Tag Archive for Los Angeles

Morning Links: Crowdfunding campaign for injured cyclist, and a pre-Thanksgiving bike video trifecta

November 22, 2017 / / 5 comments

Before we get started, let me offer my apologies to anyone who sent me links to the stories below.

With all that’s been going on, I’m afraid I’ve lost any record of who sent me what. So please accept my thanks in advance; I am truly grateful to everyone who forwards bike stories for this site, today or any other day.

Photo of Fred Mackey taken from his GoFundMe page; see below.

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Sometimes I wish the people fighting traffic safety projects in Los Angeles could see the damage done by careless — and too often, cowardly — drivers.

Case in point, this crowdfunding page for yet another bike rider who was seriously injured by a hit-and-run driver while crossing La Brea Ave.

The campaign to help Fred Mackey pay the medical expenses his insurance won’t cover has raised a little over $3,000 of the $25,000 goal after four days.

I sort of met Fred while he was in the hospital; after learning about his crash, I popped in to say hi since he was on the same floor as my wife. Unfortunately, he was busy with his doctors at the time, and by the time I could make it back a few days later, his bed was occupied by an Asian woman who was wondering what the hell I was doing there.

And yes, there’s something seriously wrong with a country where people have to go online to beg for money to pay their medical bills.

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CiclaValley offers what amounts to a painful Gravel Mob gag reel.

He follows that up with a compendium of bad drivers he encountered while riding to work.

Then again, looking for bad drivers in Los Angeles is like looking for ice in Greenland.

Except the bad drivers aren’t going anywhere.

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A foul-mouthed excuse for a comedian seems to think running bike riders off the road is amusing, and that share the road means bike riders have to get the hell out of his way.

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As long as we’re watching videos, let’s make the short leap from the seriously unfunny to a serious whackjob convinced LA is intentionally creating traffic jams to force drivers out of their cars and onto bikes and transit.

Unfortunately, though, he’s not the only one who believes this crap; you’ll find similar comments on almost any news story about or bike lanes or road diets.

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Local

Maybe LA is finally getting the message that it’s cheaper to fix broken bike lanes than pay out multi-million dollar settlements to injured bike riders, since they repaved bike lanes in Lincoln Heights and Eagle Rock last week.

The Daily Breeze looks at the arrival of the LimeBike dockless bikeshares in Watts, San Pedro and Wilmington.

As we mentioned before, Pasadena is threatening to put a stop to the popular Rose Bowl Loop rides by installing a number of stop signs around the route. Something tells me they’ll also park a patrol car next to each one to enforce it, too.

Glendora and South Pasadena are establishing Bicycle Friendly Business Districts, as The Source confirms something we’ve said many times — that bikes are good for business.

Cities in the western San Gabriel Valley are developing a $1 billion wish list for projects they want to install with funding originally set aside for the cancelled 710-N freeway tunnel.

Sad news from Santa Clarita, where a coach for the SCV Mountain Bike Team was killed in a car collision Monday night.

Long Beach is beginning work on reconfiguring Bellflower Blvd to remove parking spaces and add bike lanes.

 

State

Dockless bikeshare is being held up in San Diego due to the city’s exclusive contract with the under-performing DecoBike bikeshare.

San Diego is moving forward with plans for a $140 million replacement for a Mission Bay bridge; the new bridges will include bike lanes and space for walking.

Continuing our all San Diego theme, a kindhearted stranger donated a new bike to an Imperial Beach man after the one he used as his only means of transportation was stolen.

 

National

The US is now an outlier when it comes to traffic safety, with some of the deadliest roads in the industrialized world.

Chances are, you already know making carbon bikes isn’t an environmentally friendly process, but Outside is here to remind you that your carbon mountain bike ain’t exactly green.

Bicycling offers tips on how to deal with road raging drivers. In my experience, the best move is to remove yourself from the roadway; pull up onto the sidewalk if possible, preferably in a public place. And make a public display of taking a photo of the driver and his or her license plate.

Forbes looks at the best holiday gifts for women cyclists.

Bike Snob asks if riding with headphones is really such a big deal.

This may be LA’s future, as a Seattle paper looks at some of the strange places people have left dockless bikeshare bikes in the city.

A Colorado bike shop is teaching life skills to low-income kids and people with disabilities, while providing them with low-cost or free bikes.

Seriously, who the hell would steal St. Paul MN’s egg-shaped, solar-powered literary arts ebike and trailer?

Detroit is about to get a spanking new world-class velodrome.

The parents of one of the victims of the New York bike path terrorist attack are suing the city for not installing safety barriers until after the attack. Meanwhile, prosecutors have filed 22 charges against the attacker, including eight possible death penalty charges.

The Pennsylvania bike rider who served 20 months behind bars for obstructing traffic has filed an appeal, claiming the judge in the case was biased and didn’t understand the law.

Now that’s more like it. An unlicensed Florida driver got 12 years for the hit-and-run death of a bike rider, after getting his girlfriend to claim she was behind the wheel. Note to women: If your boyfriend, husband and/or significant other wants you to take the fall for his crimes, get a new one.

 

International

A road raging Canadian bike rider is facing weapons charges after threatening a couple in a car with a knife.

There’s a special place in hell for whoever stole and vandalized a handicapped British boy’s specialized adaptive bike.

An English man gets nine and a half years for plowing into a bike rider during a Jack Daniels-fueled rampage, after telling his girlfriend he was cheating on her, followed by carjacking a woman’s car.

Life is cheap in the UK, where a truck driver walks after seriously injuring a bike rider, despite his admission that he was “avoidably distracted.”

A drunk driver who was high on coke got three and a half years for the death of a British bike rider in a head-on crash while he was speeding to get another drink. Although that’s still just a fraction of what it should have been.

American cities can’t even get Vision Zero right, yet Sweden is already Moving Beyond Vision Zero to encourage safe bicycling and walking while designing roadways to make fatal collisions impossible.

A Norwegian researcher concludes ebikes are good exercise, while a Swedish retail company predicts they will be the country’s Christmas gift of the year.

Paris vows to reimburse customers as the city’s famed Velib bikeshare system grinds to a halt due to a series of strikes.

Once again, a bike maker is determined to demonstrate just how sexist the industry is, as Italian brand Pinarello’s new ads for their forthcoming ebike fall flat. To put it mildly.

Don’t sexually harass a woman on the street while riding by on your bike like this Aussie jerk, especially if she has her camera on. Or, better yet, just don’t do it. Period.

 

Competitive Cycling

No, you didn’t win that pro cycling contract by pedaling inside; a young New Zealand cyclist won the Zwift competition to join the Team Dimension Data under 23 team.

In the best news of the day, Italian cyclist Claudi Cretti is back on her bike, just four months after she suffered major head injuries in a crash at the Giro Rosa.

 

Finally…

If you lose your cellphone while stealing a bike, probably not the best idea to walk into the police station to ask if they’d found it. Who needs headphones when you can ride with your own piano?

And sometimes a dog’s best defense is just being too fat to attack anyone.

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On a personal note, let me offer my sincere thanks to everyone who has expressed their best wishes for my wife’s recovery from her recent surgery; it’s helped get us through a difficult few days.

And if you’re riding this weekend, remember that drivers will be far more focused on shopping and finding a finding parking space than watching out for you. So ride safely and defensively; I want to see you all back here next week.

 

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , ,

Morning Links: Anti-road diet NIMBYs boycott businesses, road safety in LA & Houston, and New Yorker bike covers

November 20, 2017 / / 26 comments

Last month, the road diets in Playa del Rey were ripped out before they had a chance to prove whether they were working.

