Tag Archive for traffic safety deniers

US achieves road death pariah status, carfree streets and the people who love & hate them, and more open streets on tap

February 24, 2020 / / 2 comments

Good grief.

Apparently, the United States is now in favor of traffic deaths.

Or at least disagrees with the rest of the world — literally — on the urgent need to keep people from dying on our streets.

Writing in Forbes, British bike scribe and historian Carlton Reid points out that the United States was the only one out of more than 140 nations which refused to sign on to the Stockholm Declaration from the Third Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety held in the city last week.

Because of the latest dissent it’s likely that road safety professionals will say the U.S. is a “road-death reduction pariah.” Pedestrian organizations, including the leading American one, have already expressed disappointment at the U.S. decision to dissent…

Among the key conference resolutions was the call to rein back speed on the world’s roads. The Stockholm Declaration wants countries to “focus on speed management,” with increased enforcement of existing speed limits and “mandate a maximum road travel speed of 30 kph (18.6 mph) in areas where vulnerable road users and [motor] vehicles mix.”

The declaration noted that speed reductions would result in improvements in air quality and could therefore help countries tackle climate change.

And that’s where they lost American support.

The U.S. delegation at the Third Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety objected to a declaration that wants to shift “toward safer, cleaner, more energy-efficient and affordable modes of transport and promote higher levels of physical activity such as walking and cycling as well as integrating these modes with the use of public transport to achieve sustainability.”

Also, the U.S. dissociated from a declaration that aims to focus attention on the “safety needs of those road users who are the most vulnerable including pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, and users of public transport.”

A statement from the U.S. delegation said it “dissociates itself from references [to] climate change, gender equality, reduced inequalities, responsible consumption and production” claiming that these issues are “not directly related to road safety.”

So, in addition to the usual climate change denial from our nation’s leaders, we’re evidently now opposed to energy efficiency, walking, bicycling and public transit. Or gender equality in transportation, for that matter.

Not to mention saving the lives of vulnerable road users.

Something I would have thought no one could possibly oppose.

And yet, here we are.

The world’s only traffic safety deniers and road-death reduction pariahs.

I don’t care whether you’re liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. Or anything else in-between, above, below or beyond.

Some things are just wrong.

Then again, Lego doesn’t seem to love alternative transportation, either.

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Today’s common theme is carfree streets.

Downtown News considers how we’ll get around on Broadway if cars are banned from the DTLA corridor.

A San Francisco bike shop owner comes out against a proposal to make Valencia Street carfree, apparently preferring the business he gets from motorists to all the additional sales he might get from people who no longer have to worry about getting hit by cars and the people in them.

An Arizona family owns two cars, but prefers to leave them parked for a bike-based, virtually carfree existence.

A Philadelphia bike advocate calls for making the city’s Chestnut Street carfree.

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Yesterday’s CicLAvia is just the beginning.

https://twitter.com/ActiveSGV/status/1230947573243863041

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Give your input on plans to improve mobility on the Westside.

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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes goes on. 

A mixed race Indiana couple are accused of harassing two teenage bike riders and running them off the road because they were flying pro-Trump flags on their bikes. I’ve spent the last several months training the foster corgi to ignore dogs he disagrees with; we shouldn’t have to do the same thing for people in cars who don’t like someone else’s politics.

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

A pair of bike riders fatally stabbed a man waiting at a bus stop in East LA in what is believed to be a gang attack. Thanks to Orange House for the link.

Talk about keeping dangerous people on the streets until it’s too late. An Irish man got a well-deserved eight years behind bars for crashing a stolen bicycle into an English tourist as he was making his getaway, leaving her with life-changing injuries; he had a whopping 92 previous convictions, including several involving gratuitous violence.

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Local

Streetsblog’s Joe Linton argues that LA’s plan to widen Magnolia Blvd is straight out of 1999, and ignores more modern standards adopted in the mobility plan adopted just four years ago.

Seriously? An idiot from Metro Metro’s Chief Program Management Officer tries to argue that most of the agency’s highway projects don’t make greenhouse gas emissions worse. Apparently with a straight face.

Letter writers in the LA Times come out strongly in favor of enforcing speed limits. The problem is, there aren’t enough cops in the country to catch every speeding driver. Which is why we need to legalize automated speed cameras in California.

 

State

No bias here. Only a windshield-biased motorist’s organization could find something to love in California’s deadly 85th Percentile Law, which allows drivers to set speed limits with their heavy right feet.

A San Diego letter writer says stop pushing bike lanes as a solution to traffic, insisting the city has failed to convincingly demonstrate demand. Although as someone much smarter than me once said, you don’t demonstrate the need for a bridge by counting the people swimming across a river.

A Rancho Mirage bike rider was lucky to escape with minor injuries when she was struck by a driver Friday morning. Thanks to Victor Bale for the heads-up.

A state legislator introduced legislation that would keep Bay Area bridges free for bike riders and pedestrians.

Caltrans will shut down the popular new bike and pedestrian lane on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge for parts of the next three weeks for inspections, even though it just opened a few months ago; the agency will provide a shuttle to ferry riders and walkers across the bridge.

 

National

A writer for Jalopnik buys a 1980s Schwinn, intending to swap it out with modern components. And finds it’s not as easy as it sounds.

Speaking of Schwinn, the newly trendy bike maker is back with a modern take on the classic Stingray Krates that’s designed to grow with your kids.

Streetsblog makes the argument that Vision Zero is missing something big — like getting more cars off the road, which will make everyone safer.

A Portland writer has his bike stolen. And uses a bluetooth tracker and plausible deniability to get it back. Thanks to J. Patrick Lynch for the heads-up.

Longtime Seattle-area guitarist Dave Sims makes a comeback album with his band Archer, 22 years after shattering his spine in a bicycling crash.

Washington became the latest state to require a minimum three-foot distance to pass someone on a bicycle.

Good news, as the Bureau of Land Management, aka BLM, backs off on a uniquely bad idea to lease land for oil and gas drilling that could have threatened Moab, Utah’s famed Slick Rock mountain bike trail.

Chicago’s rapid shift to become bike friendly is largely leaving people of color behind.

A new exhibit in a Boston Museum traces how two women from the same neighborhood broke bicycling barriers in the 1890s — one by riding solo around the world, and the other by competing as a black women.

A Massachusetts paper opines that masses of kids swerving and popping wheelies in traffic — and often against it — is a recipe for disaster.

No bias here, either. The New York Post’s notoriously bike-hating columnist calls out the city’s plans for a bike lane on Sixth Avenue, insisting it “raises the bar for malicious streetscape tampering.” Because evidently, no one who works in those high rise professional buildings would ever want to ride a bike to work.

Brazen bike thieves are targeting ebike delivery riders on New York’s Queensboro Bridge with violent assaults to take their bikes and personal possessions.

A North Carolina columnist performs the mental gymnastics that accompany the switch from bike-hater to one of us.

A year after the drunken Mardi Gras parade crash that killed two people and injured several others, a New Orleans paper questions whether the city is any safer for people on bicycles, as improvements suggested by the mayor continue to exist only on paper.

 

International

That feeling when your road bike just doesn’t have enough high-end bling.

An English city is offering residents the equivalent of up to $3,800 to ditch their cars in favor of bikes or transit.

After a British woman has her bike stolen, her kindhearted co-workers pitch in, raising the equivalent of $580 to buy a new one.

Afghans take to the streets — and onto their bikes — to celebrate a preliminary step towards ending the country’s decades of open warfare.

Dubai now has a 780-bike, 78-station ped-assist bikeshare system.

Kindhearted Aussie cops replace a five-year old girl’s bike after hers was stolen.

A Philippine physician makes the case that bikes are good for the country’s cities. And every other city, too.

A bike-riding American priest and Medal of Honor winner in the Korean War is being investigated for a possible pathway to sainthood.

 

Competitive Cycling

VeloNews examines how the world’s largest women-only mountain bike race, Colorado’s Beti Bike Bash, returned from the brink of financial ruin after a ten-year run.

Tour de France, Giro and Vuelta winner Chris Froome makes his long-delayed comeback from severe injuries suffered in a training ride crash last summer, saying “it feels good to be a bike racer again.”

If you swear you saw Welsh Tour de France winner Geraint Thomas riding the mean streets of Los Angeles last month, you’d be right.

Bike Snob’s Eben Weiss argues that gravel grinding won’t save bike racing in the US.

 

Finally…

Nothing like celebrating four months of sobriety by getting drunk and stealing a motorcycle. Now you have to start looking for drivers falling from above, too.

And that moment when you suddenly realize you need a change of underwear.

https://twitter.com/greenlaker/status/1230840656077045760?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1230840656077045760&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Froad.cc%2Fcontent%2Fnews%2F271415-cyclist-nearly-escapes-terrifying-smash-uci-postpone-chinese-races-due

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

91-year old actor killed on Venice Blvd, LA Times endorses Ryu in CD4, trash cans in bike lanes, and bike videos

February 10, 2020 / / Comments Off on 91-year old actor killed on Venice Blvd, LA Times endorses Ryu in CD4, trash cans in bike lanes, and bike videos

Is this really the Los Angeles traffic safety deniers want?

According to the LA Times, 91-year old actor Orson Bean was killed crossing dangerous Venice Blvd near the Pacific Resident Theatre Friday night when he was struck by first one, then another, driver.

The longtime television star was crossing to the theater, where his wife was volunteering as an usher.

“Many of us do this, including the audience,” (theater publicist Judith) Borne said. “The crosswalk is out of the way. Many people … just cross” the lanes.

And there’s the problem.

The street is designed to maximize traffic flow, with pedestrians expected to walk at least a full block in either direction to use a crosswalk to cross the wide, four-lane street.

Except people usually won’t do that.

Most people tend to take the most direct and convenient route. Which in Bean’s case, meant crossing without a crosswalk.

And no, that’s not jaywalking.

Under California law, every intersection has a crosswalk, whether or not it’s marked on the pavement.

Which is often what it means when the police say, as they did in this case, that someone was crossing outside a marked crosswalk.

However, it’s also perfectly legal to cross in the middle of the block, as long as it’s not controlled by a traffic signal on both ends; in this case, the only traffic signal is on Oakwood Ave on the east end of the block.

What’s missing from the street are the safe, convenient crosswalks, and narrowed streets at intersections to slow speeds and reduce crossing distances, that advocates have long been calling for.

And which are exactly the sort of safety improvements that groups like Keep LA Moving and Restore Venice Blvd have been fighting, in an attempt to prioritize the convenience of drivers over the lives and safety of human beings.

If something like this had been in place on every block, rather than just some parallel painted lines where they pose the least inconvenience to drivers, Orson Bean might have lived to see his 92nd birthday.

And if that’s not a tragic waste, I don’t know what is.

Bean deserved better. So do the rest of us.

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The LA Times endorsed incumbent David Ryu for re-election in my council district, despite the presence of two candidates with better safety and planning credentials in Sarah Kate Levy and Nithya Raman.

Even though, like our current president, Ryu apparently likes to take credit for work done by the previous office holder.

He is also responsible for blocking a desperately needed, shovel-ready road diet and bike lanes on 6th Street between Fairfax and La Brea, despite the support of the local neighborhood council, because it would have inconvenienced drivers who use the narrow street as a bypass for busy Wilshire Blvd.

Both Levy and Raman have been endorsed by Bike the Vote LA. And either would be a better choice in next month’s election.

However, the Times did at least endorse Loraine Lundquist in CD12.

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If you have any questions about your vote in the March 3rd election, Bike the Vote LA will help answer them tonight.

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Yes, placing trash cans in a bike lane is illegal under state law. But good luck trying to find someone to enforce it.

