Tag Archive for Streets For All

New York joins LA in fight for 25×25, Streets For All’s state & county endorsements, and Ford says park the car

May 13, 2022 / / One comment

New York is joining Los Angeles in the movement for 25×25.

Advocates are challenging city leaders to return 25% of city street space back to the people by 2025, whether in the form of sidewalks, bikeways or public plazas.

New York currently has 19,000 lane miles dedicated to motor vehicle use, and three million free on-street parking spaces — more than 1.5 for every vehicle in the city.

The LA 25×25 campaign similarly seeks to return 25% of the city’s 6,500 centerline miles of streets to human use by 2025.

Unfortunately, none of the five major candidates for mayor — make that four, after Joe Buscaino dropped out — have signed on yet, though a handful of others have, including progressive candidate Gina Viola.

Which would seem to make it a valuable point of distinction for anyone who does.

Meanwhile, three of the five candidates for city controller have endorsed the plan; not surprisingly, pseudo-environmentalist Paul Koretz is a holdout, along with Paul Wilcox. And four of the five candidates for city attorney are onboard.

Only Curren Price has backed it among sitting city council candidates. Bob Blumenfield is a no, while Monica Rodriguez and Mitch O’Farrell have failed to respond, along with “Roadkill” Gil Cedillo, though several of their challengers have endorsed it.

Combined with the Healthy Streets LA ballot measure, which requires the city to build out the already-approved mobility plan as streets are repaved, it could radically reform the city into a human-centered space it hasn’t seen for most of the past century.

And New Yorkers could envy us for a change.

Photo shows kids enjoying a pre-pandemic CicLAvia.

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Streets For All offers their endorsements for the state legislature and the LA County Board of Supervisors.

Not surprisingly, the political action committee recommend returning Assembly Transportation Committee Chair Laura Friedman to office, along with Hilda Solis at the county level.

They also recommend WeHo Mayor Lindsey Horvath for the county board.

Click the link above for their endorsements in other state legislature races.

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The East Side Riders invite you to join them on a family friendly ride this Sunday.

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Ford is starting a new campaign telling their European staffers to park their cars and bike to work, instead.

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

This is the problem with drivers parking in bike lanes. A road raging San Francisco driver subjected a bike-riding man to a punishment pass, then threw something at him while screaming to “stay in the God damn bike lane!”, after the victim had been forced to leave it several times to get around illegally parked cars. Which is not to suggest that the jerk behind the wheel had a point.

No bias here. After a 15-year old Paris, Texas girl was injured in a hit-and-run while riding her bike, the local press can’t be bothered to mention that the apparently sentient car even had a driver.

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

A South Philly bike rider was killed in a curbside shootout when he tried to rob a man smoking in front of his home, not realizing the intended victim was armed and had a license to carry.

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Local

The widow of a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy who died during a mountain bike race run by the California Police Athletic Federation won a partial victory when a judge refused a bid to dismiss her lawsuit, but ruled she couldn’t receive punitive damages in a wrongful death case.

 

State 

No news is good news, right?

 

National

AAA included head-on collisions with bicyclists in their crash tests for cars with active driving assistance; the results weren’t pretty.

Bring it on! Seattle is hosting a self-guided Tour de Donut leading to five donut shops around the city; the $25 entry fee includes a T-shirt, and coffee or donut at each stop. LA has a hell of a lot more donut shops, in case anyone wants to try it here.

LV Sports Biz has more details on plans to hold a L’Étape by Tour de France fondo in Las Vegas next May.

Colorado bike vigilantes are stealing back previously stolen bicycles, because police don’t have the time or resources to track them down.

Millions of toddlers can’t be wrong. The founder of popular balance bikemaker Strider Bike will be inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame.

Police in Kalamazoo, Michigan are using a laser measuring device mounted to an officer’s bicycle to catch drivers violating the city’s five-foot passing law. Something we tried, and failed, to get the LAPD to do here when they complained there was no way to enforce California’s three-foot passing law.

Seriously? A Virginia legal group suggests five of the state’s bike laws that could save your life — including wearing a helmet, which isn’t required under state law. But the only tip they have for drivers is to obey the three-foot passing law. Because evidently, if you get killed by a driver it’s your own damn fault.

 

International

Vancouver is Awesome offers a cycling enthusiast’s guide to buying your first bicycle.

Good idea. Canada’s Price Edward Island is donating $25,000 to a foundation to help young people in recovery transition back into society, to help establish a program to refurbish and recycle bicycles.

Great idea. Cycling UK, Britain’s official bicycling agency, is now offering free three-month ebike loans to encourage people to stop driving and start riding.

The rich get richer. London bicyclists now have yet another bicycle superhighway, providing a safe route for riders on the city’s east side. Which compares favorably with LA’s none.

No bias here, either. An Irish jeweler blames a new bike lane that replaced parking spaces in front of his shop for “forcing” him to close, before even waiting to see how it affected his business; Facebook commenters aren’t having it.

We Love Cycling, which appears to be associated with Czech carmaker Škoda, offers advice on how to buy a bicycle online.

More heartbreaking news from Ukraine, where a father was killed by Russian soldiers as he was riding his bike, leaving his family to carry his body back home in a wheelbarrow.

No surprise here. After authorities in a New Zealand city block a dangerous street to through traffic, there hasn’t been a single crash; the city now plans to make the closure permanent.

 

Competitive Cycling

No change in the leader’s jersey, as French cyclist Arnaud Démare overcame  Caleb Ewan in a photo finish to win Thursday’s sixth stage of the Giro, capturing his second consecutive stage.

Evidently, Astana Qazaqstan team leader Alexander Vinokourov still thinks a bike race is best seen from the seat of a bicycle, taking a few minutes to motor pace behind the team van during Thursday’s sixth stage.

Cycling Tips looks at an Italian cycling team’s whopping 38 sponsors.

 

Finally…

Presenting an ebike for people who’d rather be riding a motorcycle. If you’re riding a bike with two active drug warrants and an open charge of driving without a license, maybe don’t ride salmon — or flee from police when you do.

And you’ll have to keep riding a dumb Zwift bike for now.

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

Oh, and fuck Putin, too.

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

Wrist slap for fatal Jurupa Valley hit-and-run, prelim for killer hit-and-run socialite, and bank robbing cyclist talks to BBC

April 27, 2022 / / Comments Off on Wrist slap for fatal Jurupa Valley hit-and-run, prelim for killer hit-and-run socialite, and bank robbing cyclist talks to BBC

This is why people keep dying on our streets.

A Riverside County judge rewarded a killer hit-and-run driver with his choice of 364 days in jail, work-release or home vacation confinement, for the crash that killed 30-year-old Rigoberto Guzman Jr in Jurupa Valley three years ago, followed by what the DA described as “a torrent of lies.”

Pizza deliveryman Andrew Scott Walters struck Guzman as he was riding his bike, then got out and pulled Guzman’s bike out from under his car before driving away, leaving the injured victim lying in the road when he was struck and killed by another driver — assuming he wasn’t already dead from the first crash.

Walters went so far as to call 911 to report seeing an injured man down in the road, without bothering to mention his own involvement.

He then went back to the Pizza Hut he worked at, where he explained the damage to his car by telling his boss that a drunk homeless man had hurled his bicycle at him “out of nowhere.”

No, really.

Photo by Sora Shimazaki from Pexels.

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This is who we share the road with.

Hidden Hills socialite and philanthropist Rebecca Grossman faces a preliminary hearing for the alleged street racing death of two young boys, who had the misfortune of crossing the street with their family while she was speeding down it.

Grossman, co-founder of the famed Grossman Burn Center, was reportedly driving at speeds up to 81 mph on residential streets, while repeatedly switching lanes with another driver, when she slammed into the boys as they rode their skateboard and scooter in the crosswalk.

She faces two murder counts, two counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence, and a single charge of hit-and-run driving resulting in death.

Which proves the over-privileged can be just as idiotic and deadly as the rest of us.

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No surprise here, as Streets For All has endorsed Eric Darling to replace Mike Bonin in West LA’s CD11; Darling has stood out from the other candidates for his stands on safe and livable streets since the start of the campaign.

The street safety PAC has also endorsed Bob Wunderlich for Beverly Hills City Council, along with John Mirisch.

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The BBC talks with former US Olympic hopeful turned bank robber Tom Justice, who used his cycling skills to make his getaway from over two dozen banks.

He still rides his bike, even after nine years in prison and more than a decade out, but with a La Grange jersey these days.

Chicago Magazine took a deep dive into his story in 2019 if you want to learn more.

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Buena Park continues work on a plan to install a road diet and bike lanes on Dale and Whitaker.

https://twitter.com/mikeocbike/status/1519167487778033664

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If you build it, they will come.

This is what the newly bikeable Paris looks like these days. And what Los Angeles could, with just a modicum of effort from city hall.

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But only bicyclists ignore the right-of-way, right?

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

The Texas car shop owner who posted video of himself rolling coal at a bike rider, then denied knowing anything about it, now says he’s really, really sorry. But only after the video went viral, leading to calls to boycott his shop.

No bias here. Someone in the UK altered a road sign with their own handwritten message telling bike riders to ride “single file you Lycra wearing twats!”

After a British bike rider filmed a driver using his phone behind the wheel, the driver chased him, including driving up on the sidewalk at one point, as the terrified bicyclist begged people to call the police.

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Local

We’re #1! The Los Angeles – Long Beach region once again takes the title as America’s smoggiest metro area. So try not to breathe so much on your next ride. Your lungs will thank you.

Streetsblog looks at the new “protected” bike lanes on westbound 1st Street from Boyle Heights to Little Tokyo. Although once again, the protection is only in the form of little plastic bollards that won’t stop anyone from crashing through.

The Ballona Creek bike path will be closed for maintenance between National and Sepulveda through Friday.

 

State 

Residents of a San Diego apartment complex voiced their anger over new bike lanes in the Rancho Peñasquitos neighborhood, which they say were striped in the dead of night with no advance warning. Although that’s hard to believe, since the parking spaces that were removed to make room for the bike lanes would have been full of cars at that hour.

Hats off to a Santa Barbara Eagle Scout, who built a mountain bike trail for students at his old elementary school.

San Francisco takes the next step towards a safer, less-polluting future by permanently banning cars from JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park.

Questions remain over San Francisco’s Slow Streets program, as the city keeps four of its car-lite corridors, while some residents want them gone.

Sad news from Sacramento, where a bike rider was killed in a hit-and-run while riding in a bike lane; another person riding in the bike lane at the time was uninjured.

 

National

A fascinating new study shows colorfully painted street surfaces can cut crashes involving vulnerable road users by a whopping 50%.

The Bike League belatedly addresses April’s Distracted Driving Month, noting that one in five traffic deaths is the result of distracted driving.

Police in Mt. Vernon, Washington are looking for a man and woman who fled on foot after crossing onto the wrong side of the road and driving up on the sidewalk, where they slammed into a family riding their bicycles, injuring both parents before crashing into several parked cars.

This is why people keep dying on our streets, part two. A Las Vegas food delivery driver faces her third DUI in recent years after she ran into a child riding a bicycle, leaving the kid with moderate injuries. Although the two “popular food delivery service providers” she claimed to work for disavowed any knowledge of her. One more example of authorities keeping dangerous drivers on the road until it’s too late. 

A Utah bike rider is asking the same question every hit-and-run victim asks — “I just want to know why they didn’t stop.”

Denver is putting money where its bike-friendly policy is, with all Denver residents now eligible for a $400 rebate on the purchase of an ebike, with an additional $500 for an e-cargo bike, while qualified low income residents can get a $1,200 rebate.

The Denver Post says Colorado’s new Safety Stop Law, aka the Idaho Stop Law, exposes the animosity between bicyclists and drivers. But you’ll have to sign up or subscribe to find out how or why.

Great idea. A Missouri bike and pedestrian advocacy group got a handful of state legislators on their bikes to ride a bike trail crossing the state with their constituents. I’d love to see that here, at LA City Hall, or in Sacramento.

New York’s fire department is warning about the dangers of improperly charging and storing lithium-ion batteries, after a number of fires, while Bicycling offers advice on how to keep your ebike battery from bursting into flames. As usual, read it on Yahoo if the magazine blocks you. 

There’s a special place in hell for whoever took a trailer filled with kids bikes from the New Orleans advocacy group Bike Easy. Although they’re just saying it’s “missing” at this point.

 

International

Shimano says the worldwide bike boom is showing signs of slowing off in Asia and South and Central America, though the North American and European markets are going strong.   

YK Design looks at the top ten bikes designed for an eco-friendly urban commute, including some that are seriously weird, and/or just vaporware at this point. Although number nine may be very strange, but in a very cool way, even though you probably wouldn’t want to ride it with those wires just begging for your crotch. 

A British van driver was sentenced to a total of eight years, including four behind bars, and barred from driving for 12 years, all for killing a 71-year old man riding a bicycle while so drunk he couldn’t to stand on his own following the crash; he had 25 previous traffic convictions. Yet another example of keeping a dangerous driver on the road until they kill someone.

A Malaysian paper decries kids riding the popular basikal lajak, illegally modified bicycles that allow users to race downhill in the Superman position, calling them “a threat to road safety.” Even though it was a woman driver who was convicted of killing eight teens who were riding them, rather than the other way around.

 

Competitive Cycling

Two-time Grand Tour winner Egan Bernal posted a video telling fans to be patient, because he’s on his way back. Evidently he meant it, as he returns to Europe to begin training for the first time since the training crash that nearly took his life.

World champion Julian Alaphilippe’s multiple serious injuries during Sunday’s Liège-Bastogne-Liège came when he fell down a ditch and hit a tree as a result of a mass crash.

Want to feel old? An eight-year old Missouri second grader was named to the US national BMX team.

  

Finally…

Your next ebike could be a Mini Cooper. Seriously, if a Burley is good enough for your kids, it’s good enough for your pet.

And you probably weren’t planning to, but still.

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

Oh, and fuck Putin, too.

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

CD15 mobility debate, SGV state Senator Anthony Portantino is one of us, and Bullard crowdfund passes $73,00

April 14, 2022 / / One comment

Streets For All continues to take the lead vetting candidates for the upcoming city election by hosting yet another virtual candidate debate.

This time the group is hosting three of the four candidates to replace CD15 Councilmember Joe Buscaino in LA’s oddly drawn 15th council district, which stretches from San Pedro to Watts.

Not participating is self-described businessman and community advocate Anthony Santich.

Meanwhile, Buscaino’s mayoral campaign is languishing at the bottom of the pack with just 1% of support from likely voters, after billionaire Rick Caruso’s massively self-financed campaign outflanked him to the right of the city’s otherwise liberal field.

Caruso and Karen Bass lead the field, with 24% and 23%, respectively.

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Speaking of Streets For All, the transportation PAC talks with California state Senator Anthony Portantino, who represents the San Gabriel Valley’s 25th district.

And yes, he’s one of us now.

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The crowdfunding campaign to benefit the families of Whittier’s fallen Bullard brothers, who were killed by an alleged DUI driver in Saturday’s Tour of St. George, Utah, has now exceeded $73,000 of the $100,000 goal in just two days, driven in part by members of Utah’s bicycling community.

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Maybe hi-viz isn’t the answer after all.

https://twitter.com/DurhamRPU/status/1514170915512274944?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1514170915512274944%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Froad.cc%2Fcontent%2Fnews%2Fcycling-live-blog-13-april-2022-291903

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

Four Pennsylvania teens are accused of riding around town threatening people with a replica AK-47-style gun, shooting someone on a bicycle with airsoft pellets.

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Local

The route and the final environmental study for the new 19-mile NoHo to Pasadena rapid bus line will go before the Metro Board later this month; the plan appears to incorporate many of the elements from the resident-designed Beautiful Boulevard plan.

Hats off to Santa Monica-based Bird for piloting a free, first-of-its-kind program to provide motorized attachments for New York wheelchair users.

 

State 

Despite San Diego’s avowed commitment to long-term climate goals, the city’s nonprofit Climate Action Campaign says area cities aren’t doing enough, and moving too slowly in the face of the climate emergency. On the other hand, they’re moving a lot faster than a certain megalopolis to the north we could name.

A group of Ventura middle school students have created a new kind of tote bag for a local food bank, making it easier to carry on a bicycle.

Road.cc highlights 12 “show stopping” bikes from Monterey’s annual Sea Otter Classic.

Arcata explains their new two-stage bike boxes, which eliminates the need for bike riders to filer across three lanes of a one-way street to make a left turn. Although it does mean waiting through up to two light cycles.

 

National

Beware of a recent nationwide jump in road raging drivers, many of whom may be armed after a surge in gun sales during the pandemic.

Bullshit. Forbes considers what types of bikes are best for seniors, which they seem to define as anyone over 55, including ebikes, cruisers and adult trikes. Never mind that many people ride road and mountain bikes well into their 70s, and sometimes 80s. The right bike for you depends entirely on your relative fitness and the kind of riding you want to do, regardless of your age.

The List examines what happens to your body when you ride a bike every day. Hint: It’s all good.

The Cherokee Nation introduced the six young women who will participate in this year’s Remember the Removal Bike Ride, which follows the northern route of the infamous Trail of Tears for 950 miles through Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma; this is the first time the participants have been made up entirely of Cherokee women.

It’s official in Colorado, where the governor signed a bill allowing bike riders to treat stop signs as yields and red lights like stop signs; the law, which takes effect immediately, also applies to other “slow speed” conveyances, including ebikes, e-scooters, skateboards and wheelchairs.

A St. Paul MN writer recalls the “scorcher” menace of the 1890’s, which marked the beginning of the anti-bike bias we still enjoy today.

Streetsblog concludes there’s a little truth — very little — in an article criticizing a new protected bike lane for a drop in local retail sales, rather than poor business practices or right-wing politics.

Georgia police investigators are criticized for not knowing the state’s bike laws, blaming a young woman for her own death because she didn’t have a rear light on her bike or hi-vis clothing, even though neither are require in the state. And even though she was run down by a woman stoned on meth and valium, as well as two other drugs.

 

International

Cycling News rates the best helmets for ebike riders. Which are evidently different than the best helmets for non-electric bikes, for some reason.

A 19-year old British bike rider blames a local housing association after he collided with a collapsed fence and was impaled through the chest by a fence pole.

A new Dutch study offers some much-needed perspective on the relative dangers of ebikes, revealing that ebike riders are 1.6 times more likely to end up in the emergency room than people on traditional bikes — compared to two times more likely for people on racing bikes, and three times more likely for mountain bikers. Which kind of refutes many of the panicked reports we’ve been seeing about the dangers posed by ebikes.

Vision Zero is apparently working in the Netherlands, where traffic deaths are half what they were 20 years ago, although more people were killed riding bikes than in cars. Meanwhile, a road safety group calls for mandatory helmets for anyone over 60, who account for half of the country’s bicycling fatalities.

A Malaysian lawyer called for people to pray for the woman convicted of killing eight teens riding the popular basikal lajak modified bicycles, after she was sentenced to a well-deserved six ears behind bars, along with a fine of a little more that $1,400.

An Aussie tow truck driver was allegedly high on crystal meth when he ran a stop sign and killed a 43-year old man riding a bicycle.

 

Competitive Cycling

Cycling star Peter Sagan has temporarily stepped away from racing to deal with lingering health problems following his second bout with Covid. He’s not calling it long Covid, but others are. Thanks to Megan Lynch for the heads-up.

https://twitter.com/elisaperego78/status/1514309883197284355

French world champion Julian Alaphilippe was taken down by his own team car during Belgium’s one-day Brabantse Pijl classic.

https://twitter.com/CiclismoInter/status/1514260334319603719?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1514260334319603719%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Froad.cc%2Fcontent%2Fnews%2Fcycling-live-blog-13-april-2022-291903

 

Finally…

That feeling when the cops responsible for catching bike thieves are the ones stealing them. Or when a bicycle-themed NFT group decides they’re not about NFTs after all.

And it’s probably a bad thing when your ebike foldie has a tendency to break in half.

Or maybe that’s just me.

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

Oh, and fuck Putin, too.

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

Bike bills advance in CA legislature, DIY zebra crosswalks in East Hollywood, and CD11 candidates discuss transportation

March 30, 2022 / / One comment

A handful of bike and pedestrian bills moved forward in a four hour hearing at the California capital Tuesday.

Streetsblog reports the bills all passed in the bike-friendly Assembly Transportation Committee, most by large margins.

The measures include:

  • AB 1713 reprises last year’s Stop As Yield bill vetoed by Gavin Newsom
  • AB 2147 would legalize jaywalking under most circumstances, also vetoed by Newton last year
  • AB 2264 requires pedestrian lead intervals when traffic lights are replaced
  • AB 2336 would authorize a limited test of speed cams in six California cities
  • AB 1909, the Omnibus Bike Bill, makes several tweaks to state law, including requiring drivers to change lanes to pass a bike rider, when possible.

The bills now move on to other committees, where they are likely to find a less friendly reception.

Meanwhile, San Jose’s mayor was one of the primary speakers pushing for the speed cam bill.

Photo from Ekaterina Bolovtsova on Pexels.

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The Department of DIY has struck again, this time painting some very professional looking crosswalks in East Hollywood when the city wouldn’t.

Now if we can just get them to do a few bike lanes.

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Streets For All posted video of Tuesday’s virtual forum for the candidates running to replace Mike Bonin in Westside’s CD11.

Meanwhile, Streetsblog posted an illuminating recap of their answers to whether they would re-install the safety improvements in Vista Del Mar that were ripped out after pass-through drivers got out their pitchforks and torches.

And I know who I’d be voting for if I lived in the district.

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Metro is hosting a pair of virtual public meetings this week.

First up is this evening’s Community Meeting for LA Metro’s Active Transportation Strategic Plan (ATSP) Update, which Streetsblog’s Joe Linton notes they periodically update before putting it back on the shelf to gather dust.

Next is Friday’s meeting to discuss the agency’s proposed Street Safety Policy, which appears to follow the recent trend of not using the term Vision Zero to describe Vision Zero plans.

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

No bias here. Get hit by a lawbreaking driver, and get a bill from the insurance company.

https://twitter.com/benbolliger/status/1508954714540425217

 

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

A Charlotte NC couple complain they were attacked by a gang of teenage bike riders after the driver “just kind of beeped the horn,” and were further traumatized when the cops said there was no point in pressing charges because it happens all the time.

A hearing impaired Singapore woman says a bike rider slapped and verbally abused her when she failed to give way when he rang his bike bell. Contrary to popular opinion in some quarters, a bike bell or “on your left” are both polite warnings, not commands meaning “get the eff out of my way.”

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Local

The LACBC is teaming with Metro to offer an in-person class in bicycling street skills in Commerce City tomorrow.

She gets it. CD 5 council candidate Katy Yaroslavsky, daughter-in-law of longtime LA politician Zev Yarolslavsky, says LA should be one of “the greatest bike cities in the world,” but isn’t because people don’t feel safe on the streets.

An LA mom uses her bike to bounce back from a sudden, tragic loss.

 

State 

Streetsblog offers some alternatives to California Governor Gavin Newsom’s proposal to give gas tax rebates to wealthy drivers who don’t need them, which would only encourage them to keep wasting gas.

The Press-Enterprise provides a primer on the use of ebikes and e-scooters, for anyone who hasn’t been paying attention up to this point.

More on Carlsbad’s crackdown on ebikes in the beachfront city, after collisions involving ebikes jumped from 39 in 2020 to 63 last year. Which likely corresponds with the jump in ebike usage over the last year. And just wait until someone tells them about cars.

 

National

A Chinese man is biking across the US to call attention to the fight for democracy in Hong Kong.

CleanTechnica says the US should offer ebike rebates to help starve Putin out of Ukraine.

Cycling Tips says put some foam inserts in the tires on your gravel bike.

Iowa City, Iowa reminds drivers not to park in bike lanes. Which shouldn’t need a reminder, but evidently does.

Country star Dierks Bentley is one of us, riding a mountain bike century through the Tennessee hills in a relatively balmy 40 degrees.

A Staten Island teen will spend the next four years behind bars after stealing a car, crashing into a bike rider, and leading police on a wild chase; the man on the bike suffered a broken nose and several other injuries, but wasn’t seriously hurt.

A recommendation for bicycle and e-scooter parking and ebike charging stations on the ground floor of a coming Coral Gables, Florida mobility station ran into opposition from the mayor, who is insisting on ground floor retail to offset some of the construction costs.

 

International

Bike Radar offers the “ultimate” beginners guide to buying a bicycle this year.

Rouleur provides a masterclass in the “structural, neurological and psychological repercussions” of bicycling injuries.

A British man credits his survival from a heart attack while riding to a pair of quick-thinking friends and a nearby defibrillator.

I want to be like her when I grow up. A Bollywood star’s 83-year old mother gets back on her bike after 25 years. Although maybe without the two and a half decade layoff.

Singapore actress Jaime Teo is one of us, breaking her collarbone trying to pass a large group of bicyclists on her bike when she bumped another rider.

 

Competitive Cycling

British bike hero and former Tour de France winner Sir Bradley Wiggins says keep using time trial bikes on the road, but get rid of all the distractions.

 

Finally…

The Mounties not only got their man, they crashed into him. That feeling when you get run over by a Key West tourist trolley.

And don’t brag about your bike skills until you can ride no hands while balancing a bundle of banana leaves on your head.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cbj-wl9AcgV/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=c9ffcf18-bbbb-4418-b12c-c666aec61815

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

Oh, and fuck Putin, too.

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

Metro forgets Complete Streets promises, help put the buena back in Buena Park, and Newsom to bike riders: drop dead

March 24, 2022 / / 2 comments

Once again, Metro gets it wrong.

In its zeal to keep building highway projects in the midst of a climate emergency, the LA County transit agency is starting work on a new $26 million interchange where the 605 and Beverly Blvd meet.

But despite the agency’s professed commitment to Complete Streets, they’re not including bike lanes, even though the roadway will be wide enough to accommodate them at some distant, unspecified date.

Because evidently, they just can’t find a few extra bucks in that $26 million budget for a couple more cans of white paint.

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Speaking of Metro, Streets For All takes the agency to task for their ever-expanding freeway spending.

As if they didn’t learn anything about induced demand from their failed $1 billion project to add express lanes to the 405 through Sepulveda Pass.

Which they probably didn’t.

This is was the email the group sent out yesterday.

Did you know Metro is planning on increasing their freeway budget by $142 million next year?

Metro’s 2023 draft budget will increase Freeway spending by 30%. This comes after last year’s 80% increase in freeway spending, and at the same time as transit expansion funding is being decreased in 2023.

Freeways continue to cause massive health and climate impacts among LA’s most vulnerable populations while making traffic worse.

Tell the metro board not to increase freeway spending by calling in to the Metro Board meeting tomorrow at 10am (most impactful) or emailing public comment before 5pm TODAY.

Unfortunately, it’s too late to send an email. But you may still have time to call in your comment this morning.

Meanwhile, Metro will consider a pair of bikeway projects at today’s meeting that would connect the LA River bike path with Union Station in DTLA.

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Help put the buena back in Buena Park. The OC city wants your input on a new Complete Streets project.

https://twitter.com/mikeocbike/status/1506818810682085377

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California Governor Gavin Newsom is once again throwing money around prior to an election.

But this time, it goes out to everyone but us.

At stake is the governor’s proposal for a $400 per car rebate for drivers, in lieu of freezing the gas tax as a sop to people complaining about rising gas taxes.

The money would go out to everyone with a car registered in California, for up to two vehicles, no matter how wealthy the owner, or how environmentally destructive the vehicle is.

Or if it even uses gas.

Meanwhile, transit riders would get a three month fare reprieve. And a relatively paltry $500 million would go towards active transportation projects in the state.

https://twitter.com/urbanistcole/status/1506792515982217219

In other words, Newsom is doing everything in his power to maintain the automotive hegemony on our streets, regardless of the environmental damage, rather than use the crisis as an opportunity to make a sea change in how people get around in our state.

And not one penny to the people who did the right thing, and made the sometimes difficult, but environmentally sound, decision to give up their cars.

Instead of rebates to car owners who don’t need them — and in many cases, should have purchased a less wasteful and destructive vehicle to begin with — Newsom should make all transit systems within the state free.

Not just for three months, but permanently.

He should also pay people a monthly stipend to walk or bike to work instead of driving — enough to actually get people out of their cars. Then use the remaining funds to build the infrastructure necessary to support it.

Instead, we’re just doubling down on the same problems that got us here in the first place.

And learning absolutely nothing from the last gas crisis, while just setting us up for the next one.

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Unbelievable. A young Indian boy miraculously survives when his bike was crushed by a city bus after he darted out across the roadway on his bicycle and broadsided a motorcyclist, then skidded across the roadway just inches in front of the moving bus.

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

No bias here. A Santa Barbara letter writer and former “frequent bicyclist” complains about the “bike lobby” that has “gained outsized power in the city government,” while conflating off-street bike paths with on-street bike lanes, and complaining that few people who ride the bike paths are riding to work. And that people in cars, who are apparently far more important than bike riders, really, really need their parking spaces. Although someone should ask him why he stopped riding, and if it had anything to do with a lack of safe bikeways.

A Scottish city is being justifiably criticized for leaving a huge lamppost in the middle of a new bike lane, evidently preferring to risk the safety of people using the lane than pay to move it.

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

An anonymous Portland writer complains about “asshole bicyclists” who ignore No Bikes Allowed On Trails signs to ride on walking trails in environmentally sensitive areas. Aside from making it clear he or she is as much of an a-hole as the people they’re complaining about, the writer has a point. Never ride where you could cause real harm to fragile landscapes.

Police in Ohio are looking for a hit-and-run bike rider who slammed into the side of an SUV after running a stop sign, and took off on foot when the driver called the police.

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Local

Metro Bike returns to North Hollywood with new and improved bikeshare docking stations designed to accommodate any Metro Bike from anywhere in the city.

Culver City Patch reports on the 10th anniversary celebration of children’s bike advocacy group Walk ‘N Rollers.

 

State 

That feeling when your new Ducati bicycle isn’t made by Ducati, but comes as a tribute to the Italian motorbike brand from an Irvine-based ebike maker.

Danville is looking for volunteers to serve on the city’s six-person Bicycle Advisory Commission.

A Sebastopol winemaker faces up to 12 years and eight months behind bars after pleading guilty to the drunken crash that took the life of a bike-riding man, and cost the leg of a 12-year old boy who just happened to be riding near him; or he could walk with just time served. Ulises Valdez Jr. was nearly twice the legal blood alcohol limit following the collision.

 

National

Forbes offers their picks for the best bikes to ride anywhere, from the mountains to the bodega.

Bicycling offers a clickbait slideshow with their recommendations for the ten best women’s bike helmets for any kind of rider. Because why let someone just scroll to the one that suits them when you can get a few extra clicks? As usual, you can read it on Yahoo if the magazine blocks you. 

This is the cost of traffic violence. A speeding San Antonio, Texas mom lost control and rolled her car, killing an innocent 18-year old bike rider, while injuring herself and her baby. Anyone who drives like that with a baby in the car should have either the car or the baby taken away.

Houston police were quick to blame the victim after a bike rider was killed by a  dump truck driver in a pre-dawn crash, accusing him of darting in front of the truck in what appears to be a single witness crash. Which seems somewhat unlikely, since most bike riders try to stay the hell away from massive trucks.

Completing our Texas trifecta, a Seguin, Texas man was extradited from Mexico for the fatal 2018 shooting of a man riding a bicycle; no explanation was given for why he allegedly murdered the victim, who was described as a good man who helped his neighbors.

A Kansas City public radio station profiles the city’s Black-led Major Taylor Cycling Club, saying they may not be the fastest, but make everyone feel welcome.

She gets it. A Cambridge, Massachusetts letter writer says you can support both small businesses and bike lanes, and that the two actually complement and benefit one another.

A New York morning newspaper says a two-way, barrier-protected bike lane brought a belated bike boom to the Brooklyn Bridge. Either they have an editor who loves alteration almost as much as I do, or they had an over-abundance of Bs they had to use before they went bad.

A Pittsburgh PA bike shop also hosts the world’s largest bicycle museum, with over 4,000 bicycles of every description.

Speaking of Pittsburgh, five of the eight cops involved have been fired for the fatal tasing of a man accused of riding a bicycle without permission; the victim was shocked repeatedly in a short period of time for the crime of taking the unattended bike for a test ride around the block.

To the surprise of no one, an arrest warrant has been issued for the woman who led a bike cop on a slow speed chase through a Florida airport while riding a self-propelled suitcase after she failed to appear for a court hearing.

 

International

They get it. A Halifax, Nova Scotia newspaper says SUVs are driving us to climate calamity, adding it will never be environmentally sound to use two tons of material to move roughly 200 pounds of human.

A self-described bicycling virgin shares their thoughts on riding in Manchester, England.

London’s mayor says the reputation of the city’s transportation department is at stake if bicyclists keep dying at a busy intersection.

A former British mayor and councilor accused bike riders ignoring a ban on bikes on a popular climb of being “an organized gang…who are up to no good.”

Luxembourg — the city, not the country, although the city is in the country — announced plans for seven new bike boulevards, joining three successful bike boulevards opened last year. Although someone should tell them that bikes and cobbles like the ones in the photo aren’t the best combination.

A new Italian bike light puts out a massive 5,000 lumens, yet weighs less than two ounces; it can be yours via Kickstarter starting around $138.

The women who founded Turkey’s annual Fancy Women Bike Ride have been honored with a special UN recognition for promoting bicycling; the ride has now spread around the world.

The US has finally removed the onerous 25% tariff on many Chinese bicycles, including kid’s bikes, ebikes and accessories.

That tariff change comes just in time for a Chinese company introducing a new wireless ebike charging system, which works like a charging pad for your cellphone.

 

Competitive Cycling

Canadian Cycling Magazine looks at the surprisingly long list of active pro cyclists who died of heart attacks.

 

Finally…

Your toddler may get a magnesium-framed Bentley before you do, if you do. Your dog may get a Burley before your kid does.

And we may have to deal with angry LA drivers, but at least we don’t have to worry about rampaging ostrich escapees.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY0qIIzIFn8

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

Oh, and fuck Putin, too.

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

Signing the Healthy Streets LA petition, LA asks for $197 million to finish LA River path, and working for safer Hyperion

March 7, 2022 / / 2 comments

That’s a picture of me signing the petition to get the Healthy Streets LA measure on the ballot at Pan Pacific Park yesterday, with Streets For All founder Michael Schneider.

With my four-footed intern somehow managing to upstage us both.

As we’ve mentioned a few times before, the ballot measure is a pretty simple proposition.

It would require Los Angeles to build out the city’s mobility plan, which is currently collecting dust on the city’s servers, whenever a street gets repaved. Which isn’t often enough, as anyone who’s had to fix a pothole flat can attest.

That’s it. If the street is included in the mobility plan — whether it calls for a bike or a bus lane — the city would be obligated to to stripe it.

The beauty of this approach is that the costs are minimal, since the street would have to be restriped anyway.

And every bus lane, bike lane and bicycle friendly street in the plan has already been formally blessed by the LA Planning Commission and the Los Angeles City Council, so it’s pretty damn hard to argue against.

But before that can happen, it has to qualify for the ballot, which will take around 93,000 signatures.

Let’s make yours one of them.

Mine already is.

Thanks to Michael, August and everyone volunteering their time to collect signatures on this vital transportation and traffic safety measure. 

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Los Angeles is working on getting state funding to finally finish the full LA River bike path in time for the 2028 Olympics.

Burbank-Glendale state Assemblywoman Laura Friedman, chair of the Assembly Transportation Committee, says she’s on board.

Yes, $197 million is a lot of money.

But it pales in comparison to the $1.6 billion flushed down the toilet to install HOV lanes on the 405 Freeway through LA’s Sepulveda Pass, which only resulted in more congestion and slower travel times.

And it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the state’s $31 billion budget surplus.

At the very least, it would provide a healthy alternative to driving for those who can use it for a commuter corridor, as well as a safe place to ride recreationally.

I included a link to the Daily News story from Friedman’s tweet, but it’s up to you to find a way around the paper’s paywall. 

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Here’s your chance to work for a safer street for bike riders and pedestrians on Hyperion.

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Horrifying thread from a New York bike rider, who was chased down and attacked by a driver and their passenger — for the crime of touching their car to get by after the driver illegally parked in a bike lane.

It’s worth a click to read the whole thing.

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The future of foldies, five decades ago.

https://twitter.com/CoolBikeArt1/status/1500365563889020932

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

Life is cheap in the UK, where a homicidal driver got the equivalent of a lousy $1,321 fine after trying to intentionally ram a man on a bicycle at least six times, by my count.

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

An allegedly stoned 50-year old New York ebike rider faces charges for crashing into two women crossing the street, leaving one in critical condition with a head injury.

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Local

An e-scooter rider was murdered by a hit-and-run driver in LA’s Koreatown early Saturday. He was struck by a minivan driver, then run over and dragged nearly 20 yards by a second driver as he lay in the street; the first driver stayed followed the crash, but the second driver, who likely did the most harm, fled the scene.

Despite the impending climate emergency, climate change is taking a back seat to policing and homelessness — or more often, policing the homeless — in the race for mayor of Los Angeles.

At least Los Angeles ranks high on the list of the best cities to walk a dog, coming in at sixth.

LA County firefighters hoisted an injured mountain biker out of a remote area in the Santa Monica Mountains above Brentwood.

 

State 

The nation’s highest gas prices are kicking ebike sales up another gear for San Diego bike shops, on top of the previous pandemic bike boom.

Dozens of Riverside bike riders turned out to honor 15-year old fallen bicyclist Javier Gonzalez., who was killed in a hit-and-run last week. Although someone should tell KNBC-4 that some of those “teens” look like they haven’t seen their teens for awhile now.

Residents along Shannon Road in Los Gatos say they support a proposal to add bike lanes and sidewalks, they just want to make them less safe, inviting and comfortable to “preserve the rural feel” of the community. Although they do have a point about adding trees along the route. Thanks to Robert Leone for the heads-up.

San Francisco is planning ahead, considering three options for bikeshare after its current contract with Lyft expires in five years.

Bad news from San Francisco, where a woman is still fighting for her life, three weeks after she suffered a fractured skull and broken jaw and ribs when she was run down by a hit-and-run driver while riding home from her bartending job.

 

National

Cycling Savvy explains cadence.

Always wear a bike helmet in case you get assaulted by men with sticks and bats, like this New York delivery rider who was saved by his helmet when he was assaulted by eight men, apparently just for the hell of it. Thanks to Steven Hallett for the link.

An Iowa man was convicted of homicide after running a series of red lights while driving drunk, and killing a 40-year old man riding a bike, before fleeing the scene.

It takes a major schmuck to steal the seat off a three-wheeled bike a Marshall University student with spinal bifida needs to get to class.

Speaking of which, an Alabama TV station examines how an adaptive bike can change the life of someone with a disability.

 

International

A British Columbia writer says yes, he supports more bike lanes to create safe streets and alternatives to driving, but maybe Amsterdam isn’t the best model for North American cities.

A new Canadian ebike employs motorcycle-like parts to promise speeds up to 40 mph. Which would make it illegal in California, and most of the US. 

Evidently, bike theft is no better on the other side of the Atlantic, where a bicycle gets stolen in London ever 16 minutes, with only a two percent chance of ever seeing it again.

London has expanded its Ultra-Low Emission Zone to cover any older, smog-emitting vehicles in the entire city; anyone with a gas-powered car built before 2005, or a diesel-powered car or truck built before 2014 will have to pay the equivalent of $16.70 per day. Meanwhile, Los Angeles, which consistently ranks among the smoggiest cities in the US, continues to do not one damn thing.

Twenty-five year old former world mountain bike champ Reece Wilson is the new face of tourism in Scotland’s Borders region.

Brussels has seen a 50% drop in traffic deaths since implementing an 18 mph speed limit a year ago, while bicycling rates continue to ride. LA drivers would probably riot if anyone tried to slow them down that much. Or just ignore the new limits, like they do now.

Eight-year old US/Ukrainian ebike startup Delfast continues to operate under impossible conditions in the Eastern European country, despite the Russian invasion.

A New Zealand coroner says a bike-riding man is dead because a contractor just forgot to change the road markings after a roundabout was repaved.

 

Competitive Cycling

Slovenian cycling star Tadej Pogačar claimed victory in Saturday’s Strade Bianche classic, with 41-year old Alejandro Valverde overjoyed just to finish second; high winds caused a massive crash that took down dozens of riders early in the race, including both Pogačar and Valverde.

Thirty-year old French cyclist Pauline Ferrand-Prévot will take on South Africa’s Absa Cape Epic, considered the world’s premier mountain bike stage race; she has won world titles in four disciplines, including road cycling and cyclocross.

Rather than banning time trial bikes, British TT specialist Alex Dowsett calls for rule changes to raise the height of handlebars to eliminate the head-down riding position and improve safety

That’s one way to avoid sanctions on Russian riders. Russian cyclist Pavel Sivakov is now officially French, after UCI gave him permission to change his nationality.

Sad news from the UK, where former English Tour de France and Olympic cyclist, bike shop owner and club president Colin Lewis died after a short bout with cancer; he was 79.

 

Finally…

That feeling when your banana yellow, submarine-shaped ‘bent causes causes an uproar. When you’re a convicted felon illegally carrying a handgun on your bike, put a damn light on it.

And now we know what caused that big crash in the Strade Bianche.

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

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

Tour de Foothills co-founder dies after bike collision, Streets For All happy hour, and a little entitled driver schadenfreude

March 2, 2022 / / One comment

If you missed it last night, the SoCal bike community lost a good friend over the weekend.

Tom Thomas, who spent two decades on the Upland city council, died on Saturday, two days after he was struck from behind by a motorcyclist while waiting at a Montclair red light.

So much for the myth that bike riders never stop for them.

Thomas was a founder of Upland’s Tour de Foothills and a supporter of the Pacific Electric Bicycle and Pedestrian Trail, as well as a noted local philanthropist.

One more reminder of the high cost of traffic violence.

Photo by pixel2013 from Pixabay.

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Streets For All is hosting another virtual happy hour next Wednesday, featuring LA County Supervisor Holly Mitchell.

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No, we probably shouldn’t feel good about an overly entitled driver ending up feeling a little deflated.

But it’s kind of hard not to.

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Pink Bike offers a beginners guide to American mountain biking.

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

No bias here. San Diego letter writers debate the value of the new 30th Street bike lanes, with local residents claiming no one uses them, because they don’t see anyone riding on them at the exact moment they happen to look.

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

Even fictional bike riders get blamed, as the mother of a character in 9-1-1: Lone Star was killed off when she stepped off a curb and was hit by a man on a bicycle.

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Local

Los Angeles police are looking for a man who was seen riding a bicycle nearby when a woman’s body was set on fire in Chinatown and left burning in a shopping cart.

Streetsblog checks out the new 4.2-mile extension to the San Fernando Road bike path, which will result in a ten mile path extending north from the Burbank airport, parallel to Metrolink’s Antelope Valley Line railroad tracks, when it’s finished around the end of the year.

Montebello received a nearly half-million dollar grant to build a better connection to the Rio Hondo River bike trail from the Grant Rea Park.

 

State 

Governor Newsom announced $296 million in Clean California grants to remove litter and beautify underserved communities, as well as building walking and biking paths, and other Complete Streets features.

Calbike highlights workshops for next month’s California Bicycle Summit in Oakland.

Santa Barbara’s one-year old bikeshare system is still operating at just 50% of capacity, after struggling through a number of problems in its first year.

Palo Alto decides to keep California Street carfree at least through the end of next year. Meanwhile, a former Palo Alto bike shop could be home to 124 below-market-rate apartments for low-income residents.

Around a hundred people turned out to demand that San Francisco’s JFK Drive be kept carfree, rather than returning it to a high-traffic throughway bisecting Golden Gate Park.

Sad news from Concord, where a teenage boy who had recently immigrated from El Salvador was killed when he was struck by several vehicles as he rode his bike to school; a crowdfunding page has raised over $21,000 to send his body back home.

 

National

Forbes examines the recent study that shows children in bike trailers breathe in more exhaust fumes than the adults they’re riding with, due to their lower position.

Momentum Magazine reviews the new $5,000, carbon-fiber Dutch-style ebike made by America’s only remaining Tour de France winner.

The Arkansas man who drove home with the body of a bike rider in the back of  his pickup will face reckless manslaughter and hit-and-run charges, as well as being changed as a habitual offender; he claimed he didn’t know the man was in there until he got home — and then just went to bed until police tracked him down.

A “boneheaded” New York bill could make it harder to install or remove bike lanes and bike racks by requiring electronic and written notification to local community boards and elected officials before any action is taken, which could result in a six-month hearing process. To which Los Angeles bike riders respond “Welcome to our world.” Except most of us would be overjoyed if the process only took six months. 

New Jersey drivers will now be required to change lanes to pass bike riders and pedestrians, or give at least a four-foot passing distance if that can’t be done safely. Although like California’s three-foot law, there’s a loophole allowing drivers to pass closer than four feet if they slow down and pinkie swear they really, really had to.

He gets it. A New Jersey columnist says cities must embrace ebikes to break their dependency on motor vehicles.

A sportswriter for The Washington Post learns it’s okay to show weakness and rely on friends when she decides to ride her age for her 42nd birthday, and they won’t let her quit — even if it takes her nearly seven hours.

Here’s your big break to get into television, as long as you’re a bike rider in Key West.

Florida authorities are investigating a drawbridge operator for possible manslaughter charges after a 79-year old woman was killed when the bridge opened while she was walking her bike across it.

 

International

You know a London intersection is designed to kill when eight bike riders have died there in just 14 years, and no one does a damn thing about it.

Once again, life is cheap in the UK, where a 23-year old driver will spend a whole two years and three months behind bars for killing a ten-year old boy as he was riding bikes with his dad, as a result of an ill-advised passing attempt. Meanwhile, the boy’s family will face a sentence of life without him, without being guilty of anything.

A German startup is making a bike cam with distance measuring technology and other sensors to reveal hidden dangers, while preserving detailed evidence in the event of a crash; the data can be combined with other riders and analyzed to create urban heat maps of individual cities.

This is the cost of traffic violence. A horrible story from Bangladesh, where a passenger van driver and its owner face charges after killing six of seven brothers as they were walking home from their father’s funeral.

A South African bike advocacy group is fighting back against dangerous streets and drivers with a campaign declaring #CyclistsLivesMatter. Which I would probably appreciate more if it wasn’t co-opting a fight for racial justice.

An Australian man pled guilty to using meth before he got behind the wheel and killed a 57-year old man riding a bicycle.

 

Competitive Cycling

Cycling’s governing body responded to the invasion of Ukraine by banning all UCI teams, national teams, regional teams and race commissaires from Russia and Belarus; UCI is also removing all cycling events in both countries from the calendar. However, individual athletes will still be allowed to compete for teams from other countries.

 

Finally…

Evidently, a mountain bike is an important bicycling accessory. It’s perfectly okay to call new traffic rules the “Lunatic Highway Code.”

And tell me again why you can’t carry groceries home on a bike.

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

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

Someone is

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

A

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Local

Gabe the Sasquatch

 

State 

Governor Newsom announced $296 million in Clean California grants to remove litter and beautify underserved communities, as well as building walking and biking paths, and other Complete Streets features.

Palo Alto decides to keep California Street carfree at least through the end of next year.

Around a hundred people turned out to demand that San Francisco’s JFK Drive be kept carfree, rather than returning it to a high-traffic throughway in the middle of Golden Gate Park.

 

National

New Jersey drivers will now be required to change lanes to pass bike riders and pedestrians, or give at least a four foot passing distance if that can’t be done safely. Although like California’s three-foot law, there’s a loophole allowing drivers to pass closer than that if they slow down and pinkie swear they really had to.

Here’s your big break to get into television, as long as you’re a bike rider in Key West.

 

International

You know an intersection is designed to kill when eight bike riders have been killed there in just 14 years, like this “infamously hostile” London gyratory (a more complex version of a roundabout), and no one does a damn thing about it.

Once again, life is cheap in the UK, where a 23-year old driver will spend a whole two years and three months behind bars for killing a ten-year old boy riding bikes with his dad during an ill-advised passing attempt. Meanwhile, the boy’s family was sentenced to a life without him, despite not being guilty of anything.

Britain’s official press watchdog has ruled that it’s perfectly okay to call the country’s new traffic rules the “Lunatic Highway Code.”

A German startup is making a bike cam with distance measuring technology and other sensors to reveal hidden dangers, while preserving detailed evidence in the event of a crash; the data can then be analyzed to create urban heat maps of individual cities.

This is the cost of traffic violence. Horrible story from Bangladesh, where a passenger van driver and its owner faces charges after killing six of seven brothers as they were walking home from their father’s funeral.

A South African bike advocacy group is fighting back against dangerous streets and drivers with a campaign declaring #CyclistsLivesMatter. Which I would probably appreciate more if it wasn’t co-opting a fight for racial justice.

An Australian man pled guilty to using meth before he got behind the wheel, and killed a 57-year old man riding a bicycle.

 

Competitive Cycling

Cycling’s governing body responded to the invasion of Ukraine by banning all UCI teams, national teams, regional teams and race commissaires from Russia and Belarus; UCI is also removing all cycling events in both countries from the calendar. However, individual athletes will be allowed to compete for teams from other countries.

 

Finally…

Evidently, a mountain bike is an important bicycling accessory.

And tell me again why you can’t carry your groceries home on a bike.

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

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

Bike rider killed in horrific Arkansas hit-and-run, Bike Talk talks Healthy Streets LA initiate, and Taylor Yard Bridge opening off

February 22, 2022 / / 2 comments

Unbelievable.

In one of the most horrifying examples of traffic violence in recent memory, police in Fort Smith, Arkansas discovered a hit-and-run had taken place when someone found a severed leg lying in the street Saturday morning.

They found the rest of the 57-year old victim’s body in the back of a man’s pickup, where it had been since the driver had crashed into his bike around 12 hours earlier.

The driver claimed he didn’t know the victim’s body was there until he got home — and then apparently just went inside and left him there to die once he did.

Graphics by tomexploresla

Which presumably would have given the man plenty of time to sober up before the cops found the body in his truck.

And how anyone could do something like that without being drunk or stoned is beyond me.

The crash is reminiscent of the infamous 2014 case in which a hit-and-run driver drove home with a bike rider embedded in his windshield, and didn’t notice until he came back out the next morning.

Fortunately, that one had a happier ending.

Seriously, there’s not a pit in hell deep enough.

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Bike Talk talks with Streets For All founder Michael Schneider about the organization’s Healthy Streets LA initiative to force Los Angeles to build out the city’s mobility plan when streets get repaved.

That’s followed by a segment with Bike Snob’s Eben Weiss discussing the Idaho Stop Law, which allows bike riders to treat stop signs like yields, and — at least in Idaho’s original version — treat red lights like stop signs.

A version of which was vetoed by California Governor Newsom last year.

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Remember what we said yesterday about the new Taylor Yard Bridge opening next month?

Yeah, not so much.

LA officials say the official opening has been cancelled. No reason or makeup date has been announced.

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British singer, songwriter and producer James Blunt is one of us.

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

A road-raging British driver walked without a single day behind bars for chasing down and ramming a bike rider who damaged his wing mirror; adding insult to injury, the driver was ordered to pay the equivalent of just $1,359 in compensation, despite totaling the victim’s $9,500 bicycle.

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

Police in London busted a sexual assault suspect who used a bikeshare bike in the attack, which allowed police to identify him from his credit card.

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Local

Momentum Magazine asks if Los Angeles can shake its anti-bicycling reputation, and seems to conclude, “maybe.”

On a similar note, a graduate student at Northwestern examines LA’s Vision Zero program, saying it brings both hope and skepticism to the city. Which most Los Angeles bike riders can relate to.

 

State 

No surprise here. San Diego’s KPBS says families of traffic violence victims often feel let down by the criminal justice system.

A 32-year old man was injured when he was struck by a driver in Santa Rosa after allegedly riding his bike through a red light while under the influence.

 

National

A Las Vegas optician may need his own eyes examined, after confessing that he was one of the bike riders charged by a bull captured on a viral video during the recent Rock Cobbler offroad race.

An Ohio mayor is oddly up in arms over a former rival’s donation of a $3,600 police bike to the local police department, as well as giving her late firefighter husband’s rescue gear to the fire department, calling them ethics violations; opponents call the ethics flap just an effort to keep her off the city council.

A paper in Worcester, Massachusetts marks Black History Month by tracing several key sites in the adopted hometown of legendary cyclist Major Taylor, as well as historic locations relating to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, among others.

After a 15-year old boy accidentally ride his bike off a bridge, a Massachusetts cop is credited with his rescue.

New York’s legislature is considering a package of bike and pedestrian safety bills that would give cities more control over speed limits, encourage them to build safer sidewalks and bike lanes, and require drivers to study more safety topics for their license test.

You know you have a problem when two people on bicycles are run down by hit-and-run drivers on the same stretch of a Florida street, the same time of day, just one mile and three days apart. Or when four people have been killed at the same Orlando intersection in four months, the latest victim was a 15-year old boy right-hooked while riding in a crosswalk.

 

International

Bike Radar’s podcast considers how to make this your best year yet on your bike. That’s easy. 1) Just ride, and 2) just ride more. And don’t take it so damn seriously.

Bike riders debate the relative merits of daytime running lights, after Road.cc reposts a 2015 article about their use.

A writer for Jalopnik says the “Freedom Convoy” that paralyzed Ottawa, Canada in recent weeks shows why cars and trucks should be banned from cities.

Canadian bicyclists are mourning the loss of longtime Toronto bike advocate Robert “Bicycle Bob” Silverman, who fought for bike lanes long before the city had any, and helped set it on its current bike-friendly course; Silverman passed away Sunday at age 88.

Good news on the bike theft front, as reports from more than 40 British police agencies indicate the crime fell over 11% last year.

A delivery rider in the UK says he’s never more than one crash away from financial disaster, after his earnings have dropped almost in half over the past few years.

A self-described die-hard Indian cyclist writes in defense of the humble bicycle, after the country’s prime minister cast aspersions on bikes in attacking another political party that uses one as its symbol; the head of that party calls the prime minister’s comments “an insult to the nation.”

 

Competitive Cycling

UCI may be ditching Red Bull for coverage of the Mountain Bike World Cup after this season, entering into exclusive negotiations with Discovery Sports.

Colombian cyclist Daniel Martínez calls injured countryman Egan Bernal a champion on and off the bike, as Martínez opens the European campaign with a third-place finish in the Volta ao Algarve.

Dutch pro Tom Dumoulin says he’s happy to be back on the WorldTour after walking away from the sport for several months last year.

 

Finally…

Go ahead and ride straight, even if the bike path isn’t. And sometimes you have to pedal upstream in life.

………

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

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

Volunteers needed for LA Mobility Plan initiative, and a call to fix dangerous 2 Freeway/Glendale Blvd stub

February 7, 2022 / / 5 comments

Streets For All wants to make Los Angeles put its money where its mouth is.

Or maybe put its stripes where its pavement goes.

As we’ve repeatedly discussed, the LA city council unanimously passed the groundbreaking 2010 bike plan, which included three separate but interconnected bike networks to take riders across their own neighborhood or across the city.

That was subsumed into the equally groundbreaking 2035 Mobility Plan, along with LA’s Vision Zero plan, which promised to reshape how we get around the City of Angels. And which passed with just two negative votes — from bike-hating Gil Cedillo and self-proclaimed environmentalist Paul Koretz, who apparently never met a car he didn’t like.

Then all three plans were immediately placed on the shelf, and promptly forgotten.

https://twitter.com/streetsforall/status/1490514757580775428

As a result, Streets For All is introducing a ballot measure that would require the city to implement the mobility plan whenever a street gets resurfaced, as some other cities have done.

Which, as we’ve all seen, isn’t often enough.

But here’s what the organization has to say about the initiative.

Announcing Healthy Streets LA – a ballot measure to change things once and for all.

We’re excited to share our ballot measure with you – and we need your help to get it on the ballot!