Now we know why.

A must-read tweetstorm from writer Peter Flax, who served on Councilmember Mike Bonin’s ill-fated committee to re-examine the lane reductions, reveals that the primary reason behind their removal was the negative effect they were having on local business.

Which wasn’t coincidental.

He offers a number of social media posts in which opponents of the road diets call for a boycott of businesses in the area to force them to oppose the safety measures. Which were then echoed by anti-road diet forces like Keep LA Moving — whose leader actually lives in Manhattan Beach — Recall Bonin, and conservative radio hosts John and Ken.

And now the same tactics are being used in Mar Vista, where the owner of Louie’s restaurant blamed the lane reductions in the Venice Blvd Great Streets Project for the failure of his restaurant.

Even though it had just reopened after being closed for a vermin infestation. And even though it had a meager 2.5 Yelp rating. And even though a new chef insisted on making much hated changes to the place, including a new upscale menu, that drove longtime customers away.

But sure, let’s blame the removal of excess lane capacity, which didn’t result in the loss of a single parking space.

Despite, as Peter notes, numerous studies from around the country showing that Complete Streets projects like the one on Venice are good for business — including one on LA’s York Blvd, which has thrived since a road diet went in.

Of course, that doesn’t fit with the NIMBY narrative that Vision Zero and road diets are the work of Satan himself.

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A powerful piece from Los Angeles resident and Houston native Colleen Corcoran compares the traffic safety problems and struggle to improve safety for bike riders and pedestrians in the two cities.

Corcoran, a co-founder of CicLAvia, says no one should die as a result of thoughtless street design — after her own mother was killed riding her bike through a dangerous Houston intersection earlier this year.

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We’ve mentioned this one before, but it’s worth mentioning again. An online petition opposes a proposal allowing a private school to take over a public road in Calabasas, which is a popular route allowing bicyclists to bypass traffic on busy Mulholland Highway. Thanks to Steve S. for the reminder.

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A new Flickr page offers an exceptional collection of bicycling covers from the New Yorker dating back to the 1920s.

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An Irish pundit apologized for calling bike riders Nazis, and swore he would never give a Nazi salute again.

Of course, his apology was to a local Jewish organization, not to the people he accused of being a brown-shirt uniformed, two-wheeled cult.

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Local

Construction for the MyFigueroa project is getting blamed for some of the parking problems in South Park, even though it has the support of local businesses.

A December 2nd exhibition at the LA Central Library in DTLA will feature makers, including an LA man who explores “unique bicycle shapes and designs.”

The Daily News reports on Saturday’s Finish the Ride event in Sunland-Tujunga in honor of fallen bicyclist Jeff Knopp.

 

State

Advocates for the homeless insist that the 1,000 bikes found after a homeless camp along the Santa Ana River Trail was cleared out had nothing to do with the people who had been living there, since they were found in a tunnel over two miles away.

A Huntington Beach man gets six years behind bars for attacking a police officer who stopped his son for a traffic violation while they were riding their bikes; the younger man had already been sentenced to seven years after pleading guilty last year.

Apple is donating $1.8 million to build a protected bike lane in Cupertino.

Two thousand Bay Area cyclists, joggers, skaters and strollers gear up for Thanksgiving with a 2.5 mile carfree Sunday.

 

National

Denver voted for $431 million in transportation bonds, including $18 million for bicycle projects.

Plans are underway for a program that could link Wyoming’s bike trails into a statewide network.

Sad news, as the 88-year old founder of Iowa’s legendary RAGBRAI passed away last week.

A 21-mile Ohio bike path connects local four breweries and a cider house.

Now that’s more like it. A Kentucky driver gets 35 years for the drunk and stoned hit-and-run death of a bike rider; he drove three miles after the crash with his dying victim still in the bed of his truck.

Evidently Los Angeles isn’t the only place where NIMBYs want to rip out recently installed bike lanes; outraged Cambridge, Mass residents working under the misnomer Safe Streets for All are demanding that the lanes be redesigned and parking restored, and want bike riders to be required to carry ID.

A New Jersey paper says the state’s new governor should embrace multi-use bike and pedestrian trails.

 

International

A Mexican TV executive was shot to death on Sunday when a group of thieves attempted to steal his bicycle on the outskirts of Mexico City.

Forget Everesting. A Vancouver bicyclist climbed one million feet by riding up a local mountain every day for a year to raise funds to fight pancreatic cancer.

Toronto drivers appear to be adjusting to the presence of bike lanes after initial anger. Which is usually what happens if authorities can resist the urge to rip them out before they have a chance to succeed.

A new survey shows four out of five people in the UK want protected bike lanes in cities.

Good question. The Guardian’s Peter Walker asks why cyclists are the one minority the BBC is okay with demonizing. Although there’s no point in limiting it to the Beeb, as media outlets around the world are perfectly okay with attacking people who ride bikes in ways they wouldn’t anyone else. Including right here in LA.

Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson says Britain’s streets aren’t big enough for buses and bikes, and one of them has to go.

The Guardian asks if Copenhagen has hit peak bicycle, as ridership dips and more drivers take to the roads.

Not surprisingly, the best way to tour Soweto, South Africa is by bicycle. Like pretty much any other city you could name.

An Aussie cyclist was deliberately run off the road by a road raging driver after attempting to intervene in his dispute with another motorist. Meanwhile, an Australian councilor calls for an ad hoc committee to find solutions to road rage between motorists and cyclists. Never mind that most of the anger comes from the people in the cars. And they’re the ones with the four-wheeled weapons.

A new Australian study confirms that people who ride bikes are better drivers.

Singapore’s largest organized bike ride draws 6,500 riders, including many dressed as superheroes.

An industrial design student wins an Asian award for his wooden children’s bicycle that converts from a balance bike to a pedal bike as the kids get older.

 

Competitive Cycling

Britain’s Team Sky is accused of gaming the system for therapeutic exemptions that allow riders to use otherwise banned medications.

Fabian Cancellara challenges fellow retired pro Phil Gaimon to beat him in one of Fabian’s fondos, after Gaimon’s new book repeated accusations that Cancellara was motor doping, somehow thinking it would be no big deal. And no, this isn’t beginning to sound the least like a cycling soap opera.

The Daily Beast remembers Italian cycling legend Gino Bartali and his top secret work to save Jews in WWII, as the Giro make plans to start in Jerusalem next year.

VeloNews calls 16-year old Katie Clouse the next star of US cyclocross.

 

Finally…

If you’re riding while already on probation, probably best to leave the meth and dope at home. Your next bike helmet could have an airbag.

And this is why you don’t Instagram while riding.

 

Category: Morning Links, Streets and Infrastructure / Tags: , , , , , , ,

Morning Links: Stumbling on a Compton bike crash, bike events, and fixing a bike path with duct tape

November 17, 2017 / / 6 comments

Mike Wilkinson forwards a reminder to always ride safely.

About 10:30 Thursday morning my wife saw the aftermath of a crash involving a bicyclist near Alameda and Alondra in Compton. Such a scene would be hard for most people to stomach, but it was especially tough for her, because we are both avid riders.

The bike was broken in half, which may indicate the force of the collision, but what really got to my wife was the rider’s screams as the first responders tried to help him. The whole scene is going to haunt her for a while.

Despite her shock, she felt it was important to note that most riders she sees in this area ride terribly. They run stop lights, ride on the wrong side of the road, cross from one side to the other in the middle of the block and worse. That makes it hard for even careful drivers like her to avoid collisions. It’s a reminder that following the rules of the road at least means that you are more likely to be where drivers expect you to be.

Be careful out there!

It’s important to note that there is nothing to suggest that the victim in this crash broke the law or rode recklessly in any way.

But it’s valid to say that our safety as bicyclists depends on riding in such a way that drivers know what to expect. Which means riding with traffic, observing traffic signals, and signaling turns. Even if they don’t.

In other words, ride like your life depends on it.

Because it does.

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This weekend marks the World Day of Remembrance to honor the victims of traffic violence.

Finish the Ride is marking the occasion with a memorial ride in honor of Jeff Knopp this Saturday; Knopp was killed while riding on Foothill Blvd in Sunland last November. Meanwhile, Streetsblog talks with Finish the Ride and S.A.F.E. founder Damian Kevitt.

The Pasadena Complete Streets Coalition, SoCal Families for Safe Streets, Day One, Streets are For Everyone, and Los Angeles Walks will hold a late afternoon ceremony at Pasadena city hall on Sunday.

In other events,

LACBC is hosting a ride marshal orientation on Saturday.

Also on Saturday, Walk ‘n Rollers is kicking off their Fall Fundraising campaign with their first CycleGiving ride in Culver City.

Bike SGV is leading an SGV Greenways bike train ride this Sunday.

Helen’s Cycles is hosting a number of rides over the next three days.

Los Angeles Bike Rebels is (are?) hosting a solo art show by Carolin Keweer on the 25th.

And CicLAvia returns to Wilshire Blvd on December 10th.

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It’s often said that if you can’t fix it with duct tape, it ain’t broken.

Which is amply demonstrated by this video, where people in the Dutch city of Nijmegen fixed a dangerous intersection on a bike path with a simple application of the aforementioned adhesive.

Thanks to David Wolfberg for the heads-up.

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An Irish pundit loses it on a live TV show, accusing bike riders of being actual brown shirt-wearing Nazis, and giving the Nazi salute to drive the point home.

Unfortunately, most of the story is hidden behind a paywall. However, British bike scribe Carlton Reid comes through with the full stomach-turning story.

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Local

A Mar Vista restaurant owner says the road diet implemented as part of the Venice Blvd Great Streets project put him out of business. If reducing a six lane street down to four lanes, with no loss of parking, is enough to kill your business, your problems go a lot deeper than that.

Speaking of Mar Vista, a dermatologist and Mar Vista Community Council member says Vision Zero is a great idea, but the Venice Blvd road diet was rammed down their throats and won’t save a single life. Because everyone knows that dermatologists are experts in traffic safety, unlike the people who actually get paid to do it. Never mind that it was the result of a two-year, community-driven process, and wasn’t rammed up or down any part of anyone’s anatomy. 

Emmy-winning Canadian actress Tatiana Maslany is one of us; you have to respect someone who rides her bike to an interview with the LA Times. Colin Farrell’s kid is now one of us, too.

Maybe things will get a little safer in Pasadena, which received $112,000 grant from the state to improve bicycle safety. And the Santa Monica police received a $300,000 traffic safety grant of their own.

 

State

One thousand bikes were found in a hand-built dirt bunker after a homeless camp was evicted from the Santa Ana River. If you had a bike stolen anywhere in the Fountain Valley area, now would be a good time to check in with the OC Sheriff’s Department.

A handful of Thousand Oaks residents object to a proposed road diet, while the majority who attended a meeting apparently didn’t have an opinion.

Amgen does more than just sponsor a bike race. They’re also helping to give new bikes to kids in the Conejo Valley.

A Santa Barbara woman says yes, you can go grocery shopping by bike. Although riding to class at the local university appears to have its issues. Note: As Andy S points out below, the shopping piece is a rerun of an article that appeared earlier this year.

Bakersfield received a $30,000 grant from the state for bicycle and pedestrian safety education programs, as well as distributing bike helmets.

Caltrans held a public workshop to discuss their nine-county Bay Area bike plan.

 

National

Trek is getting sued for trademark infringement, accused of stealing the name of the late plus-sized comedian Chris Farley for its popular Farley fat bike. And no, I don’t even want to consider that implication.

Now that you’ve mastered all the other bike skills, learn how to do an upside down flip over an open loop.

Bicycling explains how to survive your next attack by a wild boar or wildebeest. Or an angry dog.

The Aspen CO sheriff has recovered the stolen bike Lance Armstrong gave him, after it was found chained to a tree. Maybe now he’ll have enough sense to lock his bike up like everyone else.

It takes a real schmuck to steal a ghost bike; fortunately, it was recovered at a Kansas scrap yard.

Can he give it back? A 19-year old Michigan man rode his bike to work every day, regardless of the weather, so his coworkers pitched in to buy him a car for his birthday.

New York officials knew the bike path where eight people were killed recently was vulnerable to a terrorist attack, but did nothing to prevent it. Just like LA officials know the risk of a similar attack on Hollywood Blvd, but haven’t done anything about it.

WaPo invites six triathletes to race DC’s bikeshare bikes.

A Virginia Navy vet plans to ride a stationary bike until he’s raised enough money to buy 100 bikes and helmets for local kids.

 

International

Rouleur takes a look at the concept collaborations between bike and auto makers.

A Toronto cyclist says bike lanes aren’t for experienced riders like him; they’re for people who might not otherwise get on a bike.

I want to be like her. An 11-year old girl raised the equivalent of nearly $8,000 for a mental health charity by riding the length of the UK, inspired by a cousin with anorexia.

A bike-riding British purse snatcher is behind bars after grabbing nine purses from elderly women as he rode by, including one theft caught on security cam.

Brit cyclists say software developers and owners of autonomous cars should be held criminally responsible for any crashes.

After a 79-year old English rider was pushed off his bike by a group of teenagers, he refused to press charges because he doesn’t want them to have a criminal record.

A grieving Irish woman says “selfish drivers are oblivious to the huge devastation they could cause,” after losing her entire family in a crash with a suicidal cab driver.

Why bother with water bottles when you can strap a couple half liters of Spanish wine to your bike?

An Indian woman is riding solo across the country to prove that the nation’s roads are safe for women.

Life is cheap in Australia, where the negligent death of a bike-riding doctor isn’t worth a single day in jail.

One of China’s leading bikeshare companies is on the verge of going belly up; Quartz says China’s bikeshare startups will have to merge or die.

 

Competitive Cycling

Now that the Fabian Cancellara motor doping controversy has died down a little, Road.cc reviews Phil Gaimon’s new book Draft Animals.

A British Parliament member says Bradley Wiggins and British Cycling weren’t exonerated by the end of the recent doping investigation.

 

Finally…

Maybe cut back on the meth a bit if you want to outrun a 74-year old man on his stolen bike. Why fly the coop — literally — when you can ride a bike?

And if you’re dismantling a pair of bikes in an alley, while in possession of burglary tools — and already on probation for grand theft — you might want to have an explanation ready in case the cops show up.

Just saying.

 

Category: Bicycle Safety, Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , ,

Morning Links: Don’t take your right-of-way for granted, Union Station Bike Hub opens, and give a bike thief a hug

November 16, 2017 / / One comment

It’s a pretty light news day. Which means you should be able to read all of today’s post, and still get out to enjoy a ride in this beautiful LA weather.

Unless you live in Northern California, in which case you’re screwed.

Today’s photo shows the WeHo Pedals bikeshare dock outside Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where I’ve been spending way too much time lately. 

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Eric Fleetwood forwards this video reminding riders not to take their right-of-way for granted.

Here’s how he describes it,

As I approached the curve to the left, I signaled left to alert the driver of the Mini Cooper, even though I had the right of way and a pulsing amber headlight.  Early in the video it became apparent that he was not going to yield (you can see the back of the Yield sign and the graphic on the pavement), I veered to the right side of the road and let him pass by on my left. It appeared that he might be on a cell phone.

Incidentally, many riders down here feel that San Clemente has the worst drivers in South Orange County. I have many experiences with errant drivers, not all of which are on video. From last year: Picture the letter K with the bike route being the backbone of the K. A driver wanting to go from the right arm to the right leg of the K did so by turning left down the wrong side of the main street and then left onto the leg of the K, looking right at me and my Dinotte 400A pulsing 400 lumen amber light.

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Local

Metro has officially opened a $2.5 million, 3,000 square foot Bike Hub at Union Station, providing space for nearly 200 bicycles. Bike SGV offers photos from the event.

Los Angeles Walks is joining with the LA Vision Zero Alliance, and SoCal Families for Safe Streets to remember the victims of traffic violence at City Hall this Friday.

The president of the Eagle Rock Association pens an open letter calling for safety improvements, including bike lanes, on Yosemite Drive. Thanks to Walk Eagle Rock for the heads-up.

 

State

California Streetsblog looks at the recent report The Surprising Promise of Bicycling in America, calling it a brief history of recent advocacy gains, with a look at the future.

After a thief rode off on a San Diego man’s bamboo bike, he tracked the thief down, gave him a hug, and took his bike back. And felt so good, he started a crowdfunding campaign to buy bikes for kids whose bicycles were stolen.

San Francisco pledges nearly $150,000 to figure out how to fix a popular bike lane that’s frequently blocked by delivery vehicles.

 

National

Cycliq has updated their popular Fly 6 and Fly 12 bike cam/light combos.

A Chicago weekly asks if dockless bikeshare could disrupt the city.

Good read from a New York cyclist who complains about the chaos on the streets, saying cars — and road-raging drivers — scare the shit out of him.

 

International

A men’s website lists four of the best international cycling trips for foodies.

A Toronto writer says the permanent adoption of a trial bike lane means bicycling is finally getting recognized as a legitimate form of transportation in the city. Even if the photo shows the same sort of wheel-busting crappy pavement we have here.

A columnist rightfully ridicules a proposal to fine pedestrians for distracted walking, noting that all of the pedestrians killed in traffic collisions in the city were killed by crashes with motorists, not texting walkers.

A British car thief gets a well-deserved nine and a half years after smashing into a bicyclist while fleeing from police; fortunately, his victim is recovering.

An Irish schoolgirl left a nice, polite note asking the person who “borrowed” her bike to bring it back.

Celebrity chef Mario Bartali’s Eataly may have just opened in Century City, but it’s just a fraction of the size of the one opening in Bologna, Italy; so big that Bianchi stocked it with adult tricycles just to get around the 20-acre food complex.

Cycling in the South Bay’s Seth Davidson tries riding in ostensibly bike-friendly Vienna, Austria, and finds it not to his liking. At all. And says that does not bode well for Los Angeles.

There’s a special place in hell for someone who’d try to get away with a hit-and-run by pretending to be a Good Samaritan helping the victim, rather than the heartless driver who ran him down, like this jerk in India.

Caught on video: A Vietnamese boy just barely avoids a far too close call after he topples over on his bike directly in front of a truck.

 

Competitive Cycling

Bradley Wiggins complained about a “malicious witch hunt” after the doping investigation into British Cycling ends with no charges, but without completely clearing Wiggins or anyone else involved.

UCI’s new president says there’s no place in professional cycling for former dopers. Which as Lance and others point out, doesn’t leave too many people with sparkling clean resumes who’ve been around the sport very long.

 

Finally…

Who needs a plot of land when you can have your own bike farm? Don’t bother with traffic when you can just pedal your way down the river.

And prevent bike crashes by just buying a car like a normal person.

Yes, it’s a joke.

But you’ll find the same thoughts in the comment section virtually anytime bicycling gets mentioned online.

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Thanks to David Veloz for his generous contribution to help support this site, and bring you SoCal’s best source for bike news and advocacy every morning my laptop is working.

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , ,

Morning Links: Union Station Bike Hub opens today, and LA wastes millions earmarked to fix crumbling streets

November 15, 2017 / / 10 comments

I hope you’ll forgive my unexcused absences for the past few days.

The good news is, my wife is doing well, and should be back home from the hospital before the week is over.

And my beleaguered laptop is up and running again, leaving me somewhat poorer, but back on the job. Let’s hope it stays that way.

We’ll just assume that nothing important happened while we were gone.

Right?

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LA’s biggest Bike Hub is opening today at Union Station. The new Metro site will offer secure parking for up to 200 bikes for $5 a week, or $60 a year.

Photo by Metro’s Julia Salinas, taken from The Source website.

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KCET examines the crumbling state of LA’s streets, and the risks it poses to people on two wheels.

Not to mention the needless expense to the city, as the Bureau of Street Services has returned tens of millions of dollars to the city, rather than making desperately needed street repairs, even as the city pays out millions in legal settlements to injured riders.

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It’s been a heartbreaking few days for elderly bike riders.

A 76-year old man was killed in a collision while riding his bike in Bakersfield; John Rous was a well-known and longtime member of the local riding community.

An 80-year old British bike rider was killed in a collision with Tesla, which may or may not have been driving itself.

An 83-year old man in the UK was killed when his bike apparently hit a pothole; new rules could mean that more British potholes won’t get fixed.

An 86-year old Indian man was killed in a collision with a truck as he was riding his bike to an outdoor gym.

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Rest easy, folks. Ed Sheeran is playing guitar again, and promises he’ll keep riding his bicycle, despite injuring both arm in a recent crash.

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Let’s catch up with a couple of stories we missed from last week.

Manhattan Beach voted to install sharrows and bike route signs throughout the city. Even though one councilmember is afraid they’ll just embolden cyclists to ride exactly where they’re supposed to.

UCLA students plan to form their own neighborhood council, and split with the “NIMBY and obstructionist” Westwood Neighborhood Council. While the story is about housing, the Westwood NC has also been active in blocking much needed bike lanes in the area.

Mobility advocates gathered in Leimert Park for Untokening California to discuss creating greater equity in transportation.

Next year’s CicLAvias will include a seven-and-a-half-mile route from Disney Hall to the Hollywood Bowl on September 30th, with performances by the LA Philharmonic orchestra along the way. And ending with a free performance by the orchestra at the Bowl.

………

Local

A writer in the UCLA paper calls for an awareness campaign to get students to walk and bike more safely.

Bike SGV names Doug Strange their Community Advocate of the Year; the founder of the reborn La Verne Bicycle Coalition will be honored at their 2017 “Noche de las Luminarias” awards dinner next month.

Pasadena-area Rotarians will meet this weekend to assemble 300 bicycles for underprivileged children.

Santa Monica is moving forward with plans for a “radical” transformation of traffic-choked Lincoln Blvd into a more human-scale Complete Street.

 

State

Newport Beach police are looking for man riding a red cruiser bike who was seen following a San Bernardino County prosecutor before she was severely beaten while jogging in a park this past August.

A Riverside bike rider was shot in the leg as the result of an attempted robbery.

In a bizarre story, a Bakersfield man died in police custody shortly after using a fake gun to threaten a woman riding her horse on a bike path.

Sad news from the Sacramento area, where a 19-year old North Highlands man was killed in a hit-and-run while riding his bike.

Sacramento State University is now a silver-level BFU. And no, that does not stand for Big Effing University.