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Let’s hope LA Mayor Eric Garcetti, the new world climate mayor, understands French.

Then again, you don’t need to read it to get this one from the current Paris mayor and previous climate mayor.

https://twitter.com/Anne_Hidalgo/status/1225776654213144577

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Like Volvo’s misguided glow-in-the-dark spray paint, Ford thinks we’ll all be better off with happy face emojis and turn signals on our jackets. Instead of, say, building safer trucks and SUVs that aren’t designed to kill on impact.

https://twitter.com/FordEu/status/1225364514289352704

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How about a little music for your next ride?

https://twitter.com/velovogue/status/1226758776386015232

And yes, the lyrics seem to sum it up pretty well. Just don’t wear earbuds in both ears.

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Looks like someone is fed up with cops parking in bike lanes.

Although, while I appreciate the anger, the wording on that one seems to go a little too.

Thanks to Erik Griswold and W Corylus for the heads-up.

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As Horace Greeley might have said, “go left, young man.”

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A new video suggests maybe Los Angeles doesn’t suck for cycling, after all.

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

Police in the UK are looking for a driver who intentionally knocked a teenage boy off his bike. Note to Southern Daily Echo: The car didn’t “nudge” the victim’s tire, the driver did using his car as a weapon.

Sometimes, though, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.

After leading a Washington deputy on a slow speed chase when he refused to pull over for a traffic stop, a Minnesota man threw his bicycle at the officer, took a fighting stance, and said he was baddest man in the world and was going to beat the cop up, then threatened to burn the cop’s home down and kill him after the deputy tased him. But other than that, he seems like a perfect ambassador for the sport, right?

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Local

The San Francisco bike rider who was convicted for killing a pedestrian in a crosswalk while allegedly racing through the streets trying to claim a Strava KOM is now running attack ads against George Gascón, the DA who charged him, as Gascón runs for the same post in Los Angeles. Which seems like a damn good reason to vote for Gascón, if you ask me.

LAist examines the push to reform the deadly 85th Percentile Law and lower speed limits to safer levels in the City of Angels. Although maybe the City of Angeles could just stop making so many of them.

CicLAvia points out some of the high points on historic Central Avenue through South Central, Florence-Firestone and Watts, site of the next CicLAvia on February 23rd. Meanwhile, an op-ed in the Times discusses the importance of the area once known as the Eastside to the black community. Which explains how the East Side Riders got their name, even though they’re nowhere near East LA.

Classy move by Duarte, which renamed a bike and pedestrian path in the city for the San Gabriel Valley’s first African American council member and mayor, and his wife.

Tonight’s Malibu City Council meeting will include discussion of proposed bike and pedestrian paths to improve safety on Civic Center Way, along with the possibility of adding a traffic lane.

 

State

Baby steps. The first state bill in response to a recent study criticizing the outdated and deadly 85th Percentile Law would merely extend the time between required traffic surveys, while creating a statewide traffic safety program to monitor pedestrian and bicycle crashes. Meanwhile, speed surveys have finally been completed on all LA streets, allowing full speed enforcement for the first time in several years.

Evidently, Cleveland isn’t the only place where rivers catch on fire; Riverside firefighters were mopping up the remains of a 64-acre blaze that ignited on the Santa Ana River bottom, forcing the closure of the bike path that parallels the river.

The thoroughly discredited concept of bike licenses and registration once again rears its ugly head in San Francisco, thanks to a candidate for city supervisor. Most people who call for it are really far less interested in licensing than they are in just getting bikes off the streets.

It only took one day for bike ridership to boom on San Francisco’s newly carfree Market Street.

A Bay Area bike rider describes how he gladly broke the law by riding an ebike on a trail through the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

A trio of Marin mountain bikers face prosecution for building an illegal trail though an open space reserve, allegedly causing $72,000 in damage.

 

National

Harley Davidson’s new $30,000 electric motorcycle could face unexpected competition from more modest ebikes.

Finally, someone gets around to the really important stuff, as the Chicago Tribune examines what to look for in a dog bike trailer and offers their picks.

The VP of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy says America will need bicycling and walking included to pass a major transportation bill.

Tragic news, as the president of the Utah-based Children’s Miracle Network of hospitals was killed in a bicycling crash; unfortunately, there’s no word on where or how the crash occurred.

A British tabloid gets it right, saying the breathtaking views of Colorado’s Crested Butte is best seen from the seat of a mountain bike.

A kindhearted Colorado man is using his spare time to turn “junk into jewels’ by refurbishing bicycles to give to homeless people.

An Iowa woman wants to know why her husband was killed in a violent fall when the experienced bicyclist was wearing a helmet and riding uphill. And why police discount evidence that he may have been clipped by a passing driver.

Actress Selma Blair bought a $2,000 mobility bike for a Massachusetts stroke victim when the woman couldn’t afford to get it herself.

An Alabama man lay dying in a ditch for over an hour after his bike was struck by a hit-and-run driver who didn’t call 911. And neither did a state legislator or the local police chief, who both knew about the crash but didn’t bother to call for medical help.

The Montgomery, Alabama Bicycle Club will host a bike ride from Selma-to-Montgomery later this month, following in the footsteps of Dr. Martin Luther King on his historic march.

Nothing to worry about in this Orlando, Florida neighborhood, where an eleven-year old neighborhood watch captain patrols the streets by bicycle.

Newly released bodycam video shows a Florida cop tasing a teenage bike rider for the crime of popping wheelies last year; the cop was censured for his actions.

 

International

They’re some of us, too. The Spanish language edition of GQ looks at the bikes preferred by Barack Obama, Brad Pitt, Jude Law, Justin Timberlake and Matt Damon; the first two were also Oscar winners last night.

In a case of life sort of imitating art, an unidentified Reddit user says she stopped speaking to her fiancé when he bought her a Peloton bike, after pleading with him not to get her one.

A Kiwi woman is bicycling 1,250 miles across the length of Mexico, accompanied by a man riding from Alaska to Argentina.

A British Columbia lawyer warns that a switch to no-fault insurance in the province could harm bike riders involved in crashes.

Saskatoon, Canada considers axing a must-use requirement for bike lanes, allowing bicyclists to ride in traffic lanes and make left turns, almost like real people.

An Englishman offers advice on how to ride a unicycle 21,000 miles around the world in three years, which is exactly how he did it. Step one: Don’t fall off.

It takes a real schmuck to steal a Scottish doctor’s bicycle as she was making a house call to visit an elderly patient.

Who says bike riders aren’t tough? A 72-year old British man got back on his bike and rode nine miles home after he was struck by a hit-and-run driver — despite suffering four broken ribs, a fractured hip and a head injury.

A Tunisian woman rode her bike to the Saudi Arabian holy city of Mecca, becoming the first woman to make the pilgrimage by bike; she was allowed into the city, even though she wasn’t accompanied by a male guardian on the 53-day journey, as required by Saudi law.

The former chief-of-staff for Guyana’s defense forces was arrested for a crash that killed a well-known bicyclist; the retired rear admiral failed a roadside Breathalyzer test.

 

Competitive Cycling

Riders in the Netherlands pick an appropriate time to hold the Dutch Headwind Cycling Championships, with no drop bars allowed, as Winter Storm Ciara pummels Europe.

VeloNews discusses why American bike racing needed the late, great Amgen Tour of California; the race is on the sort of one-year hiatus from which most bike races and other events never seem to return.

 

Finally…

If you insist on riding inside, skip the two-grand Peloton and build your own DIY version. Your next Lyft driver could be a 15-time Grammy winner.

And if dinosaurs had just worn helmets and hi-viz, they might still be here today.

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Thanks to Domus Press for a very generous and unexpected donation to help keep this site coming your way every day. Donations are always welcome, in any amount and for any reason. 

 

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

Morning Links: Auto-centric traffic safety denier op-ed in OC Register, cross-border bike rescue, and why people keep dying

October 29, 2019 / / Comments Off on Morning Links: Auto-centric traffic safety denier op-ed in OC Register, cross-border bike rescue, and why people keep dying

One quick bit of advice before we get started. 

With all the fires in California this week, it’s important to note that wildfire smoke can cause problems ranging from allergies and irritated eyes to lasting lung damage. 

So if you can smell smoke, don’t ride. If you have to ride, wear a mask.

And stop by your local hardware store or pharmacy to get one that really works.

Your lungs will thank you. 

Photo by Denniz Futalan from Pexels.

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File this one under you’ve got to be kidding.

An op-ed in the Orange County Register makes some of the most blatant auto-centric, traffic safety denier arguments for the preservation of automotive hegemony we’ve yet seen.

Starting with the photo and captions of the “recent” road diets in Playa Del Rey.

LA Department of Transportation crews began restoring a second eastbound lane of traffic on Culver Boulevard between Nicholson Street and Jefferson Boulevard in Playa Del Rey while adding bollards as barriers to protect new bike/walk lanes. A recent “road diet” caused gridlock and backlash from commuters. Work is expected to be complete by Monday morning commute. Photo by Robert Casillas, Daily Breeze/SCNG

Only problem is, those road diets and bike lanes were removed two year ago. after climate friendly progressive mayor had them unceremoniously yanked out.

Evidently, it’s taken LADOT a long damn time to finish the work.

Or maybe our friendly neighborhood traffic safety denier authors — one a senior fellow with the Cato Institute, which is funded by the anti-transit Koch Brothers, the other an attorney and member of traffic safety denier pressure group Keep LA Moving — didn’t bother to do even the most basic fact checking.

Or maybe just didn’t care.

As demonstrated by their lead paragraphs, repeating the myth that a recent road diet prevented the evacuation of Paradise CA, leading to the deaths of 86 people.

Except it’s not true, according to the town’s mayor.

Mayor Jody Jones said Tuesday that the evacuation of Paradise, begun at 7:46 a.m Nov. 8, was complete by 3 p.m. Residents who arrived at a shelter in Oroville said the 16-mile exodus took 2½ hours, better than the three-hour evacuation in 2008 that sparked the Butte County Grand Jury’s investigation.

“I don’t believe that it really mattered,” Jones said of the changes made on Skyway. “I don’t think there’s any town in the world prepared with a roadway infrastructure that could evacuate their entire town all at once. They’re just not built to do that.”

That’s right.

The evacuation route took half an hour less than the same journey ten years earlier — six years before the road was even installed.

Then there’s this whopper.

The mass-produced automobile is one of the greatest inventions in American history because it brought both physical and economic mobility to the masses. These benefits were accompanied by pollution and safety issues, but such problems have dramatically declined. Cars today are 99 percent cleaner than cars in 1970, and fatality rates per 100 million vehicle miles have declined more than 75 percent.

Ask anyone who rides a bike or walks if they feel safer on the streets.

Never mind that this great invention they cite is literally one of the least efficient ways to move human beings from one place to another. And has the entire world on the brink of a climate disaster.

But hey, they’re not as bad as they used to be, right?

Or how about this?

The numbers reveal that fatalities plummeted 21 percent after the 2008 financial crisis. This was because total driving fell by 2.3 percent, reducing congestion and apparently increasing safety. When driving and congestion increased again during the economic recovery, fatalities also increased, though not by as much as they had declined.

This suggests that small reductions in traffic congestion can save many lives. Congestion especially makes intersections and streets more dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists.

However, there is a much better case to be made that while congestion may increase the risk of collisions, the severity of crashes decreases along with the decrease in speeds.

As we’ve seen in LA, the risk of traffic fatalities actually increases dramatically when streets are less congested, enabling drivers to speed and drive more aggressively.

Studies have found that for every pedestrian whose life might be saved by slowing traffic, anywhere from 35 to 85 people will die from sudden cardiac arrest due to delayed emergency response. This doesn’t even count other medical emergencies, structure fires, or other emergency service needs.

Someone please show us these studies, because they defy all comprehension.

Or maybe the Federal Highway Administration has no idea what they’re talking about when they say that not only do road diets not slow down emergency response times, they can actually improve them.

Then our traffic safety denier guides bring it down to the local level, LA style.

Los Angeles installed a road diet on Venice Boulevard, a tsunami, fire, and earthquake evacuation route, converting two of six traffic lanes into bicycle lanes. Auto traffic declined yet bicycle-auto accidents increased, a problem worsened by the difficulty emergency vehicles had in reaching injured cyclists.

Which is funny, since the road diet on Venice Blvd, aka the Mar Vista Great Streets project, actually reduced injury collisions involving people on bicycles, while eliminating severe injury collisions.

And average response times for the Mar Vista fire station are just 30 seconds longer than the citywide average.

Yes, every second matters. But clearly, the roads aren’t as congested and impassible as they would have us believe.

Let’s end on this note.

Calculations using the Department of Transportation’s National Transit Database reveal that transit in Los Angeles and most cities not named New York uses more energy and emits more greenhouse gases per passenger mile than the average car or SUV. Autos use even more energy and pollute the most in congested traffic, so increasing congestion or forcing people onto transit are the wrong ways to protect the environment.

The solution is not to force people to keep driving, which has already resulted in ever increasing traffic congestion virtually everywhere, with or without road diets.

It’s to provide viable alternatives to driving in order to get more of those cars, trucks and SUVs off the road. And the way to do that is by making bicycling, walking and transit safer, more pleasant and more efficient.

Not by doing the exact opposite.

Note: I debunked many of these and other similar myths by the Keep LA Moving half of these traffic safety denier authors in a response to his equally wacky Wall Street Journal op-ed earlier this year.

Sadly, it’s clear they’ll still get a platform, though, as long as newspapers keep excluding opinion pieces from any form of fact checking.

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David Drexler forwards news of a stolen bicycle returned to its owner, despite being taken across the border into Mexico.

Thanks in part to Bike Index.

BIKE INDEX AIDS IN RARE CROSS-BORDER RECOVERY
San Diego, Coronado, and Tijuana police forces collaborate expertly after receiving a tip on Bike Index to recover this $6,000 bicycle.

“Hi think I saw your bike on a swap meet place in Tijuana, which was a very weird place for me find an awesome bike. I’ve got the feeling that it was stolen so I took some pics and sent them to your phone. I hope it’s your stolen bike.” In August, a bike was stolen from outside of the Hotel del Coronado. A month later, someone messaged the registrant using Bike Index, believing they saw the bike at a swap meet in Mexico. Officers in Tijuana recovered the bike and met officers from the San Diego and Coronado police at the border to return the stolen bike to the owner. Cross-border recoveries are extremely rare! We’ve only had two others in our history: one bike found in Guadalajara and another found in Mexico City.

So what are you waiting for?

Register your own bike, already. Before it’s too late.

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This is why people keep dying on the streets.

The family of a Michigan man is understandably upset about a plea deal that would mean just one year in jail for the hit-and-run driver who killed him as he was riding his bike, instead of the maximum of 15-years behind bars.

After a New York trucker was convicted of killing a bike rider while driving with a suspended license, the judge sentenced him to…wait for it…another suspended sentence. Which probably won’t keep him off the roads, either.

A Malaysian judge dropped all charges and freed a woman who had slammed her car into a group of teenaged bike riders, killing eight young men; the judge ruled the police had failed to sufficiently investigate the crash. And even gave her back her driver’s license so she could do it again.

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The LACBC offers a few slogans for your Climate Strike sign at this Friday’s City Hall protest, which will feature 16-year old climate activist Greta Thunberg.

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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes is all too real.

Brooklyn garbage collectors respond to the recent deaths of bike riders killed by garbage truck drivers by walling off a bike lane with garbage cans to protest this damn bike riders. No, really.

Then there’s this, from our own LA backyard.

Meanwhile, CiclaValley says the new Safe Lanes app is the best way to record and report drivers who block bike lanes.

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Local

Here’s a better version of the Eastsider’s story about construction work on the new Red Car Pedestrian Bridge over the LA River that we linked to yesterday. Thanks to Patrick Pascal for the link.

West Hollywood ranked in the bottom third of America’s Best Small Cities, but scored a top 20 ranking for quality of life, due in part to its bikeshare system. Which has now been removed.

It’s not just bike riders who are dying in LA-area hit-and-runs.

 

State

The California Transportation Commission will livestream a symposium on the state’s Active Transportation Program today and tomorrow.

San Diego residents can look forward to a number of street disruptions in the South Bay Area for construction of the South Bay Rapid transit system starting, uh, yesterday. Thanks to Robert Leone for the heads-up.

More news from down south, where the bikeways program of the San Diego Association of Governments, aka SANDAG, is on hold for a year after falling behind schedule and $79 million over budget. Smart thinking. Nothing will get them back on track like falling even further behind.

Sacramento residents discuss how they’d make biking and walking safer.

 

National

Great long read from Cycling Tips’ James Huang, aka the Angry Asian, who says enough already, it’s time the bike industry did something about traffic deaths, while a Kentucky newspaper says not only are more pedestrians dying on our streets, but even more carnage lies ahead.

Vox says carfree zones could be the future of cities. Exactly what former state legislator Mike Gatto called for in Sunday’s Daily News.

He gets it. A writer for a public interest research group says with the dangers posed by climate change, bike riders getting scared off the roads by safety fears should be a big red flag, and we already know how to fix it.

A driving website recommends the best bike bells, calling them a must-have for a “safe, care-free ride.” Because evidently, a bell can be heard above a bumping sound system in a hermetically sealed, virtually soundproof motor vehicle, instantly alerting the driver he’s about to run over your ass. Right?

Outside tests three popular e-cargo bikes, and likes the Tern best. But says the much cheaper RadWagon will still get you there.

Evidently, they don’t get a lot of bike-riding Buddhist monks in Memphis. Or headline proof readers, for that matter.

When Boston park benches get in the way of bike stunts, just take an angle cutter and remove them. The benches, that is.

This is how Vision Zero is supposed to work. New York responds to this year’s epidemic of bicycling deaths with a $1.7 billion commitment to build 250 miles of protected bike lanes. Meanwhile, Los Angeles is committed to building bupkis.

A bike rider says he was tackled off his bike while riding on a DC trail and robbed at gunpoint, with the thief taking his bike, pannier, wallet and everything else he had with him.

The admittedly drunk New Orleans driver who killed two people riding bikes and injured several others at a Mardi Gras parade has changed his plea and and admitted guilt to all charges; he now faces up to 80 years behind bars.

A kindhearted anonymous donor dropped off a new bicycle for a Florida chef after his was stolen while he was at work; he can’t drive due to epilepsy and relies on his bicycle to get anywhere.

 

International

Interesting idea. A new bike stem comes with a built-in bike computer and 800 lumen headlight.

A brazen British bike thief literally followed a woman into a local shop to steal her new bike, after she took it in because she’d forgotten her lock.

In an absolutely brilliant step, a Belgian TV show takes politicians on a bike ride to show them the poor state of bicycle infrastructure, then confronts them with 500 relatives of people on bicycles who died because of it. Maybe if an LA TV station tried that, we might actually see some changes around here.

The City Fix offers three key lessons from The Netherlands to help spur bicycling in your own city.

A Pakistani man was killed when a glass-coated kite string fell on him, slitting his throat as he rode his bike; coated strings are used for popular kite battles in which the goal is to cut the strings of other kites.

Japanese internet users are in a tizzy after a mom is caught on video smacking her son in the head and knocking him down, for riding his bike in front of a car without looking.

 

Competitive Cycling

Bicycling likes next year’s Giro course, of course.

Good for them. After the lead rider in a Brazilian bike race got hit by a driver on an open course while the cop responsible for stopping traffic stood idly by checking his phone (see below), the entire peloton laid down their bikes and walked off in protest.

But maybe you’re more into Brompton racing.

 

Finally…

Mutant bikes and the people who love them. Who hasn’t dreamed of one day owning a shape-shifting aero bike helmet?

And nothing like getting dropped by a little kid.

 

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

Morning Links: NIMBY Pasadena traffic survey, LA finally counts bikes, and bust made in near-fatal Ramona hit-and-run

October 9, 2019 / / Comments Off on Morning Links: NIMBY Pasadena traffic survey, LA finally counts bikes, and bust made in near-fatal Ramona hit-and-run

Streetsblog takes a look at the highly biased survey from NIMBY traffic safety deniers Keep Pasadena Moving, chock full of leading questions designed to get just the responses they want about traffic in the Rose City.

But the best way to overcome their extreme NIMBY windshield bias is to get everyone you know who supports walking, bicycling, transit and safe, livable streets to take the survey themselves.

Because you already have, right?

Right?

Photo by Roberto Nickson from Pexels.

………

LADOT will finally conduct its first-ever count of bicyclists and pedestrians in the City of Los Angeles.

Something they should have done years ago; previously, the city didn’t have a clue how many people actually biked or walked in LA.

Apparently, they were satisfied to rely on this count done in the early ’80s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn7SO1W6RUI

The only prior counts were conducted on a volunteer basis by the LACBC, later in conjunction with LA Walks.

Hardly a valid basis for any city to make solid transportation decisions.

Bizarrely, though, the story implies that the counts will only be done on weekends, which will provide little real information on bike commuting and transportation riding.

Almost as if the city has fallen for the old myth that the only people who ride bikes in LA are the weekend recreational riders.

By contrast, the LACBC counts were done during both morning and evening commutes, as well as on weekends.

However, that may not be totally accurate, as Sean Meredith suggests that the weekday counts may have been contracted out to a private company.

Let’s hope he’s right.

Update: The LACBC confirms that LADOT has contracted out to a private company to do bike and pedestrian count using traffic cameras. 

In fact, it may have already been done. 

………

The CHP has arrested 32-year old Ramona resident Chase Richard for the hit-and-run crash that critically injured Michelle Scott in Ramona.

The 53-year old woman was hit while she was riding her bike to work one week ago today;

The damaged car, which had stolen plates, was seized as evidence.

………

This is who we share the road with.

CiclaValley catches the end of a nasty U-turn by a driver who didn’t seem to care he was there.

Sort of like this impatient North Hollywood driver who uses the bike lane to zoom around slower traffic.

Even though someone was riding in it at the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbstjARUPV8

………

Local

The LA Times reports the LAPD searches blacks and Latinos far more often than whites during traffic stops, even though white people are more likely to be carrying illegal items. That’s why LA’s mandatory bike registration program — which most people didn’t even know existed — was discontinued by the city council a decade ago, after it was used by police in some areas as a pretext to stop and search people of color riding bicycles.

The Orange County Register offers a schedule of the Long Beach Marathon events, including Sunday’s 20-mile bike ride preceding the race.

 

State

Berkeley is considering a proposal to require the city to improve streets and add protected bike lanes on any repaving project, while devoting half the repaving budget to bikeways and high-collision streets. The ball’s in your court, Los Angeles.

San Francisco is finally nearing the start of construction on a 2.2 mile, $604 million makeover of iconic Market Street, turning it into a carfree bicycle and transit corridor.

A Sonoma writer looks back at the legendary Coors Classic, which had four starts in the city, along with America’s only remaining Tour de France winner, who won the Coors the year before his first Tour win.

