We’ve talked a lot on here about North Figueroa. And how CD1 Councilmember Gil Cedillo singlehandedly blocked a shovel-ready complete streets project designed to tame the deadly street.
Less discussed is how committed Cedillo has been about blocking any similar projects in his district. Including a long-planned lane reduction on Temple Street that crosses council district boundaries.
Derrick Paul writes today to explain what’s going on with Temple.
Or not, in this case
………
I recently discovered a proposal to improve street safety near my neighborhood has been quietly canceled. LADOT proposed a group of projects around the middle of 2017 in support of the city’s Vision Zero initiative, which is a commitment to stop tolerating traffic-related injuries and fatalities on city streets.
One of the streets included — Temple Street — is directly adjacent to my neighborhood. The street carves through numerous street-facing residences and intersects several commercial corridors, connecting residents with businesses and public facilities (schools, parks, a library). However, like many streets in Los Angeles, this very localized thru-fare is also very large, and accommodates little else besides passing automobile traffic.
Crossing the street is a daring negotiation, and attempting to use a bicycle along it is hostile and outright dangerous, pushing any reasonable person to the sidewalk. The Vision Zero project called for numerous infrastructure changes to improve safety for all users of the street, but it’s implementation, set for completion last month, never materialized.
I learned that our district councilman stopped LADOT from moving forward. This is very surprising, as there had been no meetings with my neighborhood, no general outreach to constituents of the community. The project had been shelved with no public explanation.
Seeking further information from Council District 1, which is represented by Gil Cedillo, I reached out through one of his social media channels. I asked why his office doesn’t support mobility safety in our community. A response eventually came, but in the form of another question. “I support vehicle and pedestrian safety in our district. What makes you think otherwise?” he or someone associated claimed. After pointing to his contradicting decisions and pressing for further details, the chat went silent His form of outreach and accessibility turned out to be lip service, a façade of transparency. So I dug a little further and found this ground had been covered before.
In 2014, residents in Highland Park ran into a similar obstacle. After years of outreach and effort, advocates found their push for better street conditions unilaterally halted by Gil Cedillo. Initially promising constituents he would support their process, which had preceded him under councilmember Ed Reyes (who termed out in 2013), Gil Cedillo changed his mind once winning his election and denied LADOT the authority to implement the project.
Pushes to convince Cedillo to move forward with the project, as he promised, yielded divisive, charade meetings, little reasonable conversation or explanation, and little actual engagement. Pressure from advocates eventually ended with a letter from Cedillo, declaring his decision to indefinitely halt the project and expressing a list of alternatives, which strangely excluded the bicycle lane that formed the centerpiece of the project advocates long pushed for. Nearly four years later, most of Cedillo’s alternatives never materialized.
During this inaction, several people died or suffered severe injuries from traffic collisions along Figueroa Street. The history I reference is well documented in the archives of a blog maintained during the time.
From 2013 to 2017, 23 people suffered severe injuries along the dangerous stretch of Temple Street near me, 5 of them fatal. Under a backdrop of this much carnage, our street has a lot of room for improvement, and our city’s department of transportation recognizes this and has done the hard work of designing, proposing, and funding a project to do so. Yet my city councilman mysteriously wants to keep it from moving forward. It’s really baffling. Is it out of spite? What stake does he have in keeping the street dangerous? None of this is clear. I could understand if Cedillo had made this decision out of a genuine concern of the community, but his decision is unilateral.
Our councilman should be supportive, not disconnecting from his constituents and making these very important decisions on his own. Is it not us who he is representing and responsive to?
The lack of engagement is reflected in our district webpage, where a photo of a smiling Gilbert Cedillo is surrounded by a ghostly shell of text, devoid of many community updates. Our councilmen and councilwomen practically have the power of kings in their jurisdiction, and unfortunately we have to pray they are virtuous enough to empower us. There are engaged constituents in District 1 interested in working to solve problems in our community. Momentum to reconfigure our most dangerous streets to a safer layout, as Vision Zero proposes, is an easy one, and Cedillo should support it. The alternative is dangerous streets that continue to fail us.
