Tag Archive for Playa del Rey

Two teens killed in crash where Vista Del Mar road diet removed, and elderly driver plows through a dozen French school kids

June 6, 2024 / / 2 comments
Just 208 days left until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025.
Stop what you’re doing and sign this petition demanding Mayor Bass hold a public meeting to listen to the dangers we all face on the city’s mean streets.

Then share it — and keep sharing it — with everyone you know, on every platform you can.

We’re up to 1,190 signatures, so don’t stop now! Let’s get it up to 1,200 before I send it to the mayor’s office!

Photo by Artyom Kulakov from Pexels.

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This is why people keep dying on our streets.

Back in 2019, a four-year old girl was tragically killed by a driver as she crossed the street in Koreatown, while holding hands with her mother.

In a crosswalk. With the light.

Alessa Fajardo and her mom did everything right as they crossed Olympic at Normandie that October day, yet she died anyway. Even though Los Angeles officials knew long before about the dangers of that area and intersection.

In fact, the school they were going to was ranked the city’s 13th most dangerous campus just six years earlier, while Koreatown as a whole was rated LA’s fourth most dangerous neighborhood for bike riders and pedestrians.

That’s pedestrians, like little kids crossing the street with their mothers.

It took four-and-a-half years, and a $9.6 million dollar settlement before anything was done about it.

Los Angeles Times reporter Ryan Fonseca took a deep dive into why.

Starting with the problem of each city councilmember acting like little kings in their own districts, responsible for identifying and approving any improvements before they are made.

Or not.

Neither former District 10 Councilmember Herb Wesson, who represented the district when Alessa was killed, nor his successor, Mark Ridley-Thomas, secured that funding. Ridley-Thomas was indicted on federal corruption charges, suspended from the council and later convicted and removed from his seat in late March 2022. Nobody represented the district until Heather Hutt was appointed that September.

Hutt identified and allocated $530,000 for the new signals in June 2023, but the installation work did not begin until April 2024, four months after the family’s suit against the city was settled.

District 10 staff would not comment on the record about why they could not secure the funds in 2020, 2021, 2022 and early 2023.

No surprise there.

Then again, even on the rare occasions when councilmembers really do try to do something, angry motorists too often rush for their torches and pitchforks — and threats of recall elections.

Tuesday night, two teenagers were killed, and three people seriously injured, in a head-on collision on Vista Del Mar in Playa del Rey.

And if that sounds familiar, it should.

Two years before little Alessa was killed in Koreatown, the city agreed to another $9.6 million settlement, this time with the family of a 16-year old girl killed crossing — wait for it — Vista Del Mar to get to her car after leaving Dockweiler Beach.

The same beach where the kids were killed on Tuesday.

Then-CD11 Councilmember Mike Bonin responded by ordering long-delayed safety improvements on Vista Del Mar, and a handful of other streets in Playa del Rey. Both because too many lives had already been lost on the deadly roadway, and because the next settlement, for the next inevitable death, would be exponentially higher.

Yet the resulting lane reductions and bike lanes were unceremoniously ripped out weeks later on the orders of then-Mayor Eric Garcetti, after angry residents and pass-through drivers from Manhattan Beach rose up in anger — aided by angry rants from conservative KFI shock jocks John and Ken.

Hence that failed recall, as well as a lawsuit from anti-urbanist group Fix the City.

It only took another four years before there was blood on Garcetti’s hands, and all those who chose their own convenience over the lives of others.

Now just three years after that, two more people have needlessly lost their lives on that same bloody stretch of road. And despite a breathless report from Fox-11, police reports said there was no indication either driver was under the influence.

Never mind that the settlement for this one will likely be exponentially higher than the last one, since Los Angeles installed, then removed, safety improvements that might have prevented it.

Yet despite at least four deaths on the same section of roadway in just nine years, some people still seem to think they should have the unfettered, God-given right to go zoom zoom whenever and wherever they want, innocent lives be damned.

If you want to know why we can’t manage to do anything about the ever-rising rate of needless deaths on our streets, that’s it.

And it would be nice if our current mayor and council would somehow show they actually gave a damn, since the previous ones clearly didn’t.

………

Once again, a car was a weapon of mass destruction, when an elderly driver plowed through a group of 12 schoolchildren at a French resort.

Three of the kids were critically injured when the 83-year old driver hit them head-on as they rode single file, leaving the children screaming in terror and pain amid their mangled bikes.

She was arrested at the scene, then released and taken to a hospital after police concluded she wasn’t in a “fit state” for questioning.

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Speaking of deadly roadways, here’s your chance to fight for bike lanes on PCH in Long Beach.

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No surprise that a town known for wealthy, entitled NIMBYs would choose to prioritize their convenience over the lives of bike riders.

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Bike Culver City offers a full schedule of bike events this month, including a screening of mobility justice leader Yolanda Davis-Overstreet two short film docuseries on Biking While Black on the 13th.

https://twitter.com/BikeCulverCity/status/1798102948452651350

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It’s now 168 days since the California ebike incentive program’s latest failure to launch, which was promised no later than fall 2023. And three full years since it was approved by the legislature and signed into law — and counting.

For a change, though, California wasn’t the only state whose competency was question, after Minnesota’s planned ebike rebate program was called off for now when the website crashed within minutes of launching.

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

Police in Surrey, England released video of a violent attack on a bike rider, who was knocked off his bike by two “masked thugs” on a motorbike while riding on a bike path.

One of the UK’s leading young women’s cyclists is out of this year’s Tour of Britain after she was struck by a hit-and-run driver; Kate Richardson was on a training ride when she was knocked off her bike by the impatient driver, who came back to verbally abuse her before driving off again.

 

A man in Cork, Ireland was irate after a driver pulled over directly in front of him in a bike lane to chat with a friend on the sidewalk, while he was riding uphill with two kids on his cargo bike.

Campaigning for the European Parliament, a Dublin, Ireland politician went on a “jaw dropping,” “reactionary” anti-bike lane rant, in which she compare them to a Berlin Wall dividing the city in two.

A bike rider in Brussels, Belgium is lucky to be alive after he was knocked off his bike by a driver who tried to pass him and his companion while driving in a clearly marked bike lane, then the enraged motorist got out and slashed the victim’s throat with a knife; the victim managed to escape with just six stitches when the driver barely missed his jugular.

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

A New York rabbi suffered a broken leg when he was struck by a rogue, salmon-riding hit-and-run ebiker as he was crossing a bike lane.

Residents of Glasgow, Scotland called for food delivery ebike riders to be required to wear identifiable numbers on their backs, as a result of a number of collisions and near misses. You know, sort of like prison inmates, but without having to be convicted of anything.

A couple of teen ebike riders naturally got the blame after they quarreled with a “crew of cranky elderly” Aussies — even though the reporter admitted he had no idea what the discussion was about or who caused it.

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Local 

Streets For All urges support for a proposed 28-mile The Hill to Sea transit corridor traversing 13 cities and unincorporated communities from Pasadena to Long Beach, which would “aggressively reduce car dependency by prioritizing high quality bus service, safe protected bike paths, and improved sidewalks for walking and businesses.”

Streetsblog’s Joe Linton asks what’s next for Measure HLA as Los Angeles continues to slow walk new bus and bike lanes.

Urbanize LA has more details on the planned Complete Streets makeover of Hollywood Blvd, with bike lanes scheduled to be on the ground next year.

Los Angeles is building more than four miles of bike and pedestrian corridors in South LA west of the USC campus.

Glendale is delaying a planned Complete Streets makeover of La Crescenta Ave to search for additional funding, after initial estimates came in over budget.

 

State

Orange County supervisors voted to crackdown on ebikes, including restrictions on sidewalk riding, imposing speed limits and reclassifying bikes that generate more than 750 watts through their motors — even though the latter two could put them in direct conflict with existing state law.

Police in Cathedral City released a description of the suspect vehicle in the hit-and-run death of a bike rider last month; they’re looking for a dark-colored 2014-2019 Nissan Versa with major front-end damage, as well as missing parts.

A 52-year old bike rider in Apple Valley was airlifted for treatment after suffering major injuries when the victim was rear-ended by a driver on Monday.

A Heyward man was sentenced to nine years behind bars after pleading no contest to vehicular manslaughter and hit and run in the death of a 52-year old man riding a bicycle while driving a stolen car.

 

National

CleanTechnica sings the praises of Bike Index for registering your bike, which you can do right here for free, for life.

Bloomberg talks with University of Colorado-Denver professor Wesley Marshall about his new book, Killed by a Traffic Engineer: Shattering the Delusion that Science Underlies Our Transportation System; he’s the one who did a study several years back showing drivers and bicyclists break the law at the same rate — but bike riders do it for perceived safety, while drivers do it for their convenience.

Colorado took a step forward by creating a dedicated $7 million funding stream for “proven small infrastructure projects that improve safety for vulnerable road users,” such as bike lanes, sidewalks and other pedestrian improvements. While that’s far too little — even for a relatively small state — it’s a hell of a lot more than most are willing to commit to.

A Tulsa, Oklahoma man faces charges after he led police on a chase while driving on a bike and pedestrian pathway.

Police in Missouri are continuing to look for the SUV driver who nearly hit a man riding his bike, causing him to fall over a guardrail and down an embankment, where he lay in pain yelling for help for 13 hours.

Lawmakers in Michigan want to increase the penalties for drivers who strike vulnerable road users, while tightening the rules for who is considered one.

Vampire Diaries actress Nina Dobrev underwent successful surgery to repair an undisclosed issue resulting from an electric motorbike crash last week, as media sources continued to misidentify it as an ebike.

The Washington Post belatedly discovers bike buses can provide a viable alternative to the standard SUV school run.

Sad news from DC, where a 34-year old White House staffer was killed while riding his bike when he crossed the center line on a sharp curve during a fundraising ride, and was struck head-on by an oncoming motorist; Jacob Thomas Brewer was the husband of Fox News contributor Mary Katharine Ham.

 

International

Momentum explains why bicycles are the perfect vehicle for the 15-minute city, while offering policies to help your city go Dutch.

A writer for Cycling Weekly says forget talk about the “golden age” of bicycling, when there were ten times the number of bicyclists killed in the UK in 1950 compared to now.

A group of Queensland, Australia researchers consider what can be done about the bad weather, hills and dark nights that keep people from bicycling, particularly women. Ebikes can easily flatten the hills, but can’t help with the dark or bad weather.

