Just 49 days until LA fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025.
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Happy Veterans Day to everyone who has served our country at home and abroad!
Get out for a good ride today to celebrate. And thank you.
Photo from Lime Micromobility.
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Rancho Palos Verdes extends its usual unwelcome mat for bicyclists to e-bike riders, with new restrictions and fines to make you feel as unwanted as possible.
Of course, the Daily Breeze feels compelled to hide the story behind their paywall for subscribers only, so they evidently don’t want you to know about it.
However, this excerpt from the article suggests that they intend to ban ebikes entirely from city streets and sidewalks; the last part is legal, the first not so much.
Expanded e-bike restrictions
The city council recently expanded the ordinance to ban e-bikes on city streets and sidewalks, while allowing them on bicycle paths.
California state law allows bicycles on any street where cars are allowed, and ebikes are allowed under state law. So unless they’re planning to ban cars from city streets, they can’t ban ebikes, either.
But it could mean going to court to fight a ticket and convince a judge if you want to challenge it.
Thanks to Jim Lyle for the heads-up.
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A worker on a Camarillo landscaping crew was arrested for looting an ebike Friday in the wake of the Mountain Fire.
After a homeowner parked his ebike in his driveway to check on his property, he returned to find the bike missing. He confronted a landscaping crew working in the area, and one of the men admitted to taking the bike, and gave it back to him.
The homeowner reported the incident to the police the next day, resulting in Ramon Avila Pacheco being booked on suspicion of looting in an evacuation order area.
Apparently, returning the ebike had no effect on the charge.
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Streets For All founder Michael Schneider visits Mexico City, and discovers what Los Angeles could do with a little more political will.
Okay, a lot more.
Amazing, simple urbanism all over Mexico City. I will never understand why LA can’t do this. pic.twitter.com/kuB6z2P49o
— Michael Schneider (@schneider) November 8, 2024
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MSNBC political commentator Chris Hayes is one of us, too. Thanks to Glenn with 2 Ns for the heads-up.
Best way to commute before a big night.
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes.bsky.social) 2024-11-05T22:24:25.118Z
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It’s now 327 days since the California ebike incentive program’s latest failure to launch, which was promised no later than fall 2023. And a full 41 months since it was approved by the legislature and signed into law — and counting.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
Seriously? The Marin County Supervisors are backing what the local newspaper calls a “bike-lane experiment,” which amounts to ripping out the bike lane on the Richmond-San Rafael bridge four days a week, on a trial basis. Although it’s questionable whether they could do it without a CEQA review on anything but a trial basis.
That’s more like it. Thousands of people on bicycles jammed the streets to protest the removal of Toronto bike lanes, which were ordered taken out by the anti-bike provincial government. Maybe someday, we’ll be able to get a turnout like that here in Los Angeles. Click through if the video below appears truncated on your screen, like it is on mine.
Thousands turn out for protest to save bike lanes
byu/ICanGetLoudTooWTF intoronto
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Local
Streetsblog looks at new bike lanes and safety improvements around the city, stretching from DTLA to Leimert Park and the San Fernando Valley.
Metro Bike wants to know what you think; complete the survey and you could win a raffle prize.
An op-ed writer in the Los Angeles Times says he thought he had his bike commute down, until a bike-riding German man pointed out the obvious flaw in his route, which needlessly bypassed the beachfront bike path.
Sally Struthers is one of us, as the 77-year old former All in the Family star went for a casual bike ride in Los Angeles last week; a London paper uncharitably calls her “unrecognizable,” yet somehow the paparazzi managed to spot her.
State
Calbike says budget cuts have left California’s Active Transportation Program in dire straits, leaving just $100 million on hand, enough to fund just 4% of the $2.5 billion in requests.
Just days after a Victorville man was killed by a driver while riding his bike, another person riding a bicycle was critically injured by a pickup driver Friday evening; unfortunately, there’s no information about the victim at this time.
Good news from the Bay Area, where Prop K is leading with 54% of the vote, although it’s still too early to call; the ballot measure would permanently close San Francisco’s Upper Great Highway to motor vehicles and turn it into a linear park, bikeway and walkway.
National
No surprise here, as a new buffered bike lane in Bellingham, Washington is popular with bicyclists, and hated by motorists; ridership increased a third, while motor vehicle use on the street dropped by 14%. Which sounds like a win-win to me.
Tragic news from Utah, where a county employee was killed when he rode his ebike off the side of the road during the ceremonial opening of a paved bike trail.
Former President Bush — that’s W, not his late dad — held his annual mountain bike ride for veterans on his sprawling Texas ranch.
International
Momentum offers the complete guide to cargo bikes, calling them the next big thing.
Momentum also highlights eight of the leading bike advocacy groups on both sides of the border; the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and Santa Barbara’s Bici Centro make the cut, but none of the Los Angeles-based organizations did.
More proof that bicycles make the best emergency vehicles, as two men share a bike to get through floodwaters left behind by Hurricane Rafael in western Cuba.
Bike-friendly Canadian cities to consider if you’re already packing your bags to leave the US after last week’s election.
A London writer said she’s swearing off the Tube, aka the city’s subway system, after ebiking to work for a month, and pledges to never go back.
A golfer took an epic 47-day, 1,700-mile bike ride around Ireland to play golf and raise the equivalent of nearly $8,000 for a cancer charity.
Dutch ebike maker Stella is just the latest casualty in the bike industry.
Cycling Weekly explores how a bike trail along the former border between East and West Germany helped rewrite the history of the Berlin Wall.
A South African bicycle mayor is evangelizing bike riders in a Cape Town township, and throughout the city.
Hong Kong discovers that cracking down on illegal ebikes could spark a crisis for the city’s food delivery services.
Speaking of stories hidden behind paywalls, Kaifeng, China learned to be careful what they wish for when they encouraged night-time bike riding, and the streets became gridlocked with bicycles. Seriously, if the photo is legit, we’re talking wall-to-wall bikes.
Competitive Cycling
Record-holding sprinter Mark Cavendish called it a career with a win in Singapore’s Tour de France Criterium; Cav raced wearing bib number 35, the record-setting number of Tour de France stage wins he set this year.
Finally…
No, fleeing police on a bicycle is not “driving away.” Your next ebike could have a sidecar.
And it could be a throwback to the original bicycles made by the Dodge brothers, before they got into the car biz.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin
