She was taken to a local hospital. Sadly, Phil Gaimon reports the victim, a friend of his, was taken off life support this morning. She has not been publicly identified.
The driver remained at the scene, and reportedly cooperated with investigators.
A street view shows an intersection of two residential streets without lane markings. While it’s been awhile since I’ve ridden through there, I’ve occasionally used Idaho as a quieter alternative to busy Montana a block away.
Twitter/X user Mobility For Who offers a little more information about the crash site.
This is a 2-way stop, that the victim apparently rode through, but it’s also a neighborhood residential street with schools nearby. People have been asking the city for traffic calming measures there for years, from what I hear from residents. Drivers use 19th to cut through the neighborhood to get to/from San Vicente, so I guess the street is just setup to let them do that.
If you’re riding Idaho and crossing there, you’re basically just hoping that a speeding car isn’t coming hidden behind parked cars, so rolling through that stop sign often feels safer, just to get out of there as quickly as possible.
This is at least the 47th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the 13th that I’m aware of in Los Angeles County.
Update: The Santa Monica Mirror reports the victim was apparently riding west on Idaho, when she was struck by the southbound driver, who didn’t have a stop sign.
Update 2: A Nextdoor post identified the victim as Tania Mooser. A vigil will be held in her honor this Friday.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Tania Mooser and her loved ones.
Thanks to bikematic, Mobility For Who and Diana Williams for the heads-up.
It took about two weeks after the crash for Las Vegas police to determine that the killing of retired Bell, California police chief Andreas Probst in an August hit-and-run was intentional.
The reason became evident this weekend when horrifying video of the collision surfaced and quickly went viral.
In the video, which was AirDropped to students at a local high school at the end of last month, the teenage driver and his passenger(s) can be seen cursing at passing cars, before spotting Probst riding his mountain bike in a bike lane.
The 17-year-old driver and his passenger were cruising down a street in Las Vegas on August 14, coming up behind Andreas Probst as he rode his cycle in the bike lane. Filming with his cell phone, the passenger was chuckling with the driver as they plotted to run over Probst. You can hear them say, “Ready?” and “Yeah, hit his ass.”
The vehicle is seen in the footage coming up behind a red-clad man riding a bicycle alongside the road. The motorist pulls into the bike lane behind him, honks his horn, and purposefully strikes the cyclist’s back tire, sending him flying with the encouragement of his buddies.
The passenger records Andreas lying helplessly on the side of the road behind the vehicle. “Damn that n* got knocked out!” the passenger says as the driver can be heard stepping on the gas.
The Review-Journal’s coverage of the incident was also heavily criticized by readers who posted screenshots of a news obituary that ran in the Review-Journal on Aug. 18 — more than a week before the video surfaced — with a headline describing the incident as a “bike crash” and not an intentional killing.
In fact, a source had contacted the Review-Journal about the existence of the video more than two weeks ago, and a reporter had instructed the caller on how to forward the video to Metropolitan Police Department detectives investigating the case. Nine hours later, police announced that the incident had been deemed a homicide.
The Review-Journal also reports the passenger has not been charged, which seems inexplicable unless they were captured on the video screaming in horror at the deliberate carnage.
Hint: they weren’t.
At the very least, such a heinous crime would seem to call for a felony conspiracy charge, since both the driver and the passenger appear to have been planning the fatal assault.
Never mind that his own decision to ride on the sidewalk, rather than risk riding in the street, makes the case for building the bike lanes.
Let’s be clear: While WeHo talks a big game about “uplifting” marginalized people and “amplifying” their voices, the city’s pedestrians — those blue-collar, minimum-wage earning people the city claims to care so much about — are silently struggling just to get from Point A to Point B every day, as they’ve done for decades.
But fixing sidewalks isn’t glamorous, and that’s why WeHo hasn’t given a fuck thus far.
Even now, the impetus for reconstructing Fountain Avenue wasn’t to benefit pedestrians or disabled people. They were an afterthought.
Installing bike lanes, the cause celebre of every young politician and hip urban planner, was the point of this project.
Never mind that many of the “blue-collar, minimum-wage earning people the city claims to care so much about” are forced to ride their bikes to work along busy, dangerous corridors choked with traffic.
And not many use the sidewalks, because they can’t afford to live there.
No bias here. A Singapore website accuses an ebike rider and a motorist of road rage for engaging in a heated dispute in the middle of the roadway. Never mind that the bike rider was minding his own business until the impatient driver started honking at him for no apparent reason.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Tragic news from New York, where police are looking for a hit-and-run bike rider who killed a 69-year old woman as she was crossing a “chaotic” intersection. Since the bicyclist was on a bikeshare bike, police should be able to access user and GPS data to determine who was using a bike at that time and location. Which raises the question of why they apparently haven’t yet.
An ebike-riding man is recovering from injuries and faces sexual assault charges, after a Virginia woman flagged down a passing car when the man groped her on a bike path, then smiled as he rode away; she was able to catch up with him and apparently kicked his ass, knocking him off his bike and placing him in a chokehold until police arrived.
Streetsblog says Metro has installed new plastic bollards to protect the First Street bike lanes, which could be the first step in meeting their commitment to on bike/walk connections the promised for Metro’s new subway stations. However, it’s worth noting that the new bollards are spaced too far apart to keep motorists from driving or parking in the bike lanes, and won’t actually protect anyone from anything.
Huntington Beach will consider new ebike regulations at tomorrow’s city council meeting; the proposed ordinance would create different classes of electric bikes — which the state has already done — while providing for criminal or civil citations, and adding a section for unsafe riding. However, all of that may be moot and illegal, since regulating ebikes falls under the authority of the state, along will all other traffic regulations.
A La Jolla father calls for action on traffic safety measures after his 14-year old son suffered broken bones in his hand and foot when he was struck by a driver in a left cross crash, as he rode his ebike in a marked bike lane; the driver was waved through the intersection by another motorist, and failed to see the kid on his bike.
An 80-year old New York man was murdered by a black-clad man on a bicycle who circled the area apparently waiting for the victim to return home from a party, then rode up and shot him two times point blank in front of the victim’s horrified wife, in a killing caught on video; using a bike allowed the killer to approach his victim quickly and silently, without drawing undue attention.
More proof bike riders are tough, as a man in Baton Rouge, Louisiana walked himself to the hospital, despite three stab wounds in his back, after three people stabbed him and stole his bike and wallet, then left him bleeding on the sidewalk.
After courts awarded her the equivalent of over $620,000 for the death of her husband, a British woman decried the “inhuman” response of city leaders, who blamed him 100% for his own death after he was killed by a garbage truck driver as he rode his bike.
A Belgian bicyclist shown on video kneeing a five-year old girl in a viral video from Christmas Day 2020 has now won a defamation suit against the girl’s father, after a court fined the bike rider the equivalent of a dollar, concluding he didn’t intend to hurt her.
Helmet use has tripled among Japanese bike riders in the wake of a new law requiring them, although the lack of punishment for violating the law means it’s still only up to 13.5%.
Guyana’s junior cycling team was left standing at the airport, instead of flying to the Junior Caribbean Cycling Championships, because someone apparently forgot to check the airline’s strict no baggage policy, which includes racing bikes.
Especially since that video seems awfully familiar.
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A special thanks to Steve Fujinaka for a very unexpected and generous donation to help keep all the best bike news coming your way that lifted my spirits over the weekend.
August 25, 2023 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on A call to keep drivers out of SaMo bike lanes, drop in CA traffic deaths, and today-only deal on select CicLAvia merch
When is a bike lane not a bike lane?
When it becomes a parking lot. Or a traffic lane for motor vehicles.
A coalition of bike and safety advocacy groups has written an open letter to Santa Monica leaders praising their work building safer bikeways, but complaining about daily intrusions from motorists that put bike riders at needless risk.
To: Santa Monica City Council, Santa Monica Planning Commission, City Manager David White, Mobility Manager Jason Kligier, Director of Public Works Rick Valte,
Subject: Protecting our bikeways from motor vehicle incursions
Dear Council Members and City Leaders:
Santa Monica has become an exemplar of far-sighted bikeway design and implementation in our region. Recent innovations seen on Ocean Ave. and 17th St. have raised the bar for creating protected bike facilities that provide the safety and comfort to allow many more people to bike for their everyday mobility. Additional protected bikeways planned in Santa Monica’s Bicycle Action Plan will bring us ever closer to realizing a citywide bikeway network that will be a game-changer for mobility, traffic reduction and meeting our Vision Zero and climate goals.
Unfortunately, some motorists are undermining the benefits of recently-installed protected bike lanes (and standard, striped bike lanes) by parking in them and sometimes even driving in them. This behavior is photo-documented almost daily in social media posts (see examples: https://youtu.be/yYtqlHnEVVM).
When motor vehicles block these lanes it forces cyclists to divert into traffic lanes, sabotaging the safety and utility of these facilities, spoiling their potential to provide safe, equitable mobility choices for greater numbers of people. Further, when cyclists need to divert around vehicles blocking bikeways, this induces unsafe cycling behavior that might expose the city to liability as a result of negligence in maintaining proper bikeway access.
Therefore we, the undersigned organizations strongly urge the city to take steps to address this epidemic of bikeway incursions. There appear to be several strategies that could be explored:
– Physical barriers where they are safe and appropriate to prevent or discourage drivers from entering bikeways, such as bollards at entrance points, concrete separators and modular curb elements (like seen on Broadway).
– Additional signage and pavement markings to make it blatantly clear that bikeways are off limits to cars at all times.
– Signs that stipulate substantial fines for violations.
– Enforcement by parking and traffic officers, especially where vehicles park on the sidewalk or driveway aprons. But as a general rule, officer enforcement is sporadic and therefore less effective than physical elements.
– Perhaps photo enforcement, using something like the Automotus camera technology recently deployed in the Zero Emission Delivery Zone program.
– A literature search to explore best practices being used by other municipalities.
Clearly, physical barriers that prevent motor vehicle incursions 24-7 without the need for enforcement personnel is the superior and likely most cost-effective choice. And it makes sense to implement effective solutions to this problem before new bikeways are installed, so that this problem is not perpetuated and to save from having to make costly retrofits.
Please direct staff to find effective solutions to this vexing problem so that we can fully realize the many benefits of our growing bikeway network, especially public safety, and prevent this critical investment from being compromised.
Nine states and the District of Columbia increased more than 10%, led by Rhode Island with a horrifying 164% increase.
Meanwhile, new research examines a public health approach to road safety, considering transportation engineers as part of the public health workforce, while arguing that they should emphasize strategies that reduce risk for greater proportions of the population.
Then again, if we can’t even get the country to agree that a deadly worldwide pandemic was a public health issue, I wouldn’t hold you breathe on finding any agreement on ending traffic violence.
August 7, 2023 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on LA Times remembers philanthropic Burbank bicyclist Roy Wiegand, and LA wants your input on Forest Lawn Drive
One quick note: I am now on Bluesky, in response to the increasing toxicity on Twitter/X, thanks to an invite from Todd R.
The 60-year-old ultra marathoner and cyclist was refueling after traversing 2,500 miles on his bicycle in 25 days and in the process raising $26,000 to help improve access to clean drinking water for the Navajo Nation.
Wiegand ventured through San Francisco and Yosemite and braved 110-plus degree heat in Death Valley and Las Vegas. He enjoyed stunning vistas in Arizona and New Mexico and stayed at the homes of friends and strangers alike, his posts showed…
In the last few years, he had dedicated much of his time to philanthropic causes, most recently working with the water advocacy group DigDeep to raise money for the more than 700,000 American Indian and Alaskan Native people who lack access to clean, reliable water in the United States.
Funny how killer drivers always seem to take the best of us.
Whether because of the sentiment expressed below, or because bikes still are only allowed to ride halfway across, before being forced to turn back.
Legally, anyway.
Twitter post
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Let’s share a little Seattle bike joy from my friends at West Seattle Blog, as a huge mass of people take off on two wheels for a questionably named ride.
Is this the result of people tossing unloved and abandoned bikes into the water, or drunk tourists not watching where they’re riding?
Twitter post
Thanks to the incomparable Patt Morrison for the heads-up.
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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. After someone apparently riding a bicycle was injured in a collision at LA’s West Grand Ave and Vista Del Mar, the couple posting the video to Citizen observe the aftermath of the crash, and you can hear the man say “This is why you stay in the bike lane.” Never mind that he apparently has no idea what caused the crash, or why the victim may or may not have been in a bike lane, but automatically assumes the bike rider was at fault. I’m not sure if the link will work; unfortunately, I can’t embed the video. Thanks to Margaret W for the link.
Streetsblog’s Joe Linton, who understands these things a lot better than I do, takes a deep dive into the complicated, wonky subject of freeway mitigation, which requires Metro to take active steps to offset any increase in driving on future freeway, under California law. And hopefully, he’ll correct me if I didn’t explain that right.
More on Manhattan Beach’s decision to crack down on teenage ebike riders who violate traffic laws, instituting a zero-tolerance approach to scofflaw ebike riders. Although that sounds like illegally biased enforcement, unless the same zero-tolerance applies to motorists and pedestrians, as well as regular bike riders; if not, that could get all the tickets tossed if the kids get a good lawyer.
Anchorage, Alaska took a number of steps to become more bike friendly, approving measures to allow bike riders to treat stop signs as yields, as well as eliminating requirements for lights and brakes and noise signals, and for children 16 to wear helmets; the city also eliminated penalties for jaywalking.
The Michigan woman accused in the DUI killing of two people participating in a fundraising bike ride across the state has had her trial postponed until October; it had been scheduled to begin today.
Katie Archibald overcame grief over the death of her romantic partner, mountain biker Rab Wardell, to lead Britain to gold in the team pursuit, dedicating the win to Wardell.
And needless to say, Southern California has a long, long way to go.
The national bike advocacy group rates cities according to the quality of each city’s bike network, assigning a Bicycle Network Analysis score, or BNA, on a scale of 0 to 100.
The good news, if you can call it that, is that no US city scored lower than a 2.
Provincetown, Massachusetts and Crested Butte, Colorado ranked #1 and #2 overall, respectively, with BNA scores of 88 and 87.
Although I’m sure many LA residents think riding here is #2. And sadly, PeopleForBikes seems to agree.
Which puts us in a class with such bicycling nirvanas as Santa Ana, Las Vegas, Laguna Niguel, Raleigh NC, and Krugerville, Texas.
Which probably wasn’t named after Freddy, even if it should be.
Bike-friendly Sacramento suburb Davis ranked #1 among medium-sized cities with a BNA score of 77, while Minneapolis, Minnesota ranked atop the large city listings with a score of 68.
Outside+ is on sale for $1.99 a month for the next year, including the Outside digital network and the new Velo site. No guarantee what happens to your rate after that, however.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on rolling.
New stories from Urbanize and Streetsblog examine Monday’s opening of the Venice Blvd Safety and Mobility Project, which upgrades 2.5 miles of existing bike lanes and adds 2.1 miles of dedicated busways, while leaving a few notable gaps. Correction: Originally I had written that the project added four miles of protected bike lanes, and 2.5 miles of bus lanes, which was a misstatement. Thanks to Joe Linton for the correction.
Bicycling examines plans to build an advisory lane in Kalamazoo, Michigan, referring to it as an edge lane, which creates a single traffic lane in the center of the street while allowing drivers to move into the bike lanes on either side to pass another vehicle. Read it on AOL if the magazine blocks you.
New York has cleared the final federal hurdle preventing congestion pricing; the city is now expected to begin charging drivers to enter midtown Manhattan sometime next year. Which should clear the way for Los Angeles to institute its much discussed congestion pricing plan, as well.
A new Australian report lists 50 distinct contributory factors leading to bike riders being struck by drivers, along with another 50 leading to near misses; the leading factors are drivers pulling out in front of bicyclists, driver non-compliance with road rules, and drivers failing to give way. Note the key word with all of those is “drivers,” not bicyclists.
Santa Monica councilmembers report being flooded with dueling email campaigns, with one calling for preserving the bikeway, while another from residents of the Mid-City neighborhood called for its removal.
But for a change, more emails came from predominantly younger bicycle and pedestrian safety advocates, than from the more conservative — and presumably older — neighborhood activists.
So pat yourself on the back.
Even though the councilmember now says he never really wanted to radically alter or remove aspects of the project.
Good to know.
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Boy, does she get it.
In an op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle, a carfree former emergency room nurse, semiretired professor and septuagenarian bicyclist writes about the knee-jerk hatred of people on bicycles, both online and in what passes for the real world these days.
The next time you are tempted to pile on to such a discussion about bicyclists, ask yourself if you are doing so because you consciously or unconsciously resent them — for taking up space on the roads, for slowing you down in your car, for seemingly being so free while you are stuck in car traffic. And if so, stop and ask yourself if you can re-envision them in a non-stereotyped way: as your own kids, grandmothers, parents or other people who are placed at risk by negative comments. Your words have the power to reinforce hurtful stereotypes or to reshape perceptions.
Ultimately, hate of bicyclists comes from the same place as racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia: a desire to cling to the status quo power arrangements that favor some over others. As the bicycle becomes re-popularized as a legitimate form of transportation, there are inevitably more conflicts with those who continually and mindlessly assert that “streets are for cars.” But just as gay people are no longer willing to stay in the closet, nor women in the kitchen, bicyclists are no longer willing to settle for crumbs in terms of use of our public roadways.
It’s more than worth reading the whole thing.
Although you’ll have to find a way past the paper’s draconian paywall to do it.
However, it only showed a modest benefit in other types of crashes, which earlier versions — like the ones tested — weren’t designed to detect.
Although that means it failed in 70% of crashes, which may be a good record in baseball, but not so much in real life when it’s your ass that’s on the line.
And is apparently allowing it to stay that way, rather than promptly clearing it.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on rolling.
No bias here. A Wyoming police chief blames bike riders for most crashes with motor vehicles, claiming bicyclists have a misconception that they aren’t expected to obey the same traffic laws as motorists — even though the department doesn’t track bicycle crashes, so he’s really just guessing who’s actually at fault.
