Tag Archive for speeding drivers

Blaming bad drivers for the real problem on our roads, teaching a sainted pope to ride a bike, and ICE-y bike lanes in DTLA

July 29, 2025 / / No comments
Day 210 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025. 

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He gets it.

In an op-ed for the Washington Post, a Colorado auto and traffic safety writer says it’s long past time to address the real problem behind the 845,000 deaths on American roadways.

The poorly trained drivers behind the wheel.

Approximately 94 percent of car crashes involve some form of driver behavior like speeding, distraction, failing to yield or DUI identified as a contributing factor, although this doesn’t mean the driver is always solely responsible — bad roads, confusing or obscured signage, wildlife darting into the road, mechanical failures and other factors play their part, too.

But mostly, the problems lie with us. We aren’t very good drivers. And there is a potential solution: better driver training. If we can fix bad driving, at least partially, we can save thousands of lives.

Although he adds that better eduction of drivers can only do so much to lower the appalling death rate on our roads.

It would be wonderful to lower the death rate from 30,000 deaths a year to 25,000 or 20,000. I don’t think anyone thinks we’re going to get to zero. Some people will just be rotten drivers all their lives, and others will always ignore the rules.

But if we change the narrative and empower people to drive safely and skillfully, that’s a start.

His stats are just a tad out of date, though, as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration celebrated last year’s drop to “just” 39,345 traffic deaths, the first time this decade it’s been below 40,000.

And he may be right about never getting to zero, at least as long as humans are doing the driving.

But we can do a hell of a lot better than 20,000 to 25,000 people sacrificed to the almighty motor vehicle every year.

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay. 

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Not many people can claim to have taught both a pope and a saint to ride a bike.

Even if it was the same person.

A Roman Catholic website recounts the story of the legendary Gino Bartali, a two-time winner of both the Giro and the Tour de France, as well as a member of the Italian resistance honored as Righteous Among the Nations for saving an estimated 800 Jews during WWII.

The modest Carmelite Catholic never told his own story, which only came to light after his death.

As if that wasn’t enough to stake his claim to fame, he’s also said to have taught Pope John XXIII, who was canonized in 2014, how to ride a bike.

That alone should be the first miracle to get him sainted.

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This may not be why people keep dying on our roads.

But it sure as hell doesn’t help.

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Bicycling lifestyle brand Rapha joined with Los Angeles area bicyclists to mount a ghost bike on Stunt Road for Marvin Cortez, who was killed by a reportedly speeding and reckless driver last month.

Thanks to Aaron 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.

London’s Kensington and Chelsea council said “oopsie,” and cancelled a fine equalling the equivalent of $133 issued to a university professor for the crime of riding his bike in a shared bicycle and pedestrian lane, exactly where he was supposed to.

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Local 

The Ballona Creek Bike Path will be closed for the next two days for maintenance from Overland Ave to Higuera Street between 6 am and 4 pm

 

State

Singletracks looks at five of California’s best mountain bike trails.

A San Diego public radio station examines Vista’s plans to rip out newly installed protected bike lanes, because drivers just couldn’t deal with them, and a number bicyclists didn’t like them, either.

Santa Barbara County is recruiting bike-riding volunteers to offer direct feedback on “comfort factors” like lane width, and traffic speed and volume, to confirm the results of an AI survey of county streets.

Oakland has broken ground on a $5.4 million project to build a barrier-protected bike lane near the city’s Lake Merritt, to be named for a four-year old girl who was killed there while biking with her father two years ago.

 

National

Electrek calls ebike rebate programs a rare win-win offering cleaner air, less traffic and more mobility for people who need it most, as more cities and states provide them.

Seattle Bike Blog says no, those new lines are fog lines, not bike lanes.

A People Magazine podcast questions whether a University of Idaho student was the victim of a serial killer, after she disappeared while riding her bike to her sister’s house in 1981 and her dismembered body was found floating in the Snake River nine days later.

A new study from an Arizona law firm shows that North Dakota paid the highest dollar cost for bicycling deaths at $14,177 per 1,000 residents between 2020 and 2023, followed by Alaska, Montana and South Dakota. Although the story doesn’t explain how they calculated that cost, and doesn’t provide a link to the study.

This is how Vision Zero is supposed to work. Two years after a teenage boy was killed by a driver while riding on a residential Chicago street, and another bike rider badly injured, the city removed a traffic lane and converted it to a far safer neighborhood greenway.

CNN is finally starting to catch on, as Elon Musk’s The Boring Company promises to solve Nashville’s traffic problems, after the company’s vaporware solutions in other cities.

A Senator from Vermont has introduced a bill to restore the tax deduction for riding a bike to work, which was killed by Republicans during the first Trump administration after nine years, while expanding it to include ebikes, bikeshare and scooters.

The Washington Post provides a reminder that Cycling Without Age allows infirm elderly people to feel the wind in their hair while riding in a pedicab.

 

International

The New York Times “Wellness Around the World” series joins pre-dawn bicycle “trains” in Bogota, Columbia, as groups of up to 100 riders join together for protection against thieves and get their days off to a great start.

A Vietnamese bike touring company is introducing a “bold” ten-day gravel bike tour starting in Saigon, and traveling past tea and coffee-growing highlands, ancient Cham ruins, quiet fishing villages and bustling coastal towns, and the memorial to the infamous My Lai massacre, ending in the UNESCO World Heritage site Hoi An.

 

Competitive Cycling

USA Cycling awarded 40 titles at last week’s four-day 2025 USA Cycling Junior Track National Championships. Seriously, when I was that age, I barely knew bike racing was a thing, let alone track cycling.  

Dutch cyclist Lorena Wiebes won Monday’s stage of the Tour de France Femmes in a “furious” sprint, as race favorites Demi Vollering and Kim Le Court were caught in a late crash, allowing Marianne Vos to reclaim the yellow jersey after Le Court held it for just two days. But does that mean Le Court has to give up her new yellow bike?

The crash left Vollering “limping and emotional” with pain in the knee, glutes and back.

 

Finally…

That feeling when you end the world’s most famous bike race with a fiancé, instead of a trophy.

And that looks like fun.

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin. 

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

San Francisco embarrasses LA with speed cam warnings, and last remaining US Tour winner gets Congressional Gold Medal

July 10, 2025 / / No comments
Day 191 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025. 

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In news that should surprise absolutely no one, a new report from San Francisco shows just how many motorists drive at dangerous speeds.

As California’s first city to install speed cams, San Francisco issued almost 132,000 warnings to people caught on camera driving 11 mph or more over the posted speed limit since the cams were installed in March; actual speeding tickets will start being issued next month.

That’s just four months, and in just 50 locations throughout the entire city of over 800,000 people.

Which suggests that there are a hell of a lot of people who didn’t get caught —  or maybe didn’t get caught yet — simply because they did their speeding in some other location.

But that’s still about 132,000 more warnings than Los Angeles has issued, since the City of Angels continues to drag its feet on installing speed cams.

After all, we don’t want to interfere with anyone’s God-given right to use a heavy right foot on an open stretch of roadway.

Or one that’s not, for that matter.

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Congratulations to Greg LeMond, as America’s last remaining Tour de France winner finally received a long overdue honor by becoming the first cyclist to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

He’s also just the tenth athlete honored with the Congressional medal, joining such sporting notables as Joe Louis, Jesse Owens, Billie Jean King and Jack Nicklaus.

LeMond became the first American to win the Tour in 1986, then came back to win twice more in 1989 and 1990, after overcoming a near-fatal shotgun blast to the gut.

Conspicuously not honored were ex-Tour de France winners and notorious dopers Lance Armstrong and Floyd Landis, the latter of whom has largely been forgiven after owning up to his actions, and the former who just refuses to go away.

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Amazon Prime Days continue to dominate the news, as numerous sites urge you to buy more bike stuff to help pay off Jeff Bezos wedding and buy his new wife another new yacht or two

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

A New York judge has ruled that the city’s mayor is free to rip out a protected bike lane in Brooklyn, lifting a previous injunction preventing the removal.

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

An Ontario, Canada teenager was charged with reckless driver and violating the province’s bike helmet law, after the 17-year old was struck by a driver while riding salmon and without a skid lid, which is required for any bike rider under 18.

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Local 

Listeners to public radio station LAist’s AirTalk program share their joyous memories of riding a bicycle through the streets of Los Angeles while growing up, and question whether those days are gone forever.

 

State

The former owner of one of the nation’s first ebike stores describes how she went from Orange County bike shop owner to founding the Bellemont Project to promote ebike safety.

Fullerton caves to the Hallmark-ization of America, hosting its 3rd Annual Christmas in July Bike Ride on Friday, July 26th.

Chula Vista becomes the latest city to crack down on ebike riders, adopting what leaders say is the strictest ebike regulations in San Diego County.

Seriously? A beauty salon owner in San Diego’s Rancho Peñasquitos neighborhood called for the removal of a new bike lane, saying the loss of curbside parking will put her customers in needless danger by making them walk cross the street. Never mind that the bike lanes are there to improve safety for everyone. Or that if it’s not even safe to cross the damn street, the problem isn’t the bike lanes. 

Sacramento is building an entire new bridge to replace a never-opened bike and pedestrian bridge connecting two major pathways, after the city’s engineer of record refused to sign off on the construction because the bridge wasn’t built to contract specifications.

 

National

Streetsblog examines the GOP’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” and finds what it calls five of the ugliest transportation policies, including the unceremonious death of the bike commuting benefit, along with just about every a number of other green policies.

People For Bikes credits itself with halting dozens of harmful bike bills in “a critical year for bicycle legislation,” including anti-bike bills in New York, Illinois and yes, California.

Tragic news from Arizona, where a 75-year old man died from his injuries, over a year after he was struck by a driver while riding his bike, with the cops blaming him for allegedly turning in front of the driver.

The US version of The Sun says “certain road users” in a “major US state” no longer have to come to a complete stop at a stop sign. Except they’re actually talking about bike riders in the “major state” of New Mexico, which ranks all the way down at 36th in population. And it’s not like many motorists come to a full stop, anyway. Or any, for that matter.

A Denver TV station warns its viewers after a retiree was scammed out of $2,000 using Zelle while trying to sell an old bicycle on Facebook.

A new report from a Denver attorney group revealed that most of the city’s bicycling collisions occurred between 8 am and 9 am, and 4 pm and 5 pm, and on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

A Colorado attorney and cycling safety educator tries to clear up confusion over that state’s Stop As Yield Law, which allows bike riders to treat stop signs as yields and red lights like stop signs, as long as it’s safe to proceed. Count me among the confused, since I didn’t think Colorado had adopted the red light portion of the law.

This is why people keep dying on our streets. A Birmingham, Alabama man is facing reckless manslaughter charges for killing two people in separate collisions, first crashing his car into an ATV ridden by a 13-year old boy, followed by fatally running down a 30-year old woman riding a bicycle just five months later.

 

International

A new London campaign is urging elected officials to make bicycling more accessible and inclusive, under the banner Dare to Dream: A Bike for Every Londoner, even as the city has some of the UK’s most dangerous streets for bike riders.

The family of a 71-year old London man called for the “immediate deployment of speed and road traffic cameras” at the “notorious” intersection where he was struck by a driver while riding his bike, dying five days later, adding “no one should suffer this heartbreak.”

Over one hundred people are preparing for an “epic” 290-mile ride from Cleckheaton to London to remember the late Member of Parliament Jo Cox, who was assassinated in 2016, as well as marking the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in the UK.

 

Competitive Cycling

Defending champ Tadej Pogačar won the day on Wednesday by finishing second in the time trial, 16 seconds behind winner Remco Evenepoel; the second-place finish was enough to put Pogačar in the yellow jersey with a 42-second lead over Evenepoel, with Frenchman Kévin Vauquelin third in the GC standings, 59 seconds behind.

Two-time champ Jonas Vingegaard had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, dropping more than a minute off the pace and saying afterwards he just didn’t have the legs and had no excuse for his performance.

Canadian cyclist Michael Woods says it’s crazy that officials haven’t mandated protective gear and other safety policies for cyclists; he calls for protecting riders by lowering speeds, decreasing peloton size, reducing distraction, and rethinking the relegation system — or they may have to race in hockey gear.

Velo examines what’s changed with racing bikes over the past decade, comparing Chris Froome’s Pinarello F8 with Pogačar’s Colnago V5Rs.

A Florida man says he finished the Race Across America, aka RAAM, to keep a pledge with his father that if he didn’t quit the race, his dad would stick with his treatment for stage 4 prostate cancer.

 

Finally…

Now you, too, can become the official Bike Path Mayor — or maybe your cat can, anyway.

And you can put your tush on a weird-looking saddle for the low, low price of over $360.

But only if you live in Europe.

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin. 

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

Ex-cop cops a plea to killing 3 at 150 mph, a consideration of car brain, and 2nd round of CA ebike vouchers if anyone still cares

April 14, 2025 / / Comments Off on Ex-cop cops a plea to killing 3 at 150 mph, a consideration of car brain, and 2nd round of CA ebike vouchers if anyone still cares
Day 104 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025. 

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This is who we share the road with.

A former LAPD cop pled guilty to three counts of murder on Friday for a drunken freeway crash that killed three people.

At 150 mph.

Yes, you read that right.

Thirty-four-year old ex-cop Edgar Verduzco copped a plea to killing three people while driving his Chevy Camaro at a whopping 150 miles per hour on the 605 Freeway in Whittier, causing a horrific crash that killed a 19-year old college student and his parents.

He continued on after rear-ending the victims’ car, crashing into a second car and injuring a mother and her infant child.

And yes, he was still an active duty cop at the time of the crash, losing his job sometime after the crash, although personnel regulations prevent the department from explaining why he was fired.

Although we could probably guess.

Verduzco also pled to charges driving under the influence of alcohol causing injury and driving with a 0.08% blood-alcohol content causing injury for the crash, which came just hours after he posted a video with the hashtag #dontdrinkanddrive.

He faces three well-deserved terms of 15 years to life behind bars, along with a separate term of three years; however all four terms will be served concurrently.

Which means he could walk out after just 15 years for taking three innocent lives while driving drunk at 150 mph.

That doesn’t exactly sound like justice to me.

But what the hell do I know?

Photo by Sora Shimazaki from Pexels.

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Just call it Car Brain.

Dr. Grace Peng took a deep dive into the concept of Motonormativity, aka Car Brain, for the LA Voter Newsletter, the concept that cars are so accepted as the norm that the unconscious bias towards them, and the problems they cause, become invisible to most people.

…Indirectly, through air pollution and involuntary inactivity by making active transportation (walking, cycling) dangerous, cars may be the top killer of people in the developed world of all ages. 

Transportation, mainly private automobile use, is the largest contributor of CO2 emissions in Los Angeles County and the largest source of PM2.5 pollution (except in the occasional years when particulates from wildfire smoke affects populated areas of LACO.)

Yet, all this is invisible to most people and especially law and policy makers. In California, it is legal to kill with a car as long as you were not intoxicated, were not speeding, and stayed at the scene of the death. This applies even if a driver kills a cyclist in a crosswalk. 

Peng goes on to note that riding the subway is 30 times safer than driving, while taking the bus is 66 times safer. Transit is so safe, in fact, that a 1% increase in transit use would result in a 2.75% reduction in road deaths.

Yet cars remain the unchallenged default mode of our elected leaders, as well the general public, as anyone who has ever tried to criticize car use on social media can tell you.

It’s worth taking a few minutes to read the whole thing. Because this is mentality driving our entire society these days.

Pun intended.

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It’s time for another round of California’s deliberately throttled ebike incentive applications.

The California E-Bike Incentive Project in releasing funding for approximately 1,000 vouchers, which represents roughly one percent of the people who tried to apply for the first round of vouchers — most of whom never even got the chance.

And just 0.01% of Californian’s who are financially qualified to apply for the program.

Anyone see the problem there?

Evidently, the California Air Resources Board, which is running things themselves now after shitcanning San Diego nonprofit Pedal Ahead, does. Because now they’re promising that everyone who queues up will get a chance to be entered into a lottery to apply.

Yes, you’ll have to queue up once agin, this time just to have a chance to win a chance to apply for a voucher.

Anyway, it’s all scheduled for April 29th, if anyone who still has the patience to deal with this mess.

Lord knows, I don’t, as much as I could use one.

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Streets Are For Everyone makes the case for SB 720, a proposal in the state Senate that would authorize automated red light cameras.

The law change red light tickets from a traffic violation to a civil violation, similar to a parking ticket, while also decreasing fines to just $100, with no impact to a driver’s record or insurance rates.

In addition, the bill would eliminate the requirement to clearly identify the operator of the vehicle, instead sending the ticket directly to the registered owner.

Let’s just hope these tickets aren’t as easy to ignore as parking tickets.

Personally, I’m not sold on the idea that the tickets wouldn’t affect a driver’s record, which only enables bad drivers to stay on the roads.

But if it gets more cities to install red light cams, and more drivers to actually obey red lights, it might be worth it.

On the other hand, I’d like to see more being done to keep people from using plexiglass covers over their car’s license plates, which is nothing more than a blatant attempt to avoid responsibility for tolls and traffic violations.

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Speaking of SAFE, they’re asking you to vote for walkable, bikeable streets in the latest round of the LA2050 Grants Challenge.

https://twitter.com/StreetsR4Every1/status/1911197388049682585

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A new petition calls for installing protected bike lanes on Prospect Ave in Redondo Beach.

Hello #RedondoBeach / #SouthBay friends – please consider signing and sharing this campaign for protected bike lanes along Prospect Ave in Redondo

— (@ljwalsh.bsky.social) 2025-04-07T15:18:16.108Z

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

A Salina, Kansas man faces multiple charges for allegedly using his pickup as a weapon, crossing the centerline to swerve at a bike rider traveling in the opposite direction. Although one of the charges is for violation a restraining order, so he may have known and targeted the victim.

Seriously? A Redditor “sparked outrage” by posting a picture of a driver parked in an ostensibly protected Chicago bike lane. Which is a photo you could replicate in virtually any city in this country with protected bike lanes.

There may be hope for Toronto’s threatened bike lanes after all, after the provincial government says it may be open to compromise in the face of a massive backlash from angry bike riders.

No bias here. A road-raging British driver honked at a man riding his bike with his child on the back, as her passenger yelled at him to “get out of the way and move your fucking bike,” insisting they were rushing to the hospital because the passenger was “bleeding to death” — even though the hospital was less than a mile back in the opposite direction.

Oops. A French driver deliberately slammed his car into what he thought was a bike thief riding his bicycle, only to learn the man on the bike was actually the cop who had just busted the thief, and was riding it back to the owner.

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

Tragic news from Long Island, where a 68-year old Long Beach man died hours after he was struck by a man riding an ebike as he was crossing the street; the rider remained at the scene after the crash.

British tabloids are suitably appalled after Britpop star Harry Styles was spotted momentarily looking down at his phone while riding an ebike sans helmet. Because apparently, everyone should carry a bike helmet everywhere just in case they happen to spontaneously decided to use a dockless bike.

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Local 

UCLA Transportation announced new bike lanes and speed cushions on Westholme Blvd, as they continue to make the bike-friendly campus safer for everyone.

 

State

Encinitas pulled the plug on a proposed uphill bike lane on Birmingham Drive in the face of opposition from local residents, who claimed the street is too dangerous for bikes. Which is oddly the best argument for building it.

Cycling Weekly offers a first look at the latest tech from the Sea Otter Classic.

 

National

People For Bikes reports more people rode bicycles in the US last year than ever before, as 112 million Americans — 35% of the population over the age of three — rode a bike at least once in 2024; juvenile bicycling rates also rose from 49% to 56%.

Anywhere from 500 to 2,000 people were expected to turn out for an eight-year old Portland bike race featuring a 500-lap relay ride around a local traffic circle, with no one keeping track of laps or time, let alone who’s winning; for the first time, organizers got permits to block off neighboring streets.

Singletracks highlights the five best mountain bike trail in Utah, ranging from dry, rocky deserts to high alpine ridges.

A pair of bills in the Texas legislature would allow cities to lower speed limits to 20 mph without conducting expensive traffic studies, and require a three-foot distance to pass someone on a bicycle, or six feet if they’re driving a commercial vehicle.

A Texas bikemaker complains to Fox News that Trump’s tariffs are affecting his ability to source needed parts from China and keep production moving.

The New York Times takes a look at how little Bentonville, Arkansas, with a population just a shade over 41,600, became an epicenter for bicycling, with an assist from the family behind Walmart.

A Michigan man turns his own lifelong passion for bicycling into a campus-wide  movement at Michigan State University.

Travel + Leisure says come to Ohio’s Cuyahoga Valley National Park for the waterfalls, and stay for the local wine — and the 87-mile Towpath Trail bikeway along the former Ohio and Erie Canal.

AutoEvolution suggests the people who got screwed out of their purchase of the world’s first hubless ebike may have been the lucky ones; the website says the roughly 150 people who received the $3,349 Reevo ebike from Delaware — or maybe Seattle — based Beno Technologies got “a deathtrap at worst and the worst e-bike in the world at best.”

 

International

Momentum considers ways ebikes can boost your mental and physical health.

European bicyclists made their annual pilgrimage to Dursley, England, home of 19th Century bikemaker Mikael Pedersen, inventor of the unique diamond-frame Pedersen Bike.

A retiring British toy shop owner takes a ride down memory lane with a 97-year old bike catalog, featuring one of the country’s first drop bar racing bikes.

Paris is transforming more than just the streets, as the changes the city has made to encourage walking, transit and bicycling over the past two decades has cut air pollution levels in half.

Three young Black men are nearing the end of their nearly 1,000-mile journey by bike from Limpopo to Cape Town, South Africa, which has inspired the country while calling attention to gender-based violence.

Taiwan safety authorities called for mandatory bike helmet laws to reduce the number of fatal head injuries. Even though studies have shown that any reduction in head injuries from helmet laws likely results more from a reduction in ridership. 

An Aussie researcher discovers that most bike lanes in inner Melbourne have less than 40% tree cover, and getting worse. Although that’s probably better than here in sunny Los Angeles.

Speaking of motonormativity, Brisbane, Australia offers a prime example, after a bridge pathway relied on by bike commuters was shut down without notice, forcing people either into a long detour or back into their cars.

 

Competitive Cycling

French star Pauline Ferrand-Prévot won the Paris-Roubaix Femmes in a solo breakaway on Saturday, while 37-year old Dutch legend Marianne Vos countered world champion Lotte Kopecky to take third.

Mathieu van der Poel won his third consecutive Paris-Roubaix after rival Tadej Pogačar crashed with about 28 miles to go during their dual breakaway.

Despite the victory, van der Poel was furious after he was struck in the face by a water bottle that appeared to have been deliberately thrown from the crowd of spectators about 20 miles from the finish.

Eritrean cyclist Biniam Girmay survived the cobbles on his first Paris-Roubaix with a strong ride to finish 15th.

British reigning world champ Evie Richards is now the most decorated female short-track cross-country rider in history after back-to-back wins in Brazil.

 

Finally…

Your next tires could inflate themselves. Your next road bike could have a double top tube and cantilevered seat post.

And we may have to deal with feral LA drivers, but we hardly ever get stalked by wild cougars when we ride.

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin. 

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

Compromise offer on WeHo streets, Caltrans promises bike lanes in San Pedro, and LA failing us on speed cams

October 18, 2024 / / One comment
Just 73 days left until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025. 

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I am now officially a non-driver.

Yesterday morning, I went to the DMV to trade my driver’s license for a non-driving ID.

Between my medical issues and the meds I’m on, I simply don’t belong behind the wheel. And I probably never will.

It wasn’t an easy decision to make. I’ve held onto my license despite not driving for the past several years, just in case I needed it at some point. 

But it’s just not worth the risk I could pose to others. 

I only wish more people would realize that. 

………

In a surprisingly reasonable op-ed, West Hollywood city council candidate Larry Block, who has opposed bike projects in the past — especially in front of his Santa Monica Blvd store — offers a compromise on his opposition to removing parking for a lane reduction and protected bike lanes on Fountain Ave in the largely residential Mid-City area.

Or as he puts it, a little argy-bargy, a term that should be familiar to fans of cycling announcer Phil Liggett.

Bike lane supporters need to recognize the daily needs of disabled residents, emergency vehicles, delivery trucks, and basic services. Bike supporters must understand that residents need access to their driveways, and services like city garbage trucks and emergency vehicles need space to do their jobs. We can’t take away that access in favor of a ‘build it, they will come’ mentality’. Residents also need to accept that many people can’t afford a car, and keeping WeHo vibrant means making room for bikes and other ways to get around. Their safety matters, too, and it’s our responsibility to do what we can.

While there’s a lot we could take issue with there — like how ebikes ca serve as mobility devices for handicapped people, and the myth of bike lanes slowing emergency vehicles — Block goes on to call for developing a master plan to improve safety and livability in WeHo’s Mid-City area.

We should focus on creating a Mid-City Master Plan while working on the Fountain Ave. Streetscape and Bike Lane project. Instead of just arguing about bike lanes, we need to shift the conversation to mid-city livability and make Fountain Ave. improvements part of the bigger plan.

There’s a livability and safety problem on Fountain Ave., and we need to look at the big picture. Let’s discuss a Mid-City Master Plan that incorporates the needs of all residents. But for now, after several accidents on Fountain Ave. in recent weeks, our top priority should be making Fountain safe today.

If this is the approach a bike lane opponent — or possibly former opponent — is willing to take, there may be hope for WeHo yet.

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As a followup to Tuesday’s piece about an apparent violation of Measure HLA along Western Avenue and 1st Street in San Pedro, Ken Shima forwards a screenshot from CD15 Councilmember Tim McOsker saying the current striping is just a temporary measure, and bike lanes really are coming.

But from Caltrans, not Los Angeles.

As Joe Linton clarified in a comment to Tuesday’s post, HLA applies to “any paving project or other modification,” other than limited work like “restriping of the road without making other improvements, routine pothole repair, utility cuts, or emergency repairs.”

Which would mean it should apply here.

However, as a state agency, I’m not sure if Caltrans is required to abide by HLA, unlike Metro or the City of LA. But it’s definitely something to keep an eye on, to make sure those promised bike lanes really do go in.

Regardless of who is responsible for them.

Meanwhile, Linton visits the new bike/walk path along San Pedro’s Front Street from the Vincent Thomas Bridge to just west of Pacific Ave.

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San Francisco has selected the vendor for the city’s speed cam pilot program, with 33 cams expected to be fully operational by early 2025.

Compare that with Los Angeles, which hasn’t.

Here’s what a press release from Streets Are For Everyone, aka SAFE, had to say on the subject.

“While Los Angeles continues to ignore the problem, San Francisco takes speeding seriously. I commend San Francisco for taking this significant step towards making its citizens safer. Through their selection process, the city has done the hard work and set the stage for other cities to follow,” said Damian Kevitt, Executive Director of Streets Are For Everyone. “Los Angeles and the other pilot cities have no excuse for bureaucratic feet-dragging that is risking people’s lives.”

At the start of 2024, the Chief of Police and Mayor of Los Angeles announced that there were a staggering 336 traffic fatalities, the highest in almost 50 years and more traffic fatalities in 2023 than homicides. Across the state, 35% of fatalities are speeding-related, with over 1,500 speeding-related fatalities in 2021. Traffic violence in Los Angeles continues to get worse, and there is insufficient effort being put into implementing sensible solutions to save lives.

Yep.

That pretty much sums it up.

It took years of fighting in the state legislature to finally pound out a compromise allowing Los Angeles, Long Beach and Glendale to try a speed cam pilot program, along with three NorCal cities, including San Francisco. That was later amended to allow speed cams on PCH in Malibu, as well.

But all of that appears to be wasted on the City of Angels, which seems to be moving with all due non-haste at its usual glacial pace.

Mayor Bass has often said that she was elected to solve the city’s homelessness crisis.

Too bad that’s the only crisis she seems to think she was elected to address.

………

It’s now 303 days since the California ebike incentive program’s latest failure to launch, which was promised no later than fall 2023. And a full 40 months since it was approved by the legislature and signed into law — and counting.

………

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

No bias here. The anti-bike OB-Rag writes that San Diego officials are “quietly picking our pockets” with things like a $155,000 bike counter, which amounts to a rounding error on the city’s $104.6 million streets budget. Let alone the SANDAG’s $1.3 billion — yes, with a B — highway budget.

No bias here, either. A 76-year old Baltimore man died weeks after a driver pulled out of a sidewalk and cut him off while riding on the sidewalk, but the local press somehow blames the victim for crashing into the car. And waits until the penultimate sentence to mention the car even had a driver.

He gets it. An Ottawa, Ontario columnist says Premier Doug Ford’s plan to give the provincial legislature final say over bike lanes is all about politics, not safety or traffic flow, while the mayor of Waterloo says Ford is stepping directly into municipal jurisdiction.

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

A 22-year old Novato man faces a felony hit-and-run charge for fleeing the scene after after crashing his bicycle into an eight-year old boy; fortunately, the kid was hospitalized with minor to moderate injuries. Which raises the question of why a felony charge was filed, which under state law on only applies in cases resulting in serious injuries. 