A Marysville woman has been arrested in last week’s hit-and-run that left a bike rider seriously injured; she was taken into custody after calling the police to claim her car was stolen before the crash. An excuse that never seems to work in real life.

 

National

The GOP Senate wants to take away your measly $20 monthly benefit for riding your bike to work; the Bike League has more information on what you may be about to lose.

Architectural Digest examines how the threat of vehicular terrorism will change our cities in the wake of the New York bike path attack.

Bicycling offers tips on how to wash your bike.

A Seattle grandfather is suing after being left a paraplegic when he crashed into an unmarked bollard on a bike trail, which probably shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

An Iowa bicyclist says no, really, it’s much safer if she doesn’t give you any warning as she glides past on the sidewalk. That is what is technically known as a load of crap.

Evidently, flipping off the president pays. A Virginia woman who was fired from her job after her employers learned she was the bike rider who was photographed flipping off the presidential motorcade will receive at least $77,000 from a crowdfunding campaign. She says she did it because he wouldn’t have heard her through the glass.

 

International

A new crowdfunding campaign promises to turn your bike into an ebike for just $299, with an extra eight pounds of weight.

The Cuban record holder for the world’s tallest tall bike is working in tandem with the previous record holder, LA’s Richie Trimble, on a 20-foot tall tandem.

A Montreal website offers tips on how to stay safe and warm on your bike this winter. Which is especially good advice here in Los Angeles, where it sometimes gets down to a frigid 60 degrees.

Actor Robert Pattinson is one of us, as a gossip site freaks out when he’s spotted riding his bike in London without a helmet. Which is perfectly legal there, just as it is here.

A new UK survey shows 78% of people support protected bike lanes, even if the politicians don’t.

Three people were injured when a French driver with “psychiatric problems” deliberately plowed his car into a group of students.

Lithuanian students illustrate how much space cars take up, and how little bikes need.

A Mumbai website says everyone has a right to be safe when they ride a bike, from milkmen to champion cyclists.

………

Competitive Cycling

VeloNews reminisces about the great Bernard Hinault on his birthday.

Cyclist magazine explores why Chris Froome isn’t considered a legend.

Phil Gaimon released a statement about repeating the rumor that Fabian Cancellara was a known motor doper in his new book, after the Swiss rider’s lawyers demand the removal of the book.

 

Finally…

It’s a sad day when a dog has better form on an upright bike than I do — even if he does need training wheels. No matter how threatened you feel by drivers, riding with an AR-15 is probably not the answer; neither is claiming you just found it in the street and were taking it to the police station.

And if you’re going to ride your bike with a stolen Glock in your pants, put a damn light on it.

The bike, that is, not the gun.

………

Thanks to John P. Lynch for his generous contribution to support this site, as well as his kind wishes for my wife and laptop.

 

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , ,

Morning Links: 1.3 million mile Breeze, Will Ferrell is one of us, and Gaimon accuses Cancellara of motor doping

November 9, 2017 / / 2 comments

Today we’re trying something slightly different by moving news about bike racing and pro cycling into its own section at the bottom, which seems to work better for quiet news days like today.

………

Local

KPCC looks at the LACBC’s annual Operation Firefly bike light distribution program, which kicked off in Van Nuys Tuesday night.

CiclaValley takes part in the annual Mike Nosco Memorial Ride.

In the two years that Santa Monica’s Breeze bikeshare has been in operation, users have taken over 628,000 trips covering more than 1.3 million miles.

Long Beach votes to move forward with a road diet and protected bike lanes on Alamitos Ave to improve bike and pedestrian safety, even though it will increase peak hour traffic times by slightly more than a minute.

The Elks club is hosting a family Bike & Car Black Jack Toy Run for Veterans Children, starting in Burbank and finishing in Santa Clarita this Saturday.

 

State

After a San Diego grand jury called for more bikeshare stations at the beach, the city naturally responds by removing them instead.

Murrieta has plans to build a BMX bike park. Someday.

A Moreno Valley bike rider was critically injured in a collision Wednesday afternoon, after allegedly swerving out of the bike lane into the driver’s path. Thanks to Erik Griswold for the heads-up.

Sad news from Porterville, where a bike rider was killed by a hit-and-run driver, who faces charges for DUI and fleeing the scene.

Will Ferrell is one of us, completing what a Washington news station calls an “amazing” “marathon” bike ride with four friends, going 147 miles down the California coast from Monterey to Santa Barbara over several days. Although the station can’t seem to grasp the concept that he might have done it just because he wanted to.

More on San Francisco’s new, smaller Vision Zero fire trucks designed to fit in reduced traffic lanes.

People for Bikes looks at San Francisco’s plans to use traffic diverters to create a neighborhood bikeway, noting that reducing automobile traffic on one street does not necessarily mean an increase in traffic on surrounding streets. LA’s bike plan calls for a network of similar streets, none of which have been built, or seem likely to at this point.

Volunteers are distributing hundreds of new and refurbished bicycles to kids who lost theirs in the recent fires in Sonoma County. Meanwhile, Specialized is donating 250 bikes to kids affected by the fires.

Some schmuck is leaving anti-Islamic and anti-fraternity/sorority flyers in bike baskets and on bike seats at UC Davis.

 

National

Las Vegas is installing 800 steel bollards to along the Las Vegas strip to protect pedestrians from terrorist attacks, as well as plain, old fashioned careless drivers. Which is exactly what Los Angeles needs to do, but doesn’t seem to have any interest in, along Hollywood Blvd.

A pair of Boise, Idaho brothers design their own plans for a protected bike lane.

A Wisconsin city moves to block a planned bike path; one official calls it a financial boondoggle, even though it’s being funded by the feds.

Chicago bike path users are more worried about reckless drivers than homicidal ones.

Pfizer employees in Michigan are building bicycles as gifts for military families.

Former Tennessee Titans linebacker Eddie Robinson is one of us too, riding roughly 200 miles a week. And dropping 25 to 30 pounds from his playing days in the process.

UPS will now make deliveries in downtown Pittsburgh by ebike.

An Atlanta cyber security expert was killed when his bike was struck by a driver fleeing from the police in a stolen car.

 

International

The case of the disappearing bike racks.

An Ontario, Canadia city hopes a new bike network will convert drivers to bike riders.

A fashion magazine is wowed by royal-in-law Pippa Middleton’s choice of a cardigan for a bike ride, though she seems somewhat displeased at being ambushed by the paparazzi.

A scum bucket British taxi company sues a bike rider for the equivalent of over $6,300 after one of their cabbies ran him down, apparently for getting blood on their cab.

An Irish endurance cyclist set a new record by riding 735 miles up and down the length of the county in less than 49 hours.

The mother of a fallen Australian bike rider says bicyclists just want to feel safe on the streets, while an Adelaide paper says state, federal and local governments need to work together more effectively to counter a 20% drop in bicycling rates over the last six years.

The war on bikes continues, as someone has been booby-trapping mountain bike trails in Western Australia.

Australian authorities are blocking the ports to keep a hit-and-run driver from fleeing the country after she left a 13-year old bike-riding girl to die in the street. There’s something seriously wrong with anyone who would drive off and leave another human behind to die, let alone a child.

As LA enters the world of dockless bikeshare, more Chinese cities are saying enough is enough.

………

Competitive Cycling

Former LA pro cyclist Phil Gaimon accuses cycling legend Fabian Cancellara of motor doping in Gaimon’s new book.

The brother of fallen pro cyclist Michele Scarponi makes an impassioned plea for better road safety; the Italian rider was killed in a collision while training in April.