Fortunately all is not lost. Temple Street crosses through two districts — District 1 and 13. District 13, overseen by Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell, plans to support the project.
The bicycling portion of the plan calls for filling in gaps in the bicycle network and a focus on first and last mile connections to transit, as well as improving connections to the LA River bike path, after the city installed just 26 miles of bike infrastructure last year.
LADOT shifted their measurements to lane miles a few years back, so in actuality, they only installed bikeways on 13 miles of roadway — far from the 40 miles a year we were promised in the 2010 bike plan. Those could also include sharrows and bike routes, further reducing their value.
And there’s no word on whether that 26 miles includes the bike lanes in Playa del Rey, which were ripped out after angry drivers cowed city officials into backing down.
The city will continue to focus on Vision Zero and the High Injury Network, so we may see some additional improvements there.
But it looks like anyone hoping LADOT and the City of Los Angeles would actually move forward with the multiple bicycle networks we were promised in the hard-fought bike plan, now part of the city’s mobility plan, will be very disappointed.
Then again, most of us would be happy with a single bike network that actually went somewhere.
………
Get ready to signal your turns and ride to the right on bike paths.
In other words, if a driver has to pass a bicycle with a three-foot passing distance, so would you. If a driver has to signal a lane change — not that many do — you would, too. And if you rode off after colliding with someone, you could be charged with hit-and-run.
Of course, you’d also have to turn on your lights and windshield wipers if it rained, have windshield and side mirrors, and only leave the door of your bicycle open long enough to get in and out.
In other words, it’s a stupid law that would have ridiculous and unpredictable consequences.
Masoner suggests it might merely be a placeholder to meet the legislature’s cutoff date for introducing new bills, with the intention that it would be gutted and replaced with something different at a later date.
Although he notes it also appears to be a response to this case from Sacramento, where a runner was seriously injured in a collision with a man on a bike, who just rode off afterwards. And the local DA couldn’t figure out if the hit-and-run statutes applied to a crash on a bike path.
However, if that’s the case, then the proper response would be to specify that hit-and-run is hit-and-run, no matter where or how it occurs.
A heavy handed, scattergun approach like this is the worst possible way to go about it.
On the other hand, the GOP’s minority status in the overwhelmingly Democratic legislature means there’s almost no chance this bill will actually go anywhere.
It takes a real jerk to steal an Aussie boy’s $2,000 mountain bike that he worked for two years to buy. On the other hand, his mom’s decision to leave it outside and unlocked while they went to diner wasn’t the brightest move, either.
WTF? A San Diego cop actually watches an elderly driver right hook a bike rider and then flee the scene, yet doesn’t bother to make an arrest. Seriously, why would anyone take hit-and-run seriously if the police don’t?
Once again, bike riders are heroes. Participants in a frozen Chicago New Year’s Day ride saved the life of an elderly man who had apparently wandered off from a nursing home without a hat, coat or gloves in subfreezing temperatures. Thanks to J. Patrick Lynch for the heads-up.
A Florida DOT spokesman gets sharrows wrong, saying bike riders have the right to use the entire lane, but should ride to the right anyway. Sharrows actually indicate the proper lane positioning for people on bikes on lanes that are too narrow to safely share with a motor vehicle.
International
The CBC talks to Canadian frostbikers to discover why they like to keep riding through the winter, and whether cars and bikes can coexist on snowy streets.
A 27-year old London woman is committing to riding a bicycle again for the first time in 13 years, even though she’s afraid of riding around cars.
Irish biking groups complain about a Twitter poll run by the local police that asked if it was more dangerous for bicyclists to run red lights or vehicles to park in bike lanes; needless to say, the driving public overwhelmingly blamed the people on bikes.
July 20, 2017 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: New Mar Vista website, LADOT debuts micro-sweeper, and Caffe Luxxe hosts vintage bike exhibit
Which should come in handy both to explain what’s going on and why, and to keep up with what promises to be an endless series of public meetings defending the project.
………
Speaking of LADOT, they unveiled their new micro-sweeper to remove debris from protected bike lanes, demonstrating it in the protected bike lane next to City Hall on Los Angeles Street.
Let’s just hope it’s powerful enough to suck up all the police cars that are usually parked in it.
