Tag Archive for veto

LA River path costs double while Valley dog park suffers, last day for CA bill signing, and the fight goes on over deadly Forest Lawn Drive

September 30, 2026 / / 3 comments

The good news is that no one riding a bicycle appears to have been killed in Southern California yesterday, for only the fourth time in the last eight days. 

The bad news is that a report on the Citizen app showed the aftermath of a bike rider struck by a driver in my own Hollywood neighborhood yesterday, at Sunset and Detroit a little before 4 pm.

The video showed police closing Detroit to investigate, which is never a good sign, likely indicating a serious collision.

So fingers crossed.

Rendering of West Valley LA River bike path project shamelessly stolen from LA Streetsblog. And I’ll try to catch up with all the recent email submissions in tomorrow’s post.

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I hate to say it, but she’s got a point.

Writing for CityWatch, Miriam Preissel says she continues to fight the completion of the many named LA River bike path through the Sepulveda Basin, not because she hates bikes, but because she questions how the price tag ballooned to nearly $100 million.

I am not anti-bike. A safe, continuous RiverWay through Los Angeles is a good idea. But taxpayers should still be able to ask a basic question: How did less than three miles of bike and pedestrian improvements become a project approaching $100 million, while five major undercrossings once included in the plan were pushed into the future?

That is where this stops being just a bike-path story and becomes a public-accountability story.

That’s nearly double the original estimate.

Preissel also questions why the bike path has to take a chunk out of the San Fernando Valley’s only dog park, located in Balboa Park.

For years, I have asked a simple question: Why not keep the path on the south side?

The City has never provided what should settle the issue once and for all: a side-by-side analysis comparing the north-side and south-side routes, including cost, engineering constraints, available width, environmental effects and recreational impacts…

In 2023, the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Areas Steering Committee questioned the north-side alignment and said it could find “no supportable justification” for moving approximately a mile of the path from the south side to the north.

The committee also noted that the proposed north-side route would run only a few hundred feet from the existing Orange Line bike path along Victory Boulevard and questioned whether existing bicycle connections might provide much of the same transportation function. It also raised concerns about future floodplain and habitat restoration.

Then there’s the question of lighting, both on the bike path and in the dog park.

The RiverWay is expected to include roughly 233 lights. The dog park still has none.

The park closes at sundown. During the shorter days of the year, that means many working residents may not get home in time to use it. For apartment dwellers, the dog park is not merely a recreational luxury. It may be the only large, legal place nearby where their dogs can run off leash.

Yet the park continues to struggle with basics: irrigation, bare ground, supplies and routine maintenance. At the same time, a nearly $100 million transportation project is moving forward next door.

I wish I had the answers.

I suspect part of it is because construction on the bike path is paid for with grant money, while the dog park comes out of city funds. But if Los Angeles is ever to become the great city it professes and pretends to be, we’ve got to be able to do the basics.

Chop wood, carry water.

This city is failing, and has continued to fail for the past decade, to do the simple things that make a city livable.

Fix potholes. Pick up trash. Get the drug users and people with mental illnesses off the streets, and into housing and treatment programs. And for God’s sake, light and maintain the damn dog parks.

We may have a spiffy new bike trail to show off to the world at the ’28 Olympics, but it will only hide the fact that we’re failing as a city.

Yes, I want all 52 miles of the LA River bike path finally finished, from the headwaters of the Los Angeles River to its mouth to the Pacific in Long Beach.

But I also want a livable city.

Is that really too much to ask?

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Today is the last day for Governor Newsom to sign a number of outstanding bike and traffic safety bills. Anything left unsigned at the end of the day automatically becomes a veto.

Meanwhile, CalMatters looks at the four DUI laws that Newsom signed last week.

Now let’s focus on getting something passed in the next session allowing DAs to charge hit-and-run drivers with second-degree murder for making a conscious decision to flee rather than helping the victim, or at least calling for help.

Is that really too much to ask?

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LA Taco looks at the dispute over improving safety on Forest Lawn Drive.