Unruly teenage bike riders participating in a ride out take over the streets of Vacaville, allegedly kicking and slapping vehicles, and attempting to open car doors at red lights. Police took several riders into custody for traffic offenses, even though those are ticketable violations, rather than crimes subject to arrest. Note to Daily Republic: Unless the kids were trying to sell something to the people in those cars, the word you’re looking for is “pedalers,” not “peddlers.”

 

National

The Netherlands Stop de kindermoord movement of the 1970s may have gotten its start with less successful anti-car demonstrations led by American women in the ’50s and ’60s.

A former bike shop owner says forget the romantic dreams of owning a bike shop, and run it like the business it is. Otherwise, you may end up like these former LBS owners on the other side of the ocean.

Neighbors are upset about a Kansas City sex offender’s front yard bike sculpture. Not because they don’t like it, but because their kids are drawn to it.

A Massachusetts Navy vet is on a three-year, 25,000 ride around the US to promote suicide awareness — one year for each time he tried, and failed, to kill himself. His depression finally lifted when a friend introduced him to bicycling.

This is how you do it. Atlanta will install its first pop-up bike lane for a week to judge the response and effectiveness. And inviting people to come out and help build it.

 

International

A crowdfunding campaign is raising capital for what promises to be the world’s smallest and lightest ebike conversion kit; they’ve already raised 1246% of the $25,000 goal with nearly a month to go.

The BBC has confirmed earlier studies that determined families that drive to school are exposed to more pollutants that those who walk or bike; bicyclists were exposed to just two-thirds the amount drivers were.

A finance worker’s helmet cam catches his head-on collision with another rider on a London bike path, after he swerved around a construction barrier.

A British roadie magazine tries to answer the question of whether you need a women’s specific bike. And concludes, maybe.

PinkBike ranks Scottish cyclist Danny MacAskill’s top ten stunt videos, and wants you to vote on your favorite.

Here’s one for my bike bucket list, as The Guardian takes us bikepacking across Scotland. Unless maybe you’d rather add the Czech Republic to your mountain bike bucket list.

An Australian bike rider is looking for the Good Samaritan who saved his life after a hit-and-run driver left him unconscious in a ditch.

A Singaporean e-scooter rider will spend six weeks behind bars for crashing into the back of a man’s leg without slowing down. Seriously, they take this shit seriously over there. Thanks to Mike Cane — that’s C-A-N-E, with no R — for the heads-up. Despite how I usually seem to spell his name.

Three people — one mute, another with a bad leg — are riding their bikes over 1,600 miles across two Indonesian islands to prove to themselves that physical impairments don’t need to be obstacles.

 

Competitive Cycling

Yet-another U-23 rider has lost his life. Twenty-two-year old Italian cyclist Giovanni Iannelli was killed in a fall during Saturday’s Trofeo Bassa Valle Scrivia in northern Italy; he fell in a sprint 100 yards from finish, hitting his head on a fence post with enough force to shatter his helmet.

The drug dealer who says he sold Italian cycling great Marco Pantani his final hit of coke now insists that the former Tour de France winner was murdered in his motel room.

The mountain bike course for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics is winning praise from competitors.

The 2023 Tour de France could kick off in Spain’s Basque Country. Then again, if they really wanted to ride the Basque country, they could have just gone to Bakersfield.

Aussie cyclist Brodie Chapman discusses six things she’s learned so far while riding on the Women’s WorldTour.

 

Finally…

This could be the first published poem about dooring. If you’re fleeing a robbery on your bike, try not to crash into a police car.

And Los Angeles is fun.

But not that much fun, apparently.

 

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

Morning Links: Los Angeles bike lane fail, take a NIMBY Pasadena traffic survey, and road rage on San Diego golf course

October 8, 2019 / / One comment

Um, no.

Spectrum News 1 reports on Sunday’s CicLAvia, and leads off with the surprising news that Los Angeles has installed 600 miles of bike lanes on LA streets since the bike plan was passed in 2010.

Except it ain’t necessarily so.

There is a case to be made that the city has built 600 miles of bikeways over the past nine years.

But only if you include bike paths and sharrows in that total.

And only if you measure part of that in lane miles — which counts each side of the road separately, effectively doubling the total.

A more easily understandable figure is center lane miles, which measures both sides of the roadway at once.

In truth, Los Angeles had only painted 250.82 miles of bike lanes when adjusted for lane miles, as of the 2015-16 fiscal year. Along with 19.95 miles of bike paths, and 90.44 miles of basically useless sharrows.

In the three years since then, the city’s anemic output has resulted in just 33.25 center lane miles of any kind — a miserable average of just 11.08 miles a year.

And this with a progressive mayor who supposedly supports bicycling, and one of the nation’s most respected planning heads in LADOT’s Seleta Reynolds.

The word pathetic comes to mind.

So a more accurate figure, measured the way most people would understand it, comes out to less than 400 miles of bikeways of any kind built in Los Angeles since 2010.

394.46, to be exact.

And only 284.04 miles of those are on-street bike lanes – assuming all the bikeways built after the 2013-2014 fiscal year are bike lanes, and not sharrows.

Or looking at it another way, only 120.61 miles of bikeways of any kind have been built since Eric Garcetti became mayor in 2013, for an average of just 17.23 center lane miles per year.

And yes, that includes sharrows.

To make matters worse, half of those were built during his first year in office, so they were already under way when he came in.

Which means in reality, Garcetti and Reynolds should only be credited with just 60.85 center lane miles of any kind.

An average of just 10.14 miles per year after his first year.

Just in case you wondered why Vision Zero is failing in Los Angeles.

………

Seriously, stop whatever you’re doing, and take a few minutes to respond to this very slanted survey from NIMBY traffic safety deniers Keep LA Moving’s Pasadena franchise.

It would be a real shame if the responses to the survey reflected a desire for safe streets and increased density, instead their desire to keep zoom, zooming on bike and pedestrian unfriendly Rose City streets only a car could love.

And while the survey says you can only respond once, that’s once per device.

I also may have *accidently* discovered that you can respond as many times as you want if you keep deleting the two Survey Monkey cookies on your computer.

Not that anyone would do that. of course.

………

CiclaValley’s Zachary Rynew is none too pleased with a UPS driver.

For good reason.

………

The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes goes on.

A road raging San Diego man drove onto a golf course to chase two bike-riding teens after they allegedly through food onto his car, first running down one boy with his car, then getting out and repeatedly punching him. Note to crazy man: just get your damn car washed next time.

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

Or at least we can assume it was someone who rides a bike who once again hacked a Brooklyn NY traffic sign to spread anti-car messages. Seriously, I’m not laughing. You’re laughing.

https://twitter.com/curtisfox/status/1181194618592989184?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1181194618592989184&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fbklyner.com%2Fdigital-billboard-hacked-anti-car-message%2F

………

Local

Nice piece from Streetsblog’s Sahra Sulaiman about a South LA man who hit the scrapyard to build a custom lowrider-style fat tire bike for a friend. And ended up inking a deal with a bike maker.

 

State

They get it. Encinitas decides to split the baby, converting existing bike lanes along the Coast Highway to protected lanes, and painting sharrows on the right lane of the highway so the spandexed crowd doesn’t have to slow down or compete for space with slower riders.

A Palm Springs magazine talks with Tom Kirk, the man behind the planned 50-mile bike path slowly taking shape around the Coachella Valley.

Santa Barbara sheriff’s deputies are trying out new police vehicles with a battery and two wheels, and a Trek decal on the frame.

Streetsblog SF says you may not be able to stop drivers from parking in bike lanes, but at least something could be done about employees of transit agencies.

The victim in Thursday’s fatal dooring in Oakland has been identified as a 24-year old Oakland man. Just a reminder, since the Bay Area media insists on saying the victim ran into the open door — drivers are always responsible for dooring a bike rider as long as the victim obeying the law and riding on the right side of the street.

 

National

Bike Snob’s Eben Weiss says there’s nothing controversial about bike lanes, and it’s time for the media to catch up. Tell that to Keep LA Moving and their associates.

You can forget autonomous cars saving us anytime soon. A study by AAA shows cars with supposed pedestrian-detection systems can’t recognize people in the roadway under several circumstances, including after dark and when traveling over 25 mph.

The New York Times says bikes and bears don’t mix, with recreational mountain biking leading to dangerous conditions for humans, as well as for bears and other wildlife. Mountain biking may have sustainability issues, too. Thanks to George Wolfberg for the first link.

Forget bears, rainbow crosswalks are the real danger.

Hundreds of Lime bikes and scooters were burned in a Seattle warehouse fire, apparently sparked by exploding batteries.

A Colorado velodrome is facing demolition unless they can find an alternate buyer in the next few months.

A Cleveland man faces 16 charges, including kidnapping and aggravated robbery, for carjacking a vehicle with a toddler inside and killing a man riding a bicycle while fleeing from police. Which brings up the obvious question of why, apparently, wasn’t he charged with 2nd degree murder?

An MS-13 gang member got 23 to life behind bars for hacking a 15-year old New York State boy to death with a machete after he went out for a bike ride.

Apparently, things are no different in Hoboken as they are anywhere else, as local NIMBYs swear their support for bike lanes and Vision Zero, just not where the city wants to put them.

Charges were reduced for an Uber bike delivery rider in the stabbing death of a Philadelphia man, from 2nd degree murder to voluntary manslaughter, reducing the maximum sentence from 40 to 20 years. The defense claims the white victim used racist language while arguing with the black bike rider.

Police in Pennsylvania are looking for a bank robber who may have fled the scene in a white van. Or maybe an SUV. Or a mountain bike.

Bethesda, Maryland bike riders get their first protected intersection. Which outnumbers similar intersections in Los Angeles by a factor of 1 – 0.

Heartbreaking news from Alabama, where a preteen boy shot a 12-year old boy in the back of the head when he refused to hand over his bicycle.

 

International

A British Lord has a long history of vehemently opposing bicycles and the people who ride them. But all that will be forgotten if you sign up for his charity bike ride in Spain (scroll down). Forgotten by you, that is; he’ll undoubtedly continue criticizing bikes while taking your money.

Road.cc explains why UK bike riders may not use the “perfectly good bike lanes” drivers often complain about.

The Guardian asks if we should ban SUVs from our cities. Short answer, yes. Longer answer, absolutely.

Apparently, suffering a severe brain injury isn’t good for your marriage. The wife of British adventurer James Cracknell explains why the couple split up after 17 years of marriage, saying the extreme brain injury he suffered when he was struck by a truck driver while riding across the US in 2010 left him with a different personality.

Amsterdam is slowly moving to cut cars out of the picture, one street at a time.

Break the rules for riding a bicycle in Abu Dhabi, and you may not have one anymore.

Tragic news from Singapore, as a 53-year old man died five days after he was hit by someone on a bicycle; to make matters worse, his sister stumbled on the scene as paramedics were tending to her brother.

Speaking of Singapore, e-scooters may be on their way out in the law-and-order city-state.

 

Competitive Cycling

Once again, a pro cyclist has been seriously injured in a crash with a motor vehicle during a race. Dutch rider Edo Maas suffered neck, back and facial fractures when he collided with a car whose driver had wandered onto the closed course during a rapid descent in the Piccolo Lombardia race; the 19-year old cyclist was riding on the Giro’s Madonna del Ghisallo bike path, named after the patron saint of bicyclists.

Deadspin walks readers through the “hilarious” Zwift cheating scandal. Despite the scandal, Zwift is aiming to make it into the Olympic Games. Nothing like winning gold for riding a bicycle that doesn’t go anywhere.

Bike Radar says Lance just won’t go away. Although they might have said it a tad more politely. But still.

 

Finally…

Sometimes, you just can’t win; even when a bike-riding burglar put lights and reflectors on his bike, it just makes him easier to spot. Today’s lesson — don’t pee around machete-carrying bike riders.

And if mountain bikes are too expensive, just make your own, using a front fork for the rear suspension.

 

Category: Best of, Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Morning Links: A short CicLAvia thread, NYT op-ed says cars are death machines, and Keep LA Moving summit on video

October 7, 2019 / / Comments Off on Morning Links: A short CicLAvia thread, NYT op-ed says cars are death machines, and Keep LA Moving summit on video

I had a little different CicLAvia yesterday.

My wife, who doesn’t ride a bike, wanted to go to CicLAvia this time.

So I left my bike at home, and we walked the section through the Civic Center and Little Tokyo, then combined it with a long-planned walking tour of the Arts District, ending with lunch at Smorgasburg.

Along with a stop at Angel City Brewery on the way back for a touch of Octoberfest and a half growler of their fest martzen.

And yes, a good time was had by all. With the exception of my new knee, which has been barking at me ever since we got home.

I should have sprung for the Vibranium model.

Or maybe unobtanium.

More a few people turned out this time. Just like every CicLAvia, going back to the very first one.

Whoever scheduled a Mole fest right next to CicLAvia deserves a promotion.

Who doesn’t love the incredible craftsmanship that goes into these lowrider bikes?

Thanks to Jason for a quick rundown on Pure Cycle’s new e-cargo bike.

I’m not saying everyone went to Angel City post CicLAvia…

…but it sure as hell looked like it.

 

Meanwhile, Sam Omar-Hall offers a great thread capturing the day.

And everyone’s favorite transit advocate reminds us that the final CicLAvia of the year comes in two months.

https://twitter.com/_KennyUong_/status/1181045930595778561

………

Today’s must read comes in the form of an op-ed in the New York Times.

Allison Arieff writes that she used to think calling cars death machines was extreme. But not any more. 

Especially after her nine-year old niece was lucky to survive getting hit by an ice cream truck in Los Angeles.

Cars are death machines. Pedestrian fatalities in the United States have increased 41 percent since 2008; more than 6,000 pedestrians were killed in 2018 alone. More than 4,000 American kids are killed in car crashes every year – I am thankful every day my niece wasn’t one of them.

Here’s the thing: Statistics clearly don’t seem to persuade anyone of the magnitude of this problem. Not policy makers or automakers, technologists or drivers.

She goes on to quote from over 500 people who responded to her request for stories of getting hit by a driver.

And says autonomous cars aren’t going to save us.

Among the safety measures proposed by car companies are encouraging pedestrians and bicyclists to use R.F.I.D. tags, which emit signals that cars can detect. This means it’s becoming the pedestrian’s responsibility to avoid getting hit. But if keeping people safe means putting the responsibility on them (or worse, criminalizing walking and biking), we need to think twice about the technology we’re developing.

This may be the worst outcome of the automobile-centered 20th century: the assumption that it’s people who need to get out of the way of these lethal machines, instead of the other way around.

And neither are SUVs.

Because the front end of an S.U.V. is higher than the average car’s front end, it is far more likely to hit a pedestrian in the chest or head and twice as likely to kill walkers, runners, cyclists and children, compared to regular cars. And yet, S.U.V. sales account for 60 percent of new vehicle sales.

One of the easiest ways to make cars safer would be to make them smaller. Another way? Figuring out how to get people to drive less by providing safer, more sustainable alternatives to the car.

Seriously, take a few minutes to read the whole thing — including the quotes from the victims.

We’ll wait.

If you have any time left, The Guardian offers this long read on why the streets are getting deadlier for pedestrians.

And for us.

………

Shameful.

The wife of an American diplomat stationed in the UK is claiming diplomatic immunity to avoid responsibility for the hit-and-run that killed a British motorcycle rider.

She was reportedly driving on the wrong side of the road when she slammed into the 19-year old victim while driving next to a US spy base.

After police tracked her down, she promised not to leave the country. Then did it anyway, presumably returning to the US.

His heartbroken parents have appealed to President Trump to return her to face justice.

But we’ll have to see if this administration has the integrity to do the right thing. Or will shield her from anything even resembling justice.

I know which one my money is on.

………

Keep PDR Moving has posted a nearly four-hour video of the “national summit” for Keep LA Moving, which Peter Flax says amounted to about 25 NIMBYs and traffic safety deniers gathered in a restaurant.

He also says John Forester, aka the “father of vehicular cycling,” comes on about 30 minutes in, and proceeds to bore the room

If you have the time, and the stomach, to actually watch it.

………

The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes goes on.

A road raging Wisconsin driver got out of his car and repeatedly punched a man on a bike, then threatened to beat up the police officers when they arrived to break it up, after the bike rider made the mistake of flipping off the driver when he revved up behind him. That’s one key lesson I learned the hard way — never flip off the driver behind you.

………

Local

The LA Times celebrates the permanent hold placed on the freeway portion of the High Desert Corridor through north LA County, saying building a highway that will increase the amount of miles driven, at a time when the state is committed to cutting driving miles, is the wrong move. But notes that the high speed rail and bike path portions of the project can still go through. And should.

A former member of the Pasadena Transportation Advisory Commission sets the record straight on Complete Streets, correcting the mistaken belief that Complete Streets only benefit of people walking or riding a bike.

This is who we share the roads with. An allegedly drunk Pasadena driver fled the scene after killing a pedestrian; the driver faces charges for vehicular manslaughter, DUI and driving without a license. More evidence just how desperately those Complete Streets are needed. And how desperately we need to do something to stop hit-and-runs.

 

State

The Orange County Transportation Authority, aka OCTA, and Caltrans want your input on how to transform Beach Blvd between La Habra and Huntington Beach. Banning cars and turning it into a transit, bike and pedestrian corridor probably won’t fly. But it should.

An anonymous donor is offering a $25,000 reward for the heartless coward who fled the scene after running down 53-year old Michelle Scott as she rode her bike to work at her Escondido office on Wednesday, leaving her lying on the side of the road with critical injuries.

The Ventura County Star suggests riding a bike as one option for an eco-friendly commute during the county’s Rideshare Week starting today.

A bike-riding San Francisco columnist says the solution to conflicts on the road are bicycle turnout lanes that would allow bike riders to get out of the way of trailing traffic, just like the one he and his wife used to pull aside to leet a semi pass on a narrow roadway.

Sad news from Oakland, where a 24-year old man was the victim of a dooring; he was killed when someone opened the door of a parked car in front of him, knocking him into the path of a large pickup. I’m told the street had sharrows, which were due to be replaced with bike lanes. But it’s too late to save this man.

Former pro Levi Leipheimer’s GranFondo drew nearly 5,000 bike riders from 14 countries to Sonoma County for the 11th edition of the annual ride.

USA Today picks up the story of the four bike-riding junior detectives who helped rescue a lost 97-year old Roseville woman with dementia.

 

National

Gear Patrol says their bike of the year is one you never heard of. For once, I have to agree.

A writer for Bicycling says ebiking has suddenly become his favorite new way to explore a city.

Bicycle-oriented development is the latest trend in housing targeting Millennials.

Seattle police appear to have abused their bait bike program, targeting poor and homeless people by leaving an unlocked bicycle outside of a Goodwill store; nine people were busted, but the only one that went to trial resulted in a not guilty verdict.

A Michigan woman pens a passionate plea dripping with windshield bias begging bike riders not to make her almost kill us.

NBA great Reggie Miller rode his first century in Indiana over the weekend to benefit the fight against breast cancer.

The carnage continues in New York, where a 10-year old boy was killed riding his bike with the light while in a crosswalk; the driver, who didn’t have a driver’s license, reportedly attempted to flee with the bicycle still jammed under his truck. The boy was the 24th bike rider killed in the city this year, compared to just 11 for all of last year.

Good idea. Some New York city buses will be outfitted with cameras pointed at the right side of the road to catch people illegally parking in bike lanes; the drivers could eventually get tickets in the mail. But who will get the tickets for all those police cars parked in them? 

Delaware bicyclists are looking for a private property owner willing to host a ghost bike, when they had to take down the bike honoring a fallen bike rider after just two days because the local DOT was planning to remove it from the public property it was sitting on.

Los Angeles celebrated CicLAvia just one day after bike riders in DC enjoyed the city’s first open streets event.

South Carolina bicyclists say a road widening project left them with less room, not more.

 

International

The BBC talks with people with disabilities, who say that ebikes have changed their lives.

Former Cream and Blind Faith drummer Ginger Baker was one of us; the rock legend, who died on Sunday, gave up his dream of riding in the Tour de France after he was hit by a cab as a teenager.

Life is cheap in London, where a woman walked without a single day behind bars for slamming into a bikeshare rider with her Porsche and breaking his skull.

No bias here. A UK columnist says the spread of e-scooters are proof we’re doomed as a species, insisting that riders terrorize the sidewalk and look ridiculous. Yes, the way people look while riding a scooter is certainly the best argument against them.

A British man rode a BMX bike 300 miles in a monkey suit to raise funds and call attention to the problem of stillborn births, walking the last mile after breaking his chain. And learned the hard way that a plush monkey head works better than a bike helmet.

A writer for The Guardian wants to know why women bicyclists are targeted for abuse by aggressive male drivers, saying it’s “as though female cyclists are transgressing an invisible boundary in a way that some men find intolerable.”

A full 5% of Scottish commuters regularly get to work by bike, a number most American cities would envy, let alone the whole county. But that’s just half the country’s target for next year.

Little Mix singer Jesy Nelson is one of us, too, as she goes for a bike ride with her boyfriend on a chilly UK autumn afternoon.

Finnish immigrants get free lessons in how to ride a bike in order to fit in with the bike-riding natives.

The Danish and Irish prime ministers went for a leisurely bike ride in Copenhagen, while the Dutch prime minister explains why he rides his bicycle to work nearly every day. Short answer, because he can.

Even Tehran is passing Los Angeles by promising to build 340 miles of cycle tracks over the next five years, although women can ride a little more comfortably here, without worrying about dressing conservatively or prohibitive fatwas. That compares favorably to LA, which “built or upgraded” just 13 lane miles of bike lanes — 6.5 miles of actual roadway — in fiscal year 2018-2019. 

 

Competitive Cycling

I want to be like her when I grow up. A 70-year old Bolivian woman became the oldest woman to compete in the country’s 37-mile Skyrace extreme bike race on the legendary Death Road.

Now you, too, can cheat in cycling from the comfort of your own home.

 

Finally…

If you’re going use a mountain bike as your getaway vehicle, at least wait until you get the money. If you’re playing hide and seek from the cops with a stolen motorbike, maybe find a better hiding place than behind a telephone pole — and put a damn shirt on for your mug shot.

And your bike can take you almost anywhere.

Like to a good piece of cake.

………

A special thanks to Linda T and Matthew R for their generous contributions to support this site. I rely on your support — emotionally and financially — to keep the best bike news coming your way every day.

And too often, the worst, too. 

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

Morning Links: Mar Vista dermatologist reads minds, cool surfaces make people hot, and Film LA blocks DTLA bike lane

October 4, 2019 / / 6 comments

A Mar Vista dermatologist and self-appointed traffic planning expert is back, suggesting that anyone who supports road diets spins and distorts the facts to support their hidden agenda.

And that we only want those poor motorists to suffer.

Right.

Somehow, he professes to know that anyone who complains about “white, rich, noncaring (sic) motorists” are themselves very rich and use their cars more than most. And are white, though he says that shouldn’t matter.

Which begs the question of how he managed to check the bank accounts of everyone on the other side of the debate. Let alone their odometers.

Or why he brought up race if it doesn’t matter.

On the other hand, he does get a few things right.