………

Local  

Pepperdine remembered the four sorority sisters killed by an alleged speeding driver on PCH a year ago, as they were walking from their car to a party; their accused killer was reportedly doing 104 mph in a 45 mph zone. But hey, about those speed cams.

 

State

Congrats to the Costa Mesa Police Department for busting a thief who made off with a family’s e-cargo bike; the department has already returned it to the owner.

 

National

CNN considers the best bike lights, settling on a pair from Cygolite.

Annapurna’s scenic bicycling adventure game Ghost Bike is getting a makeover, and will re-emerge next year as Wheel World, with a lighter design to make it more fun to play. Because ghost bikes may be a lot of things, but fun ain’t one of them. 

Parents, classmates and the Littleton, Colorado community came together to call for safer streets, a year after a seventh-grade boy was killed riding his bike to middle school. Yet another reminder that the time to fight for safer streets if before it’s too late, not after. 

A Tulsa, Oklahoma TV station responds to the state’s appalling NHTSA ranking as the nation’s 6th deadliest state for bike riders by examining safety concerns for bicyclists. Meanwhile, in 6th ranked California <crickets>.

A writer for Business Insider takes a 330-mile bikepacking trip from Pittsburgh to Maryland, and says she’d absolutely do it again, despite the challenges.

Prosecutors have added a murder charge to the long list of charges against the alleged drunken and speeding hit-and-run driver who killed a beloved young doctor out for a bike ride; he was allegedly driving over twice the speed limit with a BAC double the legal limit.

Roanoke, Virginia shows how it should be done, installing multiple temporary bike lanes to encourage people to ride their bikes to the city’s largest outdoor fest. Now they just need to make them permanent.

 

International

Momentum rates the six best foldies currently on the market.

A writer for Bike Radar takes a six-day, 400-mile bike tour along South Korea’s “stunning” Four Rivers route from Seoul to Busan.

A cop in New South Wales, Australia faces charges for dangerous driving for a crash that killed a 16-year old boy riding a bicycle.

 

Competitive Cycling

One of the brightest American cycling prospects, 21-year old Boulder, Colorado resident Jared Scott, walked away from his burgeoning European pro career to become a professional DJ.

A Welsh Continental cycling team learns the hard way the dangers of relying on a bikemaker’s promise that their frames will meet UCI standards.

 

Finally…

How to not pull an endo on your mountain bike. Making a Pashley the star of Swan Lake.

And seriously, who doesn’t need a sidecar for your ebike? Or a corgi car, in my case.

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin

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

LA and Metro ignore HLA-mandated bike lanes on Vermont, and Gov. Newsom may not understand the risks of speeding

October 7, 2024 / / Comments Off on LA and Metro ignore HLA-mandated bike lanes on Vermont, and Gov. Newsom may not understand the risks of speeding
Just 84 days left until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025. 

Conceptual rendering of bike lane-free Vermont courtesy of Streetsblog LA.

………

Sadly, no surprise here.

A large collection of Los Angeles advocacy groups, led by Streets For All and ACT-LA, are complaining that Metro’s plan for bus lanes on Vermont Ave don’t comply with the requirements of Measure HLA.

The ballot measure, initially sponsored by Streets For All, passed with overwhelming support in the March primary election, winning two-thirds of the vote in the City of Los Angeles.

It ordered the city to comply with a very simple requirement to build out the already approved Mobility Plan 2035 whenever streets in the plan get resurfaced.

Or maybe not so simple, since LA officials have apparently been busy dragging their feet and looking for loopholes ever since.

According to Streetsblog LA, Metro has been working on plans to add bus lanes to Vermont for over a decade, scaling back what had been 12 miles to just six.

And just bus lines.

Advocates see Vermont as a key opportunity. If you can’t go big, be thorough, and make transit and transit riders a top priority on one of Metro’s and the nation’s highest ridership corridors, where can you?

The Alliance for Community Transit (ACT-LA) is currently circulating a letter (sign on as an individual or organization) in support of improving Vermont for people on bus, bike, and on foot – from Sunset Boulevard to the Metro C (Green) Line Athens Station. ACT-LA and two dozen organizations are calling for following features all along the nearly 12-mile-long project:

  • uninterrupted bus lanes
  • protected bike lanes
  • pedestrian scrambles at high injury and bus transfer intersections
  • tree planting, non-hostile shelters, signage, wayfinding, trash bins, and a bus rider bill of rights at every stop
  • wait time displays and public water at all major intersections
  • electrification of buses along the corridor
  • preserving all street vending and expanding the sidewalk in areas with high vending concentrations

But Metro’s current scaled-back, penny-pinching plan includes “little for pedestrians, and nothing for cyclists.”

Metro somehow claims that’s consistent with the mobility plan, and “helps support” Measure HLA.

Streets For All disagrees. And they should know, since they wrote the damn thing.

This week, the advocacy group Streets for All, the main proponent of Measure HLA and one of the signatories of the ACT-LA letter, wrote to Mayor Karen Bass and Metro CEO Stephanie Wiggins in support of Metro’s Vermont project proceeding in full compliance with Measure HLA. The letter states:

“As designed, the BRT project brings (welcome) improvements to Vermont Avenue… Those trigger the City’s obligation to install Mobility Plan enhancements. Therefore, were the City to issue permits for the project without assuring implementation of its Mobility Plan enhancements at the same time, the City would violate its ordinance, waste public funds, and allow Vermont’s dangerous conditions to remain despite the voters’ mandate.”

Streets for All notes that the project complies with the city’s plan for transit and pedestrian facilities, but not for bikeways.

It would be bad enough if this were a one-off. But Streetsblog includes a long list of current projects that don’t appear to comply with the mobility plan or HLA.

HLA gives Angelenos the right to sue to force implementation of the measure, and that could be where we’re heading.

Los Angeles seems to be daring these organizations to take them to court, either thinking they won’t do it, or in hopes of somehow getting the measure overturned.

Which seems unlikely, since it’s now part of the city charter.

We thought we had won when HLA passed. But clearly, this battle is just getting started.

………

Streets Are For Everyone, aka SAFE, notes that California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a wide range of traffic safety measures passed in the last legislative session.

These range from mandating that Caltrans follow its own Complete Streets policies, to bills extending the statute of limitations for hit-and-run if the driver flees the state.

But Newsom dropped the ball when it came to speeding drivers, vetoing a bill to increase the penalty for speeding more than 26 mph over a 55 mph limit, as well as a bill to mandate an audible warning when drivers exceed the posted speed limit by more than 10 mph.

You can read SAFE’s full article explaining both Newsom’s reasons for the vetoes, and why they think he was wrong.

But for now, let’s just say they raise serious questions over whether the governor truly grasps the dangers posed by speeding drivers to everyone around them, both on and off the roadway.

If he did, he would work with the legislature to fix the bills or to craft alternatives that he would favor, rather than just killing them with a stroke of the pen.

People both in and out of motor vehicles are injured and dying at ever increasing rates, many through no fault of their own.

And speeding is one of the leading causes of that.

If the governor doesn’t understand that, nothing will improve until he leaves office.

………

A bike ride on Saturday, October 19th will explore the new bike lanes on Hollywood Blvd, which many people noted weren’t ready for prime time during the recent Hollywoods CicLAvia.

………

It’s now 292 days since the California ebike incentive program’s latest failure to launch, which was promised no later than fall 2023. And an even 40 months since it was approved by the legislature and signed into law — and counting.

………

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

Call if a false alarm this time. It turns out the dangling wire a Milwaukee bike rider was nearly decapitated by when it wrapped around his neck as he rode past a light pole was part of an Eruv that had fallen, used by a Jewish community to allow them to move about celebrate the Sabbath more freely.

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

Seriously, if videos show bike riders avoiding a newly constructed Melbourne, Australia protected bike lane, there’s probably a reason for it.

………

Local  

A travel writer visits Los Angeles, and finds it surprisingly bikeable — as long as you’re on a guided bike tour, and do much of your riding on bike paths.

 

State

About damn time. Caltrans is finally getting around to adding bike lanes on San Diego’s busy Friars Road. I wasn’t comfortable riding on Friars when I live down there, and that was nearly four decades ago.

 

National

A British travel writer rode his bike 4,000 miles through the heart of conservative small town America, relating what he learned about “guns, politics and Trump.”

Your next road bike could be 3D printed — and the most aero bike ever built  — while your next racing tires could inflate themselves, automatically adjusting for differences in terrain.

An Idaho reporter talks about the interesting and crazy people he bumped into riding his bike down the left coast.

He gets it. A Boston writer says bike lanes don’t just benefit people on bicycles, they help everyone — yes, even businesses — improving safety and accessibility, traffic flow, and environmental sustainability.

Cambridge, Massachusetts is making $1.5 million in safety improvements to a local street, weeks after a father was killed when a driver lost control and drove up onto the sidewalk he was riding his bike on. As usual, only making the improvements they knew they needed after it’s too late.

A New York woman is being called a hero after she stopped her car to save the life of a man who suffered a heart attack while he was riding, giving the experienced triathlete CPR on the side of the road until paramedics arrived.

New York City is encouraging safe and fun bicycling through their Biketober initiative, with events scheduled throughout the month in all five boroughs. Just let me know when to show up for Biketoberfest.

He gets it, too. An op-ed from a South Carolina writer says the problem isn’t dangerous bicyclists, but speeding drivers — and it’s time to slow them down.

 

International

Road.cc explains everything you need to know about bike cams but were afraid to ask.

A newspaper in Edinburgh, Scotland talks with local bike riders about what makes them feel unsafe on the road, including potholes, narrow roads and dangerous drivers.

A London man got his stolen ebike back by posing as a locksmith, knowing the thief — or the schmuck he sold it to — would need a new one to make it work.

A British bicycling instructor is using his bike cam to bring bad drivers to justice. Too bad that’s illegal here. 

Cycling Weekly explores why twice as many bicyclists are killed riding on rural roads in the UK compared to busy city streets, and what can be done to bike riders safe on country roads.

A government minister in the Netherlands wants to see a quarter of all bike riders wearing helmets within the next decade, in a country where only four percent currently do.

Hong Kong’s police chief calls for mandatory bike helmets, as bicycling deaths rise in the city; six of the eight bicyclist killed this year weren’t wearing one. Yet somehow, no one seems to be calling for banning large trucks and SUVS, or any of the other multitude of factors that could be causing the jump, besides what the victims did or didn’t have on their head.

An Aussie man decided to move to China permanently after touring the country by bicycle, personally witnessing the changes in the countryside in the two decades when he lived and worked in Guangdong.

 

Competitive Cycling

Mathieu van der Poel won this year’s Men’s Gravel World Championships riding an actual gravel bike this time, instead of riding his roadie.

Pro cyclist Lachlan Morton shattered the record for riding around Australia, completing the 8,800 mile journey in just 30 days, nine hours and 59 minutes, and beating the old record by nearly seven days — despite a close call with a kangaroo.

Good news, as Belgian cycling star Wout van Aert is back on his bike for the first time since a devastating crash in the Vuelta last month.

 

Finally…

Forget a tent on your next bike tour, and tow a trailer — unless your trailer is a bike, of course. Sometimes it takes a village to get your stolen ebike back.

And we may have to deal with predatory LA drivers, but at least we don’t usually have to worry about migrating great white sharks.

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin

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

Governor signs Caltrans Complete Streets bill, kills car excess speed alarms; and pledge to ride or walk for Clean Air

September 30, 2024 / / 2 comments
Just 91 days left until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025. 

……..

Governor Newsom finally got around to signing SB 960 on Friday, aka the Complete Streets Bill, which will require Caltrans to actually follow their own Complete Streets policies.

But as the governor giveth, he also taketh away.

Newsom failed to sign SB 961, which would have required all new cars to give an audible alarm when drivers exceeded the speed limit by more than 10 mph; his action is the equivalent of a veto, but without actually have to wield his veto pen.

While groups like Calbike, Streets For All and Streets Are For Everyone (SAFE) fought to get him to sign it, SB 961 was much-watered down from the original bill, which would have required speed limiting technology to actively prevent drivers from speeding more than ten miles over the limit.

It also raised the question of why exceeding the limit by 10 mph was apparently acceptable, when exceeding it by any amount is against the law.

But maybe we can try again in a few years, with a different governor and a stronger bill.

………

This Wednesday is California Clean Air Day, when the Coalition For Clean Air is asking you to pledge to take transit, shop local, or take other actions to benefit the air we all share.

Although something tells me they’d be happy if you just leave your car at home and ride your bike or walk that day.

………

The new Hollywood Blvd bike lanes have been popular so far, but clearly not everyone is giving them rave reviews.

https://twitter.com/EntitledCycling/status/1839732645150003465

………

Walk Bike Glendale invites you to join them on a bike tour to examine new safety improvements in the city this Saturday.

………

It’s now 285 days since the California ebike incentive program’s latest failure to launch, which was promised no later than fall 2023. And 39 full months since it was approved by the legislature and signed into law — and counting.

………

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

London’s Metropolitan Police told bike riders not to bother submitting bike cam video of dangerous and illegal drivers, saying they’re much too busy to do anything about it — but don’t confront the driver who just almost killed you.

Sir David Attenborough — yes, the world-famous British broadcaster, biologist, writer and historian — wrote to an 11-year-old boy advising him on how to stop construction of a protected bike lane, and save 26 trees on the chopping block.

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

Heartbreaking news from Santa Cruz, where an 82-year old woman was killed when she was hit by an 80-year old man riding an ebike on the shoulder of a roadway early Friday morning; the elderly man on the bike was also hospitalized for his injuries.

A British man was sentenced to a well-deserved five years and four months behind bars for punching a 78-year old man who complained that he was riding his bike on the sidewalk, killing him, before trying to flee the scene.

………

Local  

This is who we share the road with. Former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Josh Klinghoffer pled not guilty to misdemeanor manslaughter for killing a 47-year old man walking in an Alhambra crosswalk, while making an ill-advised left turn in his car. Yet somehow, we have to learn about it from a newspaper in the UK?

 

State

Bakersfield is asking for public input on the city’s new Active Transportation Plan to craft a long-term vision for pedestrian and bicyclist safety.

San Francisco’s crookedest street is also one of the city’s deadliest.

Kindhearted Sacramento cops recovered an ebike that was stolen from a 14-year-old boy on his birthday, and returned it to him, along with a birthday cake.

 

National

In a surprising story, US News & World Report recommends the year’s seven best bikes for women. No, it’s not the bikes that’s surprising, it’s the fact that the magazine is still a thing. 

A Denver writer describes what it was like to spend 14 days riding the Colorado Trail, a 549-mile mountain bike route stretching from Denver to Durango.

Chicago bicyclists are frustrated over rising crime rates. Sort of like people who ride bikes just about everywhere. 

The New York Times tells a questioner that yes, a co-op building can ban their ebike, and no, that’s not housing discrimination, even if they use it to take their kid to the doctor.

 

International

A London charity is working to reduce Britain’s prison population by teaching ex-cons to repair bicycles, in hopes of cutting the recidivism rate.

 

Competitive Cycling

To the surprise of absolutely no one, Tadej Pogačar won the men’s road world championship, becoming the first male cyclist in 37 years to win the Tour de France, Giro and worlds in the same year.

American Chloé Dygert fell just short of victory in the women’s road race, finishing just behind Belgium’s Lotte Kopecky in a mass sprint; her silver goes with the bronze she won in last week’s time trial. Meanwhile, the Netherlands was kept off the women’s worlds podium for the first time in a decade.

There was heartbreaking news from worlds, though, after 18-year-old Swiss cyclist Muriel Furrer died, one day after crashing her bike on rain-slicked roads in the junior women’s road race on Friday; still, her family bravely requested that the championships go on as scheduled. However, there’s still no word from UCI on what actually happened, as the president of cycling’s governing body said “You don’t ride a bike to die.”

A writer for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation calls Furrer’s death “another example of the failings and risk of the peloton.”

In more bad news, the Dutch Cycling Association announced the death of 24-year old Bas van Belle, a rider for the Wielerploeg Groot Amsterdam cycling team, and the older brother of WorldTour pro Loe van Belle; no word on how he died.

It probably wasn’t just beginner’s luck. An 18-year old woman from my bike-friendly Colorado hometown won the collegiate national championship in the 500 meter time trial at the USA Cycling National Collegiate Track Championship earlier this month; it was Rita Fedewa’s first-ever college cycling race, in a discipline she’s only trained in for seven months after switching from BMX, making her the first-ever national champion for her tiny Catholic university.

 

Finally…

Here’s your chance to be a motor-doping spy for UCI. And nothing like riding your bike wearing fairy wings to save a historic theater.

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin

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

Grossman gets 15-to-life for high-speed vehicular murders, and Hermosa Beach can’t tell ebikes from electric motorbikes

June 11, 2024 / / 2 comments
Just 204 days left until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025.
Stop what you’re doing and sign this petition demanding Mayor Bass hold a public meeting to listen to the dangers we all face on the city’s mean streets.

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

We’re up to 1,196 signatures, so don’t stop now! Let’s get just four more to get it up to 1,200 before I send it to the mayor’s office!

Photo by Sora Shimazaki from Pexels.

………

That’s more like it.

Wealthy socialite Rebecca Grossman was sentenced to a well-deserved 15 to life for the vehicular murder of two little kids.

The co-founder of the famed Grossman Burn Foundation, Grossman was convicted of the high-speed deaths of 11-year old Mark Iskander, and his 8-year old brother as they crossed a Westlake Village street with their parents.

Here’s how the Los Angeles Times describes the crash.

The boys’ mother testified during trial that her older children had been walking ahead of her and her youngest son in the marked crosswalk on Triunfo Canyon Road when she heard engines roaring. Two sport utility vehicles were barreling toward them.

Iskander dived for safety, grabbing her 5-year-old son. Her next memory, she said, is of Jacob and Mark crumpled on the roadway.

Grossman was driving behind Scott Erickson, a former Dodgers player, who earlier in the day had been drinking cocktails with her at a nearby restaurant. She was driving as fast as 81 mph and traveled another half-mile after slamming into the children, according to evidence presented at trial.

However, the judge apparently took pity on her, sentencing Grossman to two concurrent terms for the murders, plus another three years for the hit-and-run to be served concurrently.

She could have been looking at 33 years before she’d be eligible for release. Instead, the 60-year old Grossman could get out when she’s a relatively young 75.

On the other hand, her victims would have been young men of 26 and 23, respectively, if the married woman hadn’t decided to race her then-boyfriend after drinking and taking valium.

Although it would be nice if Erickson had been held accountable for his not-insignificant role in the boys’ deaths, rather than given a walk by prosecutors.

………

Hermosa Beach adopted an emergency ebike ordinance that mostly restates existing state law, but can’t seem to distinguish between electric bicycles and electric motorcycles.

And if it’s so effing urgent, why didn’t they include a link to the damn press release, and not bury it on their website?

Thanks to Dr. Grace Peng for the heads-up.

https://twitter.com/HermosaBchCity/status/1800198737479836037

………

CicLAvia looks forward to their fourth open streets event of the year, and the 53rd overall, when they come to Western Ave in South LA on the 23rd, with a list of where to eat and shop along the route.

………

It’s now 172 days since the California ebike incentive program’s latest failure to launch, which was promised no later than fall 2023. And three full years since it was approved by the legislature and signed into law — and counting.

………

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

No bias here. An Austin, Texas columnist complains the city is putting in all these bike lanes, when it just makes more sense to ride on side streets — which take riders out of the way and usually don’t have traffic signals. And says you should have to wear a numbered armband to ride in certain areas.

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

A Redditor rightfully complains about the “disgusting” amount of used gel packs, water bottles and other assorted detritus left behind following a mountain bike rice through the woods.

Once again, an elderly person has been killed in a collision with someone on a bicycle, this time a 70-year old woman in Dublin, Ireland. Note to Irish Cycle — putting an urgent call for more funding in the middle of a story about a woman getting killed by a bike rider probably isn’t the best look.

………

Local 

Spectrum News 1 profiles Finish the Ride and Streets Are For Everyone founder — and all-around good guy — Damian Kevitt, as he dedicates his life to making the roads safe for everyone.

More on the teenaged, motorbike-riding assholes who attacked beach goers and businesses with fireworks in Hermosa Beach on Saturday, as the press continued to blame “ebike” riders, apparently incapable of distinguishing between a ped-assist bicycle and a battery-powered dirt bike.

 

State

Streetsblog’s Melanie Curry looks at the latest tranche of bike and transportation bills in the state legislature, including a bill to exempt bike lanes, bus lanes and pedestrian projects from the need for additional Coastal Commission studies.

The San Francisco Chronicle says the city is ready to throw in the towel on the deeply unpopular centerline bike lanes on Valencia Street, and replace them with some form of side lanes, even though putting the bike lanes in the middle of the street has reduced doorings. Which makes you wonder how the hell someone gets doored when they’re riding in the middle of the street.

Good news from Davis, where a member of the UC Davis cycling team finally awakened from a coma, five weeks after the freshman was struck by a driver while she was riding her bike.

 

National

Bloomberg says the goals of the 15-minute city are laudable, but questions whether it’s even possible to put retail, services and jobs that close to every resident. Hey, nobody said it was going to be easy.

Electrek considers why more American teens are choosing ebikes over driver’s licenses. Maybe they’re just a lot smarter than we give them credit for.

Velo examines whether Biden’s new Chinese tariffs will raise the cost of your next ebike, concluding it’s complicated.

Men’s Journal recommends their choices for Father’s Day gifts for bicyclists that won’t get stashed in the back of the drawer — including a liquor flask, in case you somehow feel the need to get sloshed during your next ride.

CNN Underscored once again considers the best bike locks, sticking with choices from Kryptonite and Hiplok.

A Brooklyn paper talks with the New York borough’s legendary bikeshare-riding stuntman famed for balancing various objects on his head.

Tragic news from upstate New York, where a teenaged boy was killed when he went off the top of a five story parking garage while riding an ebike with a group of friends. Although once again, what kind of ebike isn’t specified.

The annual 900-mile Remember the Removal Bike Ride bike ride is underway, as a group of bicyclists with Cherokee ancestry follow the infamous Trail of Tears their forebears walked from Georgia to Oklahoma.

 

International

Lime will bring the first bikeshare system to a First Nations community when they open an ebike system on British Columbia’s Squamish Nation.

If you build it, they will come. Just a month after critics said a new bike lane in Colchester, England was an accident waiting to happen and would cause carnage, bicycling rates are up 300% on the route while gaining positive reviews from riders.

More than half of bike riders in the UK say the roads are in terrible shape due to potholes and cracked pavement following months of rains.

British carmaker Ariel is releasing its first bicycle in 92 years; the company made the first mass-produced bicycle in 1871, but switched exclusively to cars in 1932.

UK police warn that drivers can’t see you if you’re wearing dark clothing. Even in broad daylight, apparently.

 

Competitive Cycling

Once again, a cyclist loses after celebrating too soon, this time in the women’s Tour of Britain when retiring Luxembourg champ Christine Majerus raised her arms in victory before losing at the finish line.

https://twitter.com/TourofBritain/status/1799821631201902952?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1799821631201902952%7Ctwgr%5E7a41bc1f59a4e4d89f72caec2115b760319db438%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fd-11901174861121623140.ampproject.net%2F2405231944000%2Fframe.html

 

Finally…

That feeling when you take your new tall bike to extreme lengths. Or when your band performs on a bicycle built for six.

And when you’re on felony probation and carrying illegal weed on your bike, just stop for the damn stop sign, already.

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin

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

LA Times voter guides for CD4, CD6 and Healthy Streets LA; SGV bike ride Sunday; and Weiner talks speed governors

February 2, 2024 / / Comments Off on LA Times voter guides for CD4, CD6 and Healthy Streets LA; SGV bike ride Sunday; and Weiner talks speed governors
332 days until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025.
So stop what you’re doing and sign this petition demanding a public meeting with LA Mayor Karen Bass to hear the dangers we face just walking and biking on the mean streets of Los Angeles.

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

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels.

………

The Los Angeles Times offers a detailed voter guide to the Healthy Streets LA ballot measure, including a look at what it does and doesn’t do, as well as who supports and opposes it.

And there’s a lot more of the former than there is the latter.

The paper also provides election guides for the six-way race for the CD6 seat currently held by Imelda Padilla on an interim basis, as well as the two men challenging Nithya Raman in the reconfigured CD4.

………

Update: This ride has been postponed until next Sunday due to risk of rain.

Safe Streets For SGV is hosting a moderately paced, nine-mile bike ride on Sunday to call for safer streets and promote better connections between Alhambra and South Pasadena.

………

State Senator Scott Weiner describes his bill that would require speed governors in all new cars, which would “only” allow drivers to break the law by 10 mph.

Which sounds perfectly damn reasonable to me.

Thanks to MYVOTECD1 for the heads-up.

………

The latest episode of Bike Talk is available online now.

A listener, Reese, speaks for connected, protected bike lanes in Utah. 2:00

News: With pedestrian and cyclist deaths in Los Angeles at an 8-year high, the departing Los Angeles Police Chief blames their reckless biking and walking habits. In California, SB 961 calls for all new cars to have speed governors. A Die-in against traffic violence at LA City Hall. 7:12

When a 14 year old on his bike was hit by an uninsured motorist in Chicago, personal injury lawyer Jonel Metaj took the case all the way to the Illinois Supreme Court. Now, people in Illinois with uninsured motorist coverage will be protected when biking and walking, too. 18:57

Alison Cohen is the founder of Bicycle Transit Systems, which operates bikeshare in cities throughout the US. She explains how BTS came to be threatened with replacement by Lyft in Los Angeles. 33:00

A Bike Thought by Stacey. 52:23

………

Not only was Farrah Fawcett one of us, but she could clearly do “Look Ma! No hands!” with the best of them.

………

It’s now 43 days since the California ebike incentive program’s latest failure to launch, which was promised no later than fall 2023. And 31 months since it was approved by the legislature and signed into law, and counting.

………

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 couple of young Frenchmen walked without a single day behind bars for an eight-month series of attacks in which they leaned out of a moving car to push at least a dozen bike riders off their bikes and into ditches, and hit at least one man repeatedly with a small truncheon; they were both sentenced to two-year suspended sentences after telling the judge they were really, really sorry. No, really.

No surprise here. A pair of Australian teenagers were arrested for intentionally running down two Melbourne bicyclists in a stolen car last week, leaving the men with serious, potentially life-changing injuries, and posting video of the attack online. They joined a now worldwide social media-inspired trend of teens stealing cars and intentionally attacking people on bicycles — including recent attacks in Huntington Beach and Las Vegas — for no other reason than they can.

………

Local 

Metro announced plans to improve streets, bus stops and bike lanes along the 710 Freeway corridor, after cancelling plans to widen the freeway in the face of public opposition.

Seven Culver City cops will join the Police Unity Tour, riding 300 miles to honor fallen officers.

 

State

San Diego and Imperial counties will share $12 million in state infrastructure funding, including for bike and pedestrian projects.

The atmospheric river that poured through California yesterday left a Santa Barbara bike lane closed due to flooding, with no projected opening date.

 

National

Bike Rumor picks the year’s best bike handlebar bags.

SRAM issued a recall for all aftermarket 12-speed eTap AXS Red, Force, Rival and Apex shift-brake levers produced before July 2023 that were not installed by a bicycle dealer, telling owners to stop using them immediately.

Forbes recommends fat biking as one of “three winter adventurers (sic) you can’t afford to miss in Anchorage.” Especially since they finally have snow this year.

A kindhearted Maine high school resource cop called on a local bike shop to donate a refurbished bike for a kid who was struggling with attendance, leading to a new program accepting donated bikes for students.

A Baltimore letter writer says traffic calming doesn’t work, and new bike lanes will never lure people out of their motor vehicles, because cars.

After losing his own vision, a New Orleans man created a tandem bicycling group to allow blind people to keep riding.

 

International

Momentum offers seven “examples of stunning and inspiring bicycle infrastructure around the world.” None of which are in Los Angeles. Or North America, for that matter. 

A longstanding worker-owned bike shop in London’s Brixton neighborhood is begging for donations to help it withstand the worst year in its two decade history.

Singer Harry Styles is one of us, spending the last day before he turned 30 riding through London in a quilted orange puffer jacket.

A new London study suggests male Sikh bike riders might not benefit from bike helmets, because the style and thickness of their turbans could already provide the best possible head protection.

British ebike brand Gocycle is introducing a futuristic take on the family e-cargo bike — as long as you have at least seven grand burning a hole in your bank account.

Unbelievable. A road raging Jersey teenage was acquitted of manslaughter for killing a bike rider with a single punch to the face, claiming he was frightened by the victim, despite repeatedly honking at him and getting out of his car to confront him after the man deservedly flipped him off.

This is who we share the road with. Italian saboteurs are cutting down speed cams, and ripping out speed humps to fight for their God-given right to speed.

The Jerusalem Post highlights the best selling bike phone mounts. One of which I already own. 

A pair of Aussie researchers say e-scooter injuries are rising, but there’s not enough data yet to say if they’re more dangerous than other micromobility methods, such as bicycles.

 

Competitive Cycling

The first win of the 2024 cycling season goes to Belgian Soudal Quick-Step sprinter Tim Merlier.

 

Finally…

Why you shouldn’t trust your bike to the cheapest lock you can find at CVS. What happens when you let a Magic 8-Ball write your bike lane headlines.

And when the mayor’s office says just kidding about scrapping the city’s annual bike ride.

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin

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

New bill requires speed governors on new California cars, LAPD Chief blames traffic victims, and LA bike deaths jump 41%

January 25, 2024 / / Comments Off on New bill requires speed governors on new California cars, LAPD Chief blames traffic victims, and LA bike deaths jump 41%
Stop what you’re doing and sign this petition demanding a public meeting with LA Mayor Karen Bass to hear the dangers we face just walking and biking on the mean streets of Los Angeles.

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

………

San Francisco state Senator Scott Weiner introduced two bills to improve traffic safety, including requiring speed governors on all new cars, and side guards on trucks.

Here’s how Calbike, which sponsored the bills, explains them.

Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) introduced the Speeding and Fatality Emergency Reduction on California Streets (SAFER California Streets) Package, Senate Bills 960 & 961, a first-in-the-nation effort to make California roads safe and accessible to all users. Senate Bill 961 requires changes to vehicles directly, including a first-in-the-nation requirement that all new vehicles sold in California install speed governors, smart devices that automatically limit the vehicle’s speed to 10 miles above the legal limit. SB 961 also requires side underride guards on trucks, to reduce the risk of cars and bikes being pulled underneath the truck during a crash.

Senate Bill 960 requires that Caltrans, the state transportation agency, make physical improvements like new crosswalks and curb extensions on state-owned surface streets to better accommodate pedestrians, cyclists, the disability community, and transit users.

These changes are a head-on attempt to tackle vehicle fatalities, which are surging across the U.S.—and especially in California—amid a rise in reckless driving since the onset of the pandemic. A recent report from TRIP, a national transportation research group, found that traffic fatalities in California have increased by 22% from 2019 to 2022, compared to 19% for the U.S. overall. In 2022, 4,400 Californians died in car crashes.

The speed governing requirement is probably unlikely to pass in its present form, as it will undoubted face stiff opposition from organizations defending California drivers’ God-given right to speed.

But it could be one of the biggest steps the state could take to ensure drivers follow speed laws, and save lives.

Sort of, anyway. Since it would still let them speed by the same 10 mph over the limit that most California drivers do now, anyway.

………

Outgoing LAPD Chief Michael Moore caused an uproar by blaming the victims for the city’s climbing traffic deaths, placing responsibility on pedestrians for crossing streets outside of crosswalks, and bicyclists for riding on streets without bike lanes and not wearing reflective gear.

Not on, say, drivers for speeding or driving distracted or under the influence, or just generally not managing to avoid hitting other people. Or on his own officers for failing to enforce traffic laws.

Schmuck.

His misguided criticisms hardly explain LA’s rapid jump in bicycling deaths, since bike riders seem no less likely to use bike lanes or wear hi-viz and reflective gear than they were just three years ago.

………

Meanwhile, Streets Are For Everyone, aka SAFE, is looking for volunteers to promote Saturday’s die-in at LA City Hall at tomorrow’s Critical Mass Ride.

SAFE is holding a Protest for safe streets on Saturday, January 27th, on the steps of City Hall in order to demand LA City leaders do something effective about safety in our roads. Our goal is to have at least 330 people in attendance to represent each life lost to traffic violence in 2023.

We will be at the LA Critical Mass ride on Friday, January 26th, to let the cycling community know about the protest and enlist their help. We need volunteers to join us and make our protest as big and loud as possible!

………

Metro wants your input on how to reduce traffic.

Traffic Reduction Study (TRS) Survey closes Jan 31, 2024 
TRS is looking at how we can manage demand to reduce traffic through congestion pricing, and make it easier for everyone to travel, regardless of how they choose to travel. Following the conclusion of the survey, Metro staff will take the time necessary to assess and evaluate the feedback received countywide to include in the study’s technical analysis. We appreciate your assistance in helping us understand what your priorities and concerns are about traffic. Please take the survey here.

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I hope you weren’t planning to ride Orange County’s Mariposa Bridge anytime soon.

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That’s more like it.

An Arizona tow truck driver got 17 years behind bars for plowing into a group bike ride, killing one woman and injuring five other people, despite playing the universal Get Out Of Jail Free card by claiming the sun was in his eyes. Although part of that sentence is for the kiddie porn cops found on his phone.

A 19-year old New Mexico man got a little more than seven years for the drunken hit-and-run that killed a 63-year old man riding a bicycle, after prosecutors dropped an additional seven years from his sentence in a plea deal.

And the Florida drawbridge operator who walked with seven years probation for failing to check if anyone was on the bridge before opening it, killing a woman walking her bike across it at the time, could be headed for nine years behind bars after failing a urine test required as a condition of her probation.

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More proof that brilliant writers ride bikes.

I mean, besides me.

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It took me about two seconds to find the bike with no rider, for whatever that’s worth.

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It’s now 35 days since the California ebike incentive program’s latest failure to launch, which was promised no later than fall 2023. And 30 months since it was approved by the legislature and signed into law, and counting.

………

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

A British bicycling organization says the country’s addiction to ever bigger cars is driving bike riders off the roads, as car widths increase an average of one centimeter a year — a little less than half an inch.

A London bike rider filmed a motorist driving blissfully the wrong way down a bike lane, as bicyclists dodged out of his way.

 

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

New York’s self-appointed sidewalk vigilante has made over 5,000 documented reports to the city’s 311 systems, thanks to a personally-programmed camera aimed to capture people illegally riding bikes on the sidewalk.

………

Local 

The Los Angeles Times suggests 13 out-of-the-mainstream bike shops to help discover the city’s thriving bicycle culture. Thanks to Keith Johnson for the link, who says his go-to shop Safety Cycle should have made the list, too.

Hollywood Progressive profiles Leon Comerre’s breathtaking 1903 painting Cycling at Vesinet.

 

State

A writer for Streetsblog says the California Transportation Commission needs to hit pause on highway projects to address the state’s massive budget shortfall, arguing that putting a potentially problematic $200 million highway expansion on hold was a step in the right direction.

Sad news from Livermore, where a 58-year old man died when he went over his handlebars after apparently suffering a mechanical problem with his bike.

San Francisco celebrity chef, restaurateur and philanthropist Chris Cosentino is one of us, riding his bike to help manage his mental health.

The City by the Bay is proposing a $9 million settlement after an infamous roadway bump resulting from a botched water pipe repair left a bike rider with life altering injuries; four other people have sued for under a million each for injuries suffered hitting the bump with their bikes. Which raises the obvious question of why not just fix the damn thing after the first person got hurt?

 

National

Oregon truckers are complaining that road diets and buffered bike lanes are making traffic lanes too narrow for their bigass trucks. Which is a better argument for making the trucks smaller than reducing bike lane buffers.

Separated bike lanes in Austin, Texas are paved with terra-cotta, making them more resistant to wear, and red instead of the usual green.

Streetsblog criticizes New York Mayor Eric Adams for once again failing to even mention bus or bike lanes in his annual State of the City address, in contrast to his vocal support as a candidate. But he does feel the need to regulate ebikes, proposing a new Department of Sustainable Delivery to regulate micro-mobility.

A DC website offers a step-by-step playbook for starting your own family biking group.

A Richmond, Virginia bike shop reopened after an unexplained closure left customers without the bikes they had ordered or had repaired, resulting in at least one customer lawsuit, as well as a suit filed by Giant Bicycles over an unpaid $144,000 tab.

 

International

A tech site says Europe’s bike industry is hitting bumps as the bicycling craze cools. Although other recent reports have suggested the opposite.

In a bizarre case, a British woman took her own life after learning her estranged husband had been riding a bicycle with another woman. Which hardly counts as infidelity, unless maybe they were sharing the same bike seat.

Travel site Lonely Planet explains how to plan a family bike trip around France’s Lake Annecy.

A 41-year old Sydney, Australia man says people make fun of him because he never learned to drive, but he’s better off riding a bike and taking transit when necessary. And so’s the planet.

 

Competitive Cycling

Mathieu van der Poel’s remarkable ten race unbeaten streak to start the ‘cross season finally came to an end, with a fifth-place finish in the Benidorm World Cup.

Canadian Cycling Magazine takes a deep dive into the relatively recent history of motor doping, including an unconfirmed accusation against American Sepp Kuss.

 

Finally…

Don’t look so surprised if you get popped for biking under the influence. The Bike Share Batman fights evildoers by stealing back stolen bikeshare bikes.

And why would you need more than one wheel to check out of a hotel, anyway?

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin

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

Caltrans meager PCH safety efforts, a peloton ticketed for following too close, and a call for a life-saving super power

December 21, 2023 / / 2 comments

It’s the last four days of the 9th Annual BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive!

Last year, it took a real Chrismukah miracle to top the previous year, with more than 25 donations in the last five days.

We’ll need at least that many this time around just to catch up — let alone set a new record for the 9th year in a row. 

So thanks to Steven H and Joshua H (no relation) for their generous support for SoCal’s best source bike news and advocacy.

But time is rapidly running out for this year’s fund drive. 

So don’t wait.

Stop what you’re doing, and give now!

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Days left to launch the California ebike incentive program this fall as promised: 0

Seriously, is anyone really surprised that the California Air Resources Board missed their latest self-imposed deadline once again?

Anyone?

Bueller? Bueller?

………

If you haven’t already, sign the petition demanding a public meeting with LA Mayor Karen Bass to listen to the dangers we face just walking and biking on the streets of LA, and city’s ongoing failure to build the safer, more livable transportation system they promised.
Then share it with everyone you know, on every platform you can.

………

Even reporters for the Los Angeles Times question whether Caltrans meager safety “improvements” on PCH will be enough to make a difference.

Writing about Monday’s performative press conference to announce a lousy $4.2 million in safety work for the 21 miles of PCH that snakes along the Pacific Coast — which works out to just $200,000 a mile — they almost immediately called the announcement into question.

While there is a process each project will have to undergo, “this is not a ‘business as usual’ approach,” Omishakin said as cars whizzed past.

After several deadly pedestrian crashes that roiled Malibu and sparked calls for change, business as usual won’t be enough, transportation activists said. Damian Kevitt, founder of Streets Are for Everyone, told The Times the “design of PCH through Malibu is simply and clearly deadly.”

“It needs to be a transformed from a highway where people can do 60 to 80 to even 100 mph through residential [areas] and businesses, with families and cyclists, unprotected, just a couple feet away,” Kevitt said.

Hopefully, Caltrans can demonstrate a little more urgency than the $34.6 million project currently underway to sync red lights along the highway, presumably to make speeding drivers stop for red while the typically non-existent non-speeding drivers on the highway will see greens.

The project was approved seven years ago, but because the highway is under California Department of Transportation jurisdiction, it had to be reviewed by the state.

“The Caltrans review process, while undoubtedly necessary for ensuring regulatory compliance and safety standards, proved to be more cumbersome than anticipated,” said Matt Myerhoff, Malibu’s public information officer.

Gee, you think?

Although red lights are typically synced to smooth traffic flow, rather than control speeds.

Meanwhile, Caltrans pledged to study PCH to determine if it can be designated as a safety corridor, in which fines for speeding can be doubled.

But f the mounting death toll on the highway isn’t prima facie proof of the problem, I don’t know what yet another study will accomplish. Then again, you could quadruple the fines, and it won’t matter if the drivers don’t get caught.

Which points to the sheer stupidity of California’s speed cam pilot program only being allowed in Los Angeles, Glendale and Long Beach, along with three NorCal cities, while completely ignoring the state’s deadliest corridors.

But still.

Members of Seetoo’s Fix PCH Action Team, including Kevitt, say the seven years it took Caltrans to allow Malibu to begin the signal synchronization project “doesn’t indicate that Caltrans is prioritizing safety at all.”

Collecting and studying the data could mean “years and years more delay before they even decide if they can slow down this highway that is known to be deadly,” Kevitt said.

Chris Wizner, another action team member, told The Times he wondered how many more deaths it would take for Caltrans to slow down PCH.

That’s easy.

The formula has always been N+1.

It will take one more death than we’ve already suffered, no matter how many there have already been.

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A Santa Barbara cop takes a turn at demonstrating he knows nothing about riding in a peloton, without saying it, as a group of Santa Barbara bicyclists got delayed tickets in the mail for following one another too closely, after one rider went down and took several other riders down with him.

Here’s the full text of the tweet.

Insult to injury rant: Group ride Santa Barbara to Ventura & back Nov. 21, a cyclist in the peloton front crashed & took down several of us. EMTs came & took me for a brain scan. I’m fine. Cop pretended to help me as he asked my name etc.

I just got a ticket for “following too close”. In a peloton. Seriously. $235 or contest it in court.

I’m tempted on principle. Would love to confront this cop & ask why he didn’t give me the ticket then & there (others also got tickets in the mail). He probably knows we would have pitched a fit.

Disgraceful. I’m lying there on the ground in paid, bloody & nauseous & this MF cop is writing me up for a traffic violation. No wonder people don’t trust the police. “Protect & Serve”. Bullshit.

Thanks to Tim Rutt for the heads-up.

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Somehow this one slipped under the radar, as Robert Leone forwards the results of the Universal Postal Union’s 2023 letter writing competition.

Okay, maybe I know why this one slipped under the radar.

Regardless, the UPU asked children to write on the following topic:

“Imagine you are a super hero and your mission is to make all roads around the world safer for children. Write a letter to someone explaining which super powers you would need to achieve your mission.”

The winner, a 13-year old girl from Kenya, requests a simple super power — the ability to write posters that will make drivers slow down, because children are the most helpless road users.

Amen.

………

Thanks to Megan Lynch for forwarding the following video, which includes these key points:

  • Soul-crushing car traffic makes the Yosemite experience very frustrating
  • That frustration gets unloaded on retail workers there
  • You should definitely ride a bike in Yosemite
  • But don’t leave anything on your bike because even in Yosemite thieves will strip it to the frame

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‘Tis the season.

A San Diego group is continuing a five decade tradition of giving, by working to build 150 bikes to give to kids on Christmas Day.

A Cedar Rapids, Iowa bike shop turned into Santa’s workshop as volunteers joined staffers to refurbish 50 bikes for kids in need.

An Alabama Baptist church collected more than 300 bikes to give to area kids for Christmas.

The work of Florida’s legendary Jack the Bike Man lives on, as the charity he founded gave 100 bicycles to people in need, despite his death earlier this year.

………

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

Eureka scrapped plans for a buffered bike lane on Myrtle Street, caving to angry residents who prefer convenient parking to protecting human lives, as long as those lives get around on two wheels instead of four.

No surprise here, as compromises forced on a Brooklyn protected bike lane by people loathe to sacrifice parking or traffic lanes resulted in a project that virtually no one is happy with.

No bias here. A New York councilmember calls for mandatory licensing and registration of ebikes, rhetorically asking “How many actual ebikes do you see stopping at a red light or observing traffic laws?” Just wait until someone tells him about cars and their drivers, which are already registered and licensed, and regularly break traffic laws anyway.

Evidently, verbally abusing and repeatedly swerving a car into a woman riding a bike isn’t illegal anymore, after police in the UK “mistakenly” close the books on a road raging driver.

………

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Local 

Streetsblog’s Joe Linton applauds yesterday’s deep dive on dooring in the Los Angeles Times.

Metro will offer free bus and train rides on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, along with free Metro Bike Share for the first half hour from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Day.

 

State

A man was arrested in Santa Ana Saturday after walking out of an Irvine Walmart with a new beach cruiser. Seriously, if you’re going to steal a bike, at least steal a better one.

Streetsblog zeros in on San Diego’s new Complete Streets policy, examining how advocates pushed for and won a better approach to street design.

A local San Francisco website says sales data doesn’t back up claims from merchants along Valencia Street that the new centerline bike lane has killed their business, showing just a 6% drop in retail sales during construction of the bike lanes. Although to be fair, a 6% drop can mean the difference between profit and loss for some businesses, but it’s a far cry from what they claimed.

At the same time, San Francisco website Underscore_SF says the controversial centerline bike lane was never going to work, and San Francisco should move the bike lanes to a more traditional curbside configuration.

 

National

GCN offers six top tips for descending on a road bike.

REI’s second-gen e-cargo bike is on sale for its lowest price ever; CNN called it the year’s best ebike, cargo or otherwise. At less than $1140, you could easily buy one with California’s ebike voucher program, and have change left over — if the voucher program ever actually launches.

More churn in the ebike world, as Harley-Davidson sold its Serial 1 ebike division to Florida ebike maker LEV Manufacturing.

Not surprisingly, bike riders in Ashland, Oregon support plans to install more bike parking in the public right-of-way.

A pair of alleged bike burglars face charges for breaking into Lance Armstrong’s storage unit — yes, that Lance Armstrong — and stealing four complete bicycles and a couple frames valued at $105,000; it’s not clear if any of the bikes were recovered.

A Texas man will face two counts of criminally negligent homicide for killing a married couple as they rode their bikes this past June; he was allegedly texting when he hit their bikes, which explains why he says he never saw them.

More on the bizarre ruling from the Illinois Supreme Court that says cities aren’t liable for injuries to bike riders due to bad pavement because streets without bike lanes aren’t intended for bicycles.

Inmates in a New Hampshire county jail are learning to repair bicycles, working towards their master bike technician certification while serving their time. Which should provide a nice incentive to commit another crime if they get released before earning their certification.

A Long Island woman faces a host of charges, including 2nd degree assault and disabling an Interlock device, for speeding through a parking lot where a triathlon was being held and slamming into a competitor riding his bike, leaving the victim with a traumatic brain injury and cervical spine fracture.

 

International

Toronto’s paramedic’s union said a controversial protected bike lane cost an ambulance crew 30 seconds getting through an intersection because drivers couldn’t get out of their way. Maybe someone should tell them those little car-tickler plastic posts are designed to bend, so you can drive right over them. 

Sad news from the UK, where popular industry pro Nils Amelinckx died after a lengthy battle with stage four bowel cancer; Amelinckx founded the nonprofit Rider Resilience to promote the use of bicycles as medicine, as well as the bicycling wing of gear maker Lyon Equipment. He was just 36.

Grieving British parents called for mandatory speed limiters on all motor vehicles, after a speeding driver climbed the curbed and killed their 14-year old daughter as she rode in a separated bike lane.

Bankrupt Dutch ebike maker VanMoof intends to rise Phoenix-like from the ashes with plans for a new e-scooter.

The BBC examines how the Finnish coastal city of Oulu became the winter bicycling capital of the world, despite its location just 60 miles south of the Arctic Circle.

 

Competitive Cycling

The Vuelta released its course for next year, starting and ending with time trials, and “savage” climbing in between.

https://twitter.com/ammattipyoraily/status/1737208276511588374?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1737208276511588374%7Ctwgr%5Efd11a704aa7aaf06f14e2637bcad18fa3438063b%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Froad.cc%2Fcontent%2Fnews%2Fcycling-live-blog-20-december-2023-305753

 

Finally…

Aquaman is one of us. This is what it would look like if Tony the Tiger sponsored a cycling team.

And your next e-cargo bike could haul a baby grand piano.

Or a grown-up one, even.

………

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin

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