Apparently, life in Los Angeles and California is a living hell.
According to the New York, uh, California Post,
In LA and California, the cost of living is stifling. Traffic is suffocating. The public schools are ill-serving kids.
And state and local government, from the governor and legislature on down to the mayor, city council and school board, are out to lunch…
But the bottom line is this: Government at all levels is failing to lead, course-correct, and address –– with even minimal efficacy –– a range of issues that increasingly degrade life here.
In fact, elected officials, driven by cronyism, interest-group pressure and out-of-touch far-left ideology, mostly make the crises worse.
Look, I’m no fan of our current city leaders, but life here ain’t all that bad.
It just could be a lot better.
And something tells me, we might not agree on who the special interests are. Never mind what “far-left” ideologies are just practical solutions that we haven’t been tried yet.
Like building more bike lanes and providing safe, practical alternatives to driving, rather than doubling down on the same things that got us in this mess.
Liberal hellfire and damnation — or maybe just fire — photo by Sergey Meshkov from Pexels.
………
Calbike wants you to contact your state legislators to call for reasonable regulation of ebikes that doesn’t blame them all for the problems caused by e-motos.
California lawmakers are right to be concerned about the spread of high-powered electric devices marketed as e-bikes. There is some truth behind the now-familiar image of 12-year-olds doing wheelies through suburban streets on machines far more powerful than a legal electric bicycle. But too many of this year’s bills respond to that concern by going after the wrong target, and they will not deliver the results anyone actually wants. Instead of drawing a clear line between legal e-bikes and illegal e-motos, these proposals blur it further. They add burdens to the bikes people actually rely on, while failing to directly address the devices creating the confusion in the first place.
California needs to protect the promise of e-bikes, not let the e-moto backlash distort the law. In this century, e-bikes have been one of the most important transportation success stories in the state. They help people replace car trips. They expand access to biking for older adults, working families, and people who might not otherwise ride in hilly terrain. They make biking more practical for longer distances, hills, errands, school dropoff, and everyday life. In a state that talks constantly about climate, congestion, affordability, and mobility, e-bikes should be an obvious part of the solution, and under settled California law, they already are.
It’s worth checking out.
And taking just a few moments to voice your support.
Meanwhile, the North Torrance Bike Bus clearly explains the differences between a legal ebike, and an illegal e-moto.
………
This is who we share the road with.
Fifty-seven-year old Montebello resident Ronald Sera died Wednesday, nearly two months after he was run down by a hit-and-run driver in Long Beach.
Sera was found by police around 1:05 am on Saturday, February 28, near Redondo Ave and Anaheim Street.
Investigators still don’t have a suspect, but describe the vehicle as a Toyota Previa van that sped away west on Anaheim.
Anyone with information is urged to call LBPD Collision Investigation Detail Detective David Doughtery at 562/570-7355, or anonymously through LA Crime Stoppers at 800/222-TIPS (8477) or LACrimeStoppers.org.
………
Streets Are For Everyone is joining with CD4 to call for help cleaning up the Forest Lawn Drive bike lanes on Saturday, April 25th ahead of this year’s Finish the Ride in Griffith Park (and good luck to Kayla as she competes in Hong Kong). For some reason, I can’t embed Instagram Reels, so you’ll have to click on the link.
SAFE is also celebrating the re-opening of the Marvin Braude Bike Trail in Pacific Palisades after it was washed out by last year’s storms, as well as progress on bike lanes in Griffith Park.
Finally, SAFE and Finish the Ride are bringing back the city’s much loved and lamented LA River Ride on May 3rd. And yes, it will still contain that confusing stretch south of DTLA where the bike path hasn’t been completed, and probably won’t be for some time.
………
Streetsblog’s Joe Linton visits Santa Monica’s MANGo.
………
New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talks healthcare while vlogging from her bike seat.
Thanks to Megan for forwarding the video.
………
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
British bicyclists may be in for a surprise, after an English city finally got around to installing flexible wands to keep drivers from illegally parking in a bike lane. Which if Los Angeles drivers are any example, won’t actually stop anyone.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
No bias here. London police ticketed 1,315 bike riders for jumping red lights in the past 12 months, an average of around just 25 a week — which doesn’t sound like that much in a city of 9.9 million. Especially compared to the approximately 4,000 drivers ticketed for the same offense, including over 1,500 caught two or more times in the past four years.
………
Local
Nice piece from LA Times Deputy Managing Editor Shelby Grad, who pens a paean to the joys of ebiking on the bikeways under the city’s overpasses, rather than driving over them.
The Pasadena City Council unanimously approved plans for the 710 Freeway stub, including housing and multimodal transportation initiatives, but wants to talk more about restorative justice for the mostly Black residents who were unceremoniously shoved out to make room for the never-built freeway.
Santa Monica Next reports on the problem of overhanging tree branches blocking the city’s bike lanes.
State
La Mesa became the latest California city to crackdown on ebikes, banning children under 12 from riding Class 1 or 2 electric bicycles.
Streetsblog points out that San Diego’s Mayor Gloria’s new budget cuts funding for the multimodal team at the city’s Department of Transportation, despite his promises to maintain funding for Vision Zero “even in a difficult budget year” when running for re-election just two years ago.
The victim who died riding an ebike in Point Mugu State Park on Saturday has been identified as a 76-year old Camarillo resident, who passed away from natural causes.
Bike East Bay is celebrating Bike To Wherever Day on May 14th. Or as it’s known in Los Angeles these days, Thursday.
National
The Cherokee Nation announced the 12 participants in this year’s 950-mile Remember the Removal bike tour, which retraces the northern route of the infamous Trail of Tears.
A Colorado bike race requires you to eat at ten Taco Bells along the route. The winner is whoever packed a peck of Pepto in their kit.
This is who we share the road with, too. Police is Sioux Falls, South Dakota threw the book at two young pickup drivers who were reported driving recklessly, doing burnouts 5 feet away from patios, committing traffic sign violations and putting pedestrians at risk, all while blaring their loud “train-style” horns.
A Waco, Texas woman was busted for allowing her son to skitch by holding the door handle of her car while riding his bike — although it didn’t help when they found almost two ounces of weed in her car.
Louisville, Kentucky has painted new downtown bike lanes a bright shade of neon green, not to keep drivers out, but to make them more obvious to pedestrians, who were falling off the curbs. Evidently, they don’t film many movies or TV shows there, because that looks like the same shade Hollywood producers went to war against here in Los Angeles.
A new report from New York’s Transportation Alternatives shows an ongoing gender bias in bicycling, revealing women are more likely to ride where there are protected bike lanes and pathways.
Shockingly, business owners have “concerns” over a proposed new bike lane on a New York thoroughfare. In other words, kinda like every business owner everywhere when new bike lanes go in. Never mind that studies show their business is usually better within a few months afterwards.
International
A Canadian bike polo player funds a short film about the sport by recycling cans, using an old video camera he found in a back alley.
A London bike rider says he never got so much room on the road before he switched to riding a Lime bike without a helmet.
A Dublin, Ireland waste management company is using e-cargo bikes — or maybe pedal-operated mini box trucks — to collect trash after the city banned putting trash bags on the street.
Here’s another one for your bike bucket list — seven days of bikepacking through four of the Canary Islands.
A Palestinian group is using bicycling to bring residents from disparate parts of the war-ravaged country together to rediscover and reclaim the land.
The European Union ambassador to Ghana is riding with a team nearly 500 miles from Tamale to Accra to encourage more people in the country to ride bicycles.
Oopsie. The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority said recently that just 1,700 people use a new bikeway each day; that turned out to be the number of people who use the new showers at the end of the path, compared to 7,000 people who used the actual pathway in just a four-hour window.
Finally…
Nothing like riding through the fields of rural Transylvania, as long as you bless your hotel room with a little garlic and holy water. That feeling when the guy documenting his “avid” bicycle journeys made his bones with an 80s cover of Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini.
Or when you rewatch the Hunger Games just to see the road-raging bike rider/actor who shot at your truck.
………
Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
………
Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
