Pasadena approves a wish list to submit to Metro in the wake of the cancellation of the 710 Freeway extension, including free bus passes for high school and college students, and a number of bicycling projects.
State
A new feature film focuses on the life of San Diego, and former Glasgow, resident and BMX star John Buultjens.
After walking across the US with his then 10-year old son to raise awareness of diabetes, a Florida man is biking back from Santa Monica to Savannah GA to continue the discussion.
International
A bike and pedestrian safety advocate in Luxembourg says safety campaigns are deflecting the blame, and it’s not the victim’s fault if they get hit by a car crossing the street.
January 30, 2018 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: Protected bike lanes in DTLA, Long Beach wants to be cooler, and San Diego could go dockless
We’re back. More or less.
While my laptop still lingers at the shop waiting for a diagnosis, they were kind enough to loan me a semi-balky replacement.
Which works well enough to get today’s bike news wrap-up online, anyway.
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Local
Work has started on transforming the bike lanes on Spring and Main Streets in DTLA to parking protected bike lanes, at the expense of a couple of parklets.
Long Beach’s bike-friendly mayor is working on plans to cool the city, from adding more trees and green spaces to getting more cars off the streets.
State
San Diego’s city attorney issues an opinion that dockless bikeshare doesn’t conflict with the city’s exclusive agreement with its DecoBike docked bikeshare system, which could open the door to other systems.
Berkeley gets a pair of new green bike lanes, along with safer bus loading zones and sidewalks to help students and faculty get to the UC campus.
Like California, it’s against the law to cross the centerline to pass a bike rider in a no-passing zone in Washington state. Even though drivers are allowed to do it in several other states, without the blood bath Governor Brown anticipated when he vetoed a bill that would have allowed it here.
Chicago bicyclists celebrate a frozen Winter Bike to Work Day. So why is it that Los Angeles, with its nearly perfect weather, can’t manage a single day to promote winter bike commuting here?
The first one suggests that the safety in numbers benefit provided by more people using bikeshare outweighs the benefits of bike helmets.
And the other concludes this way —
The key issue in considering the use of helmets is of course the risk. In recent years, more detailed assessment of risk in personal travel in England has been published [4]. This shows that risk varies considerably more by age than by mode of travel. The range of risks experienced in bicycling are in the same range as faced in walking or driving, except possibly for the most elderly bicyclists.
In conclusion, there is no objective reason to consider even the promotion of helmets for bicycling, in the absence of similar measures for all other road users.
What: An opportunity to learn more about how LimeBike works and hear from the CSUN Director of Energy & Sustainability, LimeBike’s LA Operations Manager, and other CSUN officials on how CSUN is leading the way to revolutionize sustainable transportation.
To celebrate the launch, the company is offering 10 free rides through the end of January by using the code LIMEWITHCSUN.
Even though a security camera showed the driver appearing to carefully drive around her body as he left the scene.
And even though a witness claims to have told the driver he’d backed over the victim as she was sweeping the street around her trailer, contradicting the driver’s claims that he didn’t know he’d hit anyone.
So once again, an innocent woman is dead. And no one will ever be held accountable.
While story focused on immigration, J. Patrick Lynch thinks Lopez missed the point.
The real takeaway of this article should have been how easy it is for people to get behind a machine that can easily kill . Whether it be an illegal immigrant, a driver with a suspended license for traffic violations, or someone who’s had their license revoked for multiple DUIs or has even killed someone already, if you want to drive, there’s really little stopping you.
Which is something else that has to change if we’re ever going to reduce traffic fatalities.
Let alone end them.
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Local
Work has started on the Main & Spring Forward Complete Streets project in DTLA, including converting the buffered bike lanes on Main and Spring Streets to protected bike lanes. Thanks to 14th District Councilmember José Huizar for having the courage to move forward with the project, despite LA’s recent anti-bike lane hysteria.
The San Diego Association of Governments, aka SANDAG, broke ground the two-mile Rose Creek Bikeway, part of the planned 44-mile Coastal Rail Trail between Oceanside and downtown San Diego.
Nice story. An Arkansas girl born without a hand can ride a bike for the first time after her elementary school classmates designed and built a handlebar attachment using a 3D printer.
Minneapolis MN will get a temporary fat tire bikeshare service for next month’s Super Bowl. Hopefully it will work well enough they’ll make it permanent.
They get it. A Canadian website points out why bike lanes are good for everyone, even drivers and business owners. Which should be required reading for anyone who questions the value of bikeways.
A Victoria, British Columbia chef is taking advantage of new bike lanes by opening a restaurant with a bike-through window. Which is a perfect example of how businesses can take advantage of the opportunity presented by bike-friendly streets, rather than fighting them tooth-and-nail.
Australia’s most notorious driver finally had his license revoked after 11 suspensions in 12 years, not that a little thing like that ever stopped him from driving; he also killed a ten-year old girl who was riding her bike in 2003, while driving at over three times the legal alcohol limit.
Merchants in an Australian town are fighting plans to remove parking on one side of a street to make room for bike lanes, over fears that it will kill their business. Proving once again that anti-bike lane bias is the same all over the world.
Competitive Cycling
Like father like sons. Twenty-three-year old Lithuanian cyclist Raimondas Rumsas Jr was banned for four years for doping, 15 years after his dad received a one-year ban for using EPO at the 2003 Giro d’Italia; sadly, his brother died last year under suspicious circumstances that may have been linked to doping, as well.
When you’re three-time world champ Peter Sagan, you get an audience with the pope. And when you’re the pope, you get a monogrammed bike in the papal colors from Peter Sagan.
January 23, 2018 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: CicLAvia goes to the Heart of the Foothills on April 22nd, and the war on bikes goes on
One quick note before we move on to today’s big CicLAvia news.
My email is down this week after running an update, so my apologies if anyone has reached out to me and I haven’t responded. I’ll try to catch up once I get it working again.
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CicLAvia officially unveiled the route for their next open streets event, taking a first-time journey through the Heart of the Foothills, from Claremont to San Dimas, next Earth Day.
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Once again, while the war on cars is mythical, the all-too-real war on bikes goes on.
Duluth MN business owners complain about plans for bike lanes that would eliminate parking on one side of the street; one businessman uses it as free storage for his auto shop, while another evidently didn’t consider how bike lanes could reduce the need for more spaces in his overflowing parking lot.
A New York woman says Queens’ infamous Boulevard of Death is still dangerous despite recent safety improvements, after her father was nearly hit by a driver while crossing the street; her calls for increased safety at a recent meeting were drowned out by people complaining about the bike lanes.
After a British bike rider posts video complaining that an ambulance nearly hit him, the ambulance service responds that he should have pulled over and let them pass. Seriously, bike riders have exactly the same obligation motorists do to get the hell out of the way of emergency vehicles, even if LA drivers seem to forget that.
As I was being interviewed, I felt my anger rising as I described the efforts of Councilmembers Gil Cedillo, Curren Price and Paul Koretz to block much needed bike lanes in their districts. Along with Mayor Eric Garcetti’s failure to back his own Vision Zero and Great Streets initiatives.
So I quickly apologized, calmed down and went on with the interview.
Then I later mentioned that I started this site because I was angry about the sorry state of bicycling infrastructure in the City of Angels. Even if I didn’t know it was called infrastructure back then.
Which only confirmed my pissed off status.
Anyway, it’s worth a read if you want to know who I am and why I do what I do.
And yes, it’s definitely worth a read, as Gamboa has gone from installing ghost bikes to fighting for safer streets so they won’t be needed any more.
I can personally vouch for him as one of the true heroes of Southern California bike advocacy.
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Bike statistician Ed Ryder has been examining the CHP’s SWITRS bike crash data for California and Southern California, which we’ll be taking a look at as the week goes on.
But here’s an interesting chart to get us started, showing a surprising decline in injury bike crashes in Los Angeles County after peaking in 2012; stats for last December are only partial figures, but still suggest a decline from the previous year.
The question is whether the streets are getting safer, or if fewer people are willing to risk riding on them.
Long Beach business people are worried that the May 13th start of the Amgen Tour of California will destroy their business on Mother’s Day. Seriously, if you can’t figure out a way to make money off an event that draws an additional 10,000 or so race fans — male and female — to your street, maybe the event isn’t the problem.
A Santa Cruz-area driver shows his deep concern for the safety of bicyclists by complaining about two bike riders drifting in and out of a bike lane, forcing drivers to swerve into oncoming traffic to pass them, and saying there should be a law against riding two abreast. Never mind that riding two or more abreast is perfectly legal under most circumstance, as well as “drifting” in and out of a bike lane for any number of reasons. Or that it’s also perfectly legal for drivers to slow down and wait until it’s safe to pass bike riders. In fact, it’s required, whether or not they’re in a bike lane.
A mufti-clad pseudo Petaluma bike cop pulled over a motorist and demanded personal information and cash for on the spot to pay the fine for the alleged offense. A real bike cop will have a uniform and badge, and will never ask for payment on the spot. Unless he’s asking for a bribe, which is a different matter entirely.
A former mountain biker turned distance runner recommends micro-dosing with dope to reduce pain and improve performance. Which is now more or less legal in California, as long as you don’t tell the feds.
A Dallas paper questions whether leaving dockless bikeshare bikes on the sidewalk is more than an inconvenience to handicapped people, possibly violating the American’s with Disabilities Act. Good question. Thanks to Megan Lynch for the heads-up.
Caught on video: A Dutch bike rider struggles against an intense headwind during last week’s storm. Been there, done that; I’ve actually been pushed backwards by a strong wind, as well as knocked off my bike by a sudden gust.
Caught on video too: An Australian cyclist captures a horrifying first person perspective as he gets stabbed by a road raging driver, after complaining a dangerous pass. Fortunately, he was not seriously injured.
He then returned 40 minutes later, and rear-ended two men riding their bikes in the opposite direction.
But despite being arrested two days later on suspicion of three counts of felony hit-and-run, prosecutors concluded they couldn’t prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt.
So why even try, right?
Which means that a dangerous driver is once again allowed to remain on the roads.
And drivers are once again reminded that the authorities don’t take hit-and-run any more seriously than they do.
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CD5 Councilmember Paul Koretz teams with fellow Councilmember Bob Blumenfield to introduce a motion calling for a climate emergency response in spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “fierce urgency of now,” in response to the recent fires and mudslides.
Which means he will undoubtedly reverse his position and approve bike lanes on Westwood Blvd and elsewhere on LA’s Westside, to provide a safe alternative to driving and reduce greenhouse gasses.
However, given that one of their primary requirements is that the chosen city must have a good bicycle network, LA can probably look forward to getting a participation trophy.
No irony here. Mar Vista’s dermatologist, neighborhood council member and self-appointed planner says LA needs to approach planning as engineers, rather than social justice warriors. Except when the engineers at LADOT do exactly that, neighborhood NIMBYs and pass-through drivers reject it because it’s not the kind of social engineering they want.
This is pretty much the definition of NIMBY. Five Encinitas residents are suing the city to block officials from opening a park gate to give kids a safe route to their elementary schools; they complain that it will be used by people who don’t live in their neighborhood to enter the park.
Visually impaired people from across the US are in Chula Vista for a para triathlete training camp to learn how to be guided by a sighted triathlon partner.
Bicycling talks to badass winter bike commuters from five cities with tough winters. Although they somehow left out Los Angeles, where riders are sometimes forced to endure partly cloudy days and temperatures in the 60s.
A Canadian letter-writer says money spent building a bike boulevard would have been better spent providing education for the bike-riding public. Which would do little to protect them from dangerous drivers.
However, sales have nose-dived in Malta, dropping 90% after the country required ebikes to be registered. Which should be seen as a warning of what could happen if bicycle registration laws are passed in the US.
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As if we didn’t have enough bikeshare news yesterday, there’s still more today.
South Pasadena is looking at ways to fix commuter traffic, after the long-fought 710 Freeway was finally killed; councilmembers asked that projects in the city’s 2011 bicycle master plan be included after a consultant gave them a low priority.
Long Beach approves plans for up to 120 new oil wells in exchange for restoration of wetlands on a depleted oil field, including installation of walking and bike paths.
Nissan wants drivers to control their cars with their minds. Too many people don’t seem to think behind the wheel now, so what makes them think wearing a funny hat will change that?
Burlington VT drivers are feeling squeezed by new protected bike lanes. Although the real problem seems to be parked cars and inadequate snow removal. But sure, it’s always easier to blame the bikes.
The Press-Telegram says it’s anyone’s guess how many people will actually show up for the Amgen Tour of California when it visits the city next May, after concluding that the official estimate of up to 225,000 who attended the event in 2007 was only off by around 190,000.
January 17, 2018 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: Dockless bikeshare comes to CSUN, and bikeshare systems explore interoperability on Westside
For a few short hours, we seemed to have a real scoop.
This morning, Steve S forwarded a photo showing hundreds of LimeBike dockless bikeshare bikes massed on the Cal State Northridge campus, apparently being readied for distribution.
While we speculated on just what they were doing there, I scrambled to figure out what council district they were in, assuming one of the San Fernando Valley’s councilmembers had made a deal with LimeBike for a pilot bikeshare program, like Joe Buscaino had in the Southside’s 15th District.
But before I could get a response, it turned out the bikes were on the CSUN campus because that was their destination.
The bikes’ GPS system will also be used to track where they are used to determine the best routes for new bike lanes on the campus.
But unlike shopping carts, the wheels don’t lock when they reach the edge of the university. So it will be interesting to see where the bikes actually end up.
Maybe they’ll go far enough off campus to spur approval of dockless bikeshare throughout the Valley.
And maybe even encourage more and better bikeways for students, and the rest of us, as well.
Thanks to Steve for the photo and his help with the developing story.
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Big bikeshare news in West Hollywood, too, where the city’s WeHo Pedals will soon be interoperable with other Westside bikeshares — and could one day be free.
A bike rider reportedly suffered “significant” injuries in a hit-and-run crash in Azusa Monday evening. But instead of asking for the public’s help, the police withheld any details of the suspect vehicle to avoid compromising the investigation. Thanks to Erik Griswold for the heads-up.
New York plans to add raised bike lanes along the center divider on a street crossing the border between Brooklyn and Queens, while banning left turns to eliminate dangerous conflict points inherent in a center bikeway.
NBC News looks at New York’s ludicrous ban on ebikes, which harms the city’s low-income food delivery workers. It also hurts disabled people, as well as others for whom a pedal-assist bike could provide an invaluable mobility tool.
A Florida letter writer says no, it wasn’t the sun’s glare that resulted in a bike-riding politician’s death, it was someone who decided to keep driving when he couldn’t see where he was going.
You’ve got to be kidding. A Kiwi driver won’t face charges for intentionally ramming a bike rider after first rear-ending him, then becoming impatient when it took too long to dislodge the bike’s wheel from under the car’s bumper. Even though police called the driver’s actions “completely unacceptable.”
After frightening readers with horror stories about the abuse bike riders face on the roads in Auckland, New Zealand, a local news site says the real problems are the condition of the streets themselves.
A Singapore delivery cyclist is facing charges for killing a 73-year old pedestrian after running a red light; while the paper says he was riding a bike with a faulty coaster brake, it sounds more like he was riding a brakeless fixie.
January 16, 2018 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: Sharing the road with flying cars, and maybe bike riders aren’t scofflaws after all
They drive among us.
Maybe you somehow managed to miss the multitude of new stories over the weekend about the allegedly stoned driver who managed to plant his car on the second floor of a dental shop in Santa Ana.
No, really.
According to reports, the driver, who hasn’t been publicly identified, hit a center median with enough force to launch his car into the air, across three lanes of traffic, and embed it into the wall of the shop while still gaining altitude.
The inevitable question of how fast he had to be traveling to launch his car with such force is only partially answered by security camera footage.
As well as the view from an oncoming bus that was nearly taken out by the airborne ballistic automobile.
But at least that one seems to have stuck to the ground.
Top photo from Orange County Fire Authority. Thanks to Erik Griswold and Wes Salmon for the heads-up.
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Pot, meet kettle.