1) Transportation isn’t social engineering, but rather a search for a better way (or ways) to get from Point A to Point B.

2) Ideology and wishful thinking have no business being prioritized over engineering when it comes to the laws of physics, environmental science, and safety.

Which, oddly, is exactly the opposite of the approach he’s previously taken in criticizing city engineers and planners who he disagree with, based on his extensive knowledge of, uh, dermatology.

He’s also right about this.

3) Being pro-train, pro-bus, pro-van/carpool, pro-bicycle or pro-pedestrian is NOT the same as being anti-motorist…and vice versa. We should all have reasonable access to all forms of transportation.

This from someone who’s fought for two years to have the protected bike lanes on Venice Blvd through Mar Vista removed, and the street restored to six lanes.

Apparently, reasonable access means drivers get as much space as they want, and people on bikes get whatever’s left. And anyone on foot would have to return to scrambling to cross a raging six lane river of cars — including the elderly who formerly struggled to get across.

He goes on to complain about road diets affecting emergency response times. Yet average response times for the Mar Vista fire station, which is right next to the road diet on Venice Blvd, averages just 30 seconds more than the citywide average.

Granted, every second counts. But that hardly seems like the emergency apocalypse opponents make it out to be

Finally, there’s this odd statement.

5) We didn’t, as a community, fight and pay for the Expo Line and other lines only to have service drop–we’ve proudly paid a heap of money for better rail transit, and we deserve nothing but the best for our blood, sweat, tears, and money). And we definitely didn’t pay for bike lanes to be implemented OVER bus and rail projects and service, only as a nice and necessary supplement.

Can anyone seriously make the claim that bike lanes, in Mar Vista or anywhere else, had anything to do with the highly unpopular service cut on the Expo Line, which have affected train users with bicycles as much as anyone else?

And to the best of my knowledge, there were never any plans for bus lanes on Venice — or anywhere else where bike lanes took precedence over bus lanes. Which the NIMBYs and entitled drivers would probably fight just like they’ve fought bike lanes.

All this leads up to tomrrow’s “National Conference” sponsored by traffic safety denier pressure group Keep LA Moving at the Mar Vista cafe, which must be the only national transportation conference small enough to fit in a local restaurant.

Apparently, it’s open to anyone.

So it would be a real shame if some road diet and bike lane supporters decided to show up.

Photo of Venice Blvd in Mar Vista by Joni Yung.

………

LA’s experiment with cool road surfaces may be failing, after researchers discovered an unexpected effect.

While the light colored street toppings succeeded in cooling the street, it made everyone around them hotter as the sun’s heat was reflected back into the surrounding air.

………

A bike rider in DTLA encounters an apparent film shoot without any of the required warning or safety cones.

But while it may look like a guerrilla shoot, the video shows what appears to be couple of hi-viz vested cops standing around.

Thanks to Erik Griswold for the heads-up.

………

A Maine company has developed a three-wheeled, pedal-less “bike” that enables people with mobility issues and disabilities to walk around recreationally.

………

Local

The Metro Bike bikeshare has expanded into Thai Town and East Hollywood. Hopefully, that means Hollywood itself won’t be far behind.

The Los Feliz Ledger looks at the new bike and pedestrian bridge nearing completion over the Los Angeles River, saying it’s changing the face of Atwater Village.

The Beib is one of us, riding the streets of Los Angeles on a fat tire ebike and learning to ride a unicycle.

SoCal Cycling looks forward to this Sunday’s Heart of LA CicLAvia celebrating the 100th birthday of UCLA.

 

State

This is who we share the roads with. A 29-year old Orange County woman could be 80 by the time she gets out of prison, after being convicted of three counts of 2nd degree murder for the drunken crash that killed three teenagers and seriously injured a fourth; she was over three times the legal alcohol limit an hour after the crash.

New Anaheim Ducks coach Dallas Eakins is one of us. And tougher than most, competing in the grueling, high altitude Leadville Trail 100 mountain bike race ten times.

A Leucadia columnist decries the ruination of her fair city, in part by a planned Complete Streets project that would add (gasp!) bike lanes to the Coast Highway.

A San Diego grand jury blames the city for how it handled the e-scooter rollout.

Salinas will hold a ciclovía this weekend, too.

Work is finally beginning on installing a barrier-protected bicycle and pedestrian lane on the Bay Area’s Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, even as a study continues to turn it into an additional traffic lane, instead.

Bighearted Modesto teachers dug into their own pockets to buy a new bike for a student after his was stolen.

 

National

The Guardian takes a deep dive into why American streets are deadlier than ever for people on foot, even as cars continue to get safer for the people in them. And they’re not that that great for people on bicycles, either.

A writer for Popular Science explains how she went from barely riding a bicycle to finishing a 545-mile AIDS/LifeCycle ride in one year. And the stuff she recommends to do it.

Hunters are worried that ebikes will give too many people too much access to the wilderness. Ebike riders should be worried that hunters might mistake them for a deer.

Your next ebike could tell you when speeding drivers coming up from behind get too close.

Streetsblog takes issue with the $90 ticket issued to an Idaho bike rider by a windshield-biased cop for running a red light, even though she was hit from behind by a driver who admitted not even seeing her. She said she stopped at the light before proceeding through the intersection, which is legal in Idaho.

Fargo, North Dakota’s 75-year old Bike Man has died, after fixing and giving away thousands of bicycles to children and families.

A Denver woman is getting used to walking after she had two bicycles stolen within one month of moving to the city.

One of Denver’s best bike mechanics is a 33-year old woman.

A Dallas man admits to fatally shooting a 59-year old man in a shopping center parking lot and stealing his bicycle.

Streetsblog Chicago reads Peter Flax’s recent interview with Effective Cycling author John Forester, and calls him a dinosaur still pushing a discredited anti-bikeway credo.

The man whose dogs killed a nine-year old Detroit girl as she rode her bicycle near her home will face a 2nd degree murder charge, as well as charges of involuntary manslaughter and having dangerous animals causing death.

Good question. A student newspaper at Boston’s Northeastern University asks whether bike theft is avoidable, or if it’s just inevitable.

An Alexandria VA letter writer takes issue with the stereotype of supporters of a planned road diet as a secret cabal of spandex-clad liberals from outside the city. Which should be very familiar to anyone who’s attended a public traffic safety meeting in Los Angeles.

A New Orleans man continues to ride his bike, 24-years after receiving a double lung transplant to treat his cystic fibrosis.

 

International

Road.cc ranks the best rear tail lights, not all of which will be available on the side of the Atlantic. And the best bicycling movies, most of which should be.

Members of the Canadian ski team are stunned by the mountain biking death of ski cross racer Mikayla Martin.

Canadian Cycling Magazine offers tips on how to give your bike a fast clean up after a messy ride.

A European bike biz site says Trump’s tariffs are causing chaos in the North American bike market.

A British rider discovers things have changed since he last rode a bike in the ’80s, after he takes delivery of a new ebike.

Amsterdam is trying to reduce car usage by eliminating 10,000 parking spaces, and encouraging people to use bicycles or transit instead.

Belgian officials are concerned about a “worrying” trend, after setting a new record for bicycling fatalities in the first half of the year.

 

Competitive Cycling

The oldest continually held mountain bike race started as a contest to see whether horses or mountain bikes were faster.

A former bike racer rode Zwift indoors to ride her way back to competition after five years of motherhood.

A Belgian cyclist is really, really sorry he punched another rider following a crash near the finish of a German bike race. Although it was really just a slap to the helmet; I’ve seen kittens hit harder than that.

Slovenian cyclist Matej Mohoric suffered broken ribs and a punctured lung when some idiot decided to run with — and in — the peloton as it neared the finish line in the Tour of Croatia.

 

Finally…

Who needs two wheels when you can ride eight feet over one? Before you try to reclaim your stolen bike, make sure the thief doesn’t have a machete.

And if you’re going to confront a driver in a road rage dispute, make sure to take the orange tip off your toy gun before threatening anyone with it.

Or better yet, just don’t.

Period.

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

Morning Links: Taking traffic safety deniers seriously, walking bikes on the Troutdale bridge, and Bruce Lee was one of us

May 28, 2019 / / Comments Off on Morning Links: Taking traffic safety deniers seriously, walking bikes on the Troutdale bridge, and Bruce Lee was one of us

Good to see you back after the long holiday weekend. 

Now grab your coffee and buckle in. We’ve got a lot of territory to cover, and a lot to catch up on.

Today’s photo captures an e-bakfiets used as an expensive marketing gimmick for a perfume pop-up at the Grove, photobombed by a hot and tired corgi.

………

Call it a major misfire on this one.

A Sacramento-based reporter for the LA Times appears to take traffic safety deniers at face value, giving them a platform to complain about gas tax funds being used for active transportation.

Two years after state lawmakers boosted the gas tax with a promise to improve California streets, some cities have raised the ire of drivers by spending millions of the new dollars on “road diet” projects that reduce the number and size of lanes for motor vehicles.

Projects have touched off a debate as taxpayer advocates and motorists complain that the higher gas taxes they are paying for smoother trips will actually fund projects that increase traffic congestion.

Especially if those funds go towards reducing excess road capacity for motor vehicles, which increasing overall capacity by installing bike lanes.

Also known as the dreaded — to them — road diet.

Not to mention knee-jerk opposition from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn, which never met a tax they liked.

Gas tax money can legally go to such projects, but that does not mean it should, said David Wolfe, legislative director for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., which opposed the original gas tax increase and supported an unsuccessful statewide ballot measure last year to repeal it.It has since continued to watch and criticize how state and local governments are spending the money.

“When Proposition 6 was on the ballot, all voters heard was money would go to road repair and maintenance,” Wolfe said. “They want roads to be repaired. They don’t want roads to be taken away with their taxpayer dollars.”

Never mind that road diets have been shown to reduce overall crashes by 19% in the Golden State, and as much as 47% elsewhere.

So they’re complaining about using gas tax funds to save their own lives and repair bills.

Smart. Real smart.

Never mind also that $2.27 billion of the gas tax increase went to repair and maintain roads, while $750 million a year was set aside for transit projects.

And a paltry $100 million went to bike and pedestrian projects. Most of which benefit drivers, as well.

But try telling that to angry motorists and traffic safety deniers while they light their torches and sharpen their pitchforks.

“It’s creating gridlock on Venice Boulevard, which is then causing cut-through traffic into our neighborhoods,” said Selena Inouye, board president of the Westside Los Angeles Neighbors Network, a group formed in response to the project…

Inouye, a retired social worker, said having motorists pay higher gas taxes so the money can be used to reduce the capacity of roads is contradictory.

She and her husband are paying more than $4 a gallon for gas at her local service station, she said, a price that has been increased by the state gas tax.

“The money should be used to help with congestion overall, and I don’t think that road diets help congestion. I think they cause congestion,” Inouye said.

Even though no one else seems to be able to find that gridlock they keep complaining about. Or that only 12 cents of that $4-plus for a gallon of gas is due to the gas tax increase.

But those are just facts.

And facts just get in the way when you’re insisting on having yours.

………

Malibu Hills resident Chris Willig forwards his observations on the absurd, and possibly illegal, attempts by LA County to force bike riders to walk over the newly reopened Troutdale bridge.

Mulholland Highway had been closed in Cornell for about 6-months since the Woolsey Fire which caused the Troutdale Bridge to melt. The catastrophe has vexed cyclists. They’ve been forced to use a detour of about 6 miles on Kanan Road to go around the closure.  And that route is plagued by increased traffic particularly 1,000’s of heavy debris laden trucks hauling the remains of burned out houses.

