Evidently, leaving someone to die alone in the streets of Los Angeles just isn’t news anymore.
At least, that was the case Wednesday night, when a 50-year old man riding a bicycle was killed by a hit-and-run driver in South LA’s Hyde Park neighborhood.
Meanwhile, the silence from the mainstream media was deafening.
According to the story from CNS, the victim was riding east on Vernon Ave at 6th Ave when he was read-ended by the driver, who continued on without stopping.
He was pronounced dead at the scene.
At this time, there is no description of the suspect or the vehicle used to kill the victim, and no other information available.
This is at least the 36th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, the eighth that I’m aware of in Los Angeles County, and the fifth in the City of Los Angeles.
That’s just more than half the SoCal total for this time last year, and compares to 21 bicycling deaths in the county at the start of last October.
Either we’re having an exceptionally good year, or there are a lot more crashes that we’re just not hearing about.
I’d put my money on the latter.
This is also at least the 13th fatal hit-and-run involving someone on a bicycle since the first of the year.
Update: The victim has been identified as 51-year old Jacinto Ayala Gurrola. There’s still no word on where he lived, or any description of the suspect vehicle or driver.
My deepest prayers and sympathy for Jacinto Ayala Gurrola and his loved ones.
The victim, described only as a possible minor, died at the scene. The station reports a bicycle was lying on the sidewalk afterwards, next to a tent in the street covering the victim’s body.
Unfortunately, that’s about all we know.
There’s no word on how he may have been killed, or any description of a possible suspect.
Assuming this was a hit-and-run, there is a standing $50,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of the driver for any hit-and-run in the City of Los Angeles.
This is at least the 19th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the eighth that I’m aware of in Los Angeles County; four of those have been in the City of Los Angeles.
It’s also the eighth fatal hit-and-run involving a SoCal bike rider this year.
In it, Linton takes the Los Angeles Planning Department to task — deservedly — for producing what he calls “an astonishingly vacuous report” that’s ostensibly a status report on implementation of the city’s mobility plan.
Yet one that he says ignores all the multimodal facilities included in Planning Department’s own plan.
Almost as if they are, in reality, the LA Lack of Planning Dept.
According to Linton,
In 2015, the city approved the Mobility Plan, with hundreds of miles of new bus and bike lanes, pedestrian improvements, and a Vision Zero policy to end L.A. City traffic deaths by 2035. Safe streets advocates loved it. Reactionaries hated the plan so much they sued to block it.
Yet the Planning Department somehow gives itself an undeserved pat on the back, claiming to have accomplished 76% of the mobility plan’s Action Programs.
While that may sound like they’re making real progress, those Action Programs have nothing to do with putting paint on the street. Let alone the long-promised barriers and networks that might actually provide some protection and connections for people on bicycles.
Instead, Linton describes them this way.
“…a sort of obscure plan appendix that lists 173 tasks assigned to various city departments. The Action Plan includes things like: roadway safety outreach, wayfinding, analysis of unpermitted mountain biking in city parks, and periodic updates of LADOT’s Manual of Policies and Procedures.”
He ties their massive success in rearranging the massive pile of papers on their collective desks back to last year’s fiasco with the city council’s non-approval of the Healthy Streets LA initiative — which does nothing more than require the city to live up to its commitments, and build out the mobility plan they already passed when streets in the plan get resurfaced.
That’s it.
But evidently, that’s just a bridge and resurfaced roadway too far for the city.
He describes how the city council, led by now-disgraced racist Council President Nury Martinez, voted to adopt their own ordinance mirroring Healthy Streets LA.
One that wouldn’t contain the requirement to build out the mobility plan, but would, in actuality, leave it up to the council to decide whether or not to actually fulfill their obligations.
And you can probably guess how that would go, if you’ve been paying attention so far.
Last August, the council made it sound like the ordinance would happen right away. Then-president Martinez stated that city staff would “report back on my motion within the next few weeks.” Councilmember Nithya Raman spoke of the council “match[ing] the urgency that I hear from all of you [safe streets advocates] today.”
That’s exactly what the city’s bicycling community heard from an LADOT official within weeks of the 2010 bike plan’s passage, which was later subsumed into the city’s mobility plan.
We were told, while still celebrating our hard-fought victory, that the whole damn thing was merely “aspirational.”
Something the city has more than lived up to by living down to their extremely limited aspirations.
As Linton mentions above, we’re still waiting for that draft ordinance mirroring Healthy Streets LA to come back for a reading, let alone a vote, a full eight months — not weeks — after it was promised.
There was hope after the last election that the city’s new progressive councilmembers would light a fire under our sleepy governing body, and we might actually see some action on our streets.
But it seems just the opposite has happened. And the council has managed to douse whatever fire they might have had.