It’s long been common knowledge, among drivers at least, that people who ride bicycles are a bunch of reckless scofflaws who pay no attention to the law.
Never mind that even the most reckless bike rider is primarily a danger to him or herself, while a reckless driver is a danger to everyone around them.
That should have changed a few years ago, when a study from the University of Colorado showed that drivers and bike riders broke the law at nearly the same rate — 8% to 9% for drivers, and 7% to 8% for bicyclists.
As well as a follow-up study that showed when drivers broke the law, they did it for convenience, while people on bikes did it out of concern for their own safety.
Except that the both studies were greeted with crickets by the mainstream media.
Let alone the motoring public.
Now another study has shown virtually the same thing.
In the end, the results indicated that cyclists were compliant with the law 88 percent of the time during the day and 87 percent of the time after dark. The same study determined that drivers who interacted with the study subjects complied with the law 85 percent of the time. In other words, drivers were slightly naughtier than the cyclists—even without measuring speeding or distracted driving.
In a conversation with three of the researchers who conducted the study, I asked if they had any insight into why the findings vary so significantly from public perceptions about scofflaw cyclist behavior. “Many drivers simply don’t know the rules that concern people on bikes,” says Cong Chen. “About how much space to give cyclists, for instance, or when riders should get the right of way.”
The study also offers suggestions on how to improve safety.
In any case, based on the study findings, the researchers offered a number of recommendations to help mitigate the frighteningly high rate of close calls. For infrastructure improvements, they suggested wider and protected bike lanes; reflective green markings on bike lanes; improved lighting on roadways that see significant bicycle traffic; and so-called “through lanes,” which reduce conflicts between bicyclists and turning vehicles at intersections by letting riders be safely positioned before cars turn. “Based on what we saw and measured, we recommend measures that promote separating more than sharing,” says Kourtellis. “We think creating buffers between cars and bikes is smart.”
But once again, don’t bother trying to find any mention of the study in the mainstream media.
Evidently, dispelling a widely held misperception too often used to demonize people on bicycles just isn’t news.
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Speaking of demonizing bicyclists, one Aussie rider caught skitching — holding onto a moving vehicle to hitch a ride — is used to attack everyone who rides a bike for wanting “extra rights” on the road.
Never mind that most bicyclists haven’t done that, and never will.
And the only extra right we want is the right to ride a bike, and get home in one piece.
Los Angeles County’s outgoing Health Services director says he didn’t expect to fall in love with LA after moving here from San Francisco, but riding his bike to work from Hancock Park to DTLA certainly didn’t hurt. Thanks to Megan Lynch for the heads-up.
Repaving started this past weekend on 6th Street between La Brea and Fairfax to prepare it for the half-measure safety improvements pushed through by Councilmember David Ryu, against the wishes of local residents who were fighting for a road diet. Any hope that the road diet might go through died following the fiasco in Playa del Rey, where recently installed road diets were yanked out after an outcry from motorists.
The latest Bike Talk podcast features John Russo and Karla Mendelson of Keep LA Moving, who successfully fought to have the Playa del Rey road diets removed, and want to halt any future lane reductions in the city.
You never know what you might find while riding your bike. Like a boa constrictor with a broken jaw on the side of a Bay Area highway. The good news is, the snake has fully recovered.
An Oregon town posts a sign telling drivers not to text and drive, in honor of a 16-year old boy who was killed by a texting driver while riding his bike. Which will undoubtedly cause every driver to put down their phones. If they even bother to read it.
Just a year after finishing a seven year, 43,000 mile around-the-world bike tour, an English man is planning to set a new record by riding across Europe in less than 20 days.
A British father shares gruesome photos of his son after the boy crashed face-first into a brick wall, saying it’s a reminder to always wear a helmet. Which might have actually helped, but only if he’d worn it over his face.
An Aussie woman says she deserves a reduced sentence because the bike rider she left bleeding on the side of the road while driving high on ice didn’t die, but merely suffered permanent, life changing injuries.
South African cyclist Louis Meintjes learned the hard way to put on sunscreen under his mesh jersey. I once ended up with the Canari logo tanned onto my back after wearing my favorite jersey a little too often.
