It’s the antepenultimate weekend of the 8th Annual BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive!
No, trust me. Look it up.
I had to.
Miss this one, and there’s just two more weekends to show your love to and for this site, while you help keep all the freshest bike news coming to your favorite screen every morning. And make yourself a hero to everyone who visits this site.
Whether or not they know it.
So let’s take a moment to thank the generous people who gave from the heart yesterday so you could read this today, like Ben F, Michael F, Domus Press, Stephen M, Patrick M and Kristoffer M.
No relation, I should add, despite the abundance of Fs and Ms.
So don’t wait.
Donate today via PayPal or Zelle. And keep all the best bike news and advocacy coming your way today, and every day.
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Baldwin Park announced they’ve received a $761,000 grant from the San Gabriel & Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy to build a new mini-park on Maine Ave.
According to a press release from the city,
The Maine Avenue Mini-Park will join a series of new mini-parks along the soon-to-be-extended Big Dalton Wash Trail and the Susan Rubio Zocalo Park in Downtown Baldwin Park, which will come on-line over the next couple of years and promote public health, mental health, climate resilience and educational and employment opportunities for youth…
A bioswale, smart water irrigation system and stormwater capture improvements will ensure the sustainability of the mini-park. Additionally, its proximity to the San Fe Dam Recreation Area and the region’s extensive trail network support active transportation, furthering local and regional sustainability goals…
When completed, the park will include various passive and recreational amenities for the community, including 14 shade trees, an outdoor fitness area, shade structures, picnic tables, a grill, benches, accessible play equipment for kids and restrooms.
A spokesperson for the city suggests it will be great stopping point for bicyclists using the Santa Fe Dam Recreation Area.
The park will be built using an additional $346,000 in matching funds from LA County Measure A. It’s expected to open to the public in 2024.
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A Koreatown bike rider was collateral damage in a police chase.
According to KTLA-5, the LAPD was in pursuit of the driver of a car that had been reported stolen, when the driver struck a bicyclist near South Beaudry Ave and West 2nd Street sometime around 9 am.
He continued without stopping, until crashing into several vehicles at 6th and Normandy, where he was taken into custody.
The bike-riding victim was treated by emergency personnel at the scene; no word on their condition or whether they were taken to a hospital.
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Streets For All is hosting their holiday fundraising party tonight in the Arts District in DTLA, with a recommended minimum $100 donation; donate here to RSVP.
You’re Invited
ICYMI: We’re having our big holiday party tomorrow!
Friday, December 9, 2022
6:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Private Residence
1855 Industrial Street
Los Angeles, CA, 90021
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‘Tis the season.
The San Diego Padres surprised more than 125 2nd and 3rd graders with new bikes and helmets, as part of their Holiday Giving Tour. Which is nice, but still not enough to forgive them for beating the Dodgers in the NL Division Series.
A Victorville bike giveaway brought smiles to over 155 kids from 26 local elementary schools.
Kindhearted employees of a Green Bay, Wisconsin trucking company dipped into their own pockets to buy more than 35 bikes for local kids.
A South Carolina man has been repairing bikes to donate to kids for the holidays for the last 25 years.
Over a dozen kids from a Florida Boys and Girls Club received new bicycles, thanks to an annual program from a local car dealer.
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The California Transportation Commission — no, not Caltrans — is investing a billion bucks in boosting bicycling and walking with 93 projects targeted to low-income areas.
NEWS RELEASE: California Transportation Commission Awards $1 Billion to Disadvantaged Communities to Encourage More Walking and Biking. #ATP #Equity #Transportation #California pic.twitter.com/7DibhGbUE7
— California Transportation Commission (CTC) (@California_CTC) December 8, 2022
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No one who’s spent any amount of time on a university campus should be surprised that college administrators can’t manage to differentiate between safe, high-quality lithium-ion ebike batteries, and the fire-prone, secondhand junk ebike and scooter batteries.
So they just ban ebikes and e-scooters entirely.
https://twitter.com/BrooklynSpoke/status/1601072491551608832
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Gravel Bike California grinds to the highest point in the City of Angels, at a whopping 5,079 ft.
Which sounds impressive, unless you’re from Colorado, like me.
But still.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. A report from the uncomprehending National Transportation Safety Board, aka NTSB, incomprehensibly blames the victims for the meth-fueled crash that killed five bicyclists outside Las Vegas last year, for the crime of riding their bikes in the right lane of the highway. In other words, exactly where they were supposed to be. Las Vegas hospitals are about to be overrun with facepalm injuries.
No bias here, either. A Buffalo, New York letter writer complains that instead of blaming unsafe roadways, we should blame “the ever-increasing stupidity of pedestrians, bicyclists and drivers” and the “idiots walking and biking.”
Or here. A New Jersey columnist compares mandatory bike helmets to seat belts, saying he can’t understand why bike advocates would be against a helmet law, while ignoring the reasons advocates gave to opposite it. He also compares that opposition to bike helmets to opposition to motorcycle helmet laws, even they were opposed for diametrically differing reasons.
Sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
A British court dropped the charges against a road raging, 68-year old former Olympian, who called a woman fat and blind in an expletive-laden tirade, and reached into her car as she begged him not to hit her, all because she cut his bicycle off in traffic; the case was dismissed due to his PTSD resulting from an earlier crash.
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Local
Curbed’s Alissa Walker writes about LA’s outgoing Climate Mayor, who’s leaving the city’s broken sidewalks just as bad as when he found them, if not worse — thanks in part to his habit of getting distracted by shiny objects like a potential presidential run that never launched, and a nomination to be ambassador to India that crashed and burned. Eric Garcetti could have been a good mayor, if he had actually been interested in doing it.
Long Beach will give a Complete Streets makeover to Studebaker Road on the city’s east side, including a protected bike lane and other safety features between Los Coyotes Diagonal and Second Street.
State
A 44-year old man was seriously injured in San Diego’s Point Loma neighborhood Thursday evening, when his bike was left-crossed by a pickup driver while allegedly riding in a crosswalk against the Don’t Walk signal. Although once again, it depends on whether there were independent witnesses to the crash, or if police are relying on the driver who hit him.
A Paso Robles woman faces six years behind bars for pleading guilty to DUI after crashing into several parked cars while driving with a blood alcohol content of .30 — three and a half times the legal limit. She apparently hadn’t learned her lesson about drinking and driving, despite receiving an early release from prison for a ten-year sentence for the drunken, hit-and-run death of a bike-riding Cal Poly student in 2017. If there were any justice, she’d have to serve the remainder of her original sentence, consecutively with the new term.
National
Jalopnik reviews the updated version of Seattle-based Rad Power Bikes popular RadRunner e-cargo bike, which remains perhaps the most affordable electric cargo bike on the market, at $1,499 — and likes it. However, the positive reviews weren’t enough to prevent the company from moving forward with yet another round of layoffs.
Speaking of the five bicyclists killed by the meth-fueled truck driver outside Las Vegas last year, plans are in the works for a permanent ghost bike built for five at the trailhead of the nearby Red Rock Legacy Trail.
Life is cheap in Texas, where a then-18-year old driver walked without a single day behind bars for the drunken crash that killed a man on a bicycle in 2017. Five years is too damn long to wait for justice, and still not receive it.
A Chicago paper talks with the area’s Tandem Society, about the dual joys of riding two by two.
Chicago will vote on a proposal to allow the towing of vehicles parked in bike lanes, six months after a toddler was killed when her mom’s bike was clipped by a truck driver after she was forced to swerve around a blocked bike lane.
Life is cheap in Illinois, where a driver will spend a lousy two months behind bars for the hit-and-run crash that left a bike-riding man with a serious head injury. Both crimes alone — hitting the bike rider and fleeing the scene — call for a hell of a lot longer sentence. Let alone together.
A New York man lives a committed minimalist lifestyle, carrying all of his belongings on his bike. Which is another way of saying he’s homeless by choice.
A writer for Streetsblog says New York’s proposed bounty for reporting vehicles blocking bike lanes means you could earn a six-figure income without leaving your neighborhood. Passing a proposal like that in Los Angeles could result in a second California gold rush.
Kindhearted Louisiana sheriff’s deputies gave a 57-year old woman a new bike, after someone stole the one a neighbor had given her after realizing she’d been walking four miles each way to work every day for the past six years.
International
Apparently, you can make an illegal U-turn while driving on the wrong side of the road, killing a British motorcyclist, then flee to the US under the cover of diplomatic immunity, and still walk without a single damn day behind bars, like the wife of an American diplomat/spy did in the death of 19-year old Harry Dunn.
An English bike rider blasts a seaside bike path, claiming it’s covered in debris and prone to flooding, while suggesting bike riders would be better off on the nearby sidewalk.
Life is cheap in the UK, where a driver walked without a day behind bars for the hit-and-run crash that left a bike-riding man barely conscious and struggling to breathe; he later told investigators he thought he hit a traffic cone. Trust me, if anyone runs me down, they’re going to hear enough choice words to know exactly what they hit.
Nice. Dublin, Ireland opened a new community bike hub, providing free use of adaptive bikes for people with disabilities or mobility issues, a project to repair old and unused bikes to donate to community members, and bike repair and safe bicycling courses for kids.
Finally…
Your next favorite video game could center on a bike road trip adventure. And that feeling when you open the Ringling Trail bikeway, but the only clowns are passing motorists.
Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here all week.
Which is now over.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin, too.
