, and bike repair and safe bicycling courses for kids.
October 21, 2022 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Still no Koreatown traffic signal after 3 years, Huizar rides 6th Street Bridge, and NHTSA boss calls for Idaho Stop
Alessa’s death highlighted a series of failures: by the driver who killed her and — more significantly — by the city of L.A., which long knew of dangerous conditions at the intersection where she was killed, but did not add (some) safety improvements until after her death…
But three years after Alessa was killed — and more than 30 months since LADOT recommended the signals be upgraded (with 4-way left turn signals) to make the intersection safer — the improvements have not yet been made.
Adding insult to literal injury, the driver apparently skipped town after initially stopping. There’s been an outstanding warrant for Indira Marrero since she failed to appear in court two years ago — despite the relative slap on the wrist of a misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter charge.
Apparently emboldened by the controversy swirling around successor Kevin De León, Huizar popped up yesterday to subtly remind everyone of one of his more popular accomplishments, even though it wasn’t completed until long after he was gone.
When you’re no longer the single most disgraced CD14 pol so you decide to get back to posting. pic.twitter.com/73iSqvWSgo
She argues that data shows the law, which allows bicyclists to treat stop signs as yields and red lights as stops signs, provides additional safety benefits to people on bicycles.
It’s already in effect in a handful of cities and states, while a modified version known as Stop as Yield — which does not allow for treating red lights as stop signs — is law in several others.
Although not California, where Governor Newsom vetoed it — twice.
A Toronto bike rider was lucky to escape from a road raging driver who swerved into him, before getting out of his truck to attack him. Laws may be different in Canada, but LAPD officers have told me that simply exiting a vehicle to confront someone is enough to subject a driver to assault charges.
This happened on Dundas West this afternoon on my way home from my @thebikebrigade run. The guy (licence BR95664) deliberately tried to sideswipe me then jumped out and started chasing after me. Fortunately I managed to sprint away and lose him in traffic. #closepasspic.twitter.com/6wfdXvcoUx
American Anne Sacoolas pled guilty to a reduced charge of causing death by careless driving in the 2019 head-on, wrong-way driving death of a 19-year old British motorcyclist outside an RAF airbase known to house American spies, where her husband had worked. Sacoolas was able to use her husband’s diplomatic immunity to flee the country; it’s unlikely she will return to the UK for sentencing.
And why tote a bulky tent and sleeping bag on your next bike tour, when you can peddle your very own solar-powered ebike camper van for the low, low price of ten grand?
………
Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