No bias here, either. English residents complain that “unsightly” bike hangers don’t get used, then complain when they do.
In an apparent attempt to thin the herd, Edinburgh officials say two-way street markings on a Low Traffic Neighborhood, the UK’s equivalent of our Slow Streets, will remain in place, even though they direct bike riders directly into oncoming motor vehicle traffic on the one-way street.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
San Francisco Streetsblog says the city’s Hyde Street bike lane project is garbage, suggesting the “info-free outreach and terrible designs” demonstrate how little the city’s transit agency really cares about bicycle safety.
Speaking of protective gear, Bell Sports is recalling their “Giro” Merit helmets because they don’t comply with CPSC safety standards, and could pose a risk of head injury. Which kind of defeats the purpose of a bike helmet in the first place.
A flight website offers tips on how to fly with your bicycle, complete with a table of major airlines’ policies. Which is not the same as flying on your bicycle, which usually happens if you hit a bump or something bumps into you.
Good news from Chicago, where Streetsblog editor John Greenfield is on the mend, two months after he was placed in a medically induced coma with major head trauma, as well as several broken ribs and a broken clavicle, after he was struck by a plastic pipe sticking out from a passing truck while riding his bike on the sidewalk.
This is who we share the road with, too. Video from the UK shows impatient drivers zooming down the wrong side of the road, on a street where three bicyclists have been killed in recent years. Then again, maybe they were just visiting Americans unable to comprehend the country’s left-side driving rules.
My apologies if you received an incomplete, premature version of this post, after I inadvertently hit the Post button.
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Two month’s later, the driver who killed Master’s cycling champ and world record holder Ethan Boyes in San Francisco’s Presidio National Park has still not been identified.
And federal officials are being unusually tight-lipped about the case.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, a medical examiner’s report obtained through a public records request shows officials suspected his killer was under the influence at the time of the crash.
But there’s no word on whether the driver was tested, or whether he or she has been or will be charged with a crime.
The story also confirms that Boyes was wearing a helmet, which was shattered by the force of the impact, and that he died of multiple head and body injuries, suggesting he was hit at a high rate of speed.
Yet the ongoing secrecy raises inevitable questions of just who the driver was, and why the government is taking so long to release any information.
The local police went so far as to allow officials with the DEA to review a press release before it was given to the media, and secretly forwarded photographic evidence to the DEA.
Yet officials kept information about the crash from the public, despite appearing to be an open book to the feds, even though it was their own employee who was under investigation.
While there’s a case to be made for allowing the DEA to keep the identity of an agent under wraps, any further involvement in the investigation would in inappropriate under any circumstances.
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Mitchell Guzik writes to warn bike riders of dangerous conditions on Ocean Ave in Santa Monica, after he took a bad fall when he struck a newly installed curb, saying construction work that closed the bike lane means there’s no safe place to ride.
The street recently received a new curb protecting the two-way bike lane, but it doesn’t do any good if the bike lane is closed.
Although Guzik reports some people were riding in the closed bike lane anyway.
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The West Hollywood Bike Coalition will hold its monthly meeting tomorrow.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on rolling.
Australian bicyclists aren’t the least bike surprised by new research showing drivers see people wearing bike helmets and spandex as less than human. Thanks to Geri for the heads-up.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
A London bike rider needed extensive surgery for a broken jaw after he crashed into a young girl walking in a crosswalk — not because he was injured in the crash, but because someone walked up to him afterwards and punched him in the face.
This is who we share the road with. A Bay Area man faces multiple charges for a South Bay crime rampage that included a series of carjackings, stabbings and deadly collisions across several cities and neighborhoods, leaving three people dead and five others injured.
It turns out it was kindhearted Miami Dolphins offensive lineman Terron Armstead who donated a $5,500 ebike to a 14-year old St. Louis boy who walked two hours to attend his middle school graduation; the boy’s grandfather, who is raising the boy and his five siblings after their mother died, also received a new minivan from a local car dealer.
Unbelievable. Life is cheap in New Brunswick, Canada, where a 25-year old woman was sentenced to one year home vacation detention for the hit-and-run death of a 62-year old man — but she can leave home for work or school, to care for her daughter or go to medical appointments, or just run errands for four hours every Saturday. Meanwhile, her victim received the death penalty for the crime of riding a bicycle.
Life is cheap in the UK, where a 26-year old driver won’t spend a day behind bars for the hit-and-run crash that left a 10-year old girl with serious injuries when he jumped a red light, and slammed into her as she rode her bike home — and faced the equivalent of just over $1,100 in restitution.