 

Finally…

Car makers love to dabble in bicycle design, so why not a motorcycle maker? Your next Levis jacket could be Android and iOS compatible, for a mere 350 bucks.

And once again, if you’re using your bicycle as a weapon, you’re doing it wrong.

 

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , ,

Morning Links: Specialized ebike recovered in Hollywood, and dangerous left cross caught on cam

November 8, 2017 / / 2 comments

The LAPD Hollywood Division is looking for the owner of a black Specialized Turbo X ebike.

Another reminder to register your bike now. And if it’s ever stolen, report it to the police right away, then list it with Bike Index’s free stolen bike database.

The police can’t press charges if they can’t prove it’s stolen.

And they can’t return it t the owner if they don’t know who it belongs to.

………

Something that’s familiar to way too many bike riders, as CiclaValley caught a close call on his bike cam, courtesy of a left crossing driver.

………

The 168-mile road cycling course for 2020 Tokyo Olympics will pass by the base of iconic Mt. Fuji.

A British website talks post-retirement life with Fabian Cancellara.

………

Local

KNBC-4 reports on the new ofo bikeshare available in Griffith Park for one dollar an hour. The question is whether the bikes will remain in the park as intended, which seems pretty unlikely.

The Santa Monica Mirror looks back at the city’s Halloween-themed Kidical Mass.

The Taste of South Pasadena bike ride rolls on Thursday.

Heal the Bay is hosting an Explore Ballona! bike ride along the Ballona Creek bike path this Saturday.

Also this Saturday, CICLE is sponsoring their BEST Ride: The Flowing Power Ride, while giving participants a chance to win a free Sole bike.

 

State

A San Joaquin Valley public radio station talks with a Kern County Vision Zero group about their efforts to reduce traffic fatalities in Bakersfield.

Two teenage gang members face charges for shooting a 67-year old Lenmoore man when he tried to ride his bicycle around them. And no, I’ve never heard of Lenmoore before, either.

A Templeton man is due to be sentenced at the end of this month for the death of a bicyclist while making an unsafe pass, after pleading no contest to vehicular manslaughter.

San Francisco advocates pen an open letter to the mayor calling for improvements to the city’s Vision Zero program, including making immediate improvements at the site of any death.

A San Francisco supervisor tells Uber and Lyft to stay out of bike lanes.

 

National

A CNN Op-Ed says Juli Briskman shouldn’t have gotten fired for flipping off the president while riding her bike, which was unrelated to her work.

Bicycling offers drivers advice on how to safely pass bike riders, and tips for bike riders on how to ride clipless.

A Bernie Sanders — and soon Trump — biographer says last week’s New York terrorist attack is another reason why bicyclists and pedestrians must be protected from motor vehicles.

Once again, New York shows LA how it’s done, unveiling plans that would create protected bike lanes and improved intersections stretching eight miles across the city.

 

International

The parents of a fallen Canadian bicyclist are outraged that the driver won’t face serious charges, even though he hit a group of six riders head-on.

The Toronto city council votes to make a controversial protected bike lane on a major street permanent. Meanwhile, a pair of Toronto doctors write that protected bike lanes have a positive impact on public health by providing safe, healthy and accessible travel for people of all ages and abilities.

London’s former bike czar calls a proposal from the mayor to ban bikes on busy Oxford Street, which currently sees 5,000 riders a day, an unqualified disaster.

A pair of British bicyclists set a new record by riding through 14 countries in seven days.

Glasgow, Scotland is planning its first protected intersection. Which will be one more than you’ll find in Los Angeles.

Sixteen South African cyclists, including a 16-year old girl, rode 373 miles in 72 hours to raise awareness of diabetes.

 

Finally…

A cycling to English dictionary. And say it ain’t so, JuJu.

 

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , ,

Morning Links: LimeBikes dockless bikeshare lands in LA, and work underway on Arroyo Seco bike path

November 7, 2017 / / 11 comments

They’re here.

Just one day after the unexpected announcement that ofo had introduced dockless bikeshare to Griffith Park, came the equally unexpected announcement that LimeBike had established a beachfront in Councilmember Joe Buscaino’s 15th District.

According to a press release, LimeBike has partnered with Buscaino for a three-month pilot program, calling it the first time a dockless bikeshare company has operated in any of America’s five biggest markets.

Or maybe the second, since it comes a day after ofo’s landing in the City of Angels.

The bikes cost $1 for 30 minutes, or 50 cents for students; entering the code LIMELA after downloading the iOS or Android app will get you 25 free rides until November 20th. The bikes can be picked up anywhere one is available, and left anywhere once you’re finished.

Low income residents can pay just $5 a month for up to 100 rides, with an option for cash rather than credit card.

Meanwhile, CiclaValley searches for, and finds, the ofo outposts in Griffith Park — and nearby, on someone’s lawn.

And the Guardian looks at the epic battle being pitched behind the scenes between Silicon Valley-backed bikeshares like LimeBike, and their Chinese competitors, including ofo.

Let’s hope Angelenos take better care of the bikes than people have in other cities; bikes abandoned in creeks and trees could mean the end of what promises to be a very useful program that could benefit a lot of people.

And help make bicycling more accessible to everyone.

………

Bike SGV posts proof that the South Pasadena extension of the Arroyo Seco bike and pedestrian path is on its way.

………

Over 500 Phoenix-area cyclists turned out to honor former SoCal resident and Big Orange cyclist Rob Dollar, who was killed by a drunk and stoned teenage driver last week.

………

Sad news, as promising 20-year old Belgian cyclist Bjarne Vanacker was found dead after apparently passing away in his sleep from unknown causes.

Alberto Contador looks at the changes in pro cycling over his career as he prepares to retire, including climbing 30% grades and the advent of motor doping.

Bicycling talks with SoCal’s own Coryn Rivera, saying she has the potential to become America’s best ever bike racer. Which would mean surpassing a certain Texan, who once was great but officially isn’t anymore.

Cycling News talks with former great American hope Andrew Talansky as he transitions to tri.

And probably not the best idea to attack the members of another cycling team, even if you do blame their team car for your crash.

………

Local

Paranoid much? A dermatologist and Mar Vista Community Council member says the Venice Blvd Great Streets project is just a secret attempt to turn Mar Vista into another Wilshire Blvd.

A Medium post says the effort to recall Councilmember Mike Bonin is really an Alt-Right campaign in disguise, and calls recall leader Alexis Edelstein a flesh and blood version of a Russian Facebook bot.

The LACBC’s Operation Firefly light distribution campaign kicks off tonight in Van Nuys.

Claremont police are investigating a break-in at the Jax Bicycle Shop last week.

Long Beach will consider a road diet and parking protected bike lanes on a half-mile stretch of Alamitos Ave. Unlike Los Angeles, where road diets are in danger of becoming an endangered species.

 

State

The Voice of San Diego looks at how that city screwed up bikesharing.

San Francisco will vote on a proposal to remove parking spaces on 17th Street to install one-way protected bike lanes.

Sacramento State University campus police busted a pair of suspected serial bike thieves.

The FBI is offering a $10,000 reward for the arrest of a Davis-area woman who apparently fled to Mexico after being convicted of vehicular manslaughter for a 2014 hit-and-run that killed a bike rider.

 

National

Streetsblog says distracted walking is a distraction from the real problem of distracted driving.

A crowdfunding campaign is offering a chance to buy a new $2,000 electric foldie for just $499. Unless you’d rather travel to Europe to buy a new BMW ebike for over six times as much.

A Portland letter writer complains about a red light-running, dog pulling bike rider who managed to flip him off anyway.

A Dallas writer says riding on carfree streets was great, unless you were in one.

