Day 36 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025.
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Um, okay.
Streetsblog reports that after nine months of slow walking the legally required implementation of Measure HLA — which requires building out the mobility plan when streets get resurfaced — the Los Angeles City Planning Department has finally released its draft HLA Standard Elements Table.
The HLA SET sets out the minimum standards for each tier in the plan, from the Transit Enhanced Network and Pedestrian Enhanced Network, to three tiers of bikeway networks.
Which makes sense, since the bare minimum is all they’ve done so far.
You’ll have your chance to weigh in when the Planning Department hosts a virtual information session on its proposed HLA Standard Elements Table a week from tomorrow, from 6-7 pm.
Click here to register for the session.
Graphic for Healthy Streets LA, as Measure HLA was originally known, from Streets for All website.
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Mountain biker Eliot Jackson celebrates the City of Angels with his Ode To LA, shredding on his bike and guitar.
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Freeride mountain biker Dylan Stark is joined by “freeride legend” Josh Bender as they carve up the burn scar from 2024 Macy Fire near Lake Elsinore.
Never mind the environmental damage to nascent vegetation and animal life as the hillside struggles to recover from the fire damage.
Schmucks.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
A Philadelphia woman tried to get out of paying after her car was towed for parking in a parking protected bike lane by claiming the four-year old bike lane didn’t exist, because the signs and symbols normally denoting a bike lane were missing due to construction. Never mind that it looks pretty damn obvious even without them.
No bias here. Drivers in Oxford, England complain about Schrödinger’s bike lanes, of which there are simultaneously too many blocking the roads and causing congestion, and too few, forcing drivers to somehow cope with people legally riding in the traffic lanes.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Only in Florida. A 67-year old Lake City man kidnapped a woman at knifepoint after she struck him with her car as he rode his bike in a crosswalk, demanding that she drive him home — then called police and her employer to report the crash when she didn’t return with a promised payment, and refused to have a relationship with him.
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Local
Once again, an LAPD officer has been arrested for a fatal hit-and-run. Sgt. Carlos Gonzalo Coronel is charged with killing a 19-year old man in Tustin early Saturday morning; he’s currently accused of violating probation for a 2011 DUI conviction after he failed to complete his court ordered community service.
Oops. KCBS-2 says former US National Crit champ Rahsaan Bahati partnered with “Costa Mesa nonprofit” Walk ‘n Rollers after someone stole the trailer with all their gear. Except the group dedicated to teaching kids how to ride their bikes safely is based about 45 miles north in Culver City.
State
Calbike is working to get the California MUTCD, aka Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, updated to reflect a new law banning sharrows on streets with speed limits above 30 mph.
San Diego is looking for your input on the draft of its revised Street Design Manual outlining how roads and walkways should be designed to accommodate all users.
Now you, too, can be a star. Or at least make a cool grand demonstrating your bike skills for a healthcare ad shooting in the Bay Area (scroll down).
A San Francisco website says the city’s new bike plan is full of ideas and goals, but short on details, a departure from the its usual approach of ambitious plans that never get built.
National
A clickbait slideshow highlights the top ten US bike towns every bicyclist should visit. None of which is Los Angeles, of course.
A new Utah bill could eliminate mountain bike and gravel racing in the state by imposing a 20 mph speed limit on all trails and pathways, while also revising the definitions of electric motorcycles, e-scooters, mini-bikes and ebikes, and requiring helmets for anyone under 21.
People riding bikes in my bike-friendly Colorado hometown on the Winter Bike to Work Day will enjoy coffee, food, drinks and giveaways, both morning and afternoon. Which compares favorably to LA’s most recent Bike to Work Day, when bike commuters got squat.
In today’s best story, a family of Ukrainian refugees are living proof of the power bicycles to change lives, assuming ownership of a Boulder, Colorado bike shop from the people who became their substitute parents and benefactors when they arrived here with nothing, despite never riding a bicycle before the war started.
Once again, someone on a bicycle has been killed by a cop, as a 68-year old Norwalk, Connecticut man riding in a crosswalk was hit and killed by an on-duty police detective in an unmarked car.
The Pennsylvania House of Representatives has overwhelmingly approved a bill that would finally legalize parking protected bike lanes, sending it on to the state senate for consideration.
This is why people hate defense lawyers. Attorneys for the man accused of killing the hockey-playing Gaudreau brothers the night before their sister’s New Jersey wedding allege they were both over the legal alcohol limit as they rode their bikes, as if that had anything to do with the driver running them down from behind while passing a slower car on the shoulder of the highway.
International
Momentum offers 33 reasons to start bike commuting now. Which isn’t quite as catchy as “I got 99 problems but…”, but it will have to do.
A Nova Scotia city councilmember says the city needs a 2,000 percent increase in bicycling rates if they want to have any hope of meeting their climate goals. On the other hand, at least they have climate goals, unlike a certain SoCal megalopolis I could name, which tossed the last mayor’s Green New Deal out the window before the new mayor even came in.
Not Just Bikes says the reason Canadians can’t bike in the winter and Finns can has nothing to do with weather, and everything to do with safe bicycle infrastructure. Then proceeds to refute their own argument by showing Canadians bicycling in, yes, winter, albeit less comfortably than their Finnish counterparts.
Seriously? A 32-year old British man is facing ten years behind bars for killing a 75-year old Finnish man with an axe as he lay in his bed, bizarrely claiming it was self-defense after the older man tied him down and raped him — yet the press somehow insists on identifying him as a “cyclist” because he arrived in Finland on a bike tour.
Evidently, the wheels of justice turn slowly in India, where a man was acquitted eight years after his arrest for stealing a bike.
An Aussie website says Bangkok is better for bicycling than they expected. Which doesn’t exactly sound like high praise.
A Melbourne, Australia woman is called a Karen after she lost her temper during a rideout in the Central Business District, getting out of her car to repeatedly point her finger in the faces of the teen bicyclists stopping traffic with their two-wheeled antics.
Competitive Cycling
Wout van Aert says it was just meant to be, after failing to overtake Mathieu van der Poel for the ‘cross world championship.
Czech carmaker Škoda’s We Love Cycling website examines the post pro racing careers of a handful of cycling legends, ranging from The Cannibal to Contador.
Thanks to indoor cycling gear supplied by Zwift and Wahoo, a Congolese cyclist says he’s still able to train, even as armed conflict rages outside, making it too dangerous to ride a bicycle.
Finally…
Ethan Hunt has apparently gone rogue and is now raiding Brit bike shops. Your next bike could have two chains — and no, not the rapper. Who says you need to stop pedaling to play the drums?
And surfing, like bicycling, evidently leaves little to the imagination as to the outline of your, um, male appendage.
Assuming you have one, of course.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