A temporary one-lane bridge opened Wednesday afternoon, but the celebration from the cycling community has been short lived. Cyclists have been banned from the main road bed with LA County officials trying to force people to walk their bikes on a pedestrian sidepath. This strange traffic configuration can been seen in the photo (viewing north from the south bank of Triunfo Creek) with all of the signage required to direct traffic. It seems ridiculous since the crossing is now controlled by a traffic light system to allow only oneway passage at a posted 10 MPH. As cyclists using this route are normally in road shoes, walking the 230 feet required seems dangerous. More importantly, if many cyclists take the detour trudging across the bridge as instructed, it is clear traffic will be interrupted by all the dismounting and remounting in the street, especially at the south terminus (pictured).

The safest and most convenient routing for road cyclists would be using exactly the same rules for auto traffic. Ironically, the only change from pre-fire norm would be we’d have to cut our speed in half to accommodate the cars slowed by the new speed limit.

………

A ghost bike will be installed for fallen Valencia bicyclist Kori Sue Powers tonight.

………

Bruce Lee was one of us.

………

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

And this time, the other side is armed.

A Boyle Heights bike rider was shot in the arm in an apparent gang shooting Friday night.

San Diego’s boardwalk turned into a shooting gallery when an emotionally troubled man pulled out a rifle after getting into an argument with a bike rider, shooting at him several times — and missing, thankfully. Then tried to order an Uber to make his escape.

After someone in a passing Mercedes shot an Oakland woman in the ass with a pellet gun as she was riding her bike, she waited on the side of the road for the police to show up. Then gave up and went home, and waited another 12 hours before they finally bothered to stop by to take a report.

An Iowa bike rider was lucky to remain upright when a driver internationally swerved onto the shoulder of the roadway to sideswipe him, as a passenger leaned out the window to scream insults. And he’s got the video and a hole in his glove to prove it.

After someone shot an Arkansas bike rider in the leg, he refused to go to the hospital because he was afraid someone would take his antique bike.

A road raging Florida driver is under arrest for shooting a man riding a bicycle — for the crime of riding in the traffic lane, just like he’s supposed to.

A road raging Aussie man was busted for apparently following a bike rider home after a collision, pulling out a rifle and shooting at the rider’s home. Then leaving and coming back to do it again. And again.

Then again, not all the drivers used guns.

Some used weapons weighing a couple tons or more.

A Winnipeg bike rider watched as a semi driver flattened his bike, running over it in a road rage incident; fortunately, the victim had already gotten off to confront the angry driver.

A road raging Australian driver got mad after following a group of bicyclists, then cut in front and brake-checked them before turning into a driveway.

………

Then again, it’s not like people on bikes are automatic candidates for sainthood.

A Massachusetts man rode up to a convenience store on his bike, robbed it with a meat clever, and rode away again.

New York police are on the lookout for a bike-riding Bronx thief snatching smartphones from women.

You know we’re making progress when even an Irish mob hitman makes his getaway by bike.

And French authorities are searching for a bike-riding man who planted a nail-filled parcel bomb in Lyon, injuring 13 people.

………

Local

No surprise here, as The Eastsider says bridge construction has turned the LA River bike path into an obstacle course.

The LA Times looks at the latest gear and bikes for bikepacking, and examines the utter bliss of bikepacking in the backcountry.

CiclaValley concludes his Best Bike Weekend Ever trilogy with a look back at the recent 626 Golden Streets open streets event.

A Bakersfield man visits LA for the recent Culver City to Venice CicLAvia, and discovers the best part of traveling is the people and animals you meet, while learning that his pug really likes riding a bike.

The LAPD is introducing sand-riding fat tire ebikes and ATVs to Venice Beach in an attempt to stop running over any more people sunbathing on the beach.

Chris Pratt’s six-year old son is one of us, as the actor and fiancé Katherine Schwarzenegger bought him a fat tire bike in Santa Monica.

If you’re a fan of riding a bike without actually going anywhere, head to the Santa Monica pier on Sunday for the annual Pedal on the Pier fundraiser.

Fans of the long-running British soap East Enders will be happy to learn that Patsy Palmer is one of us, as the actress went for a bike ride with her husband in the ‘Bu.

 

State

Three cities in North San Diego County — Encinitas, Solana Beach and Del Mar — will team together for a 500-bike docked e-bikeshare system.

Sad news from Santa Cruz, where a 66-year old man was killed when he was struck by three separate cars while riding his bike on the coast highway.

Great op-ed in the New York Times from a Berkeley man, who considers the “inconvenience” posed by a lifetime of riding bikes as a one-armed black man.

A San Francisco man live-streamed his confrontation with a bike thief who was using a loud power tool to cut a lock and snatch a bike in broad daylight; the thief gave up and walked away after being challenged.

 

National

People for Bikes says inclusiveness is the way to grow the bicycling community.

Your next MIPS helmet could be full of fluid. Or you could wear one that looks like a baseball cap and folds to the size of a water bottle. Meanwhile, Forbes points out the obvious, noting that bike helmets don’t do a lot to protect your face.

Your next fat tire ebike could have three wheels — with two tandem tires in front.

A former Seattle cop and bike rider gets it almost entirely wrong, arguing that motorists automatically have the right-of-way on sharrows. And insisting that road diets and efforts to get more people on bikes are just a leftist plot. Never mind that there’s a pretty good conservative argument for bikes, too.

Great idea. A Seattle program gives bicyclists discounts at over 150 businesses in the city after buying a $5 sticker to put on their helmets.

It takes a major schmuck to steal an adaptive adult tricycle a Phoenix man used as his only form of transportation following a pair of strokes.

The architect behind the proposed Tucson AZ bike ranch across from the entrance to Saguaro National Park explains his plan in the face of local opposition. 

Police have issued an arrest warrant for an Austin TX woman who left the scene after running down a bike rider earlier this year after the victim picked her out of a lineup; apparently thinking she was getting hit on in a singles bar, she gave the victim a fake phone number before driving off. Thanks to Stephen Katz for the heads-up.

Kansas will install a beautiful permanent memorial to honor a fallen bicyclist who was killed in a collision while participating in the annual Trans-Am cross-country bike race last year.

A Kansas teen jumped into swollen flood waters to save the life of a 12-year old boy who was swept away while riding his bicycle.

Five hundred Detroit second graders got new bicycles, thanks to Chevrolet and the NHL’s Red Wings.

A new community garden will honor the victims of the Mardi Gras parade crash in New Orleans, where a drunk driver killed two bike riders and injured seven other people.

There’s a special place in hell for whoever stole 10-year old autistic Florida boy’s $5,500 adaptive tricycle — and just the opposite for the Good Samaritans who replaced it.

 

International

Mark your calendar for Monday’s World Bicycle Day.

How to be a good citizen of the bike lane.

Bicycling looks back on how bicycles helped defeat the Kaiser and win the war to end all wars. Which sadly didn’t.

A new Canadian study suggests your best protection could be a high-vis vest with a left-pointing arrow to tell drivers to move over to pass. Although that doesn’t replace the need for safe infrastructure.

Canadian advice for anyone thinking about dating a hardcore cyclist. Or maybe it’s a warning.

A Canadian man got his hot bike back after someone bought it for $60, not realizing it was stolen; the original owner used it to traverse the length and breadth of Canada. No, literally.

They get it. A Vancouver paper says “no civic bureaucrat or politician should approve a bike lane they wouldn’t feel safe taking their kids for a ride on themselves.”

A Montreal op-ed explains how bike lanes benefit everyone.

While we were busy observing Memorial Day yesterday, Londoners celebrated their first-ever Bike to Work Day.

London is moving to protect bike riders and pedestrians by dropping the speed limit in the central financial district known as the Square Mile to just 15 mph. Your move, LA Mayor Garcetti.

Participants in an organized English ride complain about routing the ride onto a roadway with speed bumps on a steep descent and no warning signs — with predictable results.

Uber wants Brits to Jump.

After a Glasgow woman is killed riding her bike, a man does some soul searching, wondering whether bicycling is worth the risk. And concluding he may keep riding, but can’t recommend it to a friend.

A couple hundred people turned out for an interfaith bike ride to remember the victims of the Christchurch, New Zealand terrorist attacks, led at the start by one of the victims, who also lost his wife, in his new wheelchair.

I sort of want to be like him when I grow up. A Michigan man gave up his comfy retirement to ride his bike across the US, and in countries around the world. And spent New Years Day riding a fat tire bike on the ice and snow of Antarctica. No offense to our southernmost continent, but I’d prefer a more temperate climate. Which Antartica will probably be in a few years, if we all keep burning fossil fuels.

 

Competitive Cycling

Slovenian cyclist Primoz Roglic considers himself lucky to have lost just 40 seconds to Giro race leader Richard Carapaz, despite Sunday’s debacle when he crashed on a too-small bike borrowed from a teammate, because he just happened to have a mechanical when the team race director was relieving himself.

You, too, can be a hard man or woman, and ride the routes of the cobbled spring classics.

Big mistake. The largest promoter in bike racing is slowly backing away from supporting women’s cycling.

Lance says he did what he had to do to win, and he wouldn’t change a thing. Except, you know, maybe like getting caught and all that.

Cycling Tips talks with the inimitable Peter Sagan.

Cycling Weekly remembers the legendary Fausto Coppi, calling him a cycling icon like no other.

And seriously, don’t try to snatch a pro cyclist’s water bottle out of his face, no matter how much you want a souvenir.

 

Finally…

Probably not the best idea to ride a stolen bike to the courthouse to be sentenced for stealing another bike. The next driver to run you off the road might do it from above.

And we may have to worry about LA drivers, but at least we don’t have to worry about bears.

Or, uh…Bigfoot.

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

Morning Links: Help fund prize money for women cyclists, no Redhook Crit, and getting Vision Zero wrong

February 15, 2019 / / One comment

The USC Cycling Team needs your help to do the right thing.

The cycling team is hosting its first bike race in six years, and wants to offer equal prize money to both men and women.

Which is the way every race should be run. But usually isn’t.

As a result, they need your help to crowdfund just $1,500 to make up the difference in purses mandated by the sport’s arcane rules.

Here’s how they explain it.

Why are the women paid less? That is an existential question plaguing professional cycling, and it trickles down to amateur and collegiate cycling. There are fewer female riders, fewer female teams and promoters are less likely to provide big money for a race that can potentially only draw 12 women. At most races, if the number of registrants surpasses a given threshold, then the prize money doubles. This is how we first modeled our prize structure.

However, this traditional model misses the point. If women knew that equal prize money were up for grabs, teams would show up in full force.  But many racers, both men and women, often wait until the week before a race to register, especially if they are local and don’t have to plan travel. So, women are checking the registration page in the days leading up to a race, weighing the costs of registering against the possibility of their winnings. Field-contingent prize money holds many back from registering.

The event takes place the first weekend in March, with the Rosena Ranch Circuit Race for collegiate cycling teams on Saturday, March 2nd, and the first ever USC Brackett Grand Prix on Sunday the 3rd.

As of this writing, they’ve raised $271 of the modest $1,500 goal, leaving a gap of just over $1,200.

Which we should be able to help them raise without breaking a sweat. Or maybe someone with slightly deeper pockets would like to sponsor the women’s races.

Because frankly, they race just as hard as the men do.

And deserve every bit as much.

Meanwhile, a bill in the California legislature would require sporting events that take place on state-owned land to provide equal prize money for men and women.

About damn time.

………

You can cancel those plans for New York this year.

In a surprising announcement, the Red Hook Criterium has been cancelled for 2019 due to rising costs and insufficient sponsorship funding.

Organizers promise the popular fixed-gear race will be back next year after they reorganize.