Which isn’t really a dispute over safety, or even bike lanes. But whether a city street should be kept dangerous to placate the wealthy owners of Forest Lawn and Mount Sinai cemeteries.

Twitter post

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At least Culver City can get things done. Even if it takes a couple decades.

Twitter post

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As a side note, I revised that Spanish language version of my ghost bike t-shirt to make it brighter and highlight the bike, after realizing the previous version was a tad too dark.

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

A 34-year old North Dakota mother faces multiple charges after allegedly driving her car at a group of children at a reported 55-60 mph before swerving away at the last minute, allegedly because the kids hid her son’s bicycle as a prank before returning it; she says she was only doing 35 to 40 mph, which does not make it better.

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

The arch-right Daily Caller reports that bicyclists berated bystanders tending to the father who was struck and killed by a bike rider while walking in New York’s Central Park. Which is something no one else seems to have reported, so take it with a grain of salt, if not the whole bag.

A Singapore man calls the police after a teen riding with a group of boys accidentally crashed into his bicycle and apparently didn’t apologize sufficiently. He then tells the group they’re “kind of pathetic,” to which one of the kids answered “thank you for the compliment.” I’ll leave it to you to decide which side belongs here. 

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Local 

Volunteers with People’s Vision Zero once again embarrassed city officials by painting their own crosswalk where a 16-year old boy was killed by a driver in South LA last week, and his sister seriously injured. As we noted above, a city that can’t do basic things like install crosswalks will never be great, and barely be livable. 

Jim sends word that Palos Verdes Drive South will be fucked up for sewer repair work until next February, which may block access to the “switchbacks” on PVD East.

 

State

LAist says ebikes are Orange County teens’ ticket to independence, but questions if they’re too dangerous — then actually takes the time to explain the legal classifications for ebikes, noting that only 12% of ebikes used by middle and high schools in Marin and San Mateo counties fit into the legal classification system. And no, that’s not data from Orange County, but there’s probably a correlation there somewhere, and the same goes for LA County beach cities.

The LA Times reports on All Kids on Bikes classes in the Inland Empire, with Rancho Cucamonga kindergarten kids learning how to ride in gym class.

Ventura County sheriff’s deputies are cracking down on bicycle and ebike violations in the Ojai Valley, as if the people on two wheels were somehow the biggest danger on the streets.

Road.cc says the phenomenon of Oakland’s scraper bikes continues. I saw my first scraper bike outside a Hollywood Target a few weeks back, although purists would argue it wasn’t a real scraper because it wasn’t in Oakland.

Mill Valley is building a citywide culture of bicycling by focusing efforts on getting elementary students at one school to bike to class, and measuring the results.

Horrible news from Sonoma County, where a woman’s body was discovered in a ditch eleven hours after a hit-and-run driver left her bicycle more than a mile from the crash site. And no, the detail about eleven hours isn’t in this Patch article, but the more detailed information is hidden behind the local newspapers’ paywalls. 

 

National

She gets it. A Salt Lake City op-ed says bicycling deaths like the writer’s father’s aren’t anomalies, but rather, the bloody cost of our car-obsessed world.

Iowa Democrats are calling the Republican candidate for governor a carpetbagger, after the man’s quickly deleted Strava account shows he actually lives across the border in Kansas.

A Boston woman suffered life-threatening injuries when she was struck by a bicyclist while walking near Boston University; the rider was also injured, but not as seriously.

The wacky New York Post says the city must rein in ebikes, arguing that ebikes should offer no speed advantage over regular bikes. Apparently forgetting that a skilled rider on fast bike can easily top 30 mph, which tops the maximum speed allowed by legal ebikes.

The honeymoon appears to be over for New York Mayor Mamdani, as Streetsblog contends he is allowing a street to be a fatality waiting to happen.

Two North Carolina men in their 40s were killed while sharing an ebike when they were struck by a 22-year old man; the driver was not arrested or cited, despite a history of five moving violations in three counties since 2022.

Electrek says a ticket issued to an 11-year old Florida boy for riding an illegal e-motorbike shows we don’t need more ebike laws, because the ones we already have are pretty good.

