Tag Archive for politics

BOLO alert for Westlake hit-and-run, more on NY bikeshare Karen, and Life/Cycle-riding doctor running to replace Schiff

May 26, 2023 / / 2 comments

The seemingly epidemic of heartless LA hit-and-run drivers just keeps on going.

The LAPD is looking for the driver who left a bike rider bleeding in the streets of Westlake, suffering from what is described as “severe, though not life-threatening injuries.”

The crash occurred around 8:45 pm on Saturday. May 13 at Hoover and Carondelet streets in the Westlake District.

The suspect vehicle is described as an older model white Nissan, with likely with damage to its front end, hood and windshield from the impact with the victim.

Anyone with information is urged to call LAPD Detective Juan Campos at 213/833-3713, or email 31480@lapd.online. Or call the Central Traffic Division Watch Commander at 213/833-3746 after hours or weekends.

As always, there is a $25,000 reward for any hit-and-run resulting in serious, but not fatal, injuries in the City of Los Angeles.

Photo by Artyom Kulakov from Pexels.

………

There’s always another side to the story, even when everyone has already taken sides.

It’s been clear for some time that we’ve only heard one side of the story about the white New York hospital worker filmed in a viral video trying to wrest and whine a bikeshare bike out of the hands of a Black teenager.

The woman, who has become infamous as the Citi Bike Karen, has spoken through her attorney, who claims he has receipts showing she rented the bike she was trying to claim.

She’s raised over $124,000 from people who thought she was unfairly accused of racism.

Now the family of the teenager she was trying to take the bike from is finally speaking out for the first time. According to them, the 17-year old boy’s life and family have been in turmoil since the incident.

They explained that as the son of low-income, West African immigrants on public assistance, he was entitled to discounted 45-minute bikeshare rides, after which the rate increases.

The day of the incident, he and his friends rode from his home in the Bronx to visit friends in Harlem. After 45 minutes, he re-docked the bike to reset the clock, before setting out again at the reduced rate.

Which is when he claims his life went to hell.

He says the hospital worker approached the group as they briefly rested with the bikes, asking each one in turn if she could use their bike. Each boy said no, because they were about to take them back out again.

So she stepped onto the bike anyway, using her phone to scan the bike’s QR code as he held onto the handlebars, and tried to take the bike out of his hands.

According to New York’s NewsOne,

It was 7:24 p.m., and that is when the boys began recording…

Michael insisted Sarah Jane Comrie knew he was planning to use the bike. He said she asked him and his friends to use theirs, and they all informed her they were using the bikes and would be leaving shortly.

He said she seemed annoyed that they wouldn’t willingly give up their bikes to her. He also said he believes she wanted that bike as opposed to the others that remained docked in the rack because he had one of the newer e-bikes.

The rest of the interaction plays out in the video. Sarah Jane Comrie, dressed in scrubs bearing the NYC Health + Hospitals logo, removed her work ID badge from her neck, placed it in her bag along with a brown paper bag she was holding and began screaming for help.

Proving once again there’s always another side to the story.

We have no way of knowing who is right, or exactly how the events played out in the minutes before the camera was turned on. But the incident offers a Rorschach Test for today’s America, as people on both sides of the political divide quickly chose sides.

A white woman received over a hundred grand, while a young Black man has his life upended. Although a crowdfunding campaign started yesterday has raised over $37,000 for his legal fees in less than 24 hours.

Because once again, we’re all taking sides.

………

He gets it.

A reporter for Vice takes on former LADOT head Seleta Reynolds recent comments comparing building bus and bike lanes without community engagement to bulldozing houses to build freeways.

This difference of intent and scale is worth dwelling on because it is why the comparison is so misguided. The U.S. Department of Transportation has estimated 475,000 households containing one million people were displaced due to highway construction from 1957 to 1977. That is the equivalent of displacing the entire population of modern-day Austin, Texas. Likewise, a Los Angeles Times analysis found that an additional 200,000 people have lost their homes due to highway construction since 1990. To the best of my knowledge, there has not been a single housing unit destroyed or person displaced to build a bike or bus lane anywhere in the U.S. On these grounds alone, it is simply absurd to compare urban highway construction to bike and bus lanes. Projects of such vastly different scopes and scale deserve different approaches and mindsets.

But there is another good reason to reject this comparison, one that is equally revealing about the biases of modern transportation officials. Reynolds asked, “What makes us so confident we know best?” Another way of asking this is, what makes us so confident we know bike and bus lanes are better than masses of parking and multiple travel lanes for private cars for everyone?

The answer is: we’ve got the receipts. In this case, decades of scientific study and experiments carefully tracked and evaluated by local departments of transportation.

The sheer absurdity of Reynolds’ comments, coming from someone who should surely know better, is appalling.

It also explains why so little was done to improve LA streets while she ran the department. And why we shouldn’t hold our breath for any major innovations coming from her new position as Metro’s Chief Innovation Officer.

Unless maybe her chief innovation is even more pointless, never-ending public meetings.

………

Openly gay, Lebanese-Armenian global health leader Dr. Jirair Ratevosian is the latest candidate to toss his hat into the ring to replace outgoing Rep. Adam Schiff in California’s 30th Congressional District.

He’s also one of us, regularly taking part in the annual 545-mile AIDS/LIFECYCLE ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles, which benefits the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the Los Angeles LGBT Center.

However, Ratevosian faces stiff competition from Burbank Assembly Transportation Chair Laura Friedman, California State Senator Anthony Portantino, and former Boy Meets World star Ben Savage, among others.

………

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

A Columbus, Ohio bike rider is calling for more protected bike lanes after a road raging driver brake checked him, then threw a drink at him. That came just days after another road raging driver deliberately backed into a bike rider when the man on the bike refused to get off and fight him.

No irony here. A London man goes on a rant about the city’s LTNs, or Limited Traffic Neighborhoods, while filming himself in front of a congested, non-LTN jammed with cars.

An award-winning British TV producer, writer and comedian was fined the equivalent of more than $1,200, plus another $1,250 in court costs and victim surcharge, for flipping off a bike cam activist when he was caught using his smartphone from behind the wheel of his $173,000 Aston Martin.

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

After a Seal Beach letter writer complains that it seems petty to ticket a pair of senior citizens on a tandem for rolling a stop sign, a cop explains that bicycles are treated as vehicles in California, and bike riders have to obey the law, too. Even laws that most drivers don’t. Which is one more argument to pass the Stop As Yield bill in the state legislature, and get Governor Newsom to sign the damn thing this time. 

………

Local 

For some reason, I can’t seem to embed tweets today. So click through for some great shots of bicycles over 100 years ago in LA’s historic Chinatown, forwarded by Erik Griswold.

Los Angeles Public Press examines LA’s gender-expansive group rides designed to make biking in the city more comfortable, safer and accepting.

 

State

No news is good news, right?

 

National

The CPSC, aka Consumer Product Safety Commission, is looking for public input as they consider how to update federal regulations governing bicycles to accommodate ebikes. Read it on Yahoo if Bicycling blocks you.

Bloomberg’s CityLab says American cities are failing female bicyclists by failing to invest in bike infrastructure.

A writer for the Christian Science Monitor relates riding cross county from Boston to Oregon in the ’70s with just a bike and $200, back when ATMs and cellphones didn’t exist.

After saying that dismantling yet another claim that bike and bus lanes cause pollution is uninteresting and a complete waste of his time, a Seattle writer considers the philosophical function of the automobile, instead.

A Colorado man takes to the road on an adaptive recumbent bike, eight years after he was injured hitting a pothole, which eventually cost him both legs.

A 28-year old Kentucky man is dead after a pickup driver crashed into his bike; police excused the crash because glare from the setting sun kept him from seeing the victim. Never mind that the correct course of action would have been to pull over to the side of the road until he could see, before he killed anyone.

The New York Times says the Citi Bike bikeshare has become part of New York’s street life as it marks its tenth anniversary.

Several members of the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles participated in a fundraising ride to benefit an autism nonprofit while wearing winged bike helmets to match the ones they wear on the field.

This is who we share the road with. A 32-year old Philadelphia woman faces murder and vehicular homicide charges for a December hit-and-run crime spree that killed on man and injured two other people; she is accused of hitting three cars and a scooter rider, then crashing into a bike rider before fatally slamming into a man walking in a crosswalk, and fleeing from all three crashes.

 

International

British Columbia becomes just the latest city, state or province to offer ebike rebates before California’s long-delayed program finally gets off the ground, with purchase credits ranging from $350 to a maximum of $1,400.

After a UK city announced plans to encourage bike riding by giving away 2,500 bicycles and free bicycling lessons, local advocates argued the city needs to address the “huge issue” of providing safe places to ride them.

This is what it looks like to hit a pothole while riding at speed, as a British man suffered a broken pelvis when he only managed to avoid three out of four potholes in his path.

 

Competitive Cycling

Leader Geraint Thomas held off an attack by by Primož Roglič and his Jumbo-Visma team on stage 18 of the Giro, while Italian champ Filippo Zana broke away from the pack to claim the stage win; the stage came on Thomas’ 37th birthday.

Bicycling says the colossal amounts of elevation gain in the last few stages of the Giro will make the final days of racing a slugfest. Unfortunately, the story doesn’t appear to be available anywhere else, so you’re on your own if the magazine blocks you. 

Cycling Weekly pulls nine bikes out of the Worldtour pro peloton to name one as their racing bike of the year.

The annual Tour of Nevada City Bicycle Classic as been officially cancelled this year, following years of declining attendance.

 

Finally…

As long as people hate bicycles and semi-trucks, you might as well do them both. That feeling when you take your javelina bike out for a spin; thanks to Dr. Grace Peng for the link. 

And that feeling when you can’t decide between a BMX and pogo stick. So you do both.

……….

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

Oh, and fuck Putin, too.

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

An open letter to the candidates in L.A. Council District 5

February 10, 2009 / / Comments Off on An open letter to the candidates in L.A. Council District 5

As cyclists, we have to get more involved in the political process if we want to see things get any better around here.

So earlier this morning, I sent the following email to each of the candidates running to replace Jack Weiss as council member for Los Angeles’ Council District 5, based on the list provided by The League of Women Voters:

Dear Mr. (or Ms.) ….

As you are no doubt aware, the election for L.A.’s 5th City Council District is just three weeks away. While you, and the other candidates, have addressed any number of various community groups, the concerns of one highly motivated group have largely been ignored up to this point.

There are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of bicyclists over voting age here in the 5th District. Some, such as myself, ride for recreation and fitness. Others ride for social or environmental reasona, while for still others, cycling is their primary means of transportation.

Whatever their reason for riding, virtually all are concerned with such vital issues as safe streets and infrastructure, clean air and fair, unbiased enforcement of traffic laws, as well as the effective implementation of the recently approved Cyclist’s Bill of Rights.

I am offering you, as well as the other candidates in the race, an opportunity to address this constituency — at no cost to your campaign.

A resident and active voter in this district, I also operate a popular blog about bicycling in Los Angeles. I’m offering to turn this forum over to your campaign for one day, in order to speak directly to this city’s bicycling community.

You are free to discuss anything you want, from the roll bicycles can play in reducing traffic congestion, to seemingly unrelated issues such as crime rates or responsiveness to your future constituents. If you are an active cyclist, tell us. Or if you want to confront cyclists in some way, feel free. Whatever you send me, I will publish — unedited and without comment — in the order that it’s received.

It may only be seen by a relative handful of district voters; however, with so many candidates, even that could be enough to influence the outcome. Or it could be linked to by other influential blogs, and seen by thousands of eligible voters with an interest in cycling.

All I ask is that you send your statement to me in the body of your email or as a Word attachment, with a maximum of 1,000 words (although less is usually better online). And the sooner I receive it the better, to allow voters time to make an informed choice.

Of course, you’re under no obligation to participate; however, if some of the other campaigns submit a statement and you don’t, it could speak volumes to the biking community.

Besides, it’s free. So what do you have to lose?

I’ve already received a commitment from CD5 candidate Adeena Bleich, who notes that her brother is an urban cyclist who survived a collision with a car.

We’ll have to see if anyone else takes the time to respond. If they do, I’ll post it on here as quickly as I can get it online, as well as creating link or separate page to keep it active at the top of this site.

Because what the candidates have to say to us — or whether they even respond — will have a lot to do with how I cast my vote next month.

And I hope it will yours, as well.

 

Thanks to Damien at Streetsblog LA for linking to a couple of my recent posts, and pointing out that Brentwood boutiques aren’t the only retailers who are clueless about Ghost Bikes. Gary picks up the “That’s so L.A.” theme — hey, we may be on to something here! — with photos of a fast and furious Viper wipe-out. L.A.’s leading biking actress/activists couple tip us to the city’s upcoming bike rack design contest, here and here. Los Angeles rides contributes more well-thought-out ways to get from here to there. Santa Clarita sponsors a century ride at the end of this month. And Portland may, or possibly may not, have its own cycling version of the mask-wearing Lone Ranger.

Category: General / Tags: , , , , , , ,

A not-so-brief lesson in social protest.

August 15, 2008 / / Comments Off on A not-so-brief lesson in social protest.

Let’s spend just one more day discussing the recent crosswalk protest in Santa Monica. Or more precisely, the reasons behind the protest and what can be done about them.

As Alex points out in his post about the crosswalk protest, the Santa Monica CM riders have tried everything they could think of to get the city manager, council members and police to work with them to in finding solutions that would work to everyone’s benefit. The only result was more tickets, and more ham-handed police tactics, as if this was the most important item on their agenda.

So what can be done, if nothing has worked?

Start by thinking like a politician. While there are some elected officials who really do want to do the right thing, what matters most to most pols these days are A) the votes they need to get re-elected, and B) the money they need to get those votes. Yes, it sucks, and yes, we all like to pretend that’s not the case, but that’s the system we’re living with these days. So deal with it, already.

And judging by the reaction, the city is more concerned about the people who complain about Critical Mass, than they are about the votes they might lose from CM riders — many of whom live outside the city.

So that leaves money. If one or more of those C.M. rider have extra-deep pockets, it’s game over. Just make the maximum donation allowed under law to the re-election funds of every council member, and drop a hint that it would be nice if the police backed off a little. Then just wait a reasonable amount of time, and the council will decide that maybe Critical Mass isn’t so bad after all.

On the other hand, no deep pockets means you’ve got to get a little more creative.

Get the public on your side. People love underdogs in this country, and want to support those who are being treated unfairly by government — especially in a left-leaning community like Santa Monica.

So why aren’t the people on the cyclists side here? After all, the cyclists are the victims here, at least in terms of being unfairly — and possibly, illegally — ticketed. (Hint: protests that keep them from getting home to their families don’t usually help.)

Get some publicity. Tell your side of the story to anyone who will listen. Talk about why Critical Mass exists, and why you ride like relatively well-behaved hooligans through the streets of Santa Monica once a month. And tell everyone who’ll listen about how unfair the city is being.

While Santa Monica doesn’t have a local newspaper anymore, this is a story that’s tailor made for one of the alternative weeklies. You might also be able to get someone at the Times interested, such as Steve Hyman at the Bottleneck Blog.

Call every TV station. Call the radio stations and see if anyone will put you on the air to tell your story — especially Santa Monica’s public radio station, KCRW. Go to the 3rd Street Promenade and the Farmer’s Market and pass out handbills explaining the police harassment, and the city’s refusal to meet with you.

In other words, use every opportunity and forum you can think of to get your side of the story out there — without pissing people off at the same time.

Document your ride. Equip as many riders as you can with small digital video recorders. That way, you will have proof of what really happens if the police crack down again. Just remember, though — they can use it for proof, too.

Invite guest riders. Invite the press to ride along, and bring their notebooks and cameras. Let them see for themselves how harmless the ride is — and how heavy-handed the police reaction. If they see you getting tickets for violations that didn’t happen, they’ll report on it. And the public is a lot more likely to believe them than a group of rowdy riders.

Besides, wouldn’t you just love to see Paul Moyer on a Critical Mass ride?

Or invite a celebrity to join in. There’s no shortage of successful actors, musicians, models, etc., around here, and some of them love to ride. In this town, it often takes a lot less than six degrees of separation to find someone who knows them.

Just the presence of someone famous may be enough to get the police to back off. Let’s hope not, though. Because if you get a ticket, chances are, no one will really care. But if someone like that gets a ticket, it’s the lead story on Entertainment Tonight.

Contact the City Attorney. If the police really are acting illegally, the city attorney’s not likely to be very happy about it. And if you don’t get any traction there, go over her head.

Get a good lawyer. This is America, where litigation — or the threat of litigation — trumps all. There’s no shortage of cycling attorney’s around here; you may be able to find one willing to represent you pro bono through one of the cycling clubs, like Velo LaGrange. Or you might be able to get the ACLU or Common Cause interested; if not, they should be able to refer you to someone who will be.

Apply pressure. While a couple hundred CM cyclists probably aren’t enough to get the city’s attention, a couple thousand angry cyclists will — and that’s still just a small fraction of the riders who live in Santa Monica, let alone the tens of thousands who pass through every day.

So start a letter writing campaign. Ask everyone you know — and everyone they know — to write the Santa Monica city government and demand that they work with you to find a solution that will allow CM to go on, without causing undue inconvenience to city residents.

There’s always a comprise, if the city and the riders are motivated to find it.

Or go viral. Start an email campaign explaining your position, and asking people to email the city government. Then send it to every rider you know, and ask them to pass it on to every rider they know, as well as contacting every CM group in the country. When the city starts getting angry emails from Des Moines and Kalamazoo — potentially effecting their tourist trade — they’ll pay attention.

Use economic pressure. Again, if a few hundred CM riders stop shopping in Santa Monica, no one’s going to notice. But if a few thousand riders stop spending money in the city, people will pay attention — and the threat of a boycott is often more effective than the boycott itself.

So start an online petition. Ask people to sign a statement saying that unless the city stops writing illegal tickets and negotiates a reasonable accommodation allowing the rides to continue, they will stop spending any money in Santa Monica. No nightclubs, no restaurants, no (gasp!) Starbucks, no REI, no boutiques on Main or Montana.

Ask them to estimate the amount of money they spend in Santa Monica each week when they sign, as well. When the city sees the amount of money local merchants could lose, and the amount they could lose in taxes, they will pay attention.

And I’ll be one of the first to sign it.

Category: General / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
 
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