As I said, it’s a must read. So what are you waiting for?
No description was available for the suspect or their vehicle. Or for the victim, apparently.
As always, there is a standing $25,000 reward for any hit-and-run resulting in serious injuries in the City of Los Angeles. Although there’s not a lot to go on this time.
But there may be hope, according to The Thousand Oaks Acorn.
The survey found that 75% of drivers empathize with cyclists’ frustrations, such as being overtaken too closely, while 81% of cyclists said they understood the challenges that drivers must deal with while navigating busy local streets.
So there’s that, anyway.
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Gravel Bike California stops to sniff, if not the roses, the superbloom of flowers brought on by the recent rains on the Carrizo Plain.
When you hear superbloom, California thinks #CarrizoPlain:
— Gravel Bike California (@GravelBikeCal) April 13, 2023
Thanks to Zachary Rynew for the heads-up.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on rolling.
San Francisco Streetsblog says a proposal for bike lanes on a commuter route and tourist attraction between Sausalito and San Francisco is already seeing a bikelash.
After a British bicyclist is understandably outraged and profane when a van driver cuts him off in the country’s left-handed equivalent of a high-speed right hook, the driver threatens a defamation case when he gets review bombed. As if you can somehow be defamed over something you actually did.
But sometimes it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
An Edinburgh columnist applauds anyone who has the courage to ride a bike on the city streets, but begs bike-riding men to cover their butt cracks. Or “bahookie” in the local parlance, apparently.
No bias here. A WeHo paper says the city wants to take away your “right” to make a right turn on a red light, while saying the maneuver is a factor in just 1% of crashes. Which means it’s responsible for around 400 deaths every year, which probably matters to the victim’s families, even if it doesn’t matter to them. And I don’t recall right on red being included in the Bill of Rights, but maybe I missed that day.
A San Diego TV station reports city council members responded to a recent hit-and-run by continuing to discuss the city’s Vision Zero Plan “to eliminate but also prevent traffic collisions, bicycle and pedestrian injuries and deaths,” which seems to be the same thing. Although I would be overjoyed just to hear Vision Zero discussed in the Los Angeles council chambers.
The San Jose Mercury News’ Mr. Roadshow explains why bicyclists don’t pay for the roads the same way drivers do. But then the paper hides it behind a paywall as “premium” content, reflecting a basic misunderstanding of how the internet works. Although you can read it for free if you’re willing to accept their daily emails.
The most dangerous intersections in Los Angeles are in South LA.
LA’s Vision Zero High-Injury Network has already revealed that many of the city’s deadliest corridors were located in South LA.
Now, after examining nearly 14,000 collision reports from 2020 to 2022, MoneyGeek has counted 86 Los Angeles intersections which have had ten or more deaths or serious injuries over the three-year period.
Four of the top five were in South LA — including three on deadly Manchester Blvd.
S. Vermont Avenue and W. Florence Avenue (19 injury crashes)
W. Manchester Avenue and S. Normandie Avenue (18 injury crashes)
Victory Boulevard and Lindley Avenue (18 injury crashes)
W. Manchester Avenue and S. Vermont Avenue (18 injury crashes)
E. Manchester Avenue and Avalon Boulevard (18 injury crashes)
The company also crunched the numbers on the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods, with DTLA coming out on top with over twice the number of intersection crashes of any other neighborhood.
Just more evidence of the failure of LA’s vastly underfunded and unimplemented Vision Zero program, which has just two years left to meet its goal of ending traffic deaths by 2025.
Along with the lack of regulation that puts us all at risk.
An article of faith among proponents of autonomous vehicles is that the vast majority (94 percent is the figure often cited) of traffic crashes are caused by human error. Cyclists make up a relatively small portion of overall road deaths in the United States, but they’re killed at higher rates than vehicle occupants. Aside from a slight dip in 2020 when we drove less early in the pandemic, cyclist fatalities have risen for over a decade, and in 2021 the annual total jumped five percent to an all-time high of nearly 1,000, according to preliminary data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
He goes on to look at the death of Elaine Hertzberg, who was walking her bike across a Phoenix street when she was run down by one of Waymo’s autonomous vehicles.
Although blame for the crash was put on the human operator, who was distracted watching videos on her phone, rather than the road ahead.
Zoom out more, and the data tells a similar story. Uber’s ATG test fleet had driven more than two million autonomous miles before Herzberg’s death. Waymo claims that it has surpassed 20 million miles total. Altogether, autonomous vehicles in California drove more than four million miles in 2021. That’s tens of millions of miles driven over years of testing, with one death. That may sound impressive, but the most recent fatality statistic for human driving in the U.S. is 1.33 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled. Autonomy literally has a long drive before it can show that it can match, let alone exceed, human safety performance, even such as it is.
And outside of those sporadic data disclosures and California’s reporting system, there are few ways to monitor progress. Without federal regulation, there’s not even a widely accepted benchmark for how safe autonomous vehicles should be to use as a target. “I understand there’s a balance between innovation and regulation, but right now that oversight isn’t happening,” says Homendy, herself a cyclist. “It’s disappointing.”
One point in favor of autonomous vehicles, though, is the complete and total lack of road raging drivers.
So at least if one of those runs you down, you’ll know they probably weren’t aiming for you.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
This is why people keep dying on the streets. A British driver walked without a single day behind bars for chasing a 16-year old boy with her car, then intentionally knocking him off his bike, all because one of the boy’s friends accidentally clipped the wing mirror on her car.
Readers of the Los Angeles Timesagree that LA drivers are getting worse, though one letter writer blames the paper for encouraging less enforcement of minor infractions.
Christian singer Amy Grant says she leaned into her faith after suffering a significant traumatic brain injury going over her handlebars in a Nashville crash last year.
Vice examines how Dutch bikemaker VanMoof made ebikes cool. Except a) not everyone thinks ebikes are cool, and b) VanMoof is just one of literally hundreds of ebike makers with varying degrees of coolness.
December 5, 2022 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on 26.5 years for killer stoned driver in AZ master’s race, a damp last CicLAvia of 2022, and Orange Line bike path closure
I’m often humbled by the support this site receives. And never more than I was on Sunday.
Saturday I was feeling low after we didn’t receive a single donation, leaving the fund drive hundreds of dollars behind last year’s record-setting pace.
Then on Sunday the floodgates opened. Not only did the sudden outpouring of support make up the deficit, it actually left us a little ahead of last year this morning.
I recognized a lot of the donors, whether from giving in years past, sharing links or comments on here, or from their work on bike advocacy issues.
Each and every one touched my heart, leaving me overwhelmed with gratitude. But none more than a donation from a loved one of a fallen bicyclist, who remembered the support I gave them in their time of need.
All of which has me feeling incredibly humbled today.
I hope you’ll join me in offering a sincere thank you to André V, Greg M, Scott G, Penny S, Samuel M, David Matsu, John H, Anthony D, Mark M and Andre C for their very generous support.
Because they’re the ones who gave from the heart to bring all the best bike news your way today, and every day.
So don’t wait. Just take a moment right now to join them by donating via PayPal or Zelle.
Shawn Michael Chock was sentenced to 26½ years behind bars for the bizarre crime. The 36-year old man received a 16-year sentence for killing 58-year old Jeremy Barrett, and 10-1/2 years for assaulting a police officer, to be served consecutively, with no time off for good behavior for the first 16 years.
A defense attorney claimed Chock was once an accomplished bike racer himself, but suffered from mental health problems. He reportedly relapsed when he received bad family news after three years of sobriety, and blacked out after failing to take his meds and inhaling aerosol fumes, crossing over several lanes of traffic to plow into the racers.
Although that doesn’t fit with earlier reports that Chock was laughing as he steered into the victims, and made a U-turn to come back at them.
Which is kind of hard to do when you’re unconscious.
It’s also worth noting that a history of mental illness and substance abuse somehow wasn’t enough for authorities to keep Chock from getting behind the wheel until it was too late.
He was only arrested after officers shot his truck engine to disable it following a standoff with police behind a hardware store.
We want to commemorate @MayorOfLA Eric Garcetti for your continual support of CicLAvia! Here is a @explorethousand helmet with #42 to celebrate you as the 42nd LA Mayor coinciding our 42nd CicLAvia. We wish you the very best and hope to see you at CicLAvia in 2023! pic.twitter.com/B3guD8B5Dc
There is currently damage to the bike path that includes cracking and uplifting of asphalt that poses a safety hazard to riders. LADOT is working with @metrolosangeles and @cd4losangeles to make permanent repairs to this section.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. A Marin paper calls for “compromises” by limiting the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge bike path to weekend use by recreational riders — even though traffic congestion is no worse than before it was installed, and removing it on weekdays would just make traffic worse in other areas. In other words, they want bike commuters and local communities to compromise by surrendering to drivers.
No bias here, either. A Portland hotel manager complains about a parking protected bike lane in front of the hotel, as careless guests nearly collide with bike riders, and a guest’s car door “got hit by a bicyclist.” No, the guest doored the person on the bike, which is against the law.
Anyone interested in serving on your local Neighborhood Council should make plans to attend an information session hosted by Streets For All this Thursday. We need a lot more support for bikes on local councils to overcome the outsized NIMBY voices.