 

International

Momentum surprisingly offers a what appears to be a new story based on 2026 PeopleForBikes data highlighting ten North American cities quietly getting better for bicycling, including our own Long Beach.

The success of the new Gordie Howe International Bridge is reinvigorating historic neighborhoods in Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario, as bicyclists fill the streets, businesses boom and forgotten landmarks are being rediscovered.

A group of Toronto doctors, nurses and other front-line healthcare workers denounced the province’s move to rip out the city’s popular bike lanes, citing the risk of traffic violence.

A 69-year old Canadian man claimed the record as the oldest man to circumnavigate the earth by bicycle, riding 18,600 miles in 324 days in honor of his late wife.

If you build it, they will come. Gloomy Glasgow, Scotland saw a 74% jump in bicycling rates over just a two-year period after investing, and continuing to invest, in new bikeways.

Thousand’s of bicyclists turned out in Birmingham, England for a viral DJ-led drum and bass bike ride, saying it displayed the dangers bicyclists face in the city.

Life is cheap in the UK, where a 15-year old kid riding an illegal e-moto was ordered to pay just the equivalent of $652 after crashing into a 46-year old father riding a bicycle, leaving the victim hospitalized with life-changing injuries after eight full months.

Spain introduces new bicycling rules allowing bicyclists to take the primary position in the lane and requiring drivers to take more care passing bicycles; however, the law now requires all bike riders to wear a helmet under all circumstances.

An Indian travel website offers a slideshow of the world’s ten most beautiful bicycling routes, including our own PCH on the California coast, which only turns really deadly once it reaches Ventura County.

A man from Kazakhstan is 100 days into a 3,200-mile bicycle journey from the country’s capital to Australia.

Beijing opened a new 21-mile section of what will eventually form a nearly 30 mile greenway on both sides of the Qing River.

 

Competitive Cycling

Outside profiles Brandon McNulty, who most Americans never heard of until he won the men’s world championship last week. And still haven’t.

It was a double victory for the US at the worlds, as American phenom Ashlin Barry became the first-ever Yank to win in the men’s U-23 race.

 

Finally…

That feeling when rising gas prices lead a ’90s pop group to trade their tour bus for Lycra and bicycles. Your next bike could be a Bugatti, for a mere $27,000 — or you could buy your toddler a Tesla balance bike for just $225. Your old bike could be someone’s new prosthetic leg.

And it’s probably not the best idea to punch someone in the chest at a bike lane meeting and call her a “stupid cunt” when you’re an elected semi-city official.

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

Oh, and fuck Putin.

 

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

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

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

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Sadly, no surprise here.

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

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

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

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

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

And just bus lines.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And speeding is one of the leading causes of that.

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

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

Instagram post

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

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

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

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

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

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Local  

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

 

State

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

 

National

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

International

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Competitive Cycling

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

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

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

 

Finally…

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

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

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

Oh, and fuck Putin

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

Newsom’s veto could mean tickets for seeking sidewalk safety, and LA Times calls out California’s roadway climate fail

October 11, 2023 / / Comments Off on Newsom’s veto could mean tickets for seeking sidewalk safety, and LA Times calls out California’s roadway climate fail

No surprise here.

Both Calbike and CABO responded to Governor Gavin Newsom’s veto of a bill that would have legalized sidewalk riding on any street without adequate bike lanes.

And needless to say, they came out on opposite sides of the issue.

Calbike, aka the California Bicycle Coalition, decried the veto, arguing that sidewalk riding may not be the best choice, but it’s sometimes the only safe one.

“Is sidewalk riding ideal? No,” said Jared Sanchez, policy director for CalBike. “In a perfect world, most streets would be Complete Streets, with safe facilities for all modes of transportation. But that’s not the reality today, and it will take years to transform every dangerous roadway in California into a safe route for biking. In the meantime, people on bikes must, at times, travel on streets with fast traffic and no bike lanes. By vetoing this bill, the governor has taken an action that will lead to more deaths and injuries of people on bikes.”