Just in time for the finale of the Tour de France, Santa Monica’s Caffe Luxxe is teaming with Helen’s Cycles to host an exhibition of rare vintage bikes starting today — July 20th, not January — through the end of September.
Michelle Sarfatti bases his refutation on Bartali’s famed reluctance to discuss his work during the war, and a problematic book written in the 1970s which was the first to claim Bartali had hidden forged identity papers in the frame of his bicycle to smuggle them past the Nazi’s.
Yet the Yad Vashem page cites Holocaust survivors whose identity papers were delivered by Bartali, and notes that he told his story to the daughter of the rabbi who founded the resistance network.
Marketplacetalks with the founder of LA-based Thousand, asking if a better looking helmet will keep people safer on their bikes. Short answer, probably not. Longer answer, only if it gets people who wouldn’t otherwise wear one to strap it on.
Minneapolis police are looking for a bike rider who may have witnessed officers attempting to resuscitate the unarmed Australian woman the cops shot after she had called 911 to report a sexual assault.
Talk about going the wrong way. Atlanta is the latest city to rip out an apparently success bike lane — in this case one built with the support of REI and People For Bikes — and replaced it with parking.
Cyclists in Sydney, Australia are complaining about cars parked in a bike lane, putting children at risk from oncoming cars when they have to ride into traffic to get around them. Proving once again that the same problems exist everywhere.
Which as of early Thursday morning, had managed to collect a whopping 70 signatures — 44 of them anonymous.
Maybe someone should point out that an anonymous signature is the same as no signature at all. Which leaves just 26 people brave, and mistaken, enough to put their name where their mouth is.
Mistaken, because California law allows bicycles on any public roadway where motor vehicles are allowed, with the exception of some limited access highways.
Which means that the only ways to ban bicycles from those roads is to —
A) Change the state law;
B) Start a crowdsourcing campaign to raise the several million dollars it would take to buy the roadways from the city, and convert them into private streets; or
C) Ban all motor vehicles from the streets, requiring residents to walk up the steep hillsides to get to their homes.
Personally, I’m all in favor of the last option; if they want to get rid of bikes, they can give up their expensive cars and massive SUVs. At which point they’d complain about all the damn hikers clogging the streets.
Then again, there is one other option.
They could accept that the public roadways belong to the public, and that anyone who wants to use them is entitled to do so, for any reason, using any form of street legal conveyance. And then slow the hell down and learn to drive safely.
But that’s not likely to happen anytime soon.
Which is not to say the people on bikes aren’t part of the problem.
We can all make a point to be more courteous and ride safely, and make room for others on the road to get by when it’s safe to do so.
Even if we’re the only ones who do it.
………
Congratulations to Michelle Mowery on her new job with the City of Long Beach.
She spent years struggling with LADOT’s notoriously auto-centric senior engineers — and often, the city’s more vocal bike advocates. But showed what she could do when she finally got the chance under former Mayor Villaraigosa.
Too bad the progress they made has come to a screeching halt since then.
And don’t forget tonight’s Bike from Work Handlebar Happy Hours, in Claremont, Downtown LA and Santa Monica, just to name a few. Just try not to be like the beer-toting guy at the bottom of this post.
Writing for the International Journal of Transportation Innovation, the LACBC’s Tamika Butler asks uneasy questions about the role of Vision Zero in a racist society, and whether the engineers and policy makers responsible for implementing it have the skills to rectify inequity in city planning.
Bad news from Turlock, where a man on a bike was run down from behind by a pickup driver. Note to Turlock Journal: When someone is hit by a truck doing nearly 60 mph, it really doesn’t matter if he was wearing a helmet. Thanks to Megan Lynch for the heads-up.
In yet another example of allowing dangerous drivers to remain on the road until they kill someone, an Oregon driver gets three and a half years for killing a bike rider, by driving with bald tires that caused his truck to fishtail in wet weather. He admitted to receiving somewhere between 30 to 40 tickets for driving with a suspended license, but would just buy another cheap used car when his got impounded.
Three whole blocks, that is. With no plans to extend them in any direction.