Despite passing a 2035 Mobility Plan containing over 1,500 miles of pedestrian safety improvements, bus lanes, and bike lanes, the City of Los Angeles has implemented less than 3% of their plan in seven years. One tragic result of this failure has been exploding traffic violence in Los Angeles, with an increasing number of people getting hurt and killed each year. We don’t have to live this way.

Healthy Streets LA is a ballot measure requiring the City to implement its own plan each time it repaves a street. Since a street has to be re-striped anyway after repaving, this will reduce the cost and dramatically speed up the implementation of the Mobility Plan on the hundreds of miles of streets the city repaves each year.

To qualify for the ballot, we need to turn in 65,000 qualified signatures by May 27th. If we can get it on the ballot, our polling shows it would easily pass. We are excited to partner with LACBC, Climate Resolve, Streets Are For Everyone, Sunrise Movement LA, the West Valley Peoples Alliance, The Transit Coalition, and The River Project on this effort.

HOW YOU CAN HELP:

  1. Sign up to volunteer and gather signatures in your area.
  2. Sign up to be an area director and manage volunteers in your area.
  3. Pledge to sign the petition – and get others to as well.

This is the most ambitious thing we’ve ever worked on, and together with your help and the help of our coalition, we can pull it off, and change our city forever.

Hopefully this will get enough signatures to get on the ballot. I’ll be signing it the first chance I get.

Then we’ll see if our fellow Angelenos really support making the changes needed to address traffic congestion, street safety, smog and climate change.

Or like our elected officials, they’d rather just sit in their cars all day, and let someone else deal with it.

………

Streetsblog’s Joe Linton calls on Caltrans to fix the 2 Freeway stub, where a bike rider was the victim of a hit-and-run on Glendale Blvd last month.

Linton writes that the freeway was part of the infamous Beverly Hills Freeway, which was cancelled in the 1960s when residents of the “wealthier and whiter neighborhoods” it was supposed to go through rose up against it.

Unlike the less wealthy and white neighborhoods that were obliterated to build some of LA’s other freeways.

Today unfinished freeway merges with heavily travelled, high-speed Glendale Blvd, with its heavily travelled, high-speed slip lanes dangerously dumping freeway traffic onto the boulevard.

Naturally, Caltrans, Metro and the City of LA recognized the problem, and immediately set out to do what they do best.

Nothing.

For many years, Metro, Caltrans and LADOT worked to plan a State Route 2 Terminus Improvement Project. Streetsblog covered the meetings – with a telling 2009 headline that read LADOT Values Capacity over Community on Route 2/Glendale Blvd., Drags Metro along for the Ride. The process resulted in a 2009 Metro board approval of a so-called hybrid alternative that largely ignored the surrounding community’s push for less traffic and more green space.

Metro published fact sheets and broke the project up into phases, declaring that “this approach ensures delivery of the improvements as quickly as possible.” To make the wretched place not quite so hostile, these agencies had planned to add landscaping, ornamental street lights, and sidewalks – and to leave the deadly slip lane in place…

Then, like several other freeway stub-end reimaginings that even barely shift space away from driving, the Metro Highway Program and Caltrans quietly shelved the already-inadequate plans (after completing modest Phase 1A improvements). The project has been scrubbed from Metro’s website (find it at the Wayback Machine).

The city of L.A. approved protected bike lanes for this part of Glendale Boulevard in the city’s Mobility Plan. But, like the rest of the non-car features in that plan, the bikeway was never pursued.

Which takes us back to Streets For All’s ballot initiative we mention above, to force the city to build out the mobility plan.

And the need for Caltrans to live up to its newfound commitment to safer, more complete streets and roadways — if they really mean it this time.

If the victim of this crash had been more seriously injured, he would have been able to sue Caltrans and Los Angeles for failing to fix a situation they clearly knew was dangerous over a dozen years ago, but decided to just leave that way.

Fortunately for him, he escaped serious injury.

But because of that, there’s little chance of finding an attorney willing take the case, and force them to make the changes that are so desperately needed to improve safety for everyone.

………

Sometimes it takes people on bicycles to stand up to people in trucks.

Bike riders in Vancouver were able to block and delay, if not halt, a large truckers convoy protesting Canada’s vaccination requirements, one of several roiling the country.

Thanks to Megan Lynch for the links.

………

Speaking of Lynch, she calls on bike-friendly Davis to conduct drills for cargo bike owners to simulate bringing in relief supplies following a natural disaster.

Which wouldn’t be a bad idea down here, or wherever you are.

And toss in all those fat-tired ebikes while we’re at it.

https://twitter.com/may_gun/status/1490236618946404353

………

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

No bias here. The British press goes berserk over a “feckless” bike rider “making mockery of the Highway Code” by taking a selfie while riding in the middle of the traffic lane, making it “impossible to pass.” Even though the cabbie filming him on dashcam didn’t seem to have any trouble passing him after just a few moments.

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

Pleasanton mountain bikers demand more access after more than a dozen riders were cited by park police, despite the fact the ticketed riders weren’t on a designated trail. Seriously, don’t complain if you’re not willing to play by the rules and protect the land.

Tulsa police fatally shot a man who allegedly pulled a gun from his waistband; he was accused fleeing on a bicycle after robbing a man outside a check cashing business.

Police in Kent, England are looking for a bike rider who allegedly attacked a young woman and threatened her following a collision. Look, adrenalin is born to be running high after something like that, but violence is never the answer. So just don’t.

………

Local

Metro calls on everyone to mark Black History Month by supporting Black-owned businesses while using bikeshare and transit.

The NASCAR Foundation teamed with All Kids Bike to provide 50 Los Angeles area schools with fleets of 24 balance bikes, along with pedal-conversion kits, helmets, a teacher’s instruction bike and an eight-lesson curriculum to teach kids how to ride a bicycle.

Pasadena will consider the city’s new pedestrian plan, which will move to the city council soon following the end of public comment. Anything that improves safety for pedestrians should be good for people on bicycles, too.

A crowdfunding campaign for the Hermosa Beach bike rider rescued by his Apple Watch has raised nearly $22,000, despite confusion over whether he fell or was attacked from behind.

 

State

A new bill in the state legislature would permanently exempt from environmental review any projects designed to improve safety for walking or biking, improve bus speeds or modernize light rail stations; a current law that does just that will expire next year. Environmental regulations have long been abused by NIMBYs using tortured legal arguments to halt projects that would benefit the environment by encouraging alternative transportation.

This is who we share the road with. A 33-year old man was sentenced to 15 to life for the drunken hit-and-run that killed one man and seriously injured another in a 2018 Santa Ana crash; Jesus Segura Herrera was over three times the legal alcohol limit when he slammed into another car after drinking at a company party.

The Executive Director of San Diego County Bicycle Coalition will discuss the state of bicycling in San Diego County in a Zoom conference at high noon tomorrow.

If you build it, they will come. New San Diego bike counters show the city’s bike lanes are seeing an average of 2,000 riders a day, even in the middle of winter.

A Santa Barbara letter writer praises a new multi-use path along Las Positas and Modoc Roads, calling it “beautiful and well done,” while noting some bike riders may prefer to stay in the traffic lanes.

A Cal Berkeley student relates the lessons she learned riding down the California coast with a male companion. Including that nearly every man they met directed their questions to the guy, not her.

 

National

My bike-friendly Colorado hometown is celebrating National Winter Bike to Work Day this Friday, complete with a free breakfast for anyone on a bicycle. Yet somehow, we can’t manage to mark the day here in Los Angeles, where the weather is perfect for it.

That’s more like it. Denver is more than doubling the cost of parking tickets for drivers who block a bike lane, sidewalk or crosswalk, raising the fee from a paltry $25 to $65. Maybe if we did that here in Los Angeles, we might actually stop people from parking in bike lanes. Of course, that would require the city to actually ticket them, which they seem reluctant to do.

Sad news from Brooklyn, where a woman was killed by a school bus driver in an apparent right hook; she’d been commuting by ebike to protect her family from Covid and lighten her environmental footprint.

Thirty years after a 61-year old New York man founded a bike messenger service, he’s traded his bicycle for a keyboard to pursue his passion for music, living off donations as a street busker.

Philadelphia decides to keep one of the city’s most dangerous streets that way by scrapping plans for a road diet, even though it was judged to be the safest option and had widespread support; they claimed they didn’t do enough outreach to underrepresented communities. Evidently, Los Angeles isn’t the only city where leaders have to scrounge for any excuse to not do the right thing.

Tragic news from Georgia, where the founder of the local chapter of the Bikes Up, Guns Down group to use bicycles, dirt bikes and ATVs to reduce gun violence was himself the victim of a fatal shooting.

Horrible news from West Palm Beach, Florida, where a woman was killed when she fell through a draw bridge as she was walking her bicycle across; she was just ten feet from safety when she fell through a gap in the roadway, falling up to six stories to her death.

 

International

London’s mayor warns of disastrous consequences for bicyclists if the city’s transportation department is forced to slash the equivalent of $678 million in spending, due to declining revenue resulting from people working from home or avoiding transit systems.

London firefighters issue a warning after a rash of apartment fires sparked by ebike batteries.

An English ebike rider was killed in a collision with a pedestrian, dispelling the myth that only pedestrians are at risk in such crashes. Unlike with motor vehicles, where pedestrians and people on bicycles face nearly 100% of the risk.

An English bike rider says he’s reported 300 dangerous drivers to the police, and taken five to court himself based on based on bike cam video, and claims he’ll keep going until drivers treat people on bicycles better. Yet another reminder that the law has to be changed in this country to allow drivers to be ticketed or charged with misdemeanors based on video or photo evidence, which is currently barred in most cases.

A volunteer with a UK mountain rescue team was called on to save an unconscious mountain biker, only to discover the victim was his own 42-year old son.

British bike cab company Pedal Me bizarrely cites safety concerns for prohibiting their riders from wearing bike helmets.

A Dublin paper considers whether the city can ever be made safe for bike riders, as former pro Nicolas Roche says even he feels like he’s risking his life there.

That’s more like it, too. The government of Australia’s New South Wales state has announced plans to more than double its current spending of $950 million for active transportation.

More awful news, as an alleged drunk driver in India’s Uttar Pradesh state was beaten to death after losing control on a speed bump and crashing into someone on a bicycle.

 

Competitive Cycling

Dutch cyclist David Dekker was lucky to escape serious injury when he rode off the side of the road and into a ravine during last week’s Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana.

Longtime Spanish pro Alejandro Valverde announced plans to call it a career at the end of the upcoming racing season after two decades as a pro cyclist.

The former captain of Afghanistan’s first women’s cycling team is now living in Roanoke, Virginia, where she’ll compete with the Blue Ridge Twenty24 in hopes of making it to Paris for the 2024 Olympics.

 

Finally…

That feeling when you give accident-prone TV star a set of training wheels for his ebike. Bicycling as a tool to reduce inbreeding.

And folding bike, folding wheels.

………

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

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

KCRW fails to confront LA Vision Zero fail, volunteers needed for ballot measure, and El Monte Vision Zero meeting

January 26, 2022 / / Comments Off on KCRW fails to confront LA Vision Zero fail, volunteers needed for ballot measure, and El Monte Vision Zero meeting

Someone in the media finally paid attention to LA’s failing and forgotten Vision Zero program.

Unfortunately, the story hits about as hard as I do these days. Which is more of a polite tap than a solid gut punch.

KCRW’s Greater LA took a look at the program, using the tragic death of fallen bicyclist Branden Findley — killed a hit-and-run driver in a stolen vehicle while on his way to the Ride for Black Lives — as an entry point.

The station notes that 294 people needless lost their lives on the mean streets of Los Angeles last year, a 20% increase over the year before. And that traffic deaths have gone up nearly every year since Mayor Eric Garcetti announced the program in 2015.

“Every single one of those numbers is a tragedy,” says LA Department of Transportation General Manager Seleta Reynolds. “If we cannot get people from A to B and guarantee that they are safe, and that when somebody leaves in the morning, they’ll come home safely at night, then we haven’t fulfilled sort of a basic responsibility.”

It’s Reynolds’ responsibility to reduce traffic deaths and injuries in LA, and her most important tool to do that is a program called Vision Zero.

Unfortunately, while the station notes the existence of critics who think the city isn’t moving fast enough, they apparently couldn’t find a single one to put on the air.

I must have been busy that day.

But then they pivot back to marshmallow journalism, allowing LADOT head Seleta Reynolds to wiggle out of the city’s responsibility for the program’s continued failure.

But Seleta Reyolds of LA’s Department of Transportation says Vision Zero is only part of the solution to reducing traffic deaths.

She points to things beyond traffic planners’ control, like America’s continuing love affair with big, heavy vehicles that make it harder for pedestrians and cyclists to survive collisions.

Then there’s the challenge of distracted driving and the development of increasingly sophisticated car infotainment systems that keep motorists’ attention focused on screens instead of the streets.

And that’s the problem.

Despite the pleading of advocates in a series of public meetings, back when public meetings could actually take place in person, the city never really adopted Vision Zero.

Instead, the city launched a toothless facsimile of the program, relying on the Four Es — engineering, education, enforcement, and evaluation — to reduce traffic deaths.

Except Vision Zero is actually predicated on one simple realization — that people will make mistakes, and it is up to government to design our streets so that those mistakes don’t have to become fatal.

They acknowledge as much on the city’s Vision Zero page, if you can find it on LADOT’s Livable Streets website.

Our Guiding Principles

  1. People will make mistakes on the road.
  2. The consequences of these mistakes should not be death or severe injury.
  3. Reducing vehicle speed is fundamental to safer streets.

Nothing there calls for education or enforcement.

That’s because Vision Zero is based on reimagining the physical reality of our streets to protect vulnerable road users, and tame aggressive and careless drivers.

But that costs money, which hasn’t been budgeted — at least not in sufficient amounts to actually make a difference.

And it requires civic leaders who possess the political courage to make the hard choices necessary to save lives. Even if it means inconveniencing drivers by removing traffic lanes or parking spots, which our currant crop of cowards clearly isn’t willing to do.

So we have to be content with excuses, and moving the goal posts.

Of course, these challenges existed when LA launched Vision Zero seven years ago. Although Reynolds acknowledges the city probably won’t meet the program’s goal of eliminating traffic deaths by 2025, she says setting a goal with Vision Zero is still worth it.

“We’ve set a milestone. We’ve set a year. And if we don’t get there, then I hope it will invite a lot of accountability and dialogue and discussion,” says Reynolds.

But once again, Vision Zero isn’t about accountability and dialogue and discussion. It’s about ending traffic deaths.

That, we have failed to do.

And we will continue to fail until Vision Zero finally becomes the city’s one overarching priority for our streets, rather than just one program among many.

Future Indian ambassador Eric Garcetti signs Vision Zero proclamation at his massive outdoor desk. Photo from Streetsblog.

………

Streets For All is looking for volunteers to circulate a petition to qualify a ballot measure calling for safe streets everywhere in LA.

Click here to volunteer.

Speaking of Streets For All, the safe streets Political Action Committee forwarded a few key findings from a recent poll in support of the ballot measure.

51.8% of people surveyed in Los Angeles would be more likely to ride a bike if there was a network of safe bike lanes

53.5% would consider taking the bus more often if it came more frequently and had its own bus-only lane

75% agree we can and should make changes to how we use street space that would improve our city

And a whopping 84% think it’s the responsibility of LA’s mayor and city council to reduce car traffic, clean the air and make our streets and sidewalks safer.

I would have liked to see more specific questions, like whether people would support removing parking spaces or traffic lanes to improve traffic safety and make room for bike lanes.

But it’s a damn good start.

And we’ll look forward to seeing the ballot measure once its released.

………

Vision Zero could soon be making its way to El Monte, starting with tomorrow’s online workshop.

………

This is who we share the road with.

A USC student “did everything right” in crossing the street in a crosswalk, and was run down by a pickup driver anyway, who stepped on the gas and fled like the heartless coward they are.

Just remember that the next time someone tries to tell you bike riders would be safe on the streets if we just obeyed traffic laws.

Because you can clearly obey the letter of the law and do everything right, and still get your ass run over by some jerk.

………

We’ve seen this New Zealand ad before. But it’s definitely worth watching again.

https://twitter.com/_dmoser/status/1485891195293339651

………

Local

No news is good news, right?

 

State

A homeless parolee has been busted for breaking out a window at a Santa Ana bike shop, and making off with a $2,000 bicycle.

Now this is how Vision Zero is supposed to work. After two people were killed while using the bike lanes on San Diego’s Pershing Drive last year, the city responds by speeding up construction of a two-way buffered bike lane and pedestrian walkway to improve safety.

Oakland announces the coming closure of the city’s Covid-inspired Slow Streets program, even though the pandemic isn’t over. And neither is the need for safe neighborhood streets.

 

National

Arch Daily offers a guide to becoming a more bicycle-dependent city.

Singletracks recommends mountain bike tools that pay for themselves in a few uses.

Great idea. Des Moines, Iowa is holding a competition to select artworks to be displayed along the city’s bike paths.

A Minnesota writer refutes the mistaken perception that winter bicyclists are all as white as the snow they ride on.

New York’s popular Five Boro Bike Ride is back on this spring as Covid cases decline.

Curbed reports that ebike batteries are catching fire way too often, while Gotham delivery riders need safe places to recharge them so they don’t.

A North Carolina man will face the death penalty for 1st degree murder for fatally shooting a five-year old boy as he rode his bicycle outside his father’s house; the alleged killer still hasn’t said why.

South Carolina belatedly gets around to considering a bill banning handheld cellphone use while driving. Then again, it’s not like bans in other states have actually stopped drivers from using them.

 

International

Trek’s holiday fundraising efforts for World Bicycle Relief may become an annual tradition for the company, as its low-maintenance Buffalo Bike built for the nonprofit is named Bike of the Year.

Yanko Design looks forward to the bicycle accessory trends of 2022, from airless bike tires and ebike workstations, to a bike helmet with a built-in air filter. Although I’m not sure “trend” is exactly the right word.

The Week recommends their picks for the best ebikes for “effortless engineering,” ranging from the equivalent of $1,343 to $5,804.

An Indian man became an overnight success after seven years of effort when he received the equivalent of $13,000 for 40% of his company on the country’s version of Shark Tank, for modifying and adult tricycle into a low-fi pesticide sprayer for crops.

 

Competitive Cycling

Two-time Grand Tour winner Egan Bernal remains in intensive care recovering from leg and spinal surgeries after suffering extensive injuries when he crashed into a bus that was parked partially blocking the roadway, while he was training in his native Colombia.

 

Finally…

If you’re already a fugitive from justice, maybe it’s not the best idea to ride your bike on the freeway. Jenny from the Block looks pretty in pink on her BMX — even if it is just an ad shoot.

And the next time it feels like you’re about to be run down by the Apocalypse, you may just be right.

………

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

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