A bill in the New Jersey legislature would make it the first state in the nation to mandate bike helmets for adults. Although similar laws have repeatedly been shown to be counterproductive, reducing bicycling rates and the safety in numbers effect, while disproportionately affecting low income riders and people of color. Thanks to Victor Bale for the link.
A 31-year old woman with Down’s Syndrome is able to ride a bike for the first time since she was a child, after a kindhearted stranger saw her competing for the title of Virginia’s Miss Amazing Senior Miss Queen, and gave her a new three-wheeled bike through a nonprofit organization.
International
A website for a drunk driving interlock ignition system reminds us that other countries have solved the problem of drunk driving, even if the US can’t seem to do it. Sort of like we can’t seem to solve traffic deaths, hit-and-runs, shooting deaths, poverty, universal healthcare…
Police have identified a 62-year-old German truck driver as a suspect in the hit-and-run death of Italian ex-pro Davide Rebellin, who died shortly after retiring from a 30-year racing career; police are still searching for the suspect.
Let’s start with a quick recap of Tuesday’s election.
The short version is, nobody won.
Yet.
The large number of mail-in ballots received on and dropped off on Election Day means it could be more than a week before we have final results.
However, as things currently stand, Rick Caruso and Karen Bass are in a virtual dead heat for mayor, with Caruso holding a slight lead.
Meanwhile, bike rider and corgi dad Kenneth Mejia holds a seemingly insurmountable lead over termed-out councilmember and career politician Paul Koretz to become city controller and the first person of Filipino ancestry to hold elective office in the City of Angeles.
Bike-friendly Katy Yaroslavsky, daughter-in-law of longtime LA office holder Zev Yaroslavsky, has an 11 point lead to replace Koretz in CD5, which should mark a sea change for active transportation on the Westside.
Tracy Park holds a nearly 11 point lead over bike-friendly Erin Darling to succeed retiring Councilmember Mike Bonin in CD11.
Hugo Soto-Martinez has a tighter five point lead over incumbent Mitch O’Farrell in CD13; if he can hold the lead, it could be a major win for active transportation in the district, where O’Farrell blocked nearly all bike projects, and only came around to support Sunset for All to gain support as he battled for re-election.
Tim McCosker has a seemingly insurmountable 30 point lead over progressive Daniel Sandoval to replace termed-out Joe Buscaino in CD15, following Sandoval’s wage theft scandal that effectively sank her prospects. I don’t have a feel for what McCosker’s expected victory will mean for bike and pedestrian projects in a district that stretches from San Pedro to Watts.
Career politician Bob Hertzberg holds a slim 1.5% lead over West Hollywood Councilmember Lindsey Horvath for LA County Supervisor; a Hertzberg victory would represent a significant conservative shift compared outgoing Supervisor Shiela Kuehl.
The collision that killed MacDonald was just one of three crashes 28-year old Victor Manuel Romero stands accused of on that March night, after getting drunk and into a fight in a bar parking lot.
Despite assuring police he would call for a ride, he instead got behind the wheel of his BMW and tore out of the parking lot, hitting the bar owner’s Caddy on the way out.
He then slammed into MacDonald, driving so fast an Uber driver waiting at the intersection felt his car rock as Romero blew by; MacDonald was like dead by the time he hit the pavement.
He then hit another car after blowing through a red light, and was arrested back near the bar after fleeing on foot.
Unbelievably, his attorney tried to blame his actions, not on being drunk or merely an asshole, but by claiming he suffered a concussion from repeated blows to the head while on the losing end of the fight, which somehow affected his decision making.
Sure. Let’s go with that.
Granted, even the worst client has a right to a defense. And his attorney can’t be blamed for throwing whatever Hail Mary he can in the face of overwhelming evidence.
But maybe he could come up with something even slightly more credible.
The South LA Expo Park to Watts CicLAvia will roll December 4th, on a route that will take it along Martin Luther King Blvd from Exposition Park to Historic South Central — the birthplace of West Coast Jazz — then along Central Ave to Florence-Firestone and ending on 103rd Street in Watts, the home turf of the East Side Riders.
The late date means the event will be subject to the whims of what passes for winter weather in Los Angeles. However, many people who have attended previous South LA CicLAvias have ranked them among the best events in the 12-year history of CicLAvia.
And it certainly offers some of the best food you’ll find anywhere in Los Angeles.
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Nothing like getting right hooked on a protected bike lane.
State Senator Scott Wiener credits his SB288 with exempting the projects from CEQA review, forcing opponents to take it to a vote of the people, where it was resoundingly rejected,
Another fun fact: SB 288 is a key reason why San Francisco’s slow streets program has been able to continue for so long without CEQA lawsuits. Instead, our democratic process gets to make that decision — not whoever has the resources to file CEQA lawsuits.