In other words, yet another in LA’s dystopian non-network of disconnected bike lanes that don’t go anywhere or connect to anything.
They just are. Which may be very Zen. But it’s also just this side of worthless.
More troubling is why.
Why not extend bike lanes further south on Glendale to Downtown and north to Silver Lake? Apparently that would involve far more than restriping the road.
“Extending bike lanes north would require Caltrans involvement as [Glendale Boulevard] becomes a State Highway (Route 2) north of Berkeley,” Fremaux explained. “On either end, the existing width would not allow for the extension without removing lanes and/or parking. Exploring such an effort is not in our near-term workplan.”
Let that sink in.
They’re more than happy to install a bike lane as part of a repaving project, but only as long as it doesn’t inconvenience anyone.
As far as the city is concerned, your life and safety are less important than a parking space. Let alone your comfort and convenience on the road.
Which is the exact opposite of Vision Zero.
And the opposite of what cities like New York, Portland and Vancouver are doing by narrowing roads and removing parking spaces to make room for bike lanes. And resulting in not just better safety, but improved traffic flow, increased livability and better sales figures for businesses along the routes.
We expected better from Mayor Eric Garcetti and LADOT General Manager Seleta Reynolds. But until they’re willing to make the hard choices and stand up to local opposition and sometimes recalcitrant councilmembers, we’re not going to get it.
So we’ll have to settle for a disconnected non-network of three-block long bike lanes that don’t go anywhere.
There’s an election in Pasadena next Tuesday for the last remaining seat on the city council between incumbent Andy Wilson, who supports the new Union Street cycle track and the coming bikeshare system, and challenger Phil Hosp, who complains about being stuck in traffic caused by the Gold Line.
It was a case of instant karma in Santa Rosa, when a driver who circled around to harass a bicyclist lost control of his car and crashed into a parked truck. Although someone should ask the Press Democrat what the hell difference it makes whether the bike rider was a transient.
Sad news from Fresno, where a bike rider was killed when a driver ran down his allegedly lightless bicycle from behind.
A new solar powered bike lock offers a double locking mechanism making it twice as hard to pick, and will notify you by Bluetooth if someone tries to break it.
A DC man has been charged with disobeying a traffic signal for killing a Kiplinger’s editor as she was crossing the street when he crashed his bike into her. He’ll be lucky if he avoids more serious, and possibly deserved, charges in the case.
March 22, 2017 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: Honoring #bikeLA’s successful women, Tour de Fat hates us, and Rail to River meeting tomorrow
This one’s worth a listen.
The Cycle Feed podcast talks with our own Dorothy Wong, who walked away from Hollywood to become one of SoCal’s leading bike race organizers, and the driving force behind SoCal Cross.
The 2017 Tour de Fat schedule has been announced, with 33 stops throughout the US for the annual beer and bike festival.
But if you live in the LA area and want to attend, you’ll have to travel at least 120 miles, as they’re apparently avoiding Los Angeles like the plague. They’re making four California stops, with the closest one in San Diego on July 8th. Not to mention two in the Bay Area.
Seriously, was it something we said?
………
There will be a meeting in Huntington Park tomorrow to discuss plans for the awkwardly named Active Transportation Rail to River Corridor.
A 50-year old bike rider suffered unspecified injuries when he allegedly turned left into the path of a BMW in Glendale Friday afternoon; police concluded the victim was at fault. Let’s hope that’s based on something other than the statement of the driver involved.
Pasadena gets it. The Rose City has adopted a new Street Design Guide that focuses moving everyone, not just the people in cars, and “accommodate(s) all users such as pedestrians, bicyclists, public transit, skateboarders and scooters.”
Damien Newton talks with Monica Curiel of Bike SGV about the bike and pedestrian count planned for April 1st; volunteers are needed throughout the San Gabriel Valley.
Jason Roy Rocha was charged with gross vehicular manslaughter, evading police and hit and run with permanent injury after fleeing the Sunday morning crash that killed Encarnacion Salazar Munoz as he rode his bike home from work in Anaheim. The OC DA takes traffic crimes like this very seriously; with a little luck, Mr. Rocha can look forward to a long time behind bars.
More bad news from NorCal, where a man on a bike was killed in collision in West San Jose; no details are available. Al Williams fills in some of the details, reporting the crash occurred near his home on a four lane street with bike lanes and a 35 mph speed limit; he says there was a Porsche with a broken windshield stopped on the side of the road when he went by.
A Montana physician says the bike-hating senator who wants to ban bicycles from state highways is wrong.
My hometown newspaper looks at the pain grieving families feel over the light sentences given killer drivers. And tips are running out in the investigation into a series of apparently random shootings in the area two years ago that took the life of a popular cyclist, along with another man.
Houston is prepared to pass a new bike plan, even though critics complain it goes too far to “appease a vocal cadre of cyclists.”
DC could soon pay commuters to leave their cars at home. California has a similar law allowing employers who subsidize parking to offer employees the chance to cash-out their parking space and take alternative transportation instead.
A Charlotte NC cop only realizes he hit a salmon cyclist when saw his broken side mirror. But if he never saw the victim, how did he know he was riding the wrong way?
In another North Carolina crash involving law enforcement, a bike rider was killed in a collision with a state police officer after allegedly running a red light, while the driver was only doing 23 mph. Funny how it always seems to be the other guy’s fault when a cop gets in a crash.
Sad news from Costa Rica, where the fourth victim of a hit-and-run driver has died, seven weeks after her riding companions were killed at the scene; the driver turned himself in only after police discovered his car.
The Guardian’s Peter Walker dives head first into the great helmet debate, saying that while he wears one most of the time when he rides, “you don’t make cycling safe by obliging every rider to dress up as if for urban warfare.”
Trucks hauling dirt from a Melbourne rail tunnel currently under construction will be fitted with protective sideguards to protect bicyclists. Sideguards have been proven to improve safety and save lives; all commercial trucks should be required to have them installed, including here in the US.
Apparently there’s nowhere that cyclists can ride without some people complaining. Like the Aussie rider who was assaulted by a man who told him to “cycle on the road” — while he was riding in a velodrome. Yes, a velodrome.
Lance says he loved wearing the US Postal Service uniform and hearing the national anthem played when he won, and being sued by the feds can’t take that away. Although they could take everything else.
Richard Masoner of Cyclelicious offers a review of bike-related legislation in the state legislature, including the possible elimination of the ride-to-the-right law we discussed yesterday, and an actual bipartisan bill to legalize the Idaho Stop — a term Masoner helped popularize — in California. The only thing more shocking than the Idaho Stop actually being considered in California is the concept of Democrats and Republicans actually working together to pass it.
A bill in the Iowa legislature would force drivers to change lanes to pass bike riders, while requiring bicyclists to use front and rear lights at all times — even in broad daylight — while a competing bill would require riders to display a slow-moving vehicle flag.
We can’t seem to get away from Malaysia this week.
The 22-year old driver who plowed into a group of Malaysian teenagers, killing eight and injured another eight, is reportedly traumatized by the experience. No matter how bad she feels, the victims’ families feel a hell of a lot worse.
Through the end of this month, BikinginLA is supporting local bike shops and other small businesses in the bike industry by offering deep discounts on our usual advertising rates. For more information, or to find out if your business qualifies, email the address on the Support and Advertising page.
………
It was a surprise announcement.
And both heartening, and a little disappointing.
Word broke Thursday morning that LA’s Vision Zero Alliance had finally released its long-awaited Action Plan, explaining how the plan to reduce traffic fatalities by 20% by the end of this year, and eliminate them entirely by 2025.
While the report hits all the appropriate notes, it’s a little short on specifics.
For instance, it talks about the need to reduce speeds to drive down LA’s worst in the nation traffic death rate, but doesn’t actually commit to reducing speed limits to 20 or 25 mph, as other major cities have done. And it discusses working to change laws at the state level, without stating whether they will fight to remove the deadly 85th percentile law that drives up speeds and destroys livability — not to mention survivability — on city streets.
However, there are a few specific actions we can follow to verify that the plan is on track:
Vision Zero means designing a street network that is safe for all modes. The City will:
Install live-saving improvements on the priority corridors and intersections along the High-Injury Network, such as optimizing four-hundred traffic signals and redesigning at least twelve miles of City streets every year to accommodate safe transportation for all.