While CalBike agrees with the governor’s assertion in his veto statement that building better bike infrastructure is the best way to provide safe spaces for people who ride bikes and that the state has moved in the right direction to create more protected and connected bikeways, infrastructure for safe biking remains woefully inadequate.

Meanwhile CABO — the California Association of Bicycle Organizations — applauded the governor’s veto.

An open letter from Alan Wachtel, Government Relations Director for CABO, pointed out the dangers of bicycling on sidewalks, both for bike riders and pedestrians.

While my organization and I appreciate the author’s intent to improve bicycle safety, this bill would instead have exactly the opposite effect. It would encourage dangerous bicycling habits, and it would constitute a huge step backward in the goal of routinely accommodating bicycle travel everywhere in the transportation network. Unfortunately, the author’s office has repeatedly declined to meet with us even to discuss these issues.

Under existing Vehicle Code §21650(g) (which I helped to draft), bicyclists may already ride on sidewalks everywhere, unless prohibited by the code or local ordinance. AB 825 would eliminate that local power unless the adjacent roadway includes a designated bicycle facility, except for last-minute amendments that provide complicated exceptions meant to protect pedestrians (but that are inadequate to do so).

But AB 825, despite being promoted as a bicycle safety bill, would, on the contrary, also be more dangerous for bicyclists. It relies on and actively perpetuates the misconception that the only safe places for bicycles are designated facilities and sidewalks.

This may be the rare instance where they’re both at least partly right.

CABO is correct that bikes don’t normally belong on sidewalks, where they pose a danger to pedestrians and an increased risk to bike riders, despite the perception of safety.

But it’s also true that a sidewalk can provide a refuge from dangerous roadways lacking safe infrastructure — especially the typical suburban California stroads, where riders often have to contend with speeding drivers exceeding the already high speed limits.

It’s also demanding too much to expect an inexperienced bike rider to take the lane on a busy street filled with impatient and distracted drivers.

It’s unreasonable to ticket someone for putting their own safety ahead of any local restrictions under those, or similar, circumstances.

Or to expect someone on a bicycle to always know when they’ve crossed from one city where sidewalk riding is allowed, to another where it’s prohibited, particularly when the restriction isn’t posted.

Then there’s the problem the bill was originally drafted to address, where police too often use sidewalk riding restrictions as a pretext to stop and search, or merely harass, people of color.

I always encourage people to ride their bikes in the street, both for their own safety, and that of people walking on the sidewalk.

But I understand if they choose not to, as I have myself for short distances, or when faced with dangerous situations on the street.

And penalizing them for making that choice is wrong — as was Newsom’s veto of the bill.

Besides, we all know sidewalks are really just parking spots for entitled drivers.

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The get it.

An editorial from the Los Angeles Times called out California’s transportation policies, arguing that the state’s highway spending doesn’t match it’s climate promises.

Then again, that’s what we’ve come to expect from the auto-centric Caltrans, despite its repeated commitments to Complete Streets and active transportation.

Two recent reports highlight the discrepancy. Regulators have warned that the state needs to slash the amount of miles people drive 25% below 2019 levels to help meet 2030 emission reduction targets. But traffic and car dependence has increased in recent years, according to a report from the progressive advocacy group NextGen Policy.

It’s no surprise why: California continues to spend the bulk of its transportation dollars to maintain and expand car-centric roads and freeways. Instead of doubling down on the existing system that makes it inconvenient and unsafe to travel by bike, foot and transit, California should be spending the bulk of its transportation funding to remake the urban landscape so people have real choices in how they get around.

But that’s not happening. Of the state’s primary transportation funding programs, just 19% of the money has gone to projects that help reduce the need to drive, such as building out bike lanes, sidewalks, rail service, electric buses and affordable housing near jobs, according to an analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council. These programs are in such demand that the state is regularly forced to deny funding to highly rated pedestrian and bicycle projects.

It’s worth reading the whole piece, because they’re right.