 

Competitive Cycling

Bicycling reports the annual Red Bull Rampage freeride mountain bike competition will finally welcome women as something other than spectators. As usual, read it on Yahoo if the magazine blocks you.

People Magazine wants to catch you up on what’s happening with America’s best-known ex-Tour de France winner. But fails to explain why anyone should give a damn. 

Huh? Twenty-five-year old Australian cyclist Robert Stannard received a four-year ban for “abnormalities” in his biological passport, with the ban backdated to 2018. Which is pretty much the same as no ban at all.

Former pro Peter Sagan takes the party on the water in a new beer ad.

 

Finally…

Why spend thousands on a gravel bike, when you can do the Gravel Unbound on a Walmart cruiser? Who the hell would steal a Penny Farthing?

And Hitch was one of us.

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

Oh, and fuck Putin

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

Blood on Garcetti’s hands as hit-and-run driver murders mom on Vista Del Mar, and big pickups blind drivers to little kids

September 13, 2021 / / One comment

We knew it was going to happen.

Just four years after a road diet was unceremoniously ripped out on deadly Vista Del Mar, a mother was killed by a hit-and-run driver while carrying her three-year old son.

And immediately, local residents jumped in to demand that something be done to stop the street’s speeding drivers.

Like this man who was quoted by KCBS-2.

A day after the tragic incident, some neighbors are saying that something needs to be done about people speeding down Vista Del Mar.

“Nobody respects the speed limit here,” said a neighbor Adolfo Navarro. “I mean, you’ll see the cops on motorcycles here during the day enforcing it, but at night, it’s…you can hardly see because the lights don’t even gloom right and then you can only see as far as you can using your headlights.”

Except something was done.

And Playa del Rey residents and Manhattan Beach commuters immediately got out the torches and pitchforks demanding its removal, until our weak-kneed mayor cut the legs out from under the local councilmember to force its removal.

Now every damn one of them have this woman’s blood on their hands.

CD11 Councilmember Mike Bonin had ordered the road diet when the city was forced to settle a lawsuit for $9.5 million, two years after 16-year-old Naomi Larsen was killed while crossing the road at Dockweiler Beach.

Just like 33-year old Wendy Galdamez Palma on Saturday night.

Bonin understood that, without quick action, people would continue to die on the killer street.

And the next settlement would make that $9.5 million look like peanuts.

So he ordered LADOT to implement a long planned, and long delayed, road diet on Vista Del Mar, along with a handful of other local streets.

Unfortunately, the work was done over a weekend, without warning or public announcements, resulting in massive traffic backups and the inevitable hot tempers.

And somehow, everyone blamed bike lanes — and bike riders in general — for the road diet, even though LADOT used diagonal parking to narrow the street, rather than bike lanes, so speeding drivers wouldn’t keep killing people.

So in the face of demands from angry cut-through commuters, as well as lawsuits and threats of recalls — that was back in the day, before recalls were an everyday thing — Garcetti ordered all the road diets and bike lanes that had been installed on other streets removed.

Making Bonin look like a hapless fool.

And making more deaths inevitable.

As an added bonus, the actions of the future ambassador to India undercut virtually every road diet that had been planned anywhere in the City of Angels, as councilmembers ran scared, and quickly concluded they’d rather see more needless deaths than have those angry drivers come after them.

Most notably on LA’s Temple Street, where both CD1’s Gil Cedillo and CD13’s Mitch O’Farrell quickly backed out of a desperately needed, shovel-ready lane reduction.

Which was soon followed by CD2 Councilmember Paul Krekorian cancelling plans for similar safety improvements on Lankershim Blvd in North Hollywood.

That’s how we ended up with bike riders and pedestrians continuing to die on our streets, six years after the city adopted Vision Zero, and just four years until traffic deaths were supposed to be a thing of the past.

Yeah, right.

Never mind an ever rising epidemic of hit-and-runs, as drivers recognized just how unlikely they are to be caught. And just how likely they are to get away with a slap on the wrist if they are.

All of which brings us to the needless death of a mother cradling her child in her arms, who reportedly turned away from the oncoming car to sacrifice her life in order to save his.

I honestly don’t know what to say anymore.

Wendy Palma did not need to die. Steps were taken to tame high speed drivers on deadly Vista Del Mar. And spineless cowards took them out.

Which means the next legal settlement won’t by $9.6 million, but significantly higher. Because the city knew there was a problem there, and not only didn’t fix it, they actually removed the fix.

And the one after that will be higher still.

And the one after that.

And people will keep dying, because the cowards in City Hall don’t have the courage to do anything about it.

Photo shows the road diet that was removed from Vista Del Mar.

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If a driver can’t see what’s on the road directly in front of them, they shouldn’t be allowed on the road.

Period.

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Everyone knows you can’t carry stuff home from the market or hardware store on a bicycle.

Let alone a dozen kegs.

Right?

https://twitter.com/pedalmeapp/status/1436314640825393153

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

This is who we share the road with. A British driver somehow seems to find humor in seeing an injured bike rider on the side of the road. Schmuck.

https://twitter.com/ldnparks/status/1435872982610612224?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1435930878392274949%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es3_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cyclingweekly.com%2Fnews%2Fgrim-viewing-as-video-emerges-of-driver-mocking-injured-cyclist-in-richmond-park

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

London police “nicked” a teenage fake food delivery rider who was dispensing cannabis instead of food, catching him with nine bags of weed and the equivalent of more than $700 in cash.

It takes a major schmuck to punch a British man walking his dog and kick him in the head, just because the man asked a passing bike rider to slow down.

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Local

Speaking of Mike Bonin, the councilmember announced improved bollard-protected bike lanes on Airport Blvd in Westchester (scroll down), even if half the riding area is in the gutter.

The LA County Sheriff’s Department’s Fugitive Task Force busted a man riding a bicycle in West Hollywood who was wanted for a New York murder, after his barber gave away his location by posting a photo of him getting a haircut on Instagram.

Fifty South Bay bike riders honored bicycling advocate Julian Katz with a ride in his memory, three years after Katz passed away at the age of 88.

They get it. The Long Beach Business Journal makes the case that a $20 million reconstruction plan for Artesia Blvd through Compton, Long Beach, Cerritos and Paramount, including an upgraded bike lane, will be good for business growth along the corridor.

 

State

San Diego will be the first US city to get the Bird, as the Santa Monica-based company deploys a fleet of their new ebikes in the city.

Twenty-eight-year old ex-con Martin Valdez Arias has been charged with randomly attacking a woman while riding his bike on a Ventura bike path; he faces charges of false imprisonment by violence and attempted sexual battery.

A travel website offers tips on how to ride your bike across San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.

 

National

They get it, too. Vox says US cities must be designed to encourage much more biking, walking and transit use to end America’s obsession with driving and fight climate change.

A Denver PBS station looks at the local chapter of Black Girls Do Bike, a nationwide group dedicated getting more Black women to ride bikes. And dispelling the myth that they don’t.

Authorities are looking for a man who went missing not far from my Colorado hometown after he set out for bike ride on Friday, and never came home.

A Missouri construction crew devised a brilliant solution to keep the 287-mile Katy trail open during a bridge replacement project, using shipping containers to form a makeshift tunnel to protect riders from falling debris.

A Chicago group gave away 75 refurbished bicycles to kids from two to ten years old, as well as giving them basic safety training.

This is who we share the road with. A three-month old Brooklyn baby is dead, and her mother clinging to life, after a wrong way driver slammed into another car, and both vehicles spun out onto the sidewalk; the driver, who had an incredible 160 traffic violations in the past four years, attempted — and failed — to jack another car to flee following the crash. Just one more example of authorities keeping dangerous drivers on the road until it’s too late.

Don’t hold your breath. New York’s mayor promises answers after the NYPD turned a new bike lane into their own parking lot.

A New Yorker gets his stolen bike back two months later, after spotting it in a photo of abandoned bikes recovered by the police.

Camila Cabello is one of us, riding her bike with a friend on the streets of New York.

An Atlantic City paper is surprised to learn that county officials have been building a bike network for the past decade, but they support the effort, saying rising bike deaths make it a necessity.

No surprise here. A Pottsville PA cop wasn’t charged for killing a 31-year old man who reportedly was struck when he rode his bike into an intersection; no word on who actually had the right-of-way, or whether the officer was using lights and siren. Unfortunately, police have a well-deserved reputation for blaming the victim in any crash involving a cop.

 

International

If you think traffic is driving you nuts, you may be right. A new study shows exposure to traffic and railroad noise increases the risk of dementia in general, and Alzheimer’s in particular.

A Canadian man is looking for the Good Samaritans who came to his rescue after he did a face plant when a brake cable snapped on a steep descent, while visiting family in Vancouver.

A Toronto columnist says the future of the city’s downtown is not car-friendly. And that’s a good thing.

A man in the UK will spend the next six months behind bars for violating his probation, after being caught in possession of a bicycle that wasn’t registered with police, which was a condition of his suspended sentence for selling weed; he had been allowed back on the streets despite 13 previous convictions.

An Irish paper says carfree housing developments don’t have to be a utopian ideal, and that removing cars from homes can eliminate the risk they pose to children.

A new Netherlands study show bicycling injuries in the country are eight times higher than what has been reported by the police.

United Arab Emirates VP Sheikh Mohammed is one of us, taking to his bike to explore Dubai’s World Expo site ahead of its opening next month. Although he doesn’t look very happy about it, at least in the top photo.

September is the most dangerous month to ride a bike in South Korea, with August second.

More confirmation that Russell Crowe is one of us, as he took his mountain bike out for a spin around Sidney, Australia with his girlfriend.

 

Competitive Cycling

Dutch cyclist Pascal Eenkhoorn was the star of Saturday’s 7th stage of the Tour of Britain for handing his water bottle to a young fan who pedaled furiously along the sidewalk to keep up with the lead breakaway.

 

Finally…

Let’s be honest, it would probably be worth the $6.51 fine to ride with a jet engine on your bike. That feeling when you’re tired of horseshit bike lanes — no, literally. Or get attacked by a pair of naked and mostly naked men.

And who says you need a surfboard to ride the waves?

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On a personal note, yesterday marked the 14th anniversary of the Infamous Beachfront Bee Incident. But I’m still here, and the bees aren’t.

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

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

Morning Links: Flax calls out road diet bullies, PCH bike/ped safety grant, and ‘tis the season for bike giveaways

November 30, 2017 / / 4 comments

Yes, we were bullied.

An Op-Ed by Peter Flax offers a good look at what he describes as the histrionics and fake news that have corrupted the road diet debate in the wake of the Playa del Rey debacle.

He describes the one-sided videos and unsupported accusations that the lane reductions were harming businesses in Playa and Mar Vista. And that it was Mayor Garcetti who pulled the plug in Playa del Rey.

One unpublicized meeting spelled the end of the task force and the Playa del Rey road diet. In league with outside forces, lower Playa business owners — among them prominent members of the LAX Coastal Chamber of Commerce, already applying public pressure — demanded an audience with L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti. People familiar with the proceedings tell me the group confronted Garcetti with a narrative that the road diet was destroying local businesses and made explicit threats to undermine the mayor’s political ambitions. These strong arm tactics set off a chain of events that led to the near-complete reversal of traffic-calming measures on Culver, Jefferson and Pershing…

This was a savvy move: Everyone cares about the health of small businesses in the community. As an advocate for pedestrian and cyclist safety, I will admit that I’m comfortable if peoples’ commutes get a few minutes longer if it makes our streets less dangerous, but I don’t want local merchants to suffer. Nobody does, and a perception that road diets harm local businesses could shift public opinion in a major way. Dozens of studies conducted in major U.S. cities have concluded that traffic calming efforts ultimately boost business, but that certainly hasn’t stopped opponents from arguing that these dynamics don’t apply in L.A.

He also points the finger where it belongs — at the mayor and city departments that have failed to lead and to stand up in support of their own programs.

The absence of facts is a defining problem in the public conversation about our roads. This cannot simply be blamed on one side of this dispute. Part of the problem is how poorly our politicians and transportation officials as well as the city’s dominant news outlets have communicated incontestable facts to people who live and drive in L.A. The mayor has been painfully silent.

This has created a void that allows a free-for-all on Facebook and Nextdoor, where people on both sides can essentially make up their own facts — about travel times, accident rates, business impacts, the laws governing speeding and jaywalking, the scientific underpinning of Vision Zero, and so on. Rather than form opinions about what to do on Venice Boulevard based on substantiated traffic or accident data, published studies on road diets, or an unbiased analysis of business impacts, the public has wound up getting informed and misinformed by social media, where people who are angry about traffic freely dismiss INRIX and LADOT data as #fakenews and then create memes with data they prefer.

It’s worth reading the full piece. Because this is the fight we’re all in if we want safer streets in the City of Angels, whether we like it or not.

And yes, I’ve felt a lot of that bullying myself, usually after something I’ve written has been mentioned on Nextdoor, a site I avoid like the plague.

Although nowhere near as much as Flax, who has been subject to more abuse and attempts at character assignation than anyone should have to tolerate.

All for the sake of safer and more livable streets, and a more vibrant community.

There is a sickness within our society right now, where what should be civil, fact-based debates too often degenerate into name calling and outright lies.

Not to mention the death threats I reported to the police earlier this year.

This is our city and these are our streets. They don’t belong to cars or the people in them.

They belong to all of us.

And we all have a right to live — and survive — on them.

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A $15,000 state grant will be used to improve bike and pedestrian safety along PCH through Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades and Malibu, including better enforcement and education on bike laws.

Although they should start by educating the sheriff’s department, which frequently misinterprets CVC 21202 to ticket people for riding abreast or in the traffic lane, both of which are legal in most cases.

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‘Tis the season.

The parents of a fallen soldier have purchased 70 bicycles for kids at Missouri’s Fort Leonard Wood.

A Virginia Walmart has stepped in to supply 460 of the 600 bicycles needed for a kids’ bike giveaway, after the original order was screwed up.

One thousand volunteers turned out in Tampa FL to build 800 bicycles to give to needy children.

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This is day seven of the 3rd Annual BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive. Your support helps keep SoCal’s best source for bike news and advocacy coming your way every day.

You can donate with just a few clicks by using PayPal. Or by using the Zelle app that is probably already in the banking app on your smartphone; send your contribution to ted @ bikinginla dot com (remove the spaces and format as a standard email address).

As always, any donation, in any amount, is truly and deeply appreciated.

And thanks to J Patrick L, Michael Y, Jeffrey F, Mark J, Joel S, Ellen S and Evan B for their generous donations to help support this site. And a belated thanks to Robs M for being the first to donate using Zelle, which apparently doesn’t let me know when someone uses it.

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Local

Spin is the latest dockless bikeshare company to invade LA, setting up office with a pilot program in Koreatown; Streetsblog asks if privately owned dockless bikeshare will prove to be a blessing or curse.

The LA Daily News looks at Metro’s plans to address the eight-mile gap in the LA River bike path through Downtown LA — although construction won’t start for at least another five years. Good thing they weren’t planning to use it for the road cycling course in the 2028 Olympics.

UCLA’s student newspaper say’s Elon Musk’s tunnels won’t solve LA’s traffic problems, and represents the same old thinking that got Angelenos stuck in this mess. Although the point of the tunnels isn’t to solve traffic problems, but just to let wealthy drivers avoid them.

A Monrovia letter writer can’t seem to grasp the concept that sharrows mean that’s where bikes are supposed to be, bike riders don’t have to get the way out of impatient drivers, and drivers are supposed to change lanes to pass people on bicycles.

 

State

Southern California officials say cuts in the proposed GOP tax bill could result in an increase in traffic, including the loss of a $20 benefit for people who bike to work.

The OC Sheriff’s Department is looking for the owners of the 1,000 presumably stolen bicycles that were recovered near a homeless camp along the Santa Ana River; if you think your bike might be one of them, send a description of the bike and the serial and police report numbers to lostbike@ocsd.org.

A 19-year old Watsonville man will face a vehicular homicide charge in the September death of a bike rider after police concluded he was speeding. And even though the victim ran a red light.

A new short documentary profiles a bike-riding, tai chi-practicing, tennis-playing San Franciscan octogenarian artist.

Once again, opponents attempt to use California’s CEQA anti-pollution laws to stop construction of bike and pedestrian paths in San Francisco, which is exactly what the revised rules are supposed to prevent. Update: J. Patrick Lynch forwards word that the San Francisco Supervisors shot that attempt down. 

You’ll soon need a reservation to visit the popular Muir Woods National Monument near Sausalito, unless you’re riding a bicycle or entering on foot.

A Sacramento cyclist is using a new form of inhaled insulin to control his Type 1 diabetes.

 

National

A new bike trailer can carry as much as a minivan while doubling as a fork lift — although you might need an ebike to pull the full 400 pound load.

Phoenix parents hop in their car and chase down a thief who stole their son’s bike.

A Colorado letter writer addresses the hatred expressed by some people towards the people on bikes who have the audacity to slow them down for a few seconds. Proving that it’s not just a SoCal phenomenon after all.

Caught on video: A pair of mountain bikers make the first-ever bike descent of a famed black diamond ski run at Jackson Hole WY.

Once again, authorities managed to keep a dangerous driver on the road until he killed someone. A Houston woman calls for changes in DUI laws after her bike-riding husband was killed by an alleged drunk driver who was already facing a previous drunk driving charge. Anyone arrested for DUI should automatically have their license suspended and the car they were driving impounded until the case is resolved.

A Texas TV station steps in after a bike rider gets the runaround when his bike was damaged by an uninsured Lyft driver.

Heartbreaking story from Minnesota, where a restaurant worker was the victim of two crashes in three weeks while riding his bike. And may not survive the second one, after the driver fled the scene.

Kindhearted Michigan police buy a new bike for a five-year old boy after he got caught in his and had to be cut out.

The Department of DIY strikes in Boston, where someone spray painted a bike lane on a bridge.

Once again, the tone deaf NYPD responds to the death of bike rider killed by a speeding driver by ticketing people riding bikes.

No surprise here, as the man accused of killing eight people in the New York bike path attack on Halloween has pled not guilty.

Hundreds of Philadelphians form a human-protected bike lane to protest the death of a bike rider killed by the driver of a trash truck while riding in a faded bike lane.

A road raging Pennsylvania man was sentenced to between one to 23 months in prison for attempting to run a bike rider off the road and threatening to kill him; he blamed the victim, as well as medications he was taking for paranoia and bipolar disorders.

A Florida bike rider became the latest victim of a police officer responding to an alarm without lights and sirens.

 

International

Local politicians say more has to be done to protect bicyclists and pedestrians in Victoria, British Columbia. And pretty much everywhere else.

Toronto is considering adopting a bike registration and theft reporting app that has resulted in a 30% drop in bike thefts in Vancouver over the last two years. Can we get that here? Pretty please?

London’s protected cycle superhighways move people five times more efficiently than regular traffic lanes. Meanwhile, the city will ban construction of new parking spaces in large segments of the city to reduce pollution. Which is probably better than LA’s approach of ripping out bike lanes.

A British magazine talks with adventurer Mark Beaumont about his record-setting ride around the world in less than 80 days.

Kashmir bicyclists pedal for democracy to call attention to the upcoming election process.

Caught on video too: After an Aussie driver nearly sideswiped a man riding in a bike lane, the driver accused him of riding outside the lane, which he clearly didn’t.

 

Competitive Cycling

Israel may be paying Chris Froome two million euros — the equivalent of $2.37 million — just to participate in next year’s Giro d’Italia, which is scheduled to start in the country.

A federal judge rules that Lance can use the “everybody else was doing it” defense in the $100 million lawsuit brought against him for allegedly defrauding his government sponsors through systematic doping.

Seven Columbian cyclists and one Bolivian rider failed drug tests at August’s Tour of Columbia, testing positive for a form of EPO. But let’s all pretend the doping era ended when Lance got busted, okay?

 

Finally…

You may able to drink your next Surly. You could be able to ride on, not in, your next Rapha.

And probably not the best idea to interrupt your 25-year ride around the world by getting drunk and assaulting cops just hours after entering a new country.

………

Thank you all for the kind words about my wife. It looks like she may be doing a little better, and may be able to avoid additional surgery for now. 

Fingers crossed.

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

Morning Links: The death of LA’s Vision Zero, safety improvements in Mar Vista, and more kindhearted people

October 19, 2017 / / 31 comments

Vision Zero, in any meaningful sense, is dead in Los Angeles.

We may see incremental improvements; a new crosswalk here, a bike lane there. But only if they don’t adversely affect anyone on four wheels.

Which is not what Vision Zero is about.

But any meaningful attempt to reduce traffic deaths to anywhere near zero in finished.

That’s because CD11 Councilmember Mike Bonin and LA Mayor Eric Garcetti jointly announced yesterday that they are caving in to the angry NIMBY and driver-led backlash, and ripping out the bike lanes and road diets in Playa del Rey.

Although that’s not the way they put it.

And in the process, throwing bicyclists and anyone else who fought for the changes under the bus. Perhaps literally.

They present it as a compromise, with a long list of pedestrian-focused improvements that won’t do crap to protect people on bikes, slow traffic or prevent crashes between motorists.

But let’s be honest.

This is a compromise like Jim Bowie and Davey Crockett compromised at the Alamo.

Those pedestrian improvements were already planned as the next phases of the community-driven process to improve safety in Playa del Rey — after the road diets, not in place of them.

So instead of improving safety and livability in the area, it will go back to being a virtual freeway for pass-through motorists.

Except now the city will be on the hook financially for every death and injury that occurs in the area, after removing the safety improvements designed to prevent them.

It’s a liability lawyer’s dream.

Worse, though, is the potentially fatal damage it’s done to Vision Zero in Los Angeles, as few, if any, councilmembers will be willing to subject themselves to the hate and vitriol Bonin and his staff have faced.

It’s a surprise they held out as long as they did.

Chances are, road diets are now off the table in this city. Perhaps permanently.

The same with installing the bike plan, which is no longer worth the silicon it’s printed on. Or any other substantive street changes that inconvenience motorists in any way, or makes NIMBY home and business owners sharpen their pitchforks and light the Tiki torches.

Even if they’re the ones who’ll benefit from it.

And even though Vision Zero was never about crosswalks or enforcement — or cutsie football videos — but about redesigning the roadways so that when people act like people do, their mistakes won’t be fatal. To them or anyone else.

Which is what these road diets were supposed to do.

But we’ll never know if they would have succeeded or not, because they were never given the chance.

I’ve long questioned whether LA’s leaders had the courage and conviction to make the tough choices Vision Zero would require, and withstand the inevitable criticism that would be directed their way.

They’ve answered with a resounding no.

The odd thing, though, is that Garcetti somehow got his name attached to the plan to restore traffic lanes — and got top billing, no less.

Even though he didn’t do a damn thing to implement or support the road diets. Or any of the other traffic safety improvements that have gone down to defeat under his tenure, from bike lanes on Westwood Blvd to sidewalks on the Hyperion-Glendale bridge.

He hasn’t shown up for a single public safety meeting since announcing Vision Zero to great fanfare two years ago. Or made a single public statement in support of Mike Bonin and the desperately needed safety changes in Playa or Mar Vista.

And yet, he gets full credit — if that’s the word you want to use — for restoring the Playa del Rey streets to their original dangerous condition, and thrusting a dagger through the heart of his own signature safety policy.

It’s been seven years since the late Bill Rosendahl stood before the city council and proclaimed that car culture ends today in the City of Angels.

He was wrong.

It’s clearly just getting started. And we will all pay the price.

………

In better news, The Argonaut reports on the figures released last week showing safety improvements and a reduction in speeding on Venice Blvd following the recent lane reductions.

However, traffic truthers refuse to accept the results; the leader of the Bonin recall effort tried to claim the street was actually more dangerous, because injuries went up on a per capita basis since there was a drop in traffic.

………

Today’s common theme, kindhearted people — mostly in blue.

An Ohio sheriff held back bicycles from a property auction, insisting that they be given to kids and adults who need them instead.

Tennessee cops pitch in to buy a man a new bicycle, after the one he relied on to get to work was stolen.

A Florida man bought a new bicycle for a boy who was run over by a distracted driver as he was riding to school; unfortunately, he’s too scared to ride it.

But Michigan cops got it backwards, buying a car for a woman who rode her bike or took a bus 13 miles to work for years.

………

Women’s racing takes a big step back, as the Tour de France cut’s the women’s La Course back to a single day.

Austrian cyclist Christoph Strasser set a new indoor 24-hour record at 585.25 miles, and vows to never ride on a track again; he’s a four-time winner of the Race Across America.

And SoCalCross offers a video recap of the year’s first cyclocross race at Irvine Lake.

………

Local

The city council’s Public Works and Gang Prevention Committee approved a motion to paint LA’s bike lanes a dull, non-reflective green, prioritizing the convenience of the film industry over the safety of bike riders. After all, it’s just so damn hard for film crews to cover-up a bike lane with some sort of mat, let alone fix it in post.

LADOT has installed what appears to be a very problematic bus loading platform in the bike lane on First Street in DTLA, which forces riders up a sharp ramp while creating a crowded conflict point when people board or get off; as passengers adjust to it, they will likely start to wait on the platform, blocking the bike lane.

UCLA parking meister Donald Shoup has been honored with the 2017 Distinguished Educator Award, the highest honor offered by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning; Shoup’s work has changed the understanding of the hidden costs of parking around the world.

Musician Andrew Bird used the LA River as his muse, inspired by his bike rides along it.

CiclaValley M.A.S.H.s gears up the Bulldog.

 

State

A 60-year old San Diego man was seriously injured when a woman crashed into his bike in Pacific Beach.

I want to be like him when I grow up. An 81-year old San Diego County man just finished a 4,300-mile ride across Canada.

Construction of a new bike path has Santa Barbara residents on edge, as road surface grinding is keeping them up at night.

If people in San Luis Obispo look depressed, it’s because they’re no longer the happiest city in the US. It’s probably no coincidence that every city in the top five is ranked silver or higher on the Bike League’s list of Bicycle Friendly Communities.

A San Francisco bike cop is in grave condition after he was run down by a suspect, who was arrested several hours after fleeing the scene.

 

National

Bicycle Times offers advice on how to clean your dirty, dirty bike.

Rails-to-Trails recommends some haunted pathways for your pre-Halloween riding pleasure, including one with a ghost bike. No, literally.

No surprise here, as the Washington jerk bicyclist who injured a pedestrian after yelling “hot pizza,” expecting her to jump out of the way, is now facing a lawsuit; he uses the same excuse drivers do, saying 3 mph pedestrians shouldn’t mix with cyclists doing 15 mph.

What’s one way to jeopardize a football scholarship at Texas A&M? Stealing a bait bike is a good start.

Bike PGH meets up with carfree former Trojan and current Pittsburgh Steeler JuJu Smith-Schuster.

Now that’s more like it. A New York man was sentenced to five to 15 years behind bars for the hit-and-run death of a bike rider; more importantly, he received a lifetime revocation of his driver’s license. Which should be automatic for any driver in any hit-and-run.

DC has become a testing ground for dockless e-bikeshare.

 

International

A new documentary takes a look at MAMILs, following four men from the US, the UK and Australia. Which should be required viewing for anyone who makes fun of middle-aged people on bikes, spandexed or otherwise.

Road.cc explains how to stop the dreaded speed wobbles.

Bicycles are making a comeback in Cuba.

A Canadian newspaper talks with Danish bicyclist Ole Kassow, who created the Cycling Without Age program.

Ed Sheeran won’t be one of us for a while, after realizing the next day that he had fractured not one, but both arms when he was hit by driver while riding in London; he had to cancel his upcoming Asian tour.

Motorist and bicycling groups both condemn calls for British bicyclists to be required to carry numbered license plates.

A Turkish librarian operates his own personal book bike, towing books for children from village to village in a bike trailer.

An Aussie newspaper says kneejerk decisions to confine dockless bikeshare bikes to specified parking areas defeats the whole purpose.

 

Finally…

Maybe Bonin should have just used a coloring book. Evidently, we’re just sidewalk speeding cyclos.

And the left lane of the southbound 5 Freeway in Newhall Pass may not be the best place to walk your bike.

Especially before 6 am.

Thanks to kdbhiker for the photo.

Category: Morning Links, Vision Zero / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Morning Links: Person behind fake advocacy group outed, and SCAG takes a deep dive into traffic safety data

October 13, 2017 / / One comment

Once again, Peter Flax has written a great piece, as he investigates the fake, Twitter-based advocacy group LA Westside Walkers.

And outs the person behind it as a Playa del Rey music video and documentary director Justin Purser, who lives steps from the initial Vista del Mar road diet.

Purser admits to being the person who started the account, although he bizarrely contends that he handed it off to a group of people he refuses to name after it was mentioned on this site, following his equally bizarre claim to have co-founded BikinginLA.

You can probably count the number of people who actually believe that on a closed fist, however.

Flax digs into the account, which continues its misleading, false-flag form of fake advocacy.

All the while, the barrage of strange tweets from the Westside Walkers account continues, a maddening mélange of dubious facts and falsely earnest advocacy, leveraging a completely faked identity to convince unsuspecting readers that measures meant to save lives are not working. It’s a total cesspool of bullshit distracting people from an actual life-and-death issue.

Meanwhile, someone from Playa del Rey forwarded screenshots in the upper left corner and below, showing comment by Purser from around the time the Westside Walkers account was started.

His point seems to be that the real goal of people who supported the road diets was to make the streets more dangerous, not less.

If that’s supposed to be a joke, it’s in very poor taste.

And says a lot more about the person who made it than it does anyone else.

Let’s hope his attitude really has changed, as Flax’s article suggests.

………

The Southern California Association of Governments, or SCAG, has prepared an in-depth look at traffic safety conditions for the six-county region, as well as each of the individual counties.

Needless to say, it’s not a pretty picture.

A few graphic highlights —

 

………

As we mentioned yesterday, Bike SGV is hosting their BEST Ride: Bike Art Night Pasadena tonight. Thanks to Tim Rutt for the heads-up.

Meetings will be held tonight and tomorrow in La Puente and Montebello, respectively, to provide input on the SGV Regional Pedestrian and Bicycle Master Plan (scroll down).

The October Slow Ride: Revive Gateway Park! will be held tomorrow, hosted by the Elysian Valley Slow Ride.

AIDS/LifeCycle is holding a pair of Kickoff AIDS/LifeCycle 2018 rides beginning at Balboa Park this Saturday to start training for next year’s 545-mile ride down the California Coast.

The South Bay Cycling Awards will be held in Torrance tomorrow; you can see a list of nominees here.

Bike SGV will hold a memorial ride on Sunday to honor staff member Brian Velez, who recently passed away unexpectedly.

Helen’s Cycles will hold a number of rides this weekend, as well as a women’s bike maintenance clinic this coming Thursday.

Also on Thursday, the LACBC will host a City Cycling Class to develop urban riding skills.