This is why people keep dying on the roads. A British driver walked without a single day behind bars for using his car as a weapon to ram into a man on a bike in reverse, after the man slapped his car when the driver yelled for him and another bike rider to get out of the road. Adding insult to injury, he’ll get his damn drivers license back after a lousy six-month suspension, when it should have been revoked for life.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Police in Carlsbad are looking for a road-raging bike rider who attacked a car driven by a pair of teens by trying to open their door and punching a window, before smashing the windshield, then allegedly lying in wait for them down the road; the altercation reportedly began when traffic bogged down as the rider was crossing the intersection, which “got him all spun up and (one of the teens) retaliated at him and got upset at him.” I assume that last quote means something, but we may need a teen-to-English translation before it makes any sense. As we’ve said many times before, though, violence is never the right answer, no matter how justified it may seem at the time.
A fire at the El Segundo Chevron plant inevitably means Southern California gas prices will be going up. To which bike commuters seem oddly unconcerned.
The San Francisco Examiner explains California’s requirements for bike lights and reflectors. However, the law only applies if you’re riding after sunset or before sunrise, although police have been known to use daytime light checks as an illegal pretext stop.
Transport for America says education, enforcement and technology — the cornerstones of American Vision Zero programs — don’t make streets safer; what does is better roadway designs.
Residents of Provincetown, Rhode Island are just the latest to get ebike rebates before California’s long-delayed program goes into effect, with qualified buyers eligible for up to $1,200.
Road.ccrecalls bygone bike tech we’re well rid of. Although if we completely get rid of wing nuts, we’ll have to find another term for all those assorted whack jobs. Oh.
December 1, 2021 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on LA Council votes to close Northvale Gap on Expo Line bike path, and last CicLAvia of 2021 rolls through South LA Sunday
There may be hope for closing the infamous Northvale Gap yet.
That will provide the space needed to extend the Expo Line bike path to close the approximately one-mile gap that resulted when Metro gave up on building the pathway through that section, in the face of heavy opposition from homeowners living on Northvale Road.
They had opposed the construction of the Expo Line, apparently believing when they bought their homes that the unused train tracks behind them would stay that way in perpetuity.
And after losing that battle, turned their attention to fighting the bike path, convinced pervy bike riders would peer into their homes, and criminals would make off with their flat screen TVs and silverware balanced on their handlebars.
No, really.
That left bike riders forced to take a circuitous route on the street in front their homes, instead of a direct one behind them. And having to climb a steep hill to ride west, instead of a flat route alongside the train.
The completed pathway is projected open in 2025 — 13 years late, and tens of millions of dollars more than it would have cost to build it along with the train line.
And that’s only if the inevitable lawsuit over eminent domain doesn’t delay the construction even longer.
Metro notes the route will have easy access with several stops along the aforementioned E is for Expo Line.
Unfortunately, I won’t be going, since I’m still suffering from the long-lingering effects of whatever the hell illness knocked me on my ass before Halloween.
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We’ve linked to this one before. But it’s worth revisiting.
He gets it. Former Azusa, Ventura and Santa Monica city manager — no, not at the same time — Rick Cole says cities can’t put off road repairs, and can’t build their way out of gridlock.
This is the cost of traffic violence. A longtime Houston art model was killed in a drunken hit-and-run crash when a speeding driver plowed into the back of his bike; he had credited bicycling with helping him maintain the muscular physique that made him popular with artists.
No bias here, either. A local Fox News channel reports on the opposition of North Carolina residents to a lane reduction and bike lanes along a rural highway, while failing to note that the primary reason for removing traffic lanes is to slow speeding drivers and improve safety, not to to force bike lanes on people who don’t want them.
French cyclist Anthony Roux has started his own initiative to fight roadside litter, encouraging people to remove trash from both sides of the road, after becoming upset over the piles of trash he sees on his training rides. We can see a lot more garbage along the roads than people who zoom by in cars do. And too often cause more than our share of it.
Thanks to James L, André V, Paul F, Terese E and Matthew R for their generous donations to keep all the best bike news and advocacy coming to your favorite screen every day.
So don’t wait. Give now via PayPal, or with Zelle to ted @ bikinginla.com.
Any amount, no matter how large or small, is truly and deeply appreciated. And thanks for all the kind words accompanying the donations; that means as much as any amount of cash.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Sometimes, the explanation stinks as much as the project.
And the location.
Anyone who ever drove the 605 Freeway through Baldwin Park and the City of Industry in years past noticed the stench of the duck farm long before it came into sight.
And it lingered long after, making you wonder if the odor was still wafting through the air, or burned into your olfactory nerve.
It’s been 20 years since work began to turn the poultry farm into a park. Although you have to wonder if even that is long enough to get the stink off the land.
But now the stench is wafting from the Metro boardroom, instead.
What’s depressing is how inexorably these small freeway expansion projects continue to advance. And the Metro gaslighting that now promotes polluting auto-focused freeway expansion as good for equity and for active transportation.
He goes on to note that Caltrans bizarrely certified that the project would have no negative environmental impact.
Because apparently, induced demand isn’t a thing anymore.
Equally bizarre, though, is Metro’s attempts at greenwashing the project by touting its extremely limited benefits to alternative transpiration.
Again, from Linton’s Streetsblog piece —
Caltrans and Metro tout the project as benefiting alternative transportation. The environmental documents assert that the project would “enhance bicyclist and pedestrian safety” and “help reduce GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions” by supporting alternative modes of transportation: biking and walking.
All of the non-car features of the project are:
Adding a sidewalk where it is currently missing on the north side of Valley Boulevard – including ADA-mandated features such as wheelchair ramps.
Adding “a widened shoulder to provide a future bike lane along Eastbound Valley Boulevard up to the northbound loop on-ramp.” Installing this 1,400-feet length of bike lanes does not appear to be actually included in the project, but the margin for potential future bike lanes is nonetheless noted as helping reduce GHG emissions.
Reducing the curve radius of the northbound loop on-ramp from eastbound Valley Boulevard; this “would be reduced to slow entering traffic to enhance safety for bicyclists and pedestrians and support use of these alternative modes.” Note that the reason the turning radius is being narrowed is to accommodate a second lane on the current one-lane on-ramp (without taking out the business next door). Caltrans asserts that an upcoming curve radius would slow Southern California drivers entering the on-ramp, and that this would encourage bicycling. Really.
All the extra bike riding this project would inspire wouldn’t begin to offset the environmental and climate damage it would cause.
Then again, it’s hard to offset anything when the bike and pedestrian side of the equation is virtually nil.
Unless you think a possible, noncommittal quarter-mile bike lane that may never be built is enough to offset what would undoubtedly be a major increase in traffic and emissions.
Or that safety for people on foot and bicycles can really be enhanced by adding a second onramp lane.
Admittedly, I’m not lawyer. But it seems like it wouldn’t take a very big cannon to shoot holes in the environmental report for this project.
Or a water pistol, for that matter.
So let’s be honest.
Every member of the Planning Committee who voted in favor of this project — which is all of them — should be ashamed.
Because whatever benefits this freeway widening project may or may not offer, their efforts to bikewash it with negligible benefits to bike riders and pedestrians stinks every bit as much as the duck farm did.
And it will take years to wash that stench off them, too.
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Nice to see an effort by LA Councilmembers Mike Bonin, Paul Krekorian and Paul Koretz to use newly signed state laws to improve safety on our streets.
LA City Councilmembers @MikeBoninLA, @PaulKrekorian and @PaulKoretzCD5 have put out 3 transportation motions to take advantage of new state laws. 1) Identify streets to reduce speed limit 2) Create permanent slow streets program 3) Implement bus-camera enforcement of bus lanes pic.twitter.com/PniSfhwz07
Instead, it’s about kids as young as six years old being handcuffed and arrested by police — including brutal use-of-force incidents — the overwhelming majority of whom are Black, brown or other people of color.
Here’s just one example they cite.
About 165 miles due south, in the rural hamlet of Paris, Illinois, 15-year-old Skyler Davis was riding his bike near his house when he ran afoul of a local ordinance that prohibited biking and skateboarding in the business district — a law that was rarely enforced, if ever.
But on that day, according to Skyler’s father, Aaron Davis, police officers followed his mentally disabled son in their squad car and chased his bike up over a curb and across the grass.
Officers pursued Skyler into his house and threw him to the floor, handcuffing him and slamming him against a wall, his father said. Davis arrived to see police pulling Skyler — 5 feet tall and barely 80 pounds, with a “pure look of terror” on his face — toward the squad car.
“He’s just a happy kid, riding his bike down the road,” Davis said, “And 30 to 45 seconds later, you see him basically pedaling for his life.”
Seriously, there’s no damn excuse for targeting kids like this, unless they somehow pose a direct threat.
And that’s pretty hard to imagine for a six-year old.
Or an unarmed 15-year old just out for a bike ride.
While it may seem like an obnoxious prank, it should be treated as an assault with a deadly weapon, which could have severe consequences for anyone with allergies or breathing problems.
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Who needs a bike car in the train when you’ve got one in front of it?
Good news and bad news. Bay Area bike riders are happy to learn the hard-won bike lane on the Richmond-San Raphael Bridge won’t have to be closed for construction of a proposed water pipeline. But the approach leading to the bridge will be.
July 6, 2021 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on CicLAvia returns with 3 dates this year, a first-hand view of traffic violence, and bike rider shoots driver in self-defense
That’s followed by the traditional Heart of LA route in Downtown Los Angeles on October 10th — the same date as the first CicLAvia, also in DTLA, eleven years earlier.
And last but far from least, a long-awaited return to South Los Angeles on October 5th.
Here’s what our bike-riding friend at KCBS2/KCAL9 have to say on the subject.
Normally I’d read it, maybe mutter a quick prayer, and move on. Just another every day tragic occurrence.
Except this time, the details dovetailed with an email I received yesterday, in the form of a script, from fellow bike rider and corgi aficionado Mike Burk, who moved from SoCal to the cooler and cloudier clime a few years ago.
Fade in:
Late morning, driver’s POV.
Coming home from town this morning when we’re diverted off the highway to a side road because of a road block. At the intersection, noticed a truck towing a poorly loaded trailer carrying an old backhoe. The truck was stopped, the driver getting a ticket by a couple of sheriff’s deputies.
Finally back on the highway and two or three miles down the road. Flashing lights ahead. As we inched along I noticed a bicycle on its side and no rider around. Whatever happened is over (it had been only 90 minutes since we came that way into town).
Seeing the bike and the emergency vehicles, I got a picture.
Photo by Mike Burk
Dissolve to:
Early afternoon, POV over shoulder, sitting at computer.
Me, during a Zoom meeting with our homeowner’s association Publications Committee. Going over articles for our next month’s Kala Pointer Newsletter. One of the committee members asked, “Did you hear about Stan Cummings this morning? He was riding his bike…”
You can guess the rest. Yes, that was Stan’s bike. He was medivacced (sp) to Harborview Hospital in Seattle (40 miles… if you’re a crow). He’s in their TBI unit, not expected to recover well, if at all.
It didn’t take too long for someone following to dial 911 — and then for the sheriffs, local police, and state police to locate and stop the truck.
Stan is active in the community and on his bike. We’ll see what happens.
Fade to black.
Burk adds this final thought.
I forget that this can happen anywhere. We’re in a REALLY small town. Even after all the miles I’ve put on my bike, the thought of getting out on that highway (WA19 and WA20) up here just terrifies me. I keep to the back roads.
Sadly, that’s exactly the case.
The news stories I see come from everywhere English is spoken, and many places it’s not.
From big cities and tiny towns in every state throughout the US, as well as Canada, Mexico and Central America, the Caribbean, the UK, Europe, India, Africa, New Zealand and Australia. And virtually everywhere else, on every kind of roadway.
Yet somehow, the onus for safety inevitably rests on our narrow, unprotected shoulders, rather than the people in the big, dangerous machines who pose the danger to people on bikes, and everyone else.
It’s like living in a village where monsters roam the streets, dragging people off at random. And instead of doing something about them, we merely tell the villagers to be careful and lock their doors at night.
Like this rabidly auto-centric anti-Vision Zero diatribe, in other words.
Every line is like parody. Jim Kenzie victim blaming on @TSN_Sports@MotoringTV. Because they’re the ones to die, responsibility for pedestrian safety is on pedestrians, not the people operating 2,000 kg high-speed machines, or those who design the streets that prioritize them. pic.twitter.com/2Oh0VBB14m
Apparently, Minnesota’s annual Freedom From Pants Ride went off without a…well, you get the idea.
MINNEAPOLIS: A 911 caller reports "500 bicyclists" wearing underwear and bathing suits, biking east from the intersection of Hennepin Ave. & Washington Ave. N.
— MN CRIME | Police/Fire/EMS (@MN_CRIME) July 5, 2021
Thanks to Tim Rutt for the heads-up.
………
Megan Lynch forwards this piece about a man seven years into a diagnosis of dementia, yet still riding his bike across Nova Scotia to fight the disease.
WATCH: Dr. John Archibald’s father was diagnosed with dementia in 2014. There’s no cure but Archibald has decided bike across Nova Scotia to raise awareness and funds for dementia research and support. Alicia Draus talks with him about his ride which started on July 1. pic.twitter.com/eePQrf5h9r
British bike scribe and historian Carlton Reid explores England’s old Great North Road from London to Newcastle, traveling in style in a classic Morgan sports car, accompanied by a Brompton foldie in the passenger seat.
………
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
In a truly bizarre case, a man on a bike shot a road raging Houston driver in self-defense when the male driver told a bike-riding couple they couldn’t ride in that neighborhood, then deliberately knocked the woman off her bike; her pistol-packing partner was let go, while the driver was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon.
Seriously? There’s not a pit in hell deep enough for a 23-year old English man who was caught masturbating on his bicycle, riding one-handed as he pursued women and young girls. Yet the bike-riding perv somehow avoided jail despite doing it not once, not twice or even thrice, but four times, apparently because the judge thought he’s a “promising student.”
A Singapore bicyclist was criticized for leaving a painted bike lane to draft behind a trio of dump trucks. Although that would be perfectly legal in the US, though not necessarily smart, where most, if not all, states allow bike riders to take the lane if they’re riding the speed of traffic.
Boulder CO police say there’s a nationwide bike shortage, so use a damn U-lock, already. Although they may not have said it quite that way.
More proof that collisions with pedestrians are just as dangerous for the person on the bike, as a 28-year old New York woman was left clinging to life after she crashed into a pedestrian walking in a Prospect Park crosswalk while she was riding in the bike lane. Seriously, ride carefully around pedestrians, who are just as unpredictable as people on bikes. And in cars.
Mashable offers tips on what to think about before entering the ebike world. But they get the first tip wrong, suggesting that ebiking is just a seasonal thing for everyone but the most extreme bicyclists.
A Singapore bike rider unfairly gets the blame for riding in the traffic lane when a driver slams into him from behind, throwing him onto the windshield before landing in the roadway; the victim sat up following the crash, so hopefully he’s okay. Warning: The dashcam video of the crash is absolutely horrifying, so be sure you really want to see it before you click on it.
Despite Bonin’s overwhelming popularity, winning 71% of the vote in the 11th Council District in 2017, he has been repeatedly targeted by conservatives who hate his policies, but haven’t been able to beat him at the ballot box.
Whether this latest recall attempt is a genuine effort to get him out of office, or just an attempt to harass and distract him, it seems like a remarkable waste of time and money for someone who will be up for re-election in less than a year.
………
No hypocrisy here.
Speaking at yesterday’s meeting of the Los Angeles City Council’s Transportation Committee, outgoing CD5 Councilmember Paul Koretz says hardly anyone uses the bike lanes in his Westside district.
@PaulKoretzCD5 says that bike lanes in his district “you hardly ever see anyone using them” though calls #DTLA bike lanes “heavily used” “smashing success” a “triumph” and says they should be expanded
That couldn’t possibly have anything to do with Koretz repeatedly blocking bike lanes on Westwood Blvd and other major streets in his district, though.
Could it?
People might be more likely to use them if they were safer and provided more separation from the Westside’s high speed traffic, legal and otherwise.
And if they connected with other safe bike lane in an actual network that could be used to travel throughout the district, rather than a handful of disconnected bike lanes that unexpectedly end, forcing riders to fight their way through heavy traffic.
A failure of planning that can be laid directly at Koretz’s feet, who is clearly all in favor of building bike lanes.
In someone else’s district.
Correction: Call it a poor word choice on my part. The failure was not one of planning, as former LADOT Bicycle Coordinator Michelle Mowery pointed out in the comments yesterday.
I’d like to take issue with your use of the word “planning” in respect to the lack of bikeways on the Westside. It is not “a failure of planning” that the Westside does not have a sufficient bikeway network. What the Westside does not have is enough political will. The planning was done, the funding was available for implementation, and the projects were all blocked by the NIMBYs and sitting elected officials.
She’s right.
I should have known better, because I remember those losing battles all too well. My apologies for unintentionally placing the blame where it doesn’t belong.
………
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. An op-ed in the New York Daily News says “ebike blood” is on the hands of New York’s progressive city council for the crime of finally making it legal to ride an ebike or e-scooter in the city. Then goes on to lump both together, without noting that the injuries and deaths he cites could just as easily have happened with regular bikes or skateboards.
Cell phone video taken inside a #SanFrancisco Walgreens shows a man packing a garbage bag full of items while multiple people, including security filmed from feet away. Video shows him riding right past them on his bike down the aisle and out the door. https://t.co/llBFeD1cjppic.twitter.com/9BwSHuTVII
Once again, the bike rider gets the blame, after a 69-year old Sonoma woman suffered major injuries when she allegedly rode her bicycle into the path of a motorist. Which is hard to imagine, since she was riding west and was struck by a driver headed east on the same road; as always, a lot depends on whether there were any independent witnesses to corroborate the driver’s story.
Once again, a driver is somehow unable to avoid crashing into a group of bike riders, as one person was killed and another wounded when the driver smashed into a group of four people riding bicycles in Syracuse NY. And once again, fled the scene, leaving his or her victims bleeding in the street.
No pun here, as a Miami paper says the city is driving to become more bicycle friendly, when it’s all that driving that made and keeps it unfriendly. But it’s interesting that they included Santa Monica, along with Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Stockholm, as their examples of bike and pedestrian friendly cities.