A kindhearted Wisconsin woman gave her own three-wheeled adult bike to an 80-year old woman after hers was stolen in a burglary.

A Brooklyn writer says ebikes could be the future of transportation, but no one wants to let them on the road.

A HuffPo writer calls protected bike lane networks, like the one in Brooklyn, a breakthrough to make bicycling easy for almost everyone. Meanwhile, CityLab says European cities like Paris, Madrid and Lisbon have figured out how to live with ebikes, so why can’t New York?

A New Yorker movingly remembers a friend killed in last week’s bike path terrorist attack.

No surprise here, as Juli Briskman was fired from her job with a Virginia government contractor after they learned she was the bike rider who flipped off the president last week. Which doesn’t make it right. Thanks to David Drexler for the heads-up.

A Philadelphia writer learns how to ride a bike as an adult.

Buy a special North Carolina license plate, and help give a kid a new bike helmet. Although giving the kid a safer place to ride his bike would probably help a lot more.

Atlanta is attempting to become a top ten bicycling city, which would mean jumping 33 spots in Bicycling’s latest rankings.

Miami police are looking for a cape-wearing, bike-riding armed robber who shot his victim in the face.

A Florida paper examines the benefits of bike paths in terms of health, financial investment and crime, noting that rails-to-trails conversions generally have lower crime rates than the abandoned railways they replaced.

 

International

An Argentine city is mourning the deaths of five residents killed in the New York bike path terrorist attack, while the president of Argentina placed flowers at the site of the attack.

Toronto’s bike-riding parking cop is still off the job, and off Twitter, giving drivers a chance to park in the bike lanes again.

Montreal elects a new bike-friendly mayor, the first woman to lead the city.

A British dog walker uses his cam to record what he considers dangerous, speeding cyclists riding illegally through a park. Although they appear to be riding safely, slowly and considerately, even if they’re not supposed to be there.

An Australian website asks if Adelaide’s future as a bike-friendly city is already in its past.

 

Finally…

A cycling kit for bike-riding Beyoncé fans. Riding backwards while pedaling forwards.

And it might surprise many women to learn that riding a bicycle 75 miles is harder than childbirth.

………

On a personal note, my wife will be having major surgery this week to correct a condition that has the potential to be life-threatening.

I’ll do my best to keep up with this site every day, but please accept my apologies in advance if I miss a day or two, or have to settle for a shortened post.

And if anyone would like to submit a guest post, now would be a great time to do it.

 

Category: Bikeshare, Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , ,

Morning Links: Dockless bikeshare comes to Griffith Park, the death of Vision Zero, and hope for Beverly Hills

November 6, 2017 / / 3 comments

Just days after a false alarm that the LimeBike dockless bikeshare had come to LA, Chinese dockless bikeshare provider ofo has apparently invaded our city.

Despite the fact that a proposed ordinance that would permit dockless bikeshare hasn’t yet made it to a single city council committee hearing.

Ofo tweeted Sunday morning, then deleted, that they were now live in Griffith Park.

They followed that up with a tweet saying they were partnering with the LA Department of Recreation and Parks to provide an easier way to ride through the park.

Brian Nelson confirmed that his wife saw four of the ofo bikes parked near the Greek Theater.

How that conforms to Councilmember David Ryu’s motion to permit privately owned dockless bikeshare in the city remains to be seen.

Especially since other providers, including LimeBike, are waiting patiently for their opportunity to come into the city.

It’s inevitable that dockless bikeshare will come to Los Angeles. The question is how — or if — it will be managed to avoid the problems that have plagued other cities.

Thanks to Erik Griswold and Zachary Rynew for the tips.

………

The LA Weekly asks if LA’s ambitious Vision Zero plan to end traffic fatalities is already dead. And accurately quotes the very pissed off author of this site.

………

I happened to run into Beverly Hills Mayor Lili Bosse at the city’s Woofstock dog fest on Sunday, and was encouraged to hear her say that the coming bike lanes on Santa Monica Blvd are just the start.

As she tweeted later, she’s looking forward to more bike lanes and better mobility throughout the city.

Maybe there’s hope for the former Biking Black Hole yet.

At least as long as she’s in office.

………

More on last week’s New York bike path terrorist attack.

A mass was held at New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral to honor the victims of the attack.

Bicyclists say the new K-rail protective barriers make the bike path less safe.

A writer for Time says the terrorist’s fearmongering has failed, while Cycling Tips captures the fear and emotion brought on by the attack.

Actor Jason Biggs lets the terrorist know what he really thinks.

And radical right scumbag firebrand Milo Yiannopoulos said “he was glad the only people hit were cyclists and ‘not actual human beings.’” Thanks to F. Lehnerz for the link.

………

In Alberto Contador’s case, the N + 1 formula for how many bikes you need equals 42 or 43.

Nobody said working through the details for the Giro’s 2018 Jerusalem start would be easy.

………

Local

If you ride the Rose Bowl loop, you owe it to yourself to attend tomorrow night’s meeting of the Pasadena City Council Parks and Recreation Committee, where the future of the popular riding route will be up for discussion. Thanks to Wesley Reutimann for the heads-up. Correction: This originally said it was a City Council meeting; thanks to Bike SGV for the correction.

With the help of a Metro grant, Bike SGV has formed what could be SoCal’s first bicycle traffic school in El Monte.

Manhattan Beach officials and the Manhattan Beach-based leader of Keep LA Moving —no irony there — are unhappy with the way the reversal of the Playa del Rey road diets is going, even though they won the battle. Apparently, they won’t be satisfied until the streets are deadly again.

The Long Beach Police Department has received a grant for traffic safety enforcement over the next year, including a focus on bike and pedestrian safety.

 

State

The Orange County Register correctly notes that the end of daylight savings time increases the dangers to drivers and pedestrians. Wrecks go up after the time change, so make sure you use lights after dark, and ride as if everyone else on the road is driving distracted and half asleep. Which they probably are.

A Chino Hills man rides to collect recyclables, tossing them into a trailer behind his bike, while yelling out to passing people to drive safely.

Los Angeles isn’t the only city being sued by bike riders for injuries caused by bad streets; San Diego is currently facing a trio of lawsuits.

A woman in San Diego’s Mira Mesa neighborhood was seriously injured when a tow truck driver rammed her bike as he left a parking lot.

The great bike debate goes on in the pages of the San Luis Obispo newspaper, as a letter writer says encouraging bicycling provides a great value for bicyclists, as well as the drivers we share the roads with.

A San Francisco street near Golden Gate Park is being converted into a “neighborway,” diverting and calming motor vehicle traffic to improve bike and pedestrian safety. Which sounds a lot like a bike boulevard by any other name.

Instead of the usual complaints that fire engines can’t get through narrow streets with bulb outs and protected bike lanes, San Francisco buys a more compact fire truck that can.

 

National

A BuzzFeed writer calls for banning cars from big cities; a conservative website seems to think it’s a leftist plot.

The Felt behind Felt evidently felt it was time to leave Felt.

Funk-meister Bootsy Collins quit drugs after being told he’d never play bass again when he flipped his road bike several times while riding high in the woods. And no, that’s not a reference to altitude.

Kindhearted Washington residents pitch in to buy new Air Jordans for a teenage Canadian tourist after his were stolen by a BMX-riding man armed with bear spray.

I want to be like him when I grow up. An Iowa man rode his bike 90 miles to celebrate his upcoming 90th birthday.

Police in Stillwater, Oklahoma are repairing abandoned bicycles to be used by residents of a local mission to run errands or look for work.

Nope, nothing odd about Kentucky Senator Rand Paul being attacked in his home by his bike-riding, rice vest-inventing next door neighbor; Paul suffered five broken ribs and bruised lungs.

Grist says Pittsburgh got the bike advocate it never knew it needed in former Trojan JuJu Smith-Schuster

Life is cheap in Florida, where a driver got five years probation for a fatal hit-and-run that killed a bicyclist. Naturally, he claimed he had no idea he’d hit anyone.

 

International

British Columbia considers raising their paltry $81 fine for dooring a bicyclist.

Montreal’s mayor denies he used his influence to muzzle a Toronto parking officer’s popular Twitter account, which he uses to call out scofflaw drivers; the officer vows he won’t be silenced after officials suspend his account. Thanks to Norm Bradwell for the link.

The co-founder of the aforementioned ofo says London will one day reach Amsterdam-like bicycling levels. You’ll note he did not say the same thing about Los Angeles. Or anywhere else in Southern California.

A new British study says bike commuting can lower your risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease, as well as overall mortality. As much as I’ve ridden over the years, I should live forever.

A driver in Britain complains about a bike rider’s misaligned, too-bright headlamp. Evidently, no one in the country has ever been blinded by a driver’s headlights.

Evidently, they don’t take using a car as a weapon seriously in the UK, either. But they do take DUIs seriously, sentencing a drunk driver who killed a cyclist to eight years.

Bicycling helped a British teenager control his epilepsy.

The rich get richer. Bike-friendly Copenhagen asks bike riders to identify where they feel uncomfortable riding to determine where infrastructure needs to be improved.

Now you, too, can take an eight-day cooking and bicycling tour of Sicily led by celebrity chefs Traci Des Jardins and Mary Sue Milliken for a mere $4,595.

An Australian website asks if bicyclists and pedestrians should be banned from using headphones. Never mind that drivers in today’s hermetically sealed motor vehicles have a hard time hearing a siren right next to them, even with the sound system turned down.

An Aussie paper traces the anatomy of a fatal hit-and-run, and how the police tracked down the unlicensed driver who killed a bicyclist.

A rider from Down Under learns the hard way not to accept fruit juice from his friends without asking if they’d spiked it.

 

Finally…

Probably not the best idea to stare at a woman’s chest when there’s a Google Maps camera car driving by. You know you’ve made it when you get mentioned in the GOP tax bill.

And don’t ride your bike down an escalator without a helmet.

 

Category: Bikeshare, Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Morning Links: Dockless bikeshare isn’t here yet, more on NYC bike path attack, and goodbye LAist

November 3, 2017 / / 2 comments

For a moment, it looked like dockless bikeshare had arrived in LA.

Even if it’s not entirely legal yet.

Marc, aka @mcas_LA, tweeted a pair of photos showing a fleet of LimeBikes in the Jewelry District in DTLA, even though the proposed ordinance to legalize dockless bikeshare hadn’t made it through the city council yet.

Alas, it was not to be.

Not yet, anyway.

LimeBike was quick to respond that the bikes were being test-ridden by their employees at a private event, and that they would never launch Uber-style without waiting for the proper permits.

So you’ll just have to wait awhile longer.

………

New York is responding to Tuesday’s terrorist attack by installing K-rail barriers at 57 intersections, including the one that Sayfullo Saipov used to drive onto the bike path.

A bill in the US Senate would provide $50 million a year to install bollards, planters and other barriers along bikeways to protect cyclists. Get back to me when they get serious; $50 million works out to a token gesture of just $1 million per state.

A student injured when Saipov’s rented truck crashed into a school attended class on Wednesday to keep his record for perfect attendance.

A writer for Opposing Views considers what the attack says about bike safety.

In an Op-Ed in the Washington Post, Eben Weiss, aka Bike Snob, writes that a terrorist attack isn’t going to scare bicyclists off their bikes because we already have to deal with motorists.

And it hasn’t stopped them, as New Yorkers flocked to the pathway when it reopened yesterday.

………

You can kiss LAist goodbye. The billionaire publisher of the “ist” and DNAinfo sites pulled the plug on the entire network yesterday, taking down all the archives at the same time.

The site had regularly written about bike issues, and been a supporter of safer streets in Los Angeles, and other cities around the world.

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the closure came after employees had voted to unionize.

………

Local

Streeetsblog’s Joe Linton and Damien Newton correct the pernicious lie that Mike Bonin somehow stole money from the Measure M transportation tax to fund Vision Zero.

The LACBC’s Operation Firefly kicks off in Van Nuys next week, providing lights to bike riders who don’t have them.

The Pasadena Star-News asks if new trains, busways and bike lanes can end SoCal gridlock. Short answer, no. With more people bringing more cars here every year, our street will continue to be clogged. The only solution is to provide alternatives to driving, so the people who choose to leave their cars at home won’t be stuck in that mess.

Authorities are looking for funding to build a roundabout at the intersection of Highway 39 and the Old San Gabriel Canyon Road above Azusa to slow traffic and provide a safe extension to the San Gabriel River Trail, which currently dead ends at the roadway.

Helen’s Cycles is holding a trio of rides this weekend, while Santa Monica’s Breeze bikeshare celebrates its second anniversary on Saturday. And CicLAvia hosts their 2nd Annual pLAy Day in LA fundraiser on Sunday.

 

State

Nice piece in the LA Daily News about the recently completed, 450-mile Challenge Ride from San Francisco for wounded vets, including a former four-star Army Chief of Staff helping an injured ex-private up a hill.

The owner of a Coronado bike rental company opposes a proposal to allow LimeBike to operate on the island.

Bakersfield has received $200,000 in funding from Kern County for a number of bike-related projects, including bike parking in the downtown area, and the Build-A-Bike program that allows kids to earn a bicycle while learning about bike maintenance and repair.

San Luis Obispo is moving forward with plans for 50 new bicycling facilities, including buffered bike lanes and a bike boulevard, to fundamentally change the way people in the community get around.

Kindhearted Visalia residents pitched in to buy a new ebike for a legally blind teenager after the one he got for his 16th birthday was stolen.

A San Jose columnist says a planned bike and pedestrian bridge is a key link to improve safety, even if a letter writer considers it a waste of money.

A San Francisco man was critically injured when a bike rider opened fire on the victim following an argument; the suspect was arrested nearby.

San Francisco protesters create a people-protected bike lane on the Embarcadero to call attention to the need for greater safety.

 

National

People for Bikes offers four reasons why businesses should embrace ebikes.

A Seattle magazine says it’s good that dockless bikeshare bikes are being abandoned in trees, because it removes the moral superiority of bicycling, and makes it seem like it an everyday activity. Which it already is.

Over 8,000 people are expected to attend Denver’s one-day VeloSwap bike swap meet and expo this weekend.

A Dallas columnist says relax, and give dockless bikeshare time to work itself out.

Former cyclist Sinead Miller is now working with Nashville’s Vanderbilt University to put an end to sepsis, after ending her pro career when she suffered a traumatic brain injury in a collision.

A driver tried to run over a group of Miami police officers on a weekly community ride, and apparently got away.

 

International

An Op-Ed in Canadian Cyclist Magazine calls out the special status of drivers, and says laws that make a cyclist’s life cheap have to be changed.

Glasgow’s Philippa York says she would have gladly given up the fame that came with her cycling career as the former Robert Millar in order to transition to a woman when she was younger.

 

Finally…

Oprah is one of us, even if one of her favorite things looks suspiciously like a ghost bike. And evidently, the painkiller Tramadol will make you faster.

Even if it has the opposite effect on me.

 

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