Just 39 days until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025.
But sure, raise your hand if you’ve heard a single LA city leader so much as mention it.
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Washington Post, meet windshield bias.
Marc Fisher, a columnist and associate editor for the paper, penned an essay purporting to tell “the truth about bike lanes,” which largely doesn’t.
Rather, he suggests that traffic calming and bike lanes are more about intentionally gumming up traffic to discourage people from driving, and encourage gentrification to change the ethnic and economic demographics of the city.
In other words, he tells us he doesn’t understand traffic safety and urban planning without telling us.
The District’s planners are intent on putting many of the city’s most important streets on what’s called a “road diet,” which sounds healthy and nutritious but is actually a recipe for traffic constipation and commuter headaches — and maybe a stealth mechanism for encouraging a wholesale shift in race and class in certain neighborhoods…
Across town, on South Dakota Avenue NE, the fight is ongoing, and, as The Post’s Rachel Weiner reported, this squabble reveals an essential truth about bike lanes as weapons of civic planning: They are often installed not to satisfy the barely measurable trickle of residents who pedal to work but mainly to make car traffic worse enough that people will be discouraged from driving.
He goes on to site the reasons given by city officials for DC’s traffic calming efforts, before rejecting them.
“Just as the big, wide lanes we have now induce speeding and reckless driving” Kapur tells me, so too would bike lanes induce slower driving — and maybe more bike riding.
Not so fast he says, citing federal statistics showing the percentage of residents who bike to work has dropped every year since reaching a peak of 5% in 2017, down to 3% — in 2022.
Never mind that the proportion of DC residents who work from home jumped from just over 7% in 2017 to more than 33% just five years later. So of course the percentage of bike commuters dropped, along with every other form of transportation, as more workers stayed home.
Then he makes a quick pivot to the racial makeup of bike riders, citing a Virginia Tech study showing 88% of bike riders are white.
But as he says, not so fast.
The study he cites dates back to 2008, and involves both the urban and suburban jurisdictions of the greater Washington, DC area, including Alexandria, Arlington County, and Fairfax County in Virginia; and Montgomery County and Prince George’s County in Maryland.
In other words, the largely Black and relatively small population of DC is conflated with the largely white, affluent and much larger populations of the suburbs. So even if a higher proportion of Black DC residents biked to work than in other areas, their numbers would be swamped by all the white suburban residents.
Never mind that the numbers he cites are more than a decade and a half out of date.
But taking the time to uncover more recent data might not support his premise that the whole reason to install bike lanes is to gum up drivers commutes and change the racial makeup of the city.
Nope.
No bias there.
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If you keep your bike — or anything else — at the Hollywood and Vine Bike Hub, you might want to check on it tout suite.
There was a break-in at the @BikeMetro Hollywood/Vine hub. Front door smashed and glass everywhere. If you store anything here, check on it asap. Kudos to the staff for alerting me via phone, but y’all should probably post about this too. CC: @metrolosangeles pic.twitter.com/2kdJNHkosN
— Phil Obaza (@philobaza) November 20, 2024
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It’s now 337 days since the California ebike incentive program’s latest failure to launch, which was promised no later than fall 2023. And a full 41 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.
No bias here, either. A Marin newspaper says the trial part-time removal of the bike lane on the Richmond-San Raphael Bridge makes it clear that the bridge should see a car-only future, in which bike commuters should be happy to be carted across in a shuttle van, climate crisis be damned.
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Local
The Complete Streets makeover of Fountain Avenue was the clear winner in the recent West Hollywood election, even if it wasn’t on the ballot. And even if opponents don’t think so.
Metro wants its money back for the MOVE Culver City protected bike lanes ripped out by the city’s recent conservative council majority, sending Culver City a bill for the full $435,000 grant.
State
A kindhearted California couple who lost their son to suicide drove across the county to give his bicycle to a young boy who lost his father the same way.
Irvine unveiled the city’s first physically separated, Class IV bikeway, a 1.25-mile route near the city’s Great Park.
Circulate San Diego offers an annual recap of the city’s bicycle and pedestrian OTS safety program.
National
Electrek shares ten things you really should know before buying an ebike.
Streetsblog explains everything you need to know about D-list reality TV star and new Transportation Secretary nominee Sean Duffy, amid fears he’ll take an axe to anything that doesn’t burn fossil fuels.
Seattle bicyclists can now use an app to report anything from bike lane obstructions and street sweeping needs to missing bike lane signs and road markings.
A novice New York bike rider shares the insights she gained after being talked into a 79-mile fundraising ride to fight breast cancer.
New York’s Central Park Conservancy calls for a major makeover of the park, with a rendering showing separate running and walking paths, along with a bike lane next to a shared traffic lane, presumably for faster riders.
Finishing our New York trifecta, the NYPD has released a photo of the pickup driver who killed a bike-riding woman as he fled from police, who were responding to a burglary call; a witness says the victim rang her bike bell to warn him, saving his life before sacrificing hers.
A woman in Jackson, Mississippi was shot and killed in a dispute over a stolen bicycle; two people now face charges. As we’ve said before, no bike is worth a human life. Just give it up and live to ride another day.
International
Clean Technica recommends improving your safety with “unique” bar-end rear vier mirrors, unless you’d rather have one you can attach to your glasses.
A British startup is installing app-controlled smart bike parking docks, which appear to be standard U-racks with a heavy-ass chain attached.
Amsterdam continues to raise the bar for everyone and everywhere else, crafting a new state-of-the-art main bicycling route along the Amstel River.
Italian bikemaker Colnago goes retro with a Columbus steel framed road bike to celebrate their 70th anniversary.
The government of Hong Kong has postponed a requirement for bike helmets until next year, saying they need more time to work out the details.
China Digital Times offers a brief first-person account of the massive Zhengzhou to Kaifeng nighttime dumpling ride.
Competitive Cycling
Columbian cyclist Nairo Quintana took advantage of the opportunity after receiving the country’s Order of Democracy Simon Bolivar to warn that the country’s athletes face massive budget cuts.
Cycling Up To Date examines how Denmark produces such talented cyclists, from Bjarne Riis to Jonas Vingegaard. Although that’s a question that might be better directed towards Slovenia these days.
Finally…
Now you, too, can carry your spare wheels in a bigass square backpack. If God is on your side, wouldn’t you actually finish the world championships?
And country star Dierks Bentley is one of us.
Country music singer/songwriter Dierks Bentley makes a longtail rink run#BicycleBirthday Dierks Bentley#BornOnThisDay November 20, 1975 pic.twitter.com/Kx06WnLu3l
— Cool Bike Art (@CoolBikeArt1) November 20, 2024
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin
