It’s the 2nd Annual BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive! Donate today to help keep Southern California’s best source for bike news coming your way every day.
Be sure to come back later today, when we’ll have a great guest post from David Kooi of Santa Monica Mountains Cyclery in Woodland Hills.
………
Today is Giving Tuesday. If you’re looking for a good bike-related cause to support, here are a few suggestions.
The Milt Olin Foundation is raising $35,000 to fight distracted driving; the organization was founded by Louise Olin after her husband was killed by a sheriff’s deputy distracted by his onboard computer.
Streets Are For Everyone (SAFE) is a non-profit dedicated to improving street safety and ending hit-and-runs, led by Finish the Ride founder Damian Kevitt.
Richmond, CA’s Rich City Rides is raising $10,000 to help serve communities in San Francisco’s East Bay area. This is how they describe their mission: “We unite people with bicycles! By infusing high crime marginalized neighborhoods with social ride celebrations of life, unity and health we decrease violence and increase familiarity and humanity across cultures, ethnicities and communities.”
The California Bicycle Coalition, aka Calbike, works at the state level to fight for fairer treatment for bike riders, increased funding for bike projects, and changes in California law to better protect riders.
The Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition works to make LA and surrounding communities healthy, safe, and fun places to ride a bike through advocacy, education, and outreach. And a donation to the LACBC will enter you in a drawing to win a bicycle from Burbank-based Pure Cycles.
While they don’t seem to have donation pages online, the San Gabriel Valley’s Bike SGV and South LA’s East Side Riders both deserve support.
Note: I somehow forgot to include LA’s iconic CicLAvia, as well as World Bicycle Relief, an organization that works to end poverty by giving bicycles to students in Africa.
If we didn’t include your favorite bike organization or cause, be sure to mention it in the comments so others can see it.
………
LA riders may have to deal with distracted, road raging drivers. But at least we don’t have to worry about charging emus.
Or head-butting mini rams, for that matter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f5RDV4DvQk
………
This could be a look at LA’s future, as an 18-year old New Zealand man rides 15 miles on broken, rubble-strewn roads to get to safety after a 7.8 earthquake.
………
Former pro Tyler Hamilton opens up about his painful doping past. Which of course has nothing to do with marketing his presumably dope-free training camps.
Doping spreads to the world of fixies, as a Columbian cyclist earned a lifetime ban by testing positive for EPO at the Milan Red Hook Crit. Evidently, he didn’t get the memo that the doping era is over.
Caught on video: Two Belgian cyclocross riders were disqualified when push came to shove. Literally.
Maybe they all could learn something from some balance bike racers. Credit Peter Flax with finding the video.
………
Local
Metro has to fork up another $300 million for the contractor on the 405 Freeway boondoggle, raising the total cost for the failed widening project to $1.6 billion. Lets hope they learned something before dumping their new Measure M funds down the same auto-centric toilet.
The Westside’s Bikerowave co-op is hosting a bicycle swap meet on December 11th; members of the public are welcome to sell bike-related items.
No bias here. El Monte police conduct the first of ten planned Bike & Pedestrian Safety Enforcement Operations by ticketing 41 bicyclists, 14 pedestrians — and just six drivers. Evidently, scofflaw motorists don’t pose much risk to others there.
Somehow this one passed under the radar, as Cudahy will host a ciclovía/open streets event from 11 am to 3 pm this Saturday.
The CSU Long Beach student newspaper looks at the national bike helmet safety campaign founded by Carmen Lofgren following the death of her son, CSULB alum Gary Lofgren two years ago.
State
Residents of San Diego’s exclusive beachside La Jolla neighborhood just say no to bikeshare, complaining about the unsightly advertising on the city’s DecoBike system, as well as a feared traffic nightmare if bikes were to besmirched their jewel-encrusted streets.
Yelp now considers bike parking in its reviews, while Cyclelicious observes that one upscale Silicon Valley mall offers free, secure bike lockers. Hopefully, that’s an idea that will spread down this way; I’d be much more comfortable riding my bike to shop if I didn’t have to field strip it to lock up and knew it would be there when I get back.
The Sacramento Bee says transportation advocates are cautiously optimistic about the prospects for active transportation under a Trump administration. Evidently, they haven’t been talking to the same advocates I have.
National
A writer for Car & Driver is just the latest to say he’s given up riding a bike out of fear of texting, talking and otherwise distracted cellphone-using drivers. Thanks to Opus the Poet for the heads-up.
Caught on video too: This is why you always lock your bike securely to your roof rack, as a Seattle bike thief needs just a few minutes to make off with one.
Good news from Colorado, as Olympian Mara Abbott gets her stolen bike back. And in better condition than when it was taken from her garage.
After a Kansas art professor and competitive cyclist was killed in a collision, her case was handled by a lawyer she had mentored as a young bike racer.
A Minnesota grad student partners with a professor to develop sensors that attach to your bike to tell you when a car is approaching.
Pittsburgh cyclists finally have the crash data they need to advocate for safety improvements.
New York releases stats on pedestrians and cyclists killed or injured on Gotham streets last month. Which is something Los Angeles has never done, if it even bothers to track that information in real time. And which Vision Zero will be meaningless without.
New York debates expanding the Citi Bike bikeshare system throughout the city.
Two Baltimore teens have been convicted of robbery and first degree assault in the stabbing death of a bike rider last January, but acquitted of murder charges, as their younger accomplice shoulders the blame.
International
Now that’s a fat bike. An Edmonton, Canada man builds a $1,700, customized four-tired bicycle designed to take him over 750 miles of ice and snow from the South Pole to the Antarctic coast.
A British bike site concludes that fake tans are just appearance doping.
Brit bike designer Isla Rowntree wants to convince parents to spend $350 on a high-performance kid’s bike, instead of dropping fifty to a hundred bucks on a kid-sized bicycle shaped object.
A kindhearted Scotsman buys a new bike for the “wee daughter” of a crossing guard after hers was stolen at a charity event.
Caught on video three: A Scottish paper is quick to blame a foul-mouthed bike rider who went off on a driver after being “beeped” at. It’s hard to blame the rider for crossing in front of the driver when the car had just rounded a curve which would have hidden it from view. On the other hand, even if you’re right, don’t be a damn jerk about it.
A TV show in the UK follows eight pseudo-celebs as they train for the 75-mile Etape du Tour.
The husband of an American cruise ship passenger killed while riding her bike in New Zealand says it was just an accident and no one was to blame. Although local riders were quick to blame the lack of safe streets.
An Aussie stunt rider gives a whole new meaning to riding the rails, while another freaks out a driver by skitching a bus.
Brisbane, Australia decides to remove unsafe safety rails from city bikeways.
A 13-year old New Zealand boy is riding the 1,000 mile length of the country’s North Island, accompanied by his mother, to raise funds for a new playground.
Taipei has revolutionized its cycling culture in just eight years, increasing bike ridership 30%, while the city’s bikeshare costs half the price of subway ride. Which is just the opposite of LA, where renting a Metro Bike costs up to twice as much as a train ride; if they really want it to succeed here and get people out of their cars, the cost has to come down.
Finally…
No, seriously. Why bother obeying traffic laws when you’re carrying meth, drug paraphernalia and stolen debit cards on your bike? Don’t blame your bike for a failed romance.
And how to annoy women cyclists.
………
A special thanks to Todd Rowell for his generous contribution to support this site during the BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive.