Helen’s Cycles in Arcadia is sponsoring a No Drop Group Ride next Saturday, October 21st.

Also on the 21st, CD4 Councilmember David Ryu is hosting an open house to discuss much needed safety improvements to 6th Street between Fairfax and La Brea.

West Hollywood will be holding a WeHo Pedals Bike Share Basics workshop on October 26th.

Santa Monica’s Breeze Bike Share is celebrating its second birthday with a ride with the mayor on November 4th.

CicLAvia will hold their 2nd annual Play Day in LA fundraiser om November 5th.

The very busy Bike SGV will hold their annual “Noche de las Luminarias” awards ceremony on December 2nd.

And CicLAvia returns to iconic Wilshire Blvd on December 10th.

………

Local

Long Beach bike advocates met with former LADOT Bicycle Coordinator Michele Mowery, now the city’s new mobility and healthy living programs officer.

The seven-day Pablove Across American fundraising ride will end in Malibu tomorrow; the ride raises money for pediatric cancer research.

Calabasas unveils a new and improved Las Virgenes Road, complete with two lanes in each direction, bike lanes and continuous sidewalks.

 

State

The bike lanes on El Toro Road will be closed for construction work Monday between Laguna Canyon Road and the 73 tollway.

Joshua Tree residents complain that new bike lanes installed by Caltrans in the downtown area don’t go anywhere.

Half Moon Bay drops plans for a bike bridge and pathways after giving up on funding from Caltrans.

After getting caught in a traffic jam caused by people escaping the Sonoma County wildfires, a Santa Rosa woman went back home and got her bicycle, carrying her 70-pound dog to safety in a duffel bag.

A drunk hit-and-run driver has been sentenced to five years for killing a Suisun City cyclist; he fled the scene on foot, abandoning his car after he crashed again while fleeing the scene.

 

National

Bicycling offers five GoPro hacks to make your videos worth watching. Most important: Install some editing software and learn how to use it. No one wants sit through five minutes of video to get to the 30 seconds where something actually happens.

Caught on video: A Seattle bicyclist was the victim of a punishment pass for having the audacity to ride outside the bike lane to pass another rider; the city’s former mayor calls it assault, even if the police don’t.

A writer for a Colorado company asks if employers should pay workers to leave their cars at home. California has a parking cash-out program designed to compensate employees who give up their parking spaces to bike, walk or take transit to work, but the program is so narrowly drawn it only applies to three percent of the state’s workers.

A Colorado writer says he’s never seen a bicyclist display animosity towards a motorist that wasn’t in response to the driver’s actions. And that drivers need to check their “vehicular privilege” at the door to their vehicle.

A New York man says getting run over by a dump truck while riding his bike was the last straw, and he’s officially done with the city. Getting run over by anything can have that effect on you.

Lobbyists descend on DC to convince lawmakers that bikeshare is bipartisan.

Baltimore’s bikeshare returns with a reduced fleet of bikes, now equipped with GPS, after it was shut down due to excessive thefts and maintenance backups.

 

International

A 72-year old writer says what cyclists over 60 really want is protected bike parking. Oddly, that’s exactly what cyclists under 60 want, too.

Caught on video too: A British driver has been fined the equivalent of $932 and lost his license for six months for forcing a bike rider off the road.

Caught on video three: A Scottish newspaper sees an out-of-control, brakeless bike rider barrel into a toddler; others may see a toddler suddenly dart in front of the bicyclist.

A Scottish writer wonders what can be done to get more women on bicycles, and concludes that better safety matters more than sweaty clothes or helmet hair.

Paris moves to ban all gas and diesel-powered cars and trucks by 2030.

A new Swiss conversion kit promises to turn any bicycle into an ebike.

A Cape Town, South African cyclist was robbed of his bicycle, just days after armed thieves stole three bikes from a group of riders on the same roadway.

A 77-year old Australian man needed over a dozen stiches after he was the victim of a random attack by a man who stepped out from behind a tree, and beat the vicim’s face with a bottle as he was riding with his wife.

 

Finally…

Your next bike could run on strings. Nothing like getting your stolen bike back, and getting it stolen again on the way home.

And apparently, Metro really doesn’t want your bike blocking the aisles.

Although I’m still waiting to see a superhero zap the people blocking the bike area so you don’t have to block the aisle with your bike.

 

Category: Advocacy & Politics, Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Morning Links: Vision Zero in reverse on Vista del Mar, and an indignorant self-pious anti-bike lane cyclist

August 29, 2017 / / 4 comments

This is not how Vision Zero is supposed to work.

Bowing to complaints from angry motorists, Los Angeles reversed the road diet on Vista del Mar in Playa del Rey last week.

Streetsblog’s Joe Linton reports the reconfigured street is now a “desolate, 4-lane highway,” with nothing to keep drivers from exceeding the already too high 40 mph speed limit.

And exceed it, they will. And already are.

Which means it’s just a matter of time until the next death on a roadway that has already seen far too many.

Except this time, the inevitable lawsuit will settle for far more than the $9.5 million paid out by the city recently in the death of a 16-year old girl. Because they had a chance to fix the problem and not only didn’t do it, but undid the fix they made.

A cost that will be born, not by the South Bay drivers who use the roadway as their personal speedway, but by the people of Los Angeles.

Or the South Bay cities that believe in calming traffic, but only inside their own city limits, for that matter.

It’s too early to give up on Vision Zero.

But this is exactly the wrong thing to do. And for exactly the wrong reasons.

Photo of deconfigured Vista del Mar by Streetsblog’s Joe Linton.

………

Once again, the specter of an indignorant, self-pious cyclist raises its ugly head.

This time in the form of a San Luis Obispo columnist who says he obeys the law when he rides, but accuses the city council of appeasing those damn scofflaw bike zealots with a cycle track he insists no one else wants anyway.

Maybe someone should tell him that many law abiding bike riders desperately want safer places to ride their bikes, and better bikeways have been shown to reduce illegal bike behavior.

And no, drivers don’t pay all the taxes and fees for the construction and maintenance of our roads.

Or even most of them.

………

BikinginLA sponsor Thomas Forsyth will team with Wolfpack Hustle to host the Forsyth Cup at the Encino Velodrome on September 16th.

………

Team USA announced the women’s team for the coming world road championships, including 42-year old defending world time trial champ Amber Neben, Chloe Dygert, Megan Gaurnier and SoCal’s own Coryn Rivera.

The Colorado-based Cannondale Drapac cycling team — home to Taylor Phinney, Alex Howes and Rigoberto Uran — has reluctantly started a crowdfunding campaign to stay afloat after losing a key sponsor for next year; the Denver Post reports it’s already raised around $1.5 million.

Chris Froome shrugged off concerns that his Team Sky has an unfair financial advantage over the other teams, comparing efforts to level the playing field to communism. Which is easy to say when he’s guaranteed a job for next year.

Good thing the doping era is over. This year’s Dana Point Grand Prix winner Kayle LeoGrande was banned for a whopping eight years after a drug test revealed seven separate prohibited substances.

……….

Local

West Hollywood’s WeHo Pedals celebrates its first anniversary tomorrow at Sal Guarriello Park at Santa Monica Blvd and Holloway from 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm. In case you’re wondering, the traditional gift for a one-year anniversary is paper; do with that what you will.

Pasadena’s planned two-way Union Street cycle track could start construction before the projected 2021 kickoff date.

Santa Clarita sheriff’s deputies will be conducting a bike and pedestrian safety enforcement program tomorrow, ticketing people for behavior that can jeopardize the safety of either, regardless of who commits it. Which means ride to the letter of the law until you’re out of their jurisdiction, which extends beyond the city limits.

The Expo Line bike path continues to be closed for maintenance work between Centinela and Stewart Street in Santa Monica; SaMo is also conducting a bike technology demonstration project at the intersection of Pico and 11th this week.

 

State

The OC Register gives you the lowdown on California ebike laws.

Nearly 20 special needs kids in Ventura get new adaptive tricycles, thanks to a Los Angeles-based nonprofit.

A Fresno school bus driver apparently right hooked a teenage bike rider, and just kept going.

The victim of Sunday’s Guerneville hit-and-run that killed a bike rider as he checked his phone on the side of the road has been identified as the chief legal counsel for UC Berkeley; a 28-year old Rio Nido man has been named a person of interest in the case.

Sacramento State University students will be greeted with several new green bike lanes leading to campus, as well Sacramento’s first bike boxes and bicycle traffic signal on a dangerous corridor near the school.

A large landslide nine months ago will keep a popular Sacramento riverfront bike trail closed until at least next spring.

 

National

PlacesForBikes’ Michael Andersen says improving bicycling is as much about slowing traffic speeds as it is building bike lanes.

A Seattle woman celebrates bike riders of all sizes with stickers reading With These Thighs.

The war on bikes continues, as a 72-year old Arkansas bike rider was seriously injured when he ran into barbed wire that had been strung at chest level across a bike trail. Lets hope they catch the jerks who did it and lock them up for a very long time.

A Pittsburgh website says new bike lanes are a good first step, but more has to be done to ensure safety.

Boston cops have accepted an invitation from the founder of a Boston stunt-bike group to ride with them, after the riders were booted from a parade that banned bikes over the weekend.

The New York Times examines dockless bikeshare companies, which are currently banned from the city.

 

International

Montreal bike cops accidently bust one of the United States’ most wanted criminals.

Six-time Brit Olympic champ Sir Chris Hoy says pretty much anyone who weighs more than 112 pounds looks awful in Lycra, and looks ridiculous in fluorescent colors or a full team kit; he later issued an apology for some of his remarks. Although I do have to agree with him about white bike shorts, which don’t look good on anyone.

A paper in the UK offers advice on how to keep your bike from getting stolen.

Organizers of a British mountain bike race face charges for not doing enough to ensure the safety of spectators after a young woman was killed by an out-of-control bike in 2014.

After months of reports that self-driving cars can’t recognize bike and riders would have to wear some sort of transponder to improve safety, German auto parts maker Bosch is introducing a radar system designed to recognize and automatically respond to bicyclists even in heavy fog, as well as spotting riders coming from behind in order to prevent doorings.

A sharp decline in Australian imports of children’s bikes prompts fears that children are less active in the country. It could have something to do with the country’s dangerous, auto-centric streets, and a mandatory helmet law and draconian fines that discourage their parents from riding. Or it could have something to do with dangerous bikes, after an Aussie teenager was impaled by the gear shift on his bicycle.

 

Finally…

Your next foldie could weigh just 15 pounds. Who needs spin class when you can just pedal your desk?

And why let a little thing like a hurricane keep you from riding?

 

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

Morning Links: Playa del Rey task force unveiled, a call to block Long beach road diet, and new Crypto Cycles film

August 21, 2017 / / One comment

Councilmember Mike Bonin has followed up on his promise to create a task force to study the Playa del Rey road diets.

He named a panel of 20 people to the Playa del Rey Safer Streets Task Force, charged with determining if the lane reductions should stay in place. And what other changes, if any, should be made to improve safety in the beachfront community.

The panel is made up of local residents and business people, including those for and against the recent changes.

Although it’s notable that only Peter Flax is identified by his means of transportation; evidently, it’s just assumed that everyone else drives.

You know, like normal people.

Meanwhile, the Easy Reader News offers one of the most in-depth examinations of the controversy to date, as South Bay residents continue to expect everyone else to pay the price for their unsustainable single-occupant commutes.

……….

A “longtime Long Beach resident” appears to have taken the wrong lesson from the Vista del Mar fiasco, saying LA’s portside neighbor should learn from LA and cancel the planned Broadway bike lanes.

Long Beach really wants to be Amsterdam, where bicycles rule. But we live in Southern California, where distances between home and work are often great, good public transportation is essentially non-existent, and temperatures are often in the 80s and 90s (and it’s getting hotter every year).

Apparently, our council imagines if we destroy our main traffic arteries, those streets will just go “poof,” cars will disappear and lanes will magically fill up with air-conditioned, long-distance commuter bicycles.

Yes, because those moderate temperatures are just too hot for humans to endure. Especially with those cool sea breezes and coastal clouds to cool things off.

And never mind that most car trips in the LA area are three miles or less. Which hardly requires a long-distance commuter bicycle.

Or bicyclist, for that matter.

………

Last week we showed you a trailer for Décryptø, the experimental short film from Scott Nichols looking at the custom hand-made carbon fiber bikes from SoCal’s Cryptic Cycles.

Now you can see the whole six-minute film, which dropped yesterday.

………

Security footage shows a Walmart security guard intentionally run down a bike rider in a parking lot.

Twice.

The Albuquerque Walmart guard then claimed the rider simply fell over on his own when he hit the curb with his bike.

Sure. Let’s go with that.

According to the guard, the whole thing started when the man on the bike hit her car with a soda. Which even if true, does not justify assault with a deadly weapon once.

Let alone twice.

The bicyclist’s version is that he was just taking a drink, and accidently splashed water on the car.

Fortunately, he was not seriously injured.

Nor, apparently, was the driver by the soda or water that somehow splashed her vehicle.

Police seem to believe the guy on the bike — and the video — arresting the security guard on a charge of aggravated battery.

………

Here’s the spoiler-free standings of the Vuelta after two stages, with a recap of Sunday’s second stage, which was too fast for successful breakaways.

Britain’s twin Yates brothers will ride twin bikes in the Vuelta that are mirror images of each other.

After falling out with Australian cycling officials and getting left off the country’s cycling team last year, Aussie track cyclist Shane Perkins has received special permission from Russian President Vladimir Putin to ride for that country, which has a desperate need for cyclists who aren’t banned for doping.

Security is high in Spain for the Vuelta and the kickoff of the country’s soccer season following the terror attack in Barcelona, but won’t affect the route.

In non-Vuelta news, Peloton looks at LA’s own pro crit champ Justin Williams.

A Tour of Norway breakaway was reeled back in when a bridge unexpectedly opened, stopping the lead riders dead in their tracks until the rest of the field caught up.

……….

Local

Sad news from South LA, where a man was killed and two women wounded in a drive-by shooting while riding their bikes in the Florence-Firestone neighborhood. Note to KTLA-5: It’s not a shootout unless the victims shoot back.

Burbank’s new bike corrals are proving a hit with bicyclists, at times holding as many as 16 bikes in a space built for 14.

A writer for the San Gabriel Valley Tribune talks with two men who went carfree, and remarkably, their lives did not grind to a halt.

 

State

The legislator who authored California’s handheld cellphone ban says the reason it’s almost universally ignored by drivers is that the penalty is too low. He tried twice to increase the penalty slightly, but both times it was vetoed by a clueless Governor Brown.

A former BMX rider has started a BMX club for school kids in San Diego’s Barrio Logan to help teach bike safety and get the kids exercising.

A San Luis Obispo letter writer says no, the streets actually belong to all of us.

San Francisco parks officials have decided that protected bike lanes would detract from the beauty of Golden Gate Park. Because all those streets and cars are just so damn pretty.

A kindhearted South San Francisco cop passes along his own son’s bicycle to replace one stolen from a 10-year old boy.

A Sacramento mother says the hit-and-run driver who killed her 15-year old son as he rode his bike back home with a friend has changed her family’s lives forever.

The Chico Velo bicycle advocacy group is looking for a new executive director, as the woman who has run the group in the Gold-level bike-friendly city since 2012 is looking to retire.

Now that’s more like it. A Lake Tahoe man gets four years and eight months behind bars for running a stop sign and hitting a bicyclist while driving at three times the legal alcohol limit, then attempting to run down a witness that followed him; he’s also banned from driving for five years after his release. Make that a lifetime driving ban, and we’ve got a deal.

 

National

Germany’s Canyon bikes is coming to the US for the first time, available only through the internet.

Bicycling takes a short look at problems tall people don’t have.

As dockless bikeshare expands in Seattle, many riders are ignoring the local bike helmet requirement, while police focus on education over writing rickets. Meanwhile, a Libertarian who derided bikeshare as socialist has found the privately owned dockless bikeshare more to his liking.

No surprise here. The relatives of a fallen cyclist have filed suit against the organizers of the Kansas City Crit after he was killed falling into a steel crowd-control barrier in June.

Great idea. An Oklahoma city holds an annual Tour de Trykes to raise funds to give away 30 to 40 adaptive tricycles to special needs kids.

Forget motorists upset over the loss of parking or traffic lanes. A group of homeless people may sue to block plans for a Chicago bike path because it could force them out from the bridge they’ve been living under.

This is the cost of traffic violence. A Minnesota bioscience researcher was killed riding her bike, as she was on her way to mentor people at a homeless shelter.

A Michigan advocacy group collected donations to create a reward fund help solve serious crimes against bicyclists.

There’s a special place in hell for the hit-and-run driver who left a bike-riding nun dying in the street.

Detroit is planning to more than double the amount of protected bike lanes in the city.

A North Carolina community remembers a man who earned the name Bicycle Jonny by riding his bicycle everywhere, after he was killed by a speeding driver.

 

International

A British Columbia bicyclist was beaten with his own bike after being knocked off it by mentally disturbed man as he rode on a bike trail; the woman he was riding with escaped with minor injuries.

A 17-year old high school grad builds his portfolio with breathtaking photos taken on a summer bike tour across the Canadian Rockies.

A toddler was knocked out of his stroller by a sidewalk cyclist in Ottawa, Canada. Seriously, if you’re going to ride on the sidewalk, slow the hell down and ride carefully around pedestrians.

Employees at a Nova Scotia market rescue a bike rider after she suffers heat stroke on a trail ride.

A writer for the Guardian says that she’s lazy, but cycling with a pack of women through a London park changed that.

A letter writer in the UK says the correct answer to the question “Where are all the cyclists in the bike lanes?” is leave your car at home and bike in them yourself.

A mystery was solved after a British couple discovered a pool of blood and a backpack on their porch after hearing a knock on their door, and police conducted an unsuccessful search using dogs. It turned out to be a man who had fallen off his bike and suffered a head injury; his friends had taken him to a hotel for help after they found him knocking on the door of the house for help.

A Glasgow bike rider receives a round of applause for his response to an anti-gay street preacher.

The Jewish couple who created Curious George escaped the Nazi invasion on a makeshift tandem bike, riding from Paris to the south of France before fleeing to Brazil by train and boat.

Indian bike riders take a rain-soaked midnight ride through the streets of Mumbai.

Eight British Muslim men rode their bicycles 2,000 miles through eight countries to attend the Hajj in Saudi Arabia.

A 70-year old Australian woman describes what it’s like to be doored from a painful first-hand perspective.

WaPo says if you really want to see Kyoto, Japan, walk, bike or take a train.

 

Finally…

No, the best way to avoid wrecking your car during the eclipse is riding your bicycle, instead. If you’re going to run away from a crash with a bike rider, try not to leave your passenger behind.

And Lance’s Kiwi beer ad has been canned.

 

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Morning Links: Today’s burning bikeshare news, and Westchester/ Playa NC requests road diet removal

August 17, 2017 / / 2 comments

It’s our first light news day in awhile, so let’s get right to it.

……….

Today’s common theme is bikeshare.

Caught on video: Vandalism of the Bay Area’s Ford GoBike bikeshare continues, as someone set one of the bikes on fire as it was docked.

A new Rutgers University survey shows black and Latino respondents support bike lanes and bikeshare, but concerns over crime and racial profiling have to be addressed first.

Two more dockless bikeshare companies are taking to the streets of Seattle, starting with China’s Ofo.

It really shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Trump Administration had a bikeshare station removed from the White House grounds, after it had been installed at the request of the previous administration.

The battle for dominance in China’s crowded bikeshare market claimed another victim as Nanking’s Ding Ding went out of business without returning customer’s deposits.

……….

In a setback for safer streets, the Neighborhood Council of Westchester/Playa voted to send an advisory letter to CD11 Councilmember Mike Bonin calling on him to “immediately reverse the lane reductions in Playa del Rey.”

The motion was approved after removing Pershing Drive from the resolution, which presumably means they want to keep that one.

……….

Local

KPCC looks at plans to revamp the area in front of Union Station to make it more inviting for people walking and biking. Even if that means eliminating some parking and reducing traffic lanes on nearby streets.

Volunteers are wanted to help clean up the Santa Clara River in Santa Clarita; free bike valet will be provided by local bike shop Performance Cyclery.

Manhattan Beach approves a 400 foot bikeway along Pollywog park to improve safety to middle school students going to and from school.

 

State

The LA Weekly asks if California’s strict DUI laws are tough enough. That’s easy. No.

San Diego authorities thought they caught a break when police detained a couple for the hit-and-run that left a bike-riding woman in a medically induced coma, but it turned out to be the wrong car. Thanks to Frank Lehnerz for the heads-up.

After dominating California high school mountain biking, recent Ramona High School graduate Gwendalyn Gibson will represent the US at the world championships in Australia next month.

Santa Barbara will get its first protected bike lane, connecting the Eastside to downtown. If you can call bendable bollards protection, that is.

No bias here. A San Luis Obispo paper says local residents aren’t happy about plans to create a bicycle boulevard. Except they’ve dropped plans for the bike boulevard, and are actually proposing a pair of protected bike lanes. And only “several” of the 60 speakers complained about the proposal.

San Francisco is planning a road diet, bike lanes and other safety improvements on one of the city’s most dangerous corridors as part of the city’s Vision Zero program.

A Sebastopol bike gear maker nearly became the victim of a patent troll.

West Sacramento is installing a road diet to improve safety for people biking and walking; as usual, some residents want it ripped out before the construction is even finished.

A Sacramento public radio station examines efforts to allow mountain biking in US wilderness areas.

Folsom will open the full 2.5 mile Johnny Cash trail this October, honoring the singer’s legendary 1968 performance at nearby Folsom Prison; artwork depicting the singer will follow in another five years.

 

National

Seattle’s police department politely suggests it has better things to do than enforce the county’s mandatory bike helmet law.

Caught on video too: Bighearted Texas paramedics make a four-year old girl’s day by giving her a bicycle one of their daughters had outgrown after they treated her for a fall.

It took a bike rider to find a pair of horses that threw their riders and ran off into a Missouri national battlefield after getting spooked by turkeys.

Nice story. When a father tweeted that he couldn’t take his little daughter to a Green Bay Packers event she’d been looking forward to, one of the Packers players volunteered to ride a bike with her to a team practice himself. Even though her father was a Vikings fan.

Kindhearted Michigan cops buy a new bicycle for a young girl after taking a report about her stolen bicycle.

A New York driver parked in a bike lane — then chased after a woman and called her a fucking bitch after she had the audacity to ride her bike around him. Apparently, she was supposed to sit there and wait until he moved his car. Or maybe she said something as she rode past.

 

International

A fan of the Nottingham soccer club is riding to all of the second-tier British team’s away games to raise money for a cancer charity; he expects to ride at least 2,249 miles before the season ends next May.

Caught on video: A Scottish van driver has to make a panic stop to avoid a bike rider who rode out directly in front of him at a rainy junction.

Self-described anarchists remove grocery store ads from Helsinki’s bikeshare bikes.

Life is cheap in Singapore, where a truck driver got a whopping four weeks for killing an ebike rider when he pulled out from an intersection without looking. But at least he was banned from driving for five years, which will likely force him to find another line of work.

 

Finally…

No, you don’t want to borrow an abandoned bike in Japan. There’s a lot of good ways to impress friends; stealing a bike isn’t one of them.

And no, those bike-shaped bike racks aren’t meant for riding.

 

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

Morning Links: Laguna driver runs down cyclist and tries to hit another, stolen bikes, and Vision Zero news

August 15, 2017 / / 2 comments

Talk about getting the story wrong.

The Daily Pilot reported yesterday that a Laguna Beach driver had attempted to crash his car into a bicyclist who tried to stop him after he’d hit another rider.

But what they failed to mention was that the first crash was intentional, as well.

The Laguna Beach Police Department reported on their Facebook page that the driver fled after intentionally crashing into a man riding his bicycle, then trying to run over the second rider as he attempted to confront him.

Thankfully, he missed.

Fifty-three-year old Laguna Beach resident Kevin O’Neill was arrested on Saturday, after witnesses and victims picked his photo out of a lineup following the twin attacks Thursday morning at Bluebird Canyon Road and South Coast Highway.

No word on the condition of his victim.

Fortunately, this took place in Orange County, where the DA takes traffic crime seriously. We should expect a charge of assault with a deadly weapon, at the very least.

But let this serve as yet another reminder that it’s not worth your life to confront an angry driver.

Gather whatever information you can, from the make, model, color and license of the vehicle to a description of the driver, as well as any photos or video, if possible.

Then get hell out of the way and let the police deal with it.

Mug shot of Kevin O’Neill from Laguna Beach Police Department Facebook page.

………

Let’s catch up with a couple of quick stolen bike announcements.

Bobby Close of LA’s popular Velo Club La Grange sent the following notice.

One of our members had his bike stolen recently in Ventura California, his name is Marc Thomas. His bike should be easy to spot as it’s a 66cm custom made Landshark bicycle YES Marc IS TALL!!! Marc is one of the great members we have in LaGrange as he is constantly teaching new and old cyclists in his world famous “ Drills for Skills” clinics. Along with being a key member of the club he was one of the many people instrumental in making the Brentwood Grand Prix happen for so many years.

Attached is a picture of the stolen bike. The bike should stand out as only NBA basketball players are tall enough to ride it.

I’ve asked for additional information on exactly when and where the bike was stolen, but haven’t heard back yet.

And Mina Moskol of the LACBC’s Santa Clarita Chapter forwards a flyer for a bicycle stolen from one of the competitors in the World Police and Fire Games staying at a Palmdale hotel last week.

………

In the never-ending battle over the Playa del Rey traffic safety improvements, the Neighborhood Council of Westchester/Playa will debate a motion to approve a letter calling for a reversal of the all the Playa del Rey lane reductions at tonight’s meeting.

Despite what opponents of the Venice Blvd Great Streets project are saying, Sweet Lucie’s Ice Cream in Mar Vista may be closing, but it has nothing to do with the lane reductions.

And a new online petition asks you to show your support for Vision Zero in the face of attacks from angry drivers and talk radio jocks.

………

Forget the worst retirement ever; LA’s own former pro Phil Gaimon ranks the top ten cookies in the United States.

……….

We’ll catch up with bike events later this week, but I can’t resist this one. Which could be the best idea for a kid’s bike safety workshop ever.

Correction: This event takes place on Saturday the 19th, not on the 21st. Thanks to the LACBC for the correction.

……….

Spoiler alert: If you haven’t the final stages of the Colorado Classic yet, skip this section.

And if you haven’t, what the hell are you waiting for?

Italy’s Manuel Senni and Romanian Serghei Tvetcov held off the peloton to win the inaugural Colorado Classic after a two-man breakaway in Saturday’s Stage 3, as Colorado’s Alex Howes lost the lead he gained on Stage 2.

Despite the accusations that her birth sex gave her an unfair advantage, trans cyclist Jillian Bearden finished in the middle of the women’s field, while 21-year old Canadian Sara Poidevin swept to victory.

The race introduced a number of young American cyclists to international competition. Or maybe the other way around.

Cycling Tips offers some great photos from the four stage race, as well as the women’s two-stage competition.

A Denver business site offers a look at the festival that accompanied, and helped pay for, the bike race.

Cycling News points out a number of problems with the race and accompanying festival, but the chairman of the Colorado Classic says based on feedback, the race will probably be back next year.

……….

Local

The Source offers photos from Sunday’s CicLAvia, while some local businesses in San Pedro complain about traffic and say they weren’t consulted. CicLAvia always puts a significant effort into outreach, for as long as a year prior to a new event; businesses that respond and cater to the people passing by are usually richly rewarded; those who don’t, aren’t.

The Expo Line bike path was abruptly closed for the next three months between Centinela and Stewart Street for undisclosed maintenance work on Monday; Santa Monica Next says the detour around the work zone could be made safer simply by moving a few parking spaces.

A new bike and pedestrian pathway and bridge along the Pacoima Wash should offer a significant cut in non-motorized travel times through the northern San Fernando Valley.

While LA is busy battling NIMBYs, Burbank is reinventing itself as a denser, more walkable and bikeable community.

The LACBC is offering a free indoor class on basic bicycling skills tonight.

CiclaValley offers video evidence that going down Mt. Baldy is a lot faster than going up.

 

State

San Diego sheriff’s deputies are looking for the hit-and-run scumbag who left a 29-year old woman in a medically induced coma after running her down in Encinitas on Friday.

A San Diego mountain biker was airlifted out of Sycamore Canyon suffering from head and neck pain.

In a horrific crime, San Francisco police are looking for a man on a bicycle who blinded a woman by pouring bleach on her after telling her to leave.

San Francisco bikeshare bikes are vandalized once again, as a local columnist says bikeshare is resented as a sign of gentrification.

A kindhearted San Francisco cop bought a new bike for a ten-year old boy after his was stolen.

Nineteen bicyclists with Type 1 diabetes finish a 4,248-mile from New York to Napa County.

Tragic news from Sacramento, where yet another hit-and-run coward killed a man riding his bike on the shoulder of a roadway.

 

National

The National Transportation Safety Board recommends reforming the deadly 85th Percentile Rule, which allows speeding drivers to dictate speed limits. Or better yet, just get rid of the damn thing entirely.

People for Bikes offers free photos and a detailed explanation of what makes an effective neighborhood greenway, formerly known as bicycle boulevards. AKA bicycle friendly streets here in LA, though no one seems to have any plans to actually build any anytime soon.

Bicycling offers advice on how to get police to take your bike cam video seriously. Which is a problem with most police departments — including here in LA.

Bike Snob says “on your left!” needs to die already, even though there’s no way to pass anyone on a trail without scaring the crap out of them. I’ve found that simply adding the word passing, as in “passing on your left,” in a polite, conversational tone solves the problem almost every time. But what the hell do I know?

Treehugger says cars really should wear hi-viz, their drivers should wear helmets, and car radios should be banned. The latter would have the added benefit of keeping radio shock jocks from fueling drivers’ anger and contributing to road rage.

A Washington bike rider was killed by a driver with a suspended license. Proving once again the difficulty of keeping dangerous drivers off the road unless their vehicles are impounded as well. Thanks to Erik Griswold for the link.

Colorado’s Mesa Verde National Park invites you to bike the park on September 30th.

An Arkansas man finishes an extreme Alaska triathlon just within the cutoff time, despite losing a leg 32 years earlier.

The famed Cleveland Clinic offers advice on how to get back to riding a bicycle. And why.

Despite testifying that he was simply riding safely by taking the lane, the Pennsylvania cyclist on trial for obstructing traffic was convicted last week; sentencing is in three months, even though he’s already served a full year in jail awaiting trial. It sounds like the real problem was that he was too militant about his rights as a bicyclist, refusing to move over even when traffic backed up behind him.

New York tells dockless bikeshare companies to get lost.

The NY Daily News says only in New York could a truck driver leave the scene after running down a bike rider, and not be charged. Obviously, they’ve never been to Los Angeles.

Speaking of Bike Snob, as we were earlier, his alter ego offers 15 unwritten rules of bicycling in New York City you’re probably breaking. Or maybe would be, if you actually rode there.

Delaware state police blame a rider for wearing dark clothes in low light conditions and taking the lane after he’s rear-ended by a driver. Correction: I originally criticized the police for bending over backwards to blame the rider after noting that the crash occurred two hours before sunset. However, as Andy S pointed out, the crash actually took place before sunrise, not sunset. I apologize for the confusion.

A Louisiana astronomer has been riding across the US for the last 450 days to educate Americans about next week’s solar eclipse, covering over 9,000 miles before his planned finish in Nashville on Monday.

 

International

A fifth of all bicycling deaths in Montreal are caused by collisions with trucks, usually when riders are right hooked and dragged under the truck. Something that could be avoided by requiring sideguards.

A London court is told a fixie rider could have avoided a fatal collision with a pedestrian if he hadn’t been riding brakeless; he blamed the woman for walking distracted, instead.

Bicycle Dutch reviews the world’s biggest bicycle parking garage.

Cycling Weekly lists seven rides in Italy to add to your bicycling bucket list.

An Aussie parliament member who opposes same sex marriage says he loves the guys he bikes with, but he doesn’t want to marry them. And apparently doesn’t get it, either.

An Australian study shows men are more likely to commit acts of violence on the road, but women drivers tend to be angrier.

 

Finally…

The problem isn’t potholes, it’s the fairies. Most bike riders only have to worry about dog bites, not two-foot long iguanas — or bears.

And just what every single cyclist needs, bicycle speed dating.

 

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

Morning Links: Second lawsuit filed over Playa del Rey road diets, and bizarre racist traffic manifesto mailed

August 11, 2017 / / 25 comments

You knew it was coming.

In news that should surprise no one, a second lawsuit has been filed over the lane reductions on Vista del Mar and other streets in Playa del Rey.

This time, by the un-ironically named driver-activist group Keep LA Moving.

Which is fighting efforts to do just that in Playa del Rey and Mar Vista, by demanding a continuation of the failed auto-centric planning that has harmed so many parts of our city, at the expense of everyone who isn’t currently in a car.

What is only a little surprising is the paranoid, tinfoil-hat wearing extremes to which they’ve taken their case.

According to a story in the Daily Breeze,

City officials have “engaged in a campaign of misinformation, name calling and race baiting, claiming that the aforementioned changes were made for ‘safety’ reasons, while the changes have made the affected roadways exponentially unsafe,” the lawsuit states.

Race baiting? Seriously?

In response to backlash, the lawsuit says, Bonin misleadingly used the stories of victims who were killed on the streets, failing to mention details that show lane reductions wouldn’t have prevented their deaths.

“In none of these cases was the unfortunate death caused by too many lanes on the road, or the lack of dedicated bicycle lanes,” the suit states.

Never mind that the victims might have survived the crashes if the traffic had been moving at a less deadly pace. Which was the expressed purpose of removing those lanes.

But here’s the best one.

It also accuses the city of failing to conduct adequate public outreach for the Safe Streets for Playa del Rey Initiative, saying only 150 of Playa del Rey’s 12,000 residents were engaged in the process.

“LADOT thereafter populated neighborhood forums with outside, paid supporters to make it appear that local residents were overwhelmingly supporting the projects,” the suit states.

If you didn’t get your check, contact LADOT and demand payment. Because evidently, everyone else who supported the projects did.

And never mind that many, if not most, of those opposing the projects don’t even live in Los Angeles, let alone in Playa del Rey.

Keep L.A. Moving also alleges Bonin’s office has suppressed free speech by allegedly deleting critical comments and blocking users from his Facebook page.

Maybe they should give the 1st Amendment another read. Because I don’t think it means what they think it means.

Then finally, there’s this.

Keep L.A. Moving director Karla Mendelson said her group isn’t against safety, but wants to make elected officials think twice before implementing road diets.

No, they’re all for safety. As long as it doesn’t inconvenience them.

You can download a full copy of the lawsuit here.

………

Traffic safety advocates and neighborhood council members around Los Angeles have been receiving a very strange and offensive screed purporting to discuss traffic safety.

This bizarrely auto-centric piece, which is filled with bike hate and 180 degrees wrong on most traffic safety efforts, reads like the Unibomber’s manifesto, but without the intelligence.

Take this section on wide bike lanes. Please.

Even more frightening than the writer’s obvious glee at the fantasy of watching another human being die in the street, is the fact that these fliers have been mailed to people’s home addresses — an implied threat clearly saying “we know where you live.”

I’m told that at least one neighborhood council member has resigned as a result.

It’s horrifying to think that working to make this a more bikeable, walkable and livable city could put you in the crosshairs of people willing to threaten others to maintain their philosophy of autos über alles on the streets.

But that seems to be the world we live in.

……….

The self-proclaimed “LA’s #1 walking and biking advocacy group” we mentioned yesterday —which calls Vision Zero “population control,” and falsely claimed to be part of the non-existent group behind this website — says it will hold a public meeting at Intelligencia Coffee in Venice on Saturday.

If you live in the area, maybe you should drop in and see if they really exist.

And if they’re really there, give them a nice, big WTF for me.

And maybe a restraining order.

………

The Colorado Classic aims to reimagine bike racing; the Denver Post gives the details on all four stages.

Here’s your spoiler-free result of the first stage.

A Denver TV station says the presence of the Rwandan cycling team at the Colorado Classic sends a message of inspiration and hope, even if they’re not expected to win any stages.

Ex-Tour de France winner Floyd Landis says banning Lance’s podcast is just being petty, as he prepares to return to mountain bike racing at the Leadville 100 with his Floyd’s of Leadville medicinal dope partner Dave Zabriskie.

Cycling great Andre Greipel says he’s lost all his instincts on the bike.

The Guardian offers a beautiful photo essay examining the 2,400-mile Transcontinental bike race across Europe.

……….

Local

Maybe one day your summer bike rides could be a bit cooler, as Los Angeles experiments with changing the surface color of streets to reduce roadway temperatures.

Great profile of 16-year old Los Angeles public transit enthusiast Kenny Uong.

CiclaValley discovers the San Fernando Valley’s secret climb.

Helen’s Cycles is sponsoring a trio of rides throughout the LA area tomorrow.

Cycling in the South Bay’s Seth Davidson offers his own inimitable advice on commuting to work.

The South Bay’s Easy Reader News credits the removal of the Herondo wall on the Hermosa border and widening the bike path with opening the entrance to Redondo Beach, leading to a boom in business along Harbor Drive. So much for bike lanes killing business, as the above lawsuit asserts, as well as the “fat bike lanes” in the manifesto.

 

State

Residents insist that traffic congestion is a nightmare in Lytle Creek, even without any road diets or bike lanes. Thanks to Erik Griswold for the heads-up.

Caught on video: A San Francisco bike rider is sent flying when he apparently hits a curb after swerving to avoid an SUV that left-crossed him.

A San Francisco website says there ain’t no party like an East Bay Bike Party.

A 74-year old Healdsburg man will face a misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter charge for an unsafe pass that apparently caused a women to fall off her bike during a charity ride.

There’s a special place in hell for whoever stole a specialized bicycle from a Navy vet who was using it to recover from paralysis, after he was shot in the head while serving in Afghanistan.

Violent crime is increasing on a Sacramento bike path with one of the region’s highest concentrations of chronically homeless people; one rider reported getting punched in the jaw just for being there.

 

National

Streetsblog asks why cities shouldn’t fund student bikeshare passes like they do transit passes.

No surprise here. A new study showed that adult-supervised bike trains to and from school increased physical activity for kids, providing 35% of their daily recommended exercise.

Seattle discovers the most effective way to cut solo car commutes is charging for parking by the day, rather than by the month. Just imagine if they combined that with safer streets to encourage more walking and biking at the same time.

Speaking of Seattle, the city’s limited experiment with dockless bikeshare doubled to a total of 2,000 bikes this week, and could double again when two more suppliers hit the streets. My apologies to whoever sent this; unfortunately, I’ve lost track of where I got this story. But thank you anyway.

Caught on video too: A safety conscious Spokane burglar straps on a helmet before riding off with a homeowner’s bike, while ghost riding another.

Good idea. A Kalamazoo MI bike club printed and distributed 100 lawn signs to promote the city’s five-foot passing law.

The Pennsylvania bicyclist on trial for obstructing traffic testified that he was simply riding in the center of the lane to avoid debris on the right and prevent unsafe passing.

A tone-deaf Atlantic City editorial says bicyclists have to ride responsibly to protect themselves from distracted drivers. Which is probably true. But wearing a bike helmet isn’t likely to prevent a collision. And even the brightest hi-viz and lights won’t help if someone is looking at his or her lap instead of the road.

Emmy nominee Keri Russell is one of us, as a fellow bike rider strikes up a conversation about her show The Americans as she waited at a Brooklyn stop light. A) Conversations like that never happen when you’re in a car, and B) it’s proof that bicyclists really do stop for red lights.

Leonardo DiCaprio is still one of us, and still riding bikeshare bikes across New York. No word on whether he stopped for stop lights or paused to speak with any other bike riders, however.

A New York lawyer goes looking for video of the hit-and-run that put a bike rider in the hospital, and finds a city-owned truck with damage matching the one that hit her.

 

International

A 16-year old Calgary boy has raised $8,000 to fight cancer as part of a 124-mile charity ride, four years after an eye exam lead to the discovery of a baseball-sized tumor in his brain.

Edmonton, Canada is testing side guards on trucks to protect cyclists and pedestrians.

Toronto developers are starting to build carfree, bike-only condos.

The sister of a fallen teenage bike rider lashes out at young Brit riders who put their lives at risk by pulling stunts in front of cars. Although you’d think she’d blame the stoned driver who killed him, instead.

Caught on video three: A Dublin bike mechanic tackles a bike thief who tried to make off with his bike after he leaned it against a wall for a few moments.

The mayor of Melbourne, Australia threatens to deal with the problem of abandoned dockless bikeshare bikes by banning them entirely.

 

Finally…

Why bother biking to work or slogging through traffic when you can just swim. You could do worse than the Sneaky Cyclist Robber, as far as bank robber epithets go.

And a mountain biker tries to take a $149 Walmart bike down some steep singletrack, with predictable results.

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