Update 100 percent of the expired speed surveys on the priority corridors by the end of 2017.
Update all City street-design standards used by the Bureau of Public Works, the Department of Transportation, and the Department of City Planning to be consistent with the National Association of City
Unanswered is whether the city will address the chronic understaffing problems at LADOT so they actually have the capability to work on Vision Zero, without throwing the hard-fought Mobility Plan out the window.
Some of those bicycling deaths could be prevented simply by building out the low-stress network of Bicycle Friendly Streets called for in the plan, giving riders a safer and more comfortable alternative to riding busier streets.
Also unanswered is how they will solve the problem of recalcitrant councilmembers who attempt to block desperately needed safety improvements in their districts, as Gil Cedillo and Paul Koretz have already done.
Not to mention LA’s rampant NIMBYism, which rises up to oppose virtually any changes on our streets, especially if there’s the slightest suspicion it might slow traffic down.
The Austrian man who was busted for trying to ride naked into a hotel in eight degree weather says he was trying to impress a girl. Although getting fired from his job as a pastry chef at the hotel probably isn’t the way to do it. And someone should explain to him about shrinkage.
A Pennsylvania bike rider was apparently under the influence when he was killed by a 17-year old driver; the victim had a water bottle filled with booze, and a dope pipe in his pocket.
University of Florida students are unnerved by a man riding his bike around campus wearing a swastika. Sometimes bike riders are the bad guys. And sometimes they’re just assholes. But even assholes have a constitutional right to be one.
But not as cheap as Illinois, where a drunk driver cops a plea for killing a man who was riding his bike home from work, in exchange for a whopping ten days behind bars. Ten effing days. Thanks to J. Patrick Lynch for the heads-up.
And a three-time Brit traffic serial killer gets his suspended license back three years early because it’s an inconvenience to his family. It was probably pretty inconvenient for the families of his victims, too.
And then we wonder why nothing ever seems to stop the carnage on our streets.
………
Nice to hear from Michael Wagner of CLR Effect, who offers news from LA County’s too often neglected Eastside.
Even if the news isn’t exactly what we want to hear.
Santa Monica Planning is hosting a ride with SaMo’s mayor this Sunday. LA mayor Eric Garcetti agreed to ride with bicyclists when he was running for office four years ago, but to the best of my knowledge, no one has bothered to ask him to do it. Which should be a big hint to the LACBC, the BAC, LADOT…
US Cycling membership now includes legal benefits, including a free consultation, reduced legal fees, and priority consideration for pro bono legal representation. Although virtually any bike lawyer will offer a free consultation.
An editorial in USC’s Daily Trojan calls California’s ban on headphones for bike riders a new, overbearing law. Except the law only prohibits wearing headphones in or on both ears, rather than one. And it’s not new. Wearing headphones in both ears has been illegal for years, just as it is for drivers; all that changed with the new law was to eliminate loopholes to include any form of headphones or earpieces.
Seventy-one percent of people responding to an online poll in one Canadian town think winter bicycling should be banned; one bighearted driver thinks running over a cyclist could provide extra traction on icy streets.
In a truly bizarre case, Dutch police have filed a complaint with the International Court of Justice against a UN lawyer from Jamaica who claimed she had been brutalized by cops who arrested her when she got off her bike and walked it across a busy street.
Who needs a mountain when you’ve got a parking garage? Adelaide, Australia cyclists compete in their own indoor hill climb. Thanks to Adam Ginsberg for the news.
Thanks to Todd Rowell for his generous donation to support this site. Donations are always welcome to help us bring you the best, freshest and most accurate bike news in this post-truth era of alternate facts and fake news.
Come back later today when we’ll have a guest post from Mr. CiclaValley himself as he talks with Toluca Lake resident and pro cyclist Phil Gaimon about next weekend’s inaugural Malibu Gran Cookie Fondo.
………
This is who we share the roads with.
San Diego’s 10News reports a road raging driver intentionally knocked a local radio host off his bicycle as he was escorting a disabled cyclist on the Coast Highway in Carlsbad, just a few miles from the end of the Challenged Athletes Foundation’s 620-mile Million Dollar Challenge.
As the rider worked to make it up a small hill, an impatient driver began honking his horn, despite a support van warning cyclists were ahead. So KOGO host Bob “Sully” Sullivan rode back to explain that his riding partner was a paraplegic using a handcycle to get up the hill.
“‘We’ve gone 590 miles, give me 90 seconds, I’ll have him up and over this grade, you can be on your way,'” Sullivan said he told the man. “Completely agitated, he says to me, ‘I don’t care if it’s f-ing God up there. Get out of the f-ing road.'”
Sullivan said that’s when he stopped talking to the man and got back on his bike. The truck’s driver accelerated and hit Sullivan’s bike, causing him to fall to the roadway.
Yet despite the presence of an off-duty Carlsbad cop riding in the opposite direction, no charges have been filed.
“I think he needs to be arrested,” Sullivan said. “Somebody who purposely hits somebody on a bicycle using his car is either assault with a deadly weapon, attempted murder, at the very least shouldn’t be driving a car right now.”
The LAPD is asking for the public’s help in finding the person who shot and killed a bike rider in Echo Park last week; 37-year old William Perea was hit with gunfire as he rode at Mohawk and Montana the night of October 17th.
………
LADOT says safety remains the top priority on the LA River bike path, as they remind both walkers and bike riders about the statutes governing the pathway and the need to share it safely, in the wake of a collision with a bicyclist that sent an elderly woman to the hospital.
The LACBC deserves a lot of credit for starting this conversation, even before Butler came on board, with its outreach to lower income immigrant communities in the last decade. Along with notable presentations at the National Bike Summit that marked the bike coalition as a national leader on the subject.
The Westwood Village Improvement Association discusses how to improve business and better serve the surrounding community. Oddly, making it safer to walk and bike there doesn’t seem to be an option, even though both would benefit the Village’s long suffering businesses.
Bike lawyer Bob Mionske writes about a new Close Call Database allowing bike riders to report punishment passes from angry motorists to establish a paper trail in case the driver does it again. Or worse.
Who was that masked man? A Bronx bike rider is a hero after retrieving a woman’s stolen purse, then riding off before she could thank him. No word on whether he left a silver bike chainlink behind.
A Brit cyclist born with just one arm is raising funds to buy a prosthetic arm so he can compete in the Paralympic Games; a Go Fund Me account has raised a little more than half of the £7,500 goal, the equivalent of $9157.
October 21, 2016 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: Goodbye and thank you to Michelle Mowery, and improvements and closures on LA River bike path
Bittersweet news from LADOT, as longtime bicycle and active transportation coordinator Michelle Mowery announced today that she is leaving for a position with the mayor’s office, focusing on the LA River Bike Path.
On Monday, October 24th, I will be beginning a new assignment with Mayor Garcetti’s LA Riverworks Team to focus on the Los Angeles River Bicycle Path. While I am excited about working full-time on the River; it will be very, very difficult to leave my home at LADOT. I will miss working with all of you on projects that have, and continue, to make bicycling more accessible in the City of Los Angeles.
The last 22 years with the City have been the most exciting and fulfilling of my 39 years in public service. I can’t tell you all how wonderful it has been to see cycling established a real means of transportation in Los Angeles. I will miss many of you as I shift my focus in the City but expect to continue to see you in my efforts on behalf of the River. It has been my greatest pleasure to serve the City as a transportation professional on two wheels.
Thank you all for your cooperation and support over the years.
When I first got involved in bike advocacy efforts in Los Angeles, I found myself loosely allied with a group of advocates who blamed Mowery for the city’s decades of failure to do anything to protect the safety of bicyclists, and who made it their not-so-secret goal to have her fired.
I resisted those efforts, to the point that I found myself ostracized and attacked because I questioned whether she was really to blame.
And openly wondered what she could do with the actual backing of the city, instead of the old school, auto-centric senior LADOT engineers, who have since retired or otherwise moved on, squashing her every effort.
I think the last several years have more than answered those questions.
