Tag Archive for Pico Blvd

Traffic deaths dropped last year — except for bikes, Trump declares war on “DEI” bike lanes, and Pico businesses fret loss of parking

July 13, 2026 / / No comments

Well, at least it wasn’t my fault this time. 

It turns out Friday’s downtime was the result of a recent WordPress upgrade that left my site vulnerable to an attack by a swarm of 19,000 feed-crawlers. 

And no, I never heard of a feed-crawler before Friday. Let alone 19,000 of the little bastards. 

Anyway, they’ve all been gathered up and shoved back in their little feed-crawler cages, so we should be good now. 

Today’s photo is a new T-shirt design that’s probably my favorite so far. But if you’re more in the mood for corgi designs, check out my other T-shirt site. 

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In news that shouldn’t surprise anyone, overall traffic deaths continued to decline last year.

Except, of course, for those of us on two wheels.

According to the latest statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, full-year traffic fatalities dropped last year to their lowest level since 2019, while the annual death rate of 1.10 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled was the second-lowest ever recorded.

That trend continues into the first quarter of 2026.

According to Carscoops.com,

According to new preliminary estimates from the NHTSA, approximately 7,770 people died in traffic crashes during the first quarter of 2026, down 4.3 percent from the same period a year earlier. The fatality rate also dropped to 0.99 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, the lowest first-quarter figure since 2014 and just shy of the all-time quarterly record of 0.98…

Despite the positive overall trend, one category continues to move in the opposite direction. Bicyclist fatalities rose 4 percent in 2025 to 1,148 deaths, remaining near the highest levels seen in more than four decades…

According to the NHTSA, the first quarter of this year represents the 16th consecutive quarterly decline in overall traffic deaths.

If only the news was as good for people riding bicycles.

In fact, traffic deaths decreased in every category last year, compared to 2024, with the single exception of people on bicycles.

  • Total estimated driver fatalities decreased 5 percent.
  • Total estimated passenger fatalities decreased 12 percent.
  • Total estimated PV occupant fatalities decreased 10 percent.
  • Total estimated motorcyclist fatalities decreased 8 percent.
  • Total estimated pedestrian fatalities decreased 8 percent.
  • Total estimated pedalcyclist fatalities increased 4 percent.
  • Total estimated fatalities in crashes involving at least one large truck decreased 7 percent.
  • Total estimated nonoccupant fatalities decreased 5 percent.

However, unlike 2024, when bicycling deaths increased every month compared to the previous year, bicycling fatalities decreased in five months in 2025, while increasing in seven.

So that’s something, anyway.

What’s not clear, however, is the effect that ebikes have had on these stats, since the NHTSA stopped listing motorized bicycles as motor vehicles in 2022, and now includes them as pedalcyclists, aka bicycles, if the rider is killed in a collision with the driver of a motor vehicle — and not at all if it involves a single vehicle crash.

There’s no explanation, however, of whether than only applies to ped-assist bicycles, or if it also includes electric and gas-powered motorbikes that fall into the gray area between ebikes and motorcycles.

So at least part of the rise could be due to the increase in electric bikes, legal and/or otherwise.

Hopefully someone, somewhere, will eventually break out those numbers so we can actually know what’s going on out there.

………

No bias here.

In a paywalled story, The Times of London says the Trump administration has declared war on bike lanes.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy made the move after decrying the “DEI” focus on bicycling over cars as he shifts $1.7 billion in funding to roads and bridges, jeopardizing safety projects around the country.

And raising the obvious question of what the hell is a DEI bike lane.

Then again, if Trump handles his war on bikes as well as he has the war with Iran, we’ll probably end up with more and better bike lanes than we would have otherwise.

Or maybe he’ll just give us control over the roadways after declaring they’re open.

………

LAist reports that small business owners on Pico Blvd recognize the street has a speeding problem and can be dangerous for pedestrians, but worry about the loss of 228 parking spaces after LADOT gives the street a Complete Streets makeover.

According to the website,

LADOT will overhaul 3.5 miles of Pico Boulevard between Crenshaw Boulevard and Figueroa Street to reduce speeding and unsafe turns and lane changes. The agency said the project is intended to improve safety by adding a center turn lane for left turns and emergency vehicles, protected bike lanes and new TOUCAN traffic signals at Manhattan Place and New Hampshire Avenue. LADOT will also repair sidewalks and curb ramps.

To make room, the city will remove parking on the north side of the street and reduce travel lanes from two to one in each direction. Construction is set to begin by the end of the year.

In other words, just like business owners everywhere else where protected bike lanes have gone in.

And just like business owners everywhere else, chances are they’ll see increased foot and bike traffic that will more than make up for the loss of parking spaces — and likely more sales, as studies have repeatedly shown that sales and tax receipts usually go up after a project like this goes in.

Something you’d think LAist could have mentioned somewhere in their story.

Never mind that over a ten-year period ending in 2023, there were 75 crashes resulting in severe injury or death on that stretch of Pico, with nearly three-quarters involving people walking or riding bicycles, and all 11 of the people killed on the corridor were pedestrians.

Which is especially important to consider in the largely Jewish neighborhood, where large numbers of people walk to temple every Saturday.

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According to the WeHo Times, a small group of West Hollywood community members met at Blake Ackerman’s ghost bike on Thursday evening to remember the 27-year old man killed by a hit-and-run driver a year ago while riding his bike home from work.

West Hollywood Councilmember and State Senate candidate John Erickson, who lives nearby on Fountain Avenue, called on WeHo Mayor John Heilman and Council Member Lauren Meister to support plans to remake the corridor to improve safety.

“It’s been a year since the community lost Blake,” Erickson said. “If we just updated a street for street safety for pedestrians, bikers and cars, it would make the most sense. And that is what we are doing.”

Erickson said his own parked vehicle was nearly struck about a week and a half ago, calling it another example of dangerous driving along the corridor.

“I can’t replace my life, and clearly we can’t replace other people’s lives,” he said.

I stopped by the ghost bike the next day, and was please to see several people had left flowers on the bike, in a sign that he has not been forgotten. And hopefully, Ackerman’s will be the last ghost bike we’ll need on the deadly corridor.

Meanwhile, the case against accused 73-year old driver Douglas Morton Adams remains pending, with no trial date currently set.

………

Thanks to Megan for forwarding a story about a hero teenager who rescued an Arizona woman with dementia who was wandering the streets in triple-digit heat, even if he was likely riding an illegal e-moto instead of a bicycle.

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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.

Grand Junction, Colorado goes the wrong way with a proposal to reduce the amount and type of bicycle parking required in the city, allowing developers to make their own decisions on whether to invest in them — even though bike parking is just a fraction of the cost of a single motor vehicle parking space.

No bias here. Bicyclists in a Liverpool, England neighborhood are complaining about a plan to “temporally” decommission a less than two-year old road diet and protected bike lanes, to make more room for cars when they start work on repairing a nearby bridge.

But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.

Thanks again to Megan for forwarding news about to two Vermont men fined $35,000 for cutting down over 300 trees to build an illegal mountain bike trail.

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Local 

BikeLA, the organization formerly known as the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, led a bike ride to MacArthur Park for a World Cup watching party on Saturday. Although as far as I could tell, both matches won by VAR.

Santa Monica will host its State of the City 2026 as a free, open street celebration on Main Street from 4 to 7 pm on Thursday, July 23, between Hollister Ave and Ocean Park Blvd; Santa Monica Spoke will host a bike valet on Norman Place.

Internet tabloids had a meltdown over the weekend after the paparazzi caught sight of bike-riding, 83-year old Harrison Ford’s physique when he stripped down to his bib shorts after an LA ride.

 

State

Authorities are looking for 32-year old David Creech, who was last seen riding his bike away from his home in the Spring Valley Lake area of San Bernardino County just before 9 am on Wednesday, July 1st.

More on Santa Barbara’s call for residents to provide feedback on an AI-generated map to create a low-stress bike network.

 

National

PeopleForBikes says bicycling to school matters more than you think, “creating opportunities for independence, physical activity, and lifelong riding habits. In many ways, it is investing in the future of bicycling itself.”

Around 6,000 people took part in the annual two-day, Seattle to Portland STP Bicycle Classic over the weekend.

A Kansas columnist says even as he closes in on 70, it’s never too late to start bicycling again.

A Minneapolis-St. Paul website had a good idea, asking a road cycling grandfather to test a high-end e-cargo bike by transporting his own grandkids, which he described as feeling like “you’re balancing a tray of kettlebells as you walk through a cosplay convention.”

More than 125 Penny Farthing riders converged on Dayton, Ohio to celebrate the Wright Brothers roots as bicycle mechanics before the brothers went on to invent some sort of flying contraption.

This is the cost of traffic violence. A 36-year old Boston woman was killed when her bicycle was struck by a truck driver; Louisa Gag was a city transportation planner and prominent bicycle safety advocate who worked to make Boston’s streets safer for everyone.

DC bicyclists won the fight to preserve a three-quarter-mile bikeway known as America’s Bike Lane from a last-minute effort by the Trump administration to have it ripped out to make room for an an exclusive, high-end golf course.

A new Virginia Historical Marker recognizes Botetourt County’s place on the legendary TransAmerica Bicycle Trail, on the 50th anniversary of the Bikecentennial ’76 cross-country bike ride.

This is who we share the road with. A road-raging Florida driver rammed a 15-year old boy riding an “ebike” off the road, then slapped the kid, when a group of teens had tried to get the driver to stop after swerving at them; naturally, the police responded by impounding several of the teens’ bikes for not being street legal, rather than busting the driver.

 

International

Momentum calls out 30 bike lanes around the world that should have never been built, from blocked bike lanes to lanes that start and stop in the middle of high-traffic areas. I particularly like the ones that go over traffic islands, because cutting through them would have been just too much work, apparently.

Momentum also offers a guide to Quebec’s 3,100 mile bicycle network.

Residents of a Montreal neighborhood have a reasonable complaint after the city removed parking spaces on one side of the street, including disability spaces, for a protected bike lane, arguing that the city wouldn’t even install a crosswalk so one older woman could reach the spaces across the street.

A British Member of Parliament had her new e-cargo bike stolen the first time she tried riding it to town in Oxford.

Residents of a north London neighborhood take a different approach to installing a ghost bike, first towing it on a bike trailer through an intersection where too many people biking and walking have been killed, then putting it on display the local museum’s “50 Years of Cycle Islington” exhibition.

London’s department of transportation failed to install a single mile of bike lane in the city last year, relying on local council’s to do all the building. There’s probably no truth to the rumor that the head of Transport for London has been hired to run LADOT on that basis. 

Irish towns as small as 5,000 to 10,000 people see up to a 50% increase in a ridership when bike lanes go in, according to the country’s transportation minister, despite the fears of local councilors.

Congratulations to Świdnica, Poland, which won a competition to be named the country’s bicycling capital by riding the most miles.

 

Competitive Cycling

Two Tour de France riders, including Eritrea’s Biniam Girmay, were warned by jurors after apparently turning the race into a contact sport during the final sprint on Saturday.

Mathieu van der Poel won the third Tour de France stage of his career on Sunday in a stage reminiscent of the one-day classics he thrives on; race leader Tadej Pogačar finished safely six seconds back.

Former race leader Torstein Træen’s surprising turn in the yellow jersey didn’t last long, crashing out of the race by clipping a teammate’s wheel two days after he gained a remarkable seven-minute advantage on the race favorites.

The rise of the Hincapie brothers’ Modern Adventure Pro Cycling Team saved the cycling career of 30-year old Whitefish, Montana resident Sam Boardman, who signed with the team “just before he hung up his helmet and dove into a ‘real job.’”

The Manhattan Beach Grand Prix returned to the beach city on Sunday for its 63rd running; no results have been posted yet.

 

Finally…

With all the hi-tech innovations in bicycling, no one has yet invented a mosquito-proof face mask. And that feeling when your new bicycle is part folding bike, part Erector Set.

………

Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.

Oh, and fuck Putin.

 

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

New LA bike lanes sprouting with the spring, and CA DMV fights to keep killer driver on the road and record secret

March 11, 2026 / / Comments Off on New LA bike lanes sprouting with the spring, and CA DMV fights to keep killer driver on the road and record secret

Maybe we’re making progress after all.

Suddenly, there’s news of bike lanes sprouting all across the Los Angeles area, albeit to the apparent chagrin of some.

Twitter post

 

But evidently drivers are up in arms over at least some of the changes, as opposition grows from “some residents and local officials who say the plans could worsen traffic congestion, eliminate parking, and create confusing road designs.”

And even the death of a pregnant mom isn’t enough to get protected bike lanes on Pershing Drive.

Bluesky post

………

This is why people keep dying on our streets.

Cal Matters reports that the California DMV not only kept a driver on the road, despite at least 16 previous moving violations and four crashes, they fought to keep his driving record a secret.

Even from persecutors after he was charged with vehicular manslaughter for killing a two-year old boy.

And adding insult to grievous injury, the DMV renewed his license just a year later, while the manslaughter charge was still pending.

Surely, the DMV did some sort of review before deciding it was safe to let (Kostas) Linardos stay on the road.

Right?

The DMV spent close to a year fighting to keep the answer to that a secret, refusing to release information on Linardos without a court order and then urging a judge not to issue such a decree. The agency’s lawyer argued in a filing that prosecutors wanted records “for the improper purpose of smearing the DMV for alleged and unfounded wrongdoing.”

Prosecutors said they wanted the DMV records to help show Linardos knew the risks of driving recklessly, which is something they needed to prove to make a felony vehicular manslaughter charge stick.

When the issue finally made it to court this year, the attorney representing the agency made a shocking admission: The DMV had no records of any investigation into a longtime reckless driver who killed a 23-month-old boy. The agency didn’t even appear to have held a hearing before deciding it was fine to let Linardos stay on the road.

Un-effing-believable.

Thanks to Megan for the heads-up. 

………

A new study from San Diego’s Rady Children’s Hospital shows a more than 300% increase in ebike injuries in just the last four years.

Although once again, there’s no attempt to differentiate between ped-assist ebikes and electric motorbikes.

According to the study, the hospital recorded 262 ebike-related trauma cases last year, with most of the victims 11 and 14 years old, with a noticeable spike among 13‑year‑olds.

While that likely corresponds to the increase in ebike use, the hospital also reported ebike injuries were likely to be more severe than those caused by regular bicycles.

It’s also questionable how many of those ebikes were actually street legal, or could legally be ridden by children that young, who are limited to Class 1 and 2 bikes with a maximum speed of 20 mph.

Let alone on the freeway.

https://twitter.com/Sandiegohumor/status/2030712819264737671

Thanks to Ellectrek for the link.

Meanwhile, Newport Beach is considering banning ebikes from all schools except for high school students, and 7th graders if they have written parental permission. And once again, without differentiating between ped-assist bikes and e-motos.

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San Francisco Streetsblog’s Roger Rudick doesn’t pull his punches after Caltrans ripped out a painted Oakland bike lane, replacing them with, yes, sharrows.

And as studies have shown, sharrows are worse than nothing when it comes to preventing injuries to bicyclists, and shouldn’t be used on streets with speeds above 35 mph.

Actions speak louder than words, Lucy pulls the football away again; whatever aphorism or metaphor one wants to use, Caltrans proves once again that it’s run by bad actors who betray the public in their relentless pursuit of auto-über alles policies.

Then there’s this.

With the removal of the painted bike lanes, which were woefully inadequate on a multi-lane street such as Oak Street to start with, Caltrans now expects cyclists to share a lane with traffic. Keep in mind that this is also a major route to I-880 and is plagued with non-stop speeding traffic and red-light running. The removed bike lanes are on a major bike commuter routes that connect the Oakland ferry terminal, Lake Merritt BART, and thousands of residential units…

Nobody, really, should be surprised. Caltrans, Alameda County, and the consultants who work for them have acted in bad faith throughout this project.

Never mind that Caltran’s ostensible Complete Streets policy requires the state transportation agency to “provide comfortable, convenient, and connected complete streets facilities on all projects and in all project phases, including construction and maintenance,” according to Jeanie Ward-Waller, Director of Transportation Advocacy at Fearless.

She should know, since Ward-Waller was the whistleblower who was “reassigned” from her position as Deputy Director of Planning and Multimodal Programs at Caltrans after warning that a Sacramento highway project violated that same policy.

Just one more reminder, if we needed it, that the agency’s Complete Streets requirement needs to be codified into law, since they only seem to follow it when it’s convenient for them or the public demands it.

………

I had the time to rip into this piece from a rightwing Irish site, as a writer complains about the “fetishization” and “relentless promotion” of the government’s “obsession” with bicycling.

Instead, we’ll have to let Road.cc handle this one.

According to Vincent, from the “perception of the average person”, the number of cyclists in Dublin using the city’s bike lanes “is so small that it is set completely off balance with the amount of space they take up”.

“Hardly anyone uses these lanes, and yet we are forced to swallow it when an entire lane from a road is sacrificed – often with the result of creating an infuriating one-way system in the area – to make space for more bikes; the same bikes that seem never to fill the lanes they are currently provided with,” he continues, failing to grasp the point of cycling infrastructure entirely.

Never mind that those “empty” bike lanes have resulted in a 50% increase in bicycle trips.

But that inconvenient fact probably wouldn’t fit his narrative.

………

The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.

No bias here. Residents in Devon, England are getting out the torches and pitchforks over construction work for a new protected bikeway, which will force a three-mile detour that will add “minutes” to their commute.

No bias here, either. After a woman in Singapore was struck by a driver while riding her bicycle in a crosswalk connecting two sides of a bike path, commenters online wrongly assumed she was required to get off her bike and walk it across the street.

But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.

The LAPD is looking for a suspect in a bike-by shooting in Historic South Central Los Angeles, after a 36-year old man was shot by someone on a bicycle while sitting in his car at Washington Blvd and Santee Street.

The French bike rider who was caught on video shoving a five-year old girl out of his way on a snowy bike path says he didn’t do anything wrong, and the whole thing was blown out of proportion.

………

Local 

If you left your bicycle, cellphone, blowtorch or prosthetic leg on a Metro bus or train, they may be holding it for you to reclaim. Although it makes sense that someone would leave their bike behind after losing their leg on the bus, which would make it kinda hard to pedal. 

Momentum hails Santa Monica resident Caro Vilain, aka mobilityforwho on Instagram, for her “viral videos steering a fun-fueled cycling revolution.” I would have embedded some of her videos, but Insta was being uncooperative tonight. 

 

State

Streetsblog offers a first look at transportation bills advancing in the state legislature.

Streets For All is out with their annual California Mobility Report Card grading individual legislators for their support of mobility legislation, or the lack thereof.

Evidently, complaining works. The Bay Area’s Caltrain is backing off new restrictions on taking cargo bikes, panniers or child seats onto their bike cars.

Police in Redwood City used license plate readers to snare a pair of bikewear thieves, who somehow walked out of a bike store with more than four grand worth of bicycle clothing.

That’s more like it. Palo Alto is using an app to reward people for riding a bicycle, ebike, e-scooter or electric skateboard, providing them with money that can be spent at local businesses.

A 27-year old man was found safe when he was reported missing after setting out for Big Sur from Monterey on his bicycle.

Say what? Sad news from Sacramento, where a man died in the hospital after he was struck by a driver while riding a bicycle — yet the police bizarrely said they suspected the death was a suicide, without offering any explanation.

 

National

Um, okay. Ebike imports to the US either a) set a new record last year, or b) declined significantly from 2024 levels, and c) may have exceeded the total value of regular bicycles for the first time. Or not.

On the other hand, bicycling contributed $3.67 billion to the American economy last year, an increase of 3.4% over the previous year.

Clean Technica recommends escaping the “Trump pump” on a ebike.

That’s more like it, too. The governor of New Mexico has signed a bill requiring driving students to take at least three hours of training on how to operate their vehicles around vulnerable road users, including bicyclists, pedestrians and emergency service workers.

Bicyclists in Omaha, Nebraska are calling for safety changes after a bike rider was killed by the driver of a semi-truck, following the removal of one of the city’s most-used bicycling routes for a streetcar project.

Heartbreaking news from Pennsylvania, where a 15-year old girl was killed while on a brief bike ride with her twin sister, at an intersection that had received more that 100 complaints from local residents.

A North Carolina newspaper offers an in-depth report on last month’s 950-mile Remember the Removal bike ride to help members of the Cherokee Nation reconnect with their heritage, while retracing the northern route of the horrific Trail of Tears; an estimated quarter of the 16,000 tribal members died along the way when the Cherokee people were forced to walk to Oklahoma from their Southern Appalachian homelands.

Florida lawmakers unanimously approved a draconian new ebike law that requires ebike riders to slow down to 10 mph within 50 feet of pedestrians on sidewalks or shared pathways.

 

International

What took so long? A man in the Isle of Wight faces charges seven months after he pushed a woman in her 60s off a seawall, resulting in injuries to her head, legs and face.

Custom lowrider bikes crafted by a Los Cruces, New Mexico artist made an appearance at the Paris Fashion Week.

Police in Soweto, South Africa have yet to make an arrest in an apparent hit-and-run that killed a popular security guard as he rode his bike to work in January, though they have brought in a suspect vehicle for testing.

 

Competitive Cycling

California’s Luke Lamperti claimed his first win on the season, sprinting to victory in stage 1 of Paris-Nice on Sunday.

Velo says the 2026 road cycling world championships in Montréal “will be an old-school rainbow jersey brawl.”

Twenty-two-year old Belgian pro Leander Van Hautegem was the subject of a “miracle rescue” when a passing forest ranger found him lying in a ditch with a severe concussion, collapsed lung, and broken rib after he crashed on a training ride.

Indiana University is expecting a record crowd for next month’s 75th annual running of the school’s iconic Little 500, made famous in Breaking Away. Which remains the all-time best bike movie, in my not-so-humble opinion.

A DC area public radio station reports on the annual Garage Racing National Championships, which was held last month in a multilevel Virginia parking garage.

 

Finally…

That feeling when a major consumer magazine suggests that a 14 buck ebike cover will somehow protect it from thieves. Now drivers aren’t even waiting for real bicycles to crash into.

And throwing your bicycle at the cops to make an escape is not one of the many recommended uses for it. And if they your bike, just hand over your backpack full of illegal weed.

………

Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.

Oh, and fuck Putin. 

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Just poor planning? Or are they trying to kill us?

September 5, 2008 / / One comment

When I ride my bike, I tend to stick to routes I know, and take side streets whenever possible.

That gives me an intimate knowledge of the danger spots; because I know the streets, I know where I’m likely to run into trouble, so I can be ready for it.

For instance, when I take the bike lane on Main Street in Santa Monica, I know I’ll have a long, straight route where I can get up a good head of speed, often approaching — or sometimes exceeding — the speed of traffic. But I keep a close watch for taillights and drivers behind the steering wheels of parked cars, so I can avoid getting doored. And I have to be prepared for cars that suddenly cut in front of me and stop in the bike lane to back into a parking space.

If I keep a close watch on the oncoming cars behind me, though, I can easily cut out into traffic and take the lane for as long as it takes to avoid any obstacles.

Closer to home, I often take Ohio through Westwood, which gives me a nice, relatively quiet street to ride. East of Westwood Blvd, I look out for cars that dart out from the side streets without looking for bikes coming downhill at 25 or 30 mph; west of the boulevard, I know that cars tend to pass too closely. Sometimes intentionally.

But when I drive my car, I don’t have to be concerned about things like that. So I frequently find myself driving down streets I seldom, if ever ride.

Like Pico Blvd, for instance.

According to the most recent Metro Bike Map, it’s designated as a bike route between the 405 freeway to Century Park East.

Evidently, they assume a lot of cyclists are going to ride along the 405, then sling their bikes over their shoulders and climb down from the overpass, since there’s no exit ramp there. Or else we’re going to ride Pico to Cotner — just before the freeway — and then take the onramp for a nice, exhilarating ride over the Sepulveda pass.

And who knows, that could happen. Because anyone crazy enough to ride through all the traffic and potholes along there is probably crazy enough to ride the freeway.

The next section, just east of Sepulveda, offers two narrow lanes in each direction, bounded by parked cars on either side. And there’s no room to ride in the parking lane, even if you did manage to avoid any swinging doors.

Which means that any rider there would be forced to take a lane on one of the Westside’s most crowded streets. Then try to dodge all the cars pulling in and out of all the various driveways, parking lots and valet stands, as well as one of the city’s busier shopping centers.

I suppose that explains why I’ve never seen a cyclist on that particular bike route. And I can only assume it was designated as a bike route in a blatant attempt to thin the herd, since I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone without a death wish.

Then I find myself driving down other streets, such as Centinella, which was recently repaved and widened, leaving plenty of room for a bike lane now, in an area that desperately needs one. Instead, they put in nice, wide lanes and a center divider lane. The newly rebuilt Santa Monica Blvd, where they could easily extend the bike lane through Beverly Hills — or at least far enough to accommodate the route Will recently attempted.

Or Jefferson, which has three full lanes of traffic leading to and from the new Playa Vista development, yet no bike lanes to help move those people in and out of the area, or get riders to and from all the work places that have opened up in the former warehouse district south of Ballona Creek.

Maybe they assume riders will take the Ballona Creek bike path to get there. Except that it runs on the north side of the creek, with little access to the south side. And it presents it’s own set of problems.

I could go on (and on… and on…), but you get the idea.

Pick virtually any street in West L.A. If it’s a designated bike route, chances are, it shouldn’t be. Or if it could safely accommodate a bike lane, it doesn’t. And if by some miracle it actually has a bike lane, it usually doesn’t go anywhere, and dumps riders off in the most dangerous spot possible.

I think Timur hit it on the head. (If you haven’t read his blog, drop what you’re doing — once you finish reading this, of course — and check out one of the most intelligent, insightful and beautifully written sites in local cyberspace.)

The problem is that our entire bike system shows every sign of being designed by people who have never ridden a bike in their entire lives. Or at least, haven’t been on one that didn’t training wheels, streamers on the handlebars or playing cards attached to the spokes.

It’s a system that was designed to move cars with maximum efficiency, though little evident efficacy, with no thought paid to any other form of traffic or the effect it will has the surrounding community — like the mayor’s plan to turn Olympic and Pico into one-way streets, for instance. And whatever minimal effort was made to accommodate cyclists or pedestrians was obviously nothing more than an afterthought.

That why we need to add our comments to the new bicycle master plan, which the city is updating right now. (Yes, there actually is one now, believe it or not.) Then contact your council member to insist on adoption of the Cyclist’s Bill of Rights — and do something concrete about it by insisting that Metro include a 1% each set-aside for cycling and pedestrian projects in the proposed 1/2 cent sales tax increase.

You don’t have to look very had to see the failure of bicycle planning around here.

And no one’s likely to do anything about it unless we stand up and make them.

 

The Times’ Bottleneck Blog’s questions SoCal bike routes, including one on a Ventura highway in the sunshine; you’re gonna go, I know. Once again, the city breaks the law by banning cyclists from the holiday light display in Griffith Park. Maybe we should get a group together and go anyway. LACBC celebrates it’s tenth anniversary with a potluck party. Thankfully, only Will Campbell’s shadow bites the dust, courtesy of a non-stop driver, then encounters the owner of these road we ride on. Back from vacation, Gary catches us up on the Brentwood Grand Prix, and urges us to support the subway to the sea. But who won the Manolos? Alex says goodbye to Spook. And finally, New York has over 3600 reports of vehicles blocking bike lanes; L.A. zero. Somehow, I don’t think that means it never happens here; maybe we just don’t have enough functional lanes that anyone out here thinks it matters.  

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