Then share it — and keep sharing it — with everyone you know, on every platform you can.
We’re slowly gaining signatures, up to 1,027 now, so keep it going! Urge everyone you know to sign the petition, until the mayor agrees to meet with us!
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It was a light bike news day yesterday. So if no news is good news, this may be one of my best pieces ever.
The better news is, that means you can get out on your bike that much sooner today.
The woman’s attorney argued that the she suffers permanent pain, and was forced to pay hundreds of thousands in medical bills tripping in the pothole, which was shaded by a parked car.
Kwan told CVN he believed the combination of Walmart’s alleged failure to comply with their own safety policies and the extended time the pothole was allowed to develop brought the jury over to his side.
“We presented evidence that Walmart never enforced their own ‘Parking Lot Safety’ policy, which states they must regularly check and fix any potholes in their parking lots,” he said. “We also showed that the pothole in question had been in bad shape since 2018, giving Walmart plenty of time to repair, which they didn’t.”
Duquette notes that the same arguments could be made by a bicyclist injured under similar circumstances.
September 29, 2020 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Lyft e-bikeshare coming to Santa Monica, Arroyo Seco bike path finally patched, and new survey on bike helmet laws
E-bikeshare is back in Santa Monica, following the demise of Jump Bikes after their sale to Lime earlier this year.
The bikes will be docked at the existing Breeze bikeshare docks, after Santa Monica’s municipal bikeshare bites the dust this November, eventually expanding to 500 bikes.
Here’s what the company has to say.
The new ebikes allow riders to travel around Santa Monica and West Los Angeles with less effort. When the rider pedals, the ebikes use a small electric motor to boost the rider’s pedal power, making longer trips easier and more accessible. Users will be able to rent ebikes in the Lyft app for $1 to unlock and $0.34 per minute – just scan the QR code and go. Riders can lock the bikes to any one of 80 Breeze stations with the attached cable, or to any public bike rack within the service area for an extra $1. For more about pricing and service area, visit the Lyft website…
Lyft also offers a Community Pass for bikes and scooters in Santa Monica. The Lyft Community Pass is a reduced-fare membership program for qualifying residents of Santa Monica and LA. Membership costs $5/month and includes discounted ebike rides at $0.05/min. The Community Pass program is available to residents ages 18 and older who qualify for the Big Blue Bus Low Income Fare is Easy (LIFE) program, Calfresh, Medicaid, SNAP, or the SCE Energy Savings Assistance Program and to qualifying Santa Monica Community College students.
Correction: I originally wrote that Jump had been acquired by Lyft, but they were actually purchased by Lime. My apologies for the error.
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Speaking of Santa Monica, David Drexler confirms that the 5 mph speed limit signs have been removed from the newly widened beachfront Marvin Braude bike path through the city.
As we noted last week, the signs with the ridiculously low speed limit were installed temporarily as part of a construction project.
The lengthy delay in getting it fixed could stem from the mishmash of public agencies involved in the repair work, including, but possibly not limited to,
LADOT
Bureau of Engineering
Board of Public Works
LA County
Regional Water Quality Control Board
StreetsLA (nee Bureau of Street Services)
Maybe someone should form a single umbrella agency to manage the city and county river channel bikeways so it doesn’t take the local equivalent of a UN Security Council negotiation every time something goes wrong.
I’m told credit goes to LA Bicycle Advisory Committee member John Laue for getting this done.
You may remember Christopher Kidd from his days running the LADOT Bike Blog, which is about the last time the agency communicated effectively to the general public.
Since then, he’s been building a successful career as a Complete Streets planner in the Bay Area.
Which should make this an interesting talk.
Centering equity in transportation planning is long overdue, but methods and tools are rapidly developing to meet the challenge. Join me, @remix and @TransForm_Alert this Wednesday to hear about & discuss our workhttps://t.co/8KlzdOewqv
Washington bike riders will now be able to treat stop signs as yields, as the state becomes just the latest to adopt a modified form of the Idaho Stop Law. California should join Oregon and Washington in adopting the law, making it uniform throughout the West Coast.
A Nebraska bike nonprofit is looking for a new home after losing their current location; the organization rescues and restores bicycles, and allows at-risk kids to work on them to earn their first bikes.
Cycling Weekly offers advice on how to keep your bike safe at home. My best advice is to keep your bike inside your home if at all possible; if you have to use a garage, make sure it’s locked to something that’s secretly anchored.
Stardom has changed life for the better for the 15-year old Indian girl who rode a bike over 700 miles to carry her injured father home earlier this year; she now has a new home, eight bikes, two possible movie deals and an offer to train with the national cycling team when the pandemic loses its grip.
When it unexpectedly turns into a roadway for lost drivers.
Josh Hamilton forwarded this photo he took Tuesday morning on the Ballona Creek Bike Path in Culver City, along with the following note.
Longtime reader and wanted to share something that happened this morning.
Turns out there is nothing preventing cars from entering the bike path at Sepulveda Blvd (and minimal signage) and 2 people in a car accidentally drove onto the Ballona Creek Bike Path. They were driving slowly when I stopped and spoke with them near the pedestrian bridge at the school next to the path.
I assume they were foreign tourists as they were in what seemed like a rental car with out of state plates and they didn’t speak English. They mistakenly had Google Maps set to bicycle directions. They were concerned and clearly meant no harm, but it’s clearly an issue if drivers can just enter the bike path on accident or on purpose.
It had been left on the sidewalk next to a passenger drop-off zone where the city had instituted a scooter “no deployment zone,” but allegedly failed to enforce it.
I’ve long supported micromobility to reduce the numbers of cars on the street and vehicle miles traveled.
Long being a relative term, since they first hit the streets just two years ago.
But inherent in that support is the need to use them responsibly. Which does not include leaving them where they block sidewalks or other places where people can trip on them.
A successful micromobility program demands safe places to ride the devices, as well as safe places to park them.
We need a complete, comprehensive network of bike lanes throughout every city in the LA area, along with secure, in-street bicycle, bikeshare and scooter parking on every block.
Whoever left that scooter there in violation of the rules, whether it was the last person to use it or someone who moved it there, is who’s really responsible for harming an elderly woman.
And they’re extremely lucky that’s all it was.
Instead, every resident of Santa Monica will be on the hook for that one person’s carelessness.
Let’s there’s at least one person on the ground for each of the 28 people on bicycles killed in LA County so far this year — half of them in the City of Los Angeles.
And those numbers will continue to grow until Vision Zero finally becomes more than just a feel-good slogan for our elected leaders.
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A woman was injured when she was left crossed by a motorist pulling into a driveway during last weekend’s Tour de Foothills in Upland.
No word yet on how serious her injuries are.
Thanks to CiclaValley’s Zachary Rynew and Erik Griswold for the video.
The Orange County Bicycle Coalition sends word that half the Seal Beach Blvd bike lanes will be closed for the next six weeks.
@bikinginla The popular bike lane on southbound Seal Beach Blvd is closed for a few hundred feet near Adolfo Lopez. Work will finish ~Dec 24. There are "Share the Road" signs in the area, or riders can turn west on Westminster to the SGRT or PCH. The northbound bike lane is open.
Speaking of which, Orange County didn’t quite turn out as promised.
Orange County, California was actually sold – but unfortunately not practically designed – as a cycling community. @OCbike@bikinginla They missed their mark, if in fact they really were aiming. @KostelecPlanpic.twitter.com/JuOZpnynyt
Bruce Willis is one of us, taking up bicycling after he sold his motorcycles and donated the profits to support active and retired soldiers. Although you can’t win with the British tabloids, who criticize people who don’t wear helmets and ridicule them if they do.
The NY Times also piles on with the victim blaming by offering tips on how to stop your distracted walking. Unlike distracted driving, no one has ever been killed by a distracted pedestrian. And there are few, if any, stats to support the idea that there has been a rash of distracted walking deaths.
A new study confirms that helmet laws drive down bicycling rates — but also finds that helmet use corresponds with a higher rate of upper body injuries. Before you throw your helmet away, bear in mind that correlation does not equal causation. And a wrecked shoulder is better than a wrecked skull.
That’s more like it. A Calgary man could face up to life in prison for the meth-fueled hit-and-run that killed a 15-year old boy and seriously injured his friend as they were riding their bikes; prosecutors waived 11 other charges against the man, who was driving a stolen vehicle without a valid driver’s license.
Meital Weiss is one of us, too. She’s a 12-year old Israeli girl paralyzed from the waist down since she was 10 months old, who will celebrate her bat mitzvah by trading her wheelchair for a handcycle and ride to raise funds for the rehab hospital that cared for her. And that makes her a celeb — and a hero — in my book.
April 23, 2019 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: Roads closed in Griffith Park, Lyft fights dooring, and bike transponders aren’t the answer
You might want to put off that Griffith Park ride for a few weeks.
Or maybe find another route.
The roads leading to and around the famed Griffith Observatory will be closed to all traffic for the next two weeks for construction work.
Great idea. In addition to rating cities for bike friendliness, People for Bikes is now providing user generated bike routes in cities around the US. You can download the app here. Do I really need to mention that the bicycle advocacy group ranks my hometown as the country’s best bike city. Which only happened decades after my last ride there.
Bike Portland’s Jonathan Maus explains why Oregon should adopt the Idaho Stop Law the third time around. The same argument holds for California. And pretty well everywhere else.
No bias here. After a woman drives onto the shoulder of a highway and kills a man on a bike, the Idaho state police feel compelled to point out that he wasn’t wearing a helmet, as if that somehow contributed to the crash. And at highway speeds, a crash like that probably wouldn’t have been survivable, with or without one.
Speaking of Houston, there’s a special place in hell for the bike-riding man who stole a 94-year old woman’s wheelchair. Fortunately, her neighbor was able to record the theft, and chase the man down to get it back; police recognized the man in the video, and made a quick arrest.
The case against a Virginia landscaper will go before a grand jury; he’s accused of helping one of his employees coverup the hit-and-run that killed a bike rider, fixing the company truck and telling his staff to swear it was a deer. And to stick to their stories.
Once again, dozens of dockless bikes end up in a trash heap, after a bikeshare provider in Kingston, Ontario replaces them with a newer model. And once again, dozens of kids and low income people who could have put them to good use won’t.
Just RSVP to MilitantAngeleno@gmail.com. We want to guarantee a relatively small group to make sure we can keep the group together, and everyone can hear.
Photo by Daria Shevtsova from Pexels.com.
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An LA bike rider is nearly run down by a speeding Lyft driver.
Scariest near-miss I've had in the 2 years since I was hit. @lyft driver nearly ran me down at a high speed in a 30mph on La Brea. I could see it in my mirror, but the #fly6 video is scarier. Please, @AskLyft, take this driver off of our streets. CA plate# 8CJC789. @bikinginlapic.twitter.com/XrxOyFG6eh
Former New York traffic commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan explains why protected bike lanes are more valuable than parking spaces, saying there’s not a better investment.
A North Carolina man rode across the US with a touring group, crossing ten states and one Canadian province, just one year after breaking his neck in a bicycling fall; he’s raised over $10,000 for rehabilitation hospital that saved him.
A Scottish lawyer says a call to register and license bicyclists, while requiring them to wear helmets and high viz, and take a cycling proficiency test, is “frankly bizarre and completely impractical.”If I ever need a lawyer in Scotland, I know who I’m calling.
India is installing a 7-mile long solar bike path, with the panels on posts to cover the path and protect riders from sun and rain, while generating six megawatts of clean power every day.
Your next bike could cost $21,000, but you can totally customize it. Seriously, if you’re wanted on outstanding warrants, put a damn light on your bike — and don’t crash into the patrol car when they try to stop you.
And was told he could fish them out after the meeting — after one of the security officers dumped coffee into it.
Just another sign of how bike riders are treated in this city.
Never mind how easy it would have been for someone, anyone, to agree to hold them for him until he came back out. Or just how stupid it is to talk about encouraging bicycling, while actively discouraging bicyclists.
And never mind the kneejerk opposition he found to including bikes in the project once he finally got inside the Metro meeting.
Photo from LA Streetsblog.
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Lyft envisions a redesigned Wilshire Blvd that reduces the street’s 10 spacious lanes down to just three narrow one, along with dedicated bus lanes, to show what life could be like in a world of shared, self-driving vehicles.
The plan also includes wider, park-like sidewalks and protected bike lanes.
The company says the narrowed street could accommodate twice as many road users and carry four times as many people as it currently does.
Wilshire capacity before redesign
Wilshire capacity after redesign. Charts from CNN
No word on whether the forces attempting to roll back road diets in Mar Vista and Playa del Rey plan to recall the president of Lyft or file suit to stop the concept while it’s still in the vaporware stage.
Simon Cowell is one of us, as he goes bike riding with his family in the former Biking Black Hole of Beverly Hills, which is finally starting to show some promise.
This is why you shouldn’t chase a bike thief yourself. A pair of Visalia men nearly got shot by a bike thief after they chased him down when they saw him take a bike from their garage.
Bicycling deaths and serious injuries are down 20% since UK police began an undercover operation to catch drivers passing too close to bicyclists. Maybe that will convince the LAPD to finally give it a try.