Although past experience tells us not to hold our breath, as races that are cancelled over funding too often don’t come back.

Let’s hope that’s not the case this time.

………

Huh?

An Alexandria, Virginia woman says Vision Zero isn’t working in the US because people are choosing cars over public transportation.

Which has little, if anything, to do with reducing traffic deaths.

She cites as proof the factually incorrect, traffic safety-denying Wall Street Journal op-ed recently penned by a Los Angeles lawyer.

And dissected and discredited right here.

Meanwhile, the recent spate of op-eds and letters to the editor on the subject is starting to raise questions over whether this is concerted effort to spread misinformation about Vision Zero and road diets across the US.

And we can probably guess who’s behind it.

………

Local

Watts-based Grammy award winning rapper Jay Rock is one of us, saying he was supposed to perform on the awards show three years ago, but couldn’t because he was laid up in the hospital following a bike crash.

Long Beach says e-scooters are here to stay, as they decide to expand the pilot program while imposing new fees and regulations on scooter companies.

State

The Voice of San Diego says the city can’t meet its state transportation goals without an entirely new vision dictating major changes in transportation. The same goes for Los Angeles, which will have to make wholesale changes in how people get around as part of its LA version of a Green New Deal. But don’t count on it anytime soon.

That’s more like it. Encinitas voted to lower the speed limit on the northern section of the coast highway to improve safety for bike riders.

A 32-mile Santa Cruz rail-to-trail conversion that’s been in the works for decades finally got underway with work to widen a railway trestle to make room for a bikeway.

The victim of Sunday’s fatal bike crash in Stockton is described as a talented sushi chef who was riding his bike to work after loaning his car to a friend with a new baby; sadly, he never got there.

National

We already knew NASCAR favorite Jimmie Johnson is one of us, as he says he loves the suffering that’s part of long runs and bike rides.

Bicycling tells the heartbreaking tale of a woman who lost her fiancé when he was killed in 2015 competing in just his fifth mountain bike race. And restarted her life by moving to the Colorado town where he died, founding a company to help first responders deal with backcountry bike crashes like the one that took his life.

Riding a tandem can make your riding and your relationship stronger. Or it could end it. Or so I’m told.

More ridiculous jurisdictional issues in Colorado, where the state brings ebike classifications up to the national standards established in California, but leaves the actual regulations up to each community. Which one again means what’s legal in one city could be illegal across the street — without riders ever knowing that they had crossed into a different community, let alone one with different rules.

Common sense wins the day in North Dakota, where legislators overwhelmingly defeated a bill to require bike riders to wear reflective clothing at night. Not that wearing reflective gear is a bad idea, but mandating it is.

A new report from the League of American Bicyclists shows Oklahoma City is the deadliest city in the US for bike commuters.

Lime continues its retrenchment on bikeshare, turning what used to be a fleet of dockless bike into a pile of trash after pulling out of St. Louis.

A Michigan man confessed to the 70 mph, hit-and-run death of a bike rider, after police found his damaged car hidden in a field under a tarp and a sheet of snow.

Nashville is close to approving an ordinance that would lower speed limits from 30 to 25 mph.

A federal judge ruled that Trump’s call to execute the driver who killed eight people in a terrorist attack on a New York bike path did not taint the case, leaving the driver eligible for the death penalty.

DC considers building a three mile bike and pedestrian path along the Potomac.

A DC policy site considers how bikeshare can be made more family friendly.

International

The LA Times says love is in the air when you ride a bicycle in Santiago, Chile.

Canadian Cycling Magazine considers the pros and cons of traveling with your bike as opposed to renting one once you get there.

Nice guy. A Toronto letter writer says if you can afford a bicycle, you can afford to buy a license for it. And if you can’t, you can just walk.

Advocates call for more tolerance between Kiwi bicyclists and drivers; one rider says “just chill out and relax.”

The former world leader in dockless bikeshare continues its rapid decline, as Ofo gets the boot from Singapore after its license was suspended.

Competitive Cycling

The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Gay joins in on a fat tire race through the snowy Rockies in Crested Butte CO, complete with a brief video. As always, the Journal’s usual paywall issues apply.

A top Scottish mountain biker was none too pleased when she had to borrow a bike to compete in Spain, blasting British Airways for losing hers.

Cycling Weekly looks back at the rollercoaster career of the late, great Marco Pantani.

Cycling legend Eddy Merckx won’t be prosecuted on corruption charges by Belgian authorities — not because he didn’t do it, but because the statute of limitations has expired.

Finally…

Finding true love, if not your stolen bikes. Your next ebike could come from General Motors — but only if you live in Europe.

And your next dockless bikeshare bike could have lasers.

But not the kind that will let you singe distracted, angry or aggressive drivers.

Damn it.

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

Morning Links: Fight over road diets goes national, flooding closes GMR, and Emperor Norton was one of us

February 5, 2019 / / Comments Off on Morning Links: Fight over road diets goes national, flooding closes GMR, and Emperor Norton was one of us

Let’s start with an important piece from Streetsblog’s Joe Linton about the efforts of traffic safety deniers Keep LA Moving to take their crackpot anti-road diet fight national.

Advocates, alert: “Keep L.A. Moving,” a small, vindictive group of well-heeled westsiders with little regard for the safety of L.A.’s most vulnerable and disadvantaged residents, is now pushing its disinformation to a national audience – or, at least, attempting to – by rebranding itself as “Keep The U.S. Moving…”

As bicycle advocate Peter Flax has noted, KLAM’s work seems to thrive best in closed-door conservative echo chambers, like Nextdoor and closed Facebook groups. From there, they work to seed aligned broadcast media, including right-wing radio, where their claims are not questioned. When their dubious assertions, for example “[road diets cause] more accidents, more pollution, more gridlock, heavy traffic,” are actually aired in public debate, or studied using actual real world data, they just don’t hold up.

Like climate change deniers, these “Keep Moving” groups deny data-based studies showing that speed kills and that road diets work…

Behind all their crackpot assertions is the empowerment of drivers in well-to-do communities. These ideologues push for unfettered driver access at the expense of safety for all road users, particularly those who have the fewest mobility choices available to them and who are most at-risk to harm. The “right” of this handful of disgruntled drivers to speed is costing the lives of tens of thousands of people in the U.S. every year. Unfortunately, this is a double whammy to low-income communities of color, whose residents continue to die at higher rates. And as Rutgers’ Charles Brown points out, minority communities overlooked for road diet safety improvements “receive enforcement” instead.

It’s well worth clicking the link to read all of Linton’s hard-hitting story.

Because these are the people who, so far at least, have succeeded in halting road diets and other vital safety measures in Los Angeles, keeping our streets dangerous and deadly so people like them can continue to drive unimpeded.

At least until LA’s inevitable encroaching gridlock forces them to a full stop.

And if they have their way, everywhere.

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Popular riding route Glendora Mountain Road is closed until further notice due to flooding.

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Robs Muir sends us photographic proof that San Francisco’s beloved Emperor Norton was one of us, too.

Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley

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Anyone planning to ride to work this Friday for International Winter Bike to Work Day?

If you want to discuss it with a reporter for the new Spectrum News 1 channel, email Jada Montemarano at jada.montemarano@charter.com.

………

Local

Speaking of Spectrum News 1, they offer a nice piece on South LA’s Black Kids on Bikes, which isn’t just for kids. Or African-Americans.

UCLA is offering a week-long, 550-mile bike tour along the California coast to learn firsthand about the impacts of climate change, and possible solutions. Solution #1 — ditch the car, and ride a bike. Thanks to Audrey Kopp for the heads-up.

A Pasadena neighborhood association says the city’s proposed Cordova Street traffic calming project has a lot to like, even if it doesn’t connect with the Gold Line.

The Signal takes a look at Santa Clarita’s new Pace docked bikeshare system.

State

Can you say, duh? A San Diego TV station reports a sharp increase in traffic tickets issued to scooter riders last year — which makes sense, since it was the first full year they were in operation.

Work is almost finished on San Francisco’s newest protected bike lane.

Sonoma officials identify the homeless man who was beaten to death by two other men in a dispute over bicycle; he had served as a mentor to other people who were new to the streets.

Sacramento is the next California city to get e-scooters.

National

Bike Snob’s Eben Weiss says chill out about that scary sounding medical study on e-scooter injuries, noting that only 15 of the 249 victims were injured seriously enough to require hospitalization.

Outside examines how energy bars became America’s favorite snack food.

A writer for Fast Company takes a spin in a 300-pound e-trike, and pronounces it the future of urban deliveries.

A driving website calls the micromobility movement part revolution and part gold rush, naming 2018 the Year of the Scooter.

No surprise here. Denver’s docked bikeshare system is losing riders to the convenience of e-scooters.

The mayor of a Chicago suburb threatens to ticket every member of a group ride if they don’t stop for every stop sign. Yes, they are legally required to stop. Even though it would piss off every driver on the street street when they proceed through every intersection one at a time.

Chicago Streetsblog looks back on the life of a bike courier in the 1990s. Thanks to J. Patrick Lynch for the link.

A Massachusetts town wants to become a bicycling city, building on a bike heritage that goes back over 100 years. Although honestly, just about every city and town can say that; it’s what happened in the past 50 or 60 years that matters.

David Drexler forwards a Bloomberg piece about the reasons for a sudden uptick in New York Uber and taxi fares, which ends with “Have you considered biking?”

Great idea. Bike riders in Athens, Georgia can get discounts at participating businesses by attaching a $5 sticker to their helmets.

No bias here. A Georgia college student gets the blame in the local media for hitting a bus with his bike, when he was actually right-hooked as he came off the sidewalk. Yes, he should have slowed or stopped before riding out into the crosswalk, and probably shouldn’t have been on the sidewalk in the first place. But the driver bears responsibility for apparently not noticing him on the sidewalk and pausing to let him cross the street.

International

Cycling Weekly offers 13 inspirational cycling quotes to live your life by. Personally, I like the one from South African Bishop Desmond Tutu.

A British Columbia high school student returned home from an international environmental engineering competition with a bronze medal for her solar-powered e-trike.

A Hamilton, Ontario safety advocate says the city’s Vision Zero plan is a lot of fluff. Not that Los Angeles bike riders and pedestrians can relate that or anything.

This is who we share the roads with. A London motorist suffered serious injuries when a road raging driver intentionally plowed into him as he stood next to his car following a minor collision; no word on whether the other driver was arrested.

A British food delivery rider faces a charge of willful misconduct for a bike crash that left an eight-year old girl with a fractured skull.

Scraping the bottom of the ethical barrel, a driver in the UK faked brain damage to avoid doing jail time for killing a man on a bike while driving at twice the speed limit on the wrong side of the road; he’s now doing six and a half well-deserved years.

London’s Telegraph recommends Dubai’s “surprisingly mountainous” bicycling routes.

Some drivers continue to say bike riders are hard to see. Apparently, so are Australian garbage trucks.

Aussie medical professionals are sounding the alarm about dangerous aggression from motorists directed towards people on bicycles. Or as we call that in Los Angeles, Tuesday. Or any other day, for that matter.

Competitive Cycling

British pro cyclist Scott Auld was lucky to escape with a broken collarbone and various other injuries when he was the victim of a car crash while training in Spain; he was riding on the inside of a double pace line when the rider next to him was clipped by a driver on the wrong side of the road, crashing into him and sending him flying down a ravine.

Finally…

Who needs wheels when you’ve got skis? When you’re semi-royal, love dogs and the press has no idea what a cargo bike is.

And if you’re on parole with outstanding warrants, carrying an illegal weapon and ghost riding another bike along with yours, put a damn light on it — 

Your bike, not the other one.

Or maybe both.

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