Caltrans continues to flush massive amounts of funding down the highway widening toilet, addicted to the never-ending chase to fix traffic congestion while fueling induced demand.

And like any other addict, the only solution is to quit.

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It looks like Amazon’s Prime Days, which concludes today, is the bike world’s new October Black Friday.

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Road.cc pits a $15,000 superbike against a $430 find from Facebook Marketplace to determine how much speed money can actually buy.

And concludes that it does make a difference, but not as much as you might think.

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

A Cambridge, Massachusetts newspaper says a court heard rehashed arguments in yet another lawsuit fighting the city’s separated bike lanes, after the city has already won preliminary injunctions and subsequent appeals in two similar cases.

A Streetsblog op-ed calls out a proposal supported by a majority of New councilmembers to license all ebike riders, which would create a bureaucratic nightmare and discourage ebike use, while ignoring the lackluster infrastructure and unsafe work standards at the root of the problem.

New Yorkers rode their “little bikes” last night in protest of the mayor’s derisive comments about being able to ride their “little bikes” safely thanks to him, at a time when the city’s bicycling deaths are up dramatically.

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Local 

West Hollywood sheriff’s deputies reported three collisions involving pedestrians last month and four involving people on bicycles, while stating that enforcing the city’s restrictions on sidewalk riding is a low priority; it’s legal to ride on the sidewalk on any WeHo street without a bike lane.

 

State

Chinese ebike maker Velotric is offering discounts up to 20% to students, staff and faculty at UC San Diego, while the campus expands bike lockers and protected bike lanes.

San Marcos is getting a new eight-acre bike park, including a pump track, perimeter trail and jump lines for beginner, intermediate and advanced riders.

The campus police chief at UC Santa Cruz warns students about the growing bike theft problem at the school, while offering tips on how to keep your bike safe.

 

National

Electrek applauds Seattle’s cute little electric bike lane sweepers.

Denver drivers can’t seem to figure out how a traffic diverter works, continuing through on the wide bike lane instead of following the really big arrows on the street directing them to turn. Although the city deserves a lot of the blame for leaving enough room in the bike lane for cars to enter.

A 28-year old Denver man is nearly 8,000 miles into an effort to visit every US National Park in the Lower 48 states on one continuous bicycle trip; so far he’s made it to just 19 of the 51 parks on his itinerary.

A writer for Kansas’ Rider University student paper describes how a bright blue bicycle took him from an awkward 16-year old kid stuck at home during the pandemic, to a bike-riding man about campus.

This is why we need to ban right turns on red lights. A Kansas driver was caught on video slamming into a bike rider, who had waited until it appeared to be safe before crossing in a crosswalk with the light, and was right hooked by the driver after riding off the curb.

Road diets in Philadelphia led to a 34% decrease in fatalities on the city’s recently constructed Complete Streets.

Abandoned bikeshare bikes continue to litter a South Carolina town after the city’s provider shut down last spring.

 

International

Momentum says riding in a dress this fall is not as difficult as you might think.

A member of Britain’s Conservative Party says he will continue to call for a mandatory bike helmet law in Parliament, despite his own party repeatedly rejecting the proposal.

The mayor of Manilla’s Quezon City returned from a trip to Copenhagen, vowing to use the Danish city’s bicycle-friendly infrastructure as a role model to make her town the bicycling capital of the Philippines.

An Aussie bike advocacy group condemned video of an “entitled” SUV driver crossing the double yellow lines to pass both a bike rider and a second driver who was patiently following the bicyclist waiting for a safe opportunity to pass.

 

Competitive Cycling

Belgian pro Nathan Van Hooydonck says he immediately knew his cycling career was over when he was nearly killed in a car crash after suffering a heart problem while driving; he retired after waking from a coma and being fitted with an internal defibrillator to correct any future cardiac arrhythmia.

 

Finally…

Why settle for being a coffee roaster or a wrench when you can do both? That feeling when the heroine who defends you from bike thieves is an angry mom with a spade.

And why just ride on rubber when you can put the rubber to the rubber?

………

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

Oh, and fuck Putin

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