A Danish triathlete relates what happened in the crash that killed a race moto driver during a German Ironman last weekend, explaining the victim hit a triathlete head-on in a section where competitors where riding in both directions on the roadway at speeds up to 30 mph.
May 8, 2023 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Guns versus cars, NIMBYs want to ban beach bike bridge in park named for late bike advocate, and SaMo anti-bike bias
Thank you everyone for the kind comments. I can’t begin to tell you how much it means to me.
I’d like to say I’m better now, but my blood sugar is still more reminiscent of a ballistic missile than a placid stream. And my mental state is still swirling around the drain, in part due to my health issues, and in part due too many stories like the ones below.
The former should get a boost when I see my doctor this week, and impress on her the need for more urgent and aggressive action; the latter should improve once the former does.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t count on the health of our streets getting better anytime soon. Or our society, for that matter.
Now let’s catch up on a little news.
I’ve lost track of who sent me what over the last week, so let me just apologize in advance and thank everyone who sent me something.
The next day, a speeding driver plowed into a crowd of migrants standing outside a homeless shelter in Brownsville, Texas, killing eight people and injuring at least eleven others, in a crash witnesses allege was intentional.
If there is a difference between these two events, it appears to be one without distinction.
The body count is remarkably similar; the only difference is the choice of weapon, and the only question is one of intent. Which something tells me matters not one wit to the victims or their loved ones.
We will continue to fail as a nation, and a society, until we take comprehensive action to rein in guns and cars, and the out-of-control people in possession of both.
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George Wolfberg, right, talks with LA County’s Kristofor Norberg.
I received an email from a friend who lives in the Pacific Palisades area while I was out of commission last week.
She writes that a new park in Potrero Canyon has been named after our mutual friend George Wolfberg, a lifelong civic advocate and volunteer who fought for better beach bike paths, bike lanes and other safety facilities to help Angelenos bike more and drive less, both for cleaner air and to combat climate change, and just for the sheer joy of riding a bike.
George worked on what will now be known as George Wolfberg Park at Potrero Canyon for over 30 years, part of his larger vision of an interconnected Los Angeles.
What he envisioned was a park that would be open to all of the public, an oasis for recreation and beauty, in a fully sustainable environment of coastal native plants, while a restored riparian water capture system would protect the canyon.
And taking nearly eight decades of civic pride and advocacy with him.
But more than just a park, George envisioned a bikeway that would safely allow average people to ride from downtown Pacific Palisades, through the park and across a bridge to the beach, as well as connecting to the bike path to take riders south to the Metro Expo (E) Line in Santa Monica, or even further to Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach and Palos Verdes.
The final step seemed to be when Senator Ben Allen and others earmarked $11 million for the bridge and bikeway,
But as we’ve seen too often in the past, someone always seems to step in at the last minute to throw a wrench in the whole thing.
In this case, it’s a group of wealthy NIMBY homeowners who bizarrely don’t want bikes of any kind to besmirch a park honoring a lifelong bike advocate.
Here’s how she described it.
HOWEVER, there is a group of homeowners in the Palisades with homes on or near the rim of the park who have been very vocal about not wanting any bicycles or any type or e-bikes to be allowed in the park (which goes against what the community came to agreement upon years ago). They are making a lot of noise and asking to return the funds and cancel the bridge.
Even though the Coastal Development Permit for the Potrero Canyon Park requires access to the beach;
The Recreation and Park Board of Commissioners’ approval for the George Wolfberg Park at Potrero Canyon envisions a bridge access across PCH to the beach parking lot;
A bridge would provide safe passage across PCH rather than the danger of people trying to cross through the traffic on foot;
The bridge is also something that Caltrans supports (and it does not support adding a crosswalk or light at that location).
Yes, they want to cancel an already funded, and potentially life-saving, bike project.
Where have we heard that before?
But here’s the problem.
Because it was assumed that this was moving forward and funds were set aside, elected officials are only hearing from people opposed to the project, and not from anyone advocating FOR the bridge.
To complicate matters, supporters of the project only learned about the opposition last Wednesday, while the vote is set for this Wednesday, May 10.
Which means if you want a bike path and connectivity to the beach via a safe bridge over PCH, you need to speak up now.
No, now.
Email your support to the following California state senators today —
Because banishing bikes from a park named for one of their biggest advocates would be this city’s ultimate bike fail.
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Speaking of NIMBYs, a group of motorists are once again raising their anti-bike heads to demand the removal of a SoCal bikeway, this time Santa Monica’s new 17th Street bikeway project.
And once again, they are arguing that a Complete Streets project designed to improve safety for everyone somehow makes them less safe for people in motor vehicles.
Which is just a socially acceptable way of saying they don’t want to be inconvenienced, and are willing to risk sacrificing human lives for their God-given right to go zoom! zoom! to their hearts content.
Calbike is asking you to email the California State Senate and the Senate Budget Committee to demand that California policymakers to “divest from regressive road-building” and invest $10 billion in Complete Streets and California’s transportation future. Works for me.
This is who we share the road with, too. A Corona man was found guilty of killing three teenagers, and critically injuring three others, when he ran their car off the road and into a tree, for the crime of playing Ding Dong Ditch and speeding off after mooning him.
Hundreds of people rode their bikes in the annual Davis Loopalooza, as residents tried to reclaim their city in the wake of a serial stabber who killed two people, including one who was killed as he rode his bike through a local park.
A Spokane, Washington woman is — allegedly — a two-time hit-and-run loser, charged with killing two people after getting drunk and falling asleep behind the wheel, a decade after she was convicted of fleeing the scene after killing a bike rider. Which is precisely why drivers should lose their license for life after a single hit-and-run, because they’ve shown themselves to be unwilling to obey even the most basic requirement for driving. Let alone human decency.
The definition of chutzpah. An Arizona driver, apparently dissatisfied with the gentle caress on the wrist he received for the hit-and-run crash that killed a bike rider, appealed his conviction and sentence of less than six months behind bars and five years probation; thankfully, the appeals court politely told him to pipe down and do his time.
A Pittsburgh columnist argues the city should commit to zero traffic deaths by 2035. Although as we’ve learned the hard way, it’s one thing to commit to no traffic deaths, but it’s another to get elected leaders to actually invest the money and make the hard choices to make it happen.
This is why people keep dying on our streets. The Washington Postlooks at DC’s failure to rein in dangerous drivers, as one motorist manages to run up $186,000 in unpaid traffic fines. Just one more example of authorities keeping a dangerous driver on the streets until its too late.
And fortunately, this helped mitigate the trauma caused when Britain’s new figurehead not only failed to include a regiment of royal corgis in the coronation parade, but didn’t even his loyal four-foot soldiers a shoutout.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
March 28, 2023 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Family looks for answers in Newport Beach crash, CicLAvia rolls at tax time, and share your thoughts on CA bicycling
Yesterday I heard from a lawyer for the victim’s family, who shared that he survived the impact, but remains very seriously injured and unable to communicate.
As a result, they are desperate for any information to understand what happened to their loved one.
So if you saw the crash, or have any information about it, call Pajman Jassim of Jassim Law at 619/395-2668.
And be sure to keep the victim of this crash in your thoughts or prayers, or whatever you’re comfortable with.
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Mark your calendar for the next CicLAvia in less than three weeks.
You are invited to participate in a UC Berkeley study about the factors that make roads more or less bicycle friendly. The survey involves answering some questions about your cycling experience and then viewing and responding to short videos of bicycling on road segments. The survey takes 15-20 minutes to complete. The closing date for the survey is Friday, April 14, 2023.
Those who complete the online survey at the link below may enter a drawing to receive one of six gift cards. One $150 card, two $75 cards, and three $50 cards are available. Please encourage your peers and colleagues to complete this survey as well. Download our flyer: English | Spanish.
My take is the path is just too crowded as it is, particularly on weekends and summer afternoons and evenings, and adding commercial activity would just make a bad situation worse.
But maybe they could consider offering it during off-peak hours.
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Go ahead. Make my day.
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Disconnected bike lanes that don’t go anywhere don’t really help anyone, and clearly demonstrate just how little city and state officials actually care.
Although we may not want to admit it until she loses that weird whale hat.
Or maybe it’s a dolphin. Or a shark.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on rolling.
No bias here. A Toledo, Ohio bike path already under construction is on hold in a dispute over property rights next to a local country club, as the club argues it would be unsafe because an errant shot might hit a car, and the driver could crash into people on the bike path. Or maybe a unicorn might dart out of the 7th hole and stampede into bike riders on the path, which seems almost as probable.
An op-ed by former Santa Monica city manager and Los Angeles assistant mayor Rick Cole considers a historic opportunity to reunify the heart of Pasadena by reclaiming the scars left by Caltrans for the abandoned 710 Freeway stub.
A Yuba County woman will spend the next ten years behind bars after accepting a plea deal in the DUI death of a 37-year old neighbor as he was riding his bike; she was trying to drive home at twice the legal limit after having multiple drinks at a local bar.
It’s a sad commentary when neighbors say crashes happen all the time at a Texas intersection where drivers ignore stop signs, leading to a motorist crashing into the bike trailer carrying a six-year old girl; fortunately, both she and her father, who was riding the bike pulling the trailer, will be okay.
A writer for The Guardian insists on seeing the death of a 77-year old English woman who was knocked off her bike by an angry pedestrian as nothing more than a tragic oopsie, rather than the result of a sidewalk vigilante attempting to enforce the law against sidewalk riding herself.
Writing for Bicycling, Flax examines the solo ebike crash that took the life of 12-year old Molly Steinsapir last year, when she and a friend crashed their Rad Power bike at the bottom of a hill in Pacific Palisades, unable to stop.
The crash has led to a lawsuit by her parents against the bikemaker, Seattle’s Rad Power Bikes.
This story also begins with two preteen girls on a bicycle—to be specific, since it matters, on an electric bike made by the ascendant Rad Power Bikes. It was the final day of January 2021, on yet another balmy morning in Los Angeles. An 11-year-old named Eme Green was piloting the e-bike, and her friend Molly Steinsapir, 12, was nestled behind her on a cushioned seat intended for a second passenger. Molly and Eme were friends and neighbors, and both lived about a half mile downhill from this dramatic perch. One can imagine or at least hope that the girls felt some awe and delight up there, marveling at the expanse of earth and ocean and blue sky before them.
But then they turned that e-bike downhill and a terror unfolded. As Molly’s parents would later allege in a lawsuit, Eme could not stop the RadRunner, and the two girls crashed at high speed near the bottom of the steepest stretch of Enchanted Way. Molly, who was wearing a bike helmet, hit the pavement hard and lost consciousness.
Tragically, she would never wake up. Despite a series of increasingly desperate surgeries to address her head injuries, Molly would be pronounced dead a little more than two weeks later.
That’s the part of the story we all know, if you’ve been following the case.
But Flax uses Molly’s tragic death as a platform to examine the burgeoning ebike industry, and the boom in ebike riders of all ages.
And the seemingly inevitable crashes that follow.
This story will raise questions that don’t lend themselves to straightforward answers. Some are philosophical questions that you’ll have to ponder yourself; some are legal questions that lawyers will argue and possibly a jury will have to deliberate; and some are questions that only legislative or regulatory bodies can address. Should children be allowed to ride e-bikes? How do you balance responsibility between parents and the companies that make those bikes? Should there be significantly more proactive regulation of e-bikes by the government, given that some e-bikes may not be as safe as they should be? And in the absence of such regulation, do the companies that make and market e-bikes—particularly the companies that sell relatively inexpensive e-bikes directly to the customer—have an ethical or legal obligation to do more?
Like anything He writes, it spins an emotionally compelling tale that’s exceptionally well written. And it exposes deeper issues we all should be concerned with.
In other words, it’s well worth the few minutes of your day it will take to read it.
Which doesn’t make it one bit less tragic. Or criminal.
Thanks to Joe Linton for the heads-up.
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A Santa Monica driver is unhappy to find himself behind a small group of bicyclists.
At first glance, I thought the bike riders were breaking the law by taking both lanes, before realizing that the lane to the right is actually a parking lane. But in this case, they can legally take the full lane as long as they’re moving at the speed of traffic; otherwise they would be required to use the bike lane, which isn’t practical for a group ride.
One more reason to can California’s bike lane requirement.
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Thanks to Marcello Calicchio for the heads-up.
Meanwhile, ChrisByBike offers his own example of what is unacceptable.
Investigators believe he somehow rode into a the back of a parked truck with enough force to cause his death, even though a reported witness called it a hit-and-run.
No bias here. A columnist on the British island of Jersey complains about a plan to encourage bicycling to cut pollution with an ebike rebate, even though he claims there’s no proof of a pollution problem. And he wants bikes to face even more stringent restrictions than cars, including a ban on bicycles in the city center.
But sometimes it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
No bias here. Spectrum TV’s LA Times Today discusses “the battle of ebikes on SoCal beach boardwalks.” But somehow illustrates the story with what looks like an electric motorcycle zooming along a highway.
A writer for WeHoVille wins the lottery for a free bike from the city as part of a pilot program to get more people riding. Then has second thoughts about the restrictions, including a requirement to ride a minimum of a relatively paltry 20 miles a month.
Streetsblogtalks with San Francisco bike advocate Stacey Randecker, who recently went viral — and not in a good way — after complaining about paramedics parked in a bike lane, gaining fame as the “entitled cyclist of San Francisco,” or alternately, as a bike lane Karen. And as usual, there’s another side to the story.