Since bicycling first received the attention and backing of the mayor’s office during the Villaraigosa administration, Los Angeles has installed hundreds of miles of bike lanes, including the city’s first parking and curb protected bike lanes, as well as an actual bike network in Downtown LA.
Which is not to say we don’t still have a long way to go. It only takes a few hours riding the mean streets of Los Angeles to realize just how inadequate LA’s bicycling infrastructure is for a car-centric city this size.
But it made huge leaps under Mowery’s guidance, once she was finally allowed to do her job.
We owe her a big round of thanks for sticking in there and doing the best she could when the job was impossible, and she was the focal point for every cyclist angry over everything that didn’t get done.
And showing us all what this city could be once she was given the chance.
………
The LA Weekly takes a surprisingly even-handed look at the call for banning bikes on the LA River Bike Path through Elysian Valley, in the wake of an elderly woman who was seriously injured in a crash with a bike rider.
Not to mention they have the good taste to quote yours truly.
The story notes that that someone placed an illegal, DIY sign at the entrance to the path reading “Bike Path Closed,” which was largely and justifiably ignored.
Meanwhile, LA Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell says the city will be making safety improvements to the path to notify riders to slow down or dismount in areas with a high level of pedestrians.
As well as increasing police presence on the path. Which is something bike riders, as well as pedestrians, have long called for.
Although the call to dismount is highly questionable. Especially since people somehow seem to manage sharing the path on the far more crowded beachfront bike path.
And it should be noted, as we mentioned here yesterday, that the rider stopped and cooperated with police following the crash.
The LACBC’s Zachary Rynew, aka Mr. CiclaValley in his off-duty hours, sends word about the organization’s new team kit, which is available for preorder right now.
LACBC’s 2017 Kit is now for sale by preorder for a limited time until October 30th. To support the local cycling community, LACBC collaborated with L.A.-based collective superdomestik on design and California-based manufacturer Voler on production.
USA Cycling announces the Pro Road Tour racing schedule for next year. The tour comes to California just twice, in April and May, for the Dana Point Gran Prix and the Redlands Bicycle Classic.
Authorities are looking for the heartless coward who hit a young child in Victorville as he was riding his bike and left him lying in the street; the boy may have suffered serious head trauma in the hit-and-run collision.
CityLab urges you to ride with a boombox on your bike instead of headphones, so you can annoy more people with your excellent taste in music. However, it may take some practice to develop the retro skills required ride your bike with a massive boombox perched on one shoulder, ‘70s style.
Eyewear maker Bollé introduces a mountain bike helmet with features that actually make sense for a change, including a detachable visor, slots to store your glasses and space for an embedded tail light.
Anti-bike terrorists have struck again, sabotaging a Colorado mountain bike trail with spike-embedded boards buried in the dirt. If you question the use of that term, consider what would happen to a rider who suffers a blowout while zipping down a trail.
The Michigan senate responds to the Kalamazoo massacre by passing bill requiring a five-foot passing distance, and another requiring three hours of bike and motorcycle safety training in all driver’s ed courses.
A Philadelphia cyclist correctly resists police efforts to make him stop recording an arrest and to hand over his phone as evidence. You have a 1st Amendment right to record anything that occurs in a public place, and police have no right to stop you as long as you don’t interfere with their actions. And they can’t seize your phone without probable cause, or delete any of the contents. Which does not mean they won’t try.
A London hospital spent the equivalent of $12,000 to fight a protected bike lane in an apparent attempt to drum up business; 315 bike riders were killed or injured on the roads approaching the hospital over the last ten years, including some directly in front of their entrance.
A British man has been jailed for 28 months following a racist attack on a bike rider; he was one of three men who swerved at the victim in their car, doored him and forced him off his bike, then violently attacked him while screaming racial epithets.
A six-year old Irish boy with Duchenne muscular dystrophy is able to ride a bike for the first time thanks to a new medication. Nice to finally see some hope for this cruel disease.
The brother of a fallen cyclist begs a Dublin county council to reconsider its decision not to include safe routes to schools in their draft development plan.
Security camera footage shows thieves casually bicycling on their way to rob Kim Kardashian in Paris, then back again with her $10 million jewelry in tow.
