Just 293 days until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025.
Then share it — and keep sharing it — with everyone you know, on every platform you can.
As of this writing, we’re up to 1,013 signatures, so let’s keep it going! Urge everyone you know to sign the petition, until the mayor agrees to meet with us!
Photo by Matteus Silva for Pexels.
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Fifteen years ago, then-Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa had his eyes opened when he visited Copenhagen, and saw how cities can thrive when they provide safe alternatives to driving.
Let’s hope current Mayor Karen Bass gets the same message on her pre-Olympic excursion to Paris, where Mayor Anne Hidalgo has been removing highways and building bike lanes to create a 15-minute city.
Bass will have plenty of money to spend on it, after the city secured nearly $900 million in federal funding for transportation and infrastructure projects ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics.
Although more than $700 million of that will go to rail projects.
But still. The other $200 million could go a long way towards fixing what ails LA.
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Despite depictions from some conservatives and rightwing media of California as a dystopian hellscape, it turns out we’re actually the seventh happiest state in the US.
In fact, three California cities rank among the nation’s five happiest cities. None of which is Los Angeles, of course.
LA checks in all the way down at 64th, behind several other SoCal cities, including Long Beach, San Diego and Irvine. But at least we’re ahead of Riverside.
Barely, anyway.
So just imagine how happy we’d all be if everyone felt safe riding a bike.
Which matters, because California lawmakers want to legislate the state’s way to even greater happiness.
Maybe if more of them rode bikes, they might see that the road to happiness is a bike lane.
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This is why people keep dying on our streets.
Life is really cheap in Florida, where prosecutors have dropped criminal charges against a driver who killed a 62-year old bike rider and a pedestrian, who were collateral damage when he crashed into another car after allegedly running a red light while doing 72 mph in a 45-mph zone.
Prosecutors dropped the case because they couldn’t prove he was under the influence at the time of the crash, making it just another oopsie. And proving once again that killing other people while driving recklessly and illegally is just no big thing.
He now faces a lousy $264 traffic ticket for running the red light, which he has naturally pled not guilty to.
Because as another Florida man has made clear, accountability is for suckers.
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It turns out German filmmaker great Wim Wenders is one of us, as shown in this comment on yesterday’s post from Laemmle Theaters owner Greg Laemmle, who rode his bike to the Oscars on Sunday along with his wife Tish and assorted friends.
Thanks for the story Ted. Wim Wenders came over as we were leaving the event. He commented that his DP has the same bike (a Brompton) that Tish was riding. I thanked him for all the biking scenes in PERFECT DAYS, and he let us know that he uses his bike to get around when he is home in Berlin. One day, maybe LA will be as safe a place to bike as Berlin, Tokyo and others. But I’ll keep riding in the meantime anyway.
From his mouth to God’s ear.
As it turns out, I have something in common with Wenders. We’ve both won Golden Bear awards from the Berlin International Film Festival.
Although mine was for writing an ad campaign for a bank that doesn’t even exist anymore.
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It’s now 84 days since the California ebike incentive program’s latest failure to launch, which was promised no later than fall 2023. And 33 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. A London media personality questions who is at fault in a five-year old crash where a driver cut a corner and hit a bike rider waiting to turn head on — making who was really at fault glaringly obvious.
Police in Mumbai, India denied permission for bicycling groups to gather for a silent protest to draw attention to unsafe road conditions for bike riders and pedestrians, despite planning the rally for a spot designated for protests.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Authorities in Dublin, Ireland are looking for video evidence after a middle-aged woman was pushed off her bicycle by a “group of lads on bikes,” for no apparent reason.
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Local
The two leaders of the nation’s largest homeless rescue mission, Hope the Mission in North Hills, are on their way to DC on a 3,500-mile bike ride to advocate for homelessness programs.
Good news for Pasadena, where bike-friendly former city mayor, Los Angeles assistant mayor and Santa Monica city manager Rick Cole has been re-elected to the Pasadena city council, receiving just over 60% of the vote.
Speaking of Pasadena, the city’s police will conduct a bicycle and pedestrian safety operation on Friday, ticketing anyone who commits a traffic violation that could endanger either group, regardless of who commits it; Santa Monica cops will also hold one on Thursday and Friday. As usual, ride to the letter of the law until you cross the city limits, so you’re not the one who gets written up and fined.
Streetsblog talks with South Bay-based writer Peter Flax, whose new book, Live to Ride: Finding Joy and Meaning on a Bicycle, offers a broad look at bike riding, with a common theme that bicyclists have to work together because strength comes from unity. And yes, I’ve ordered my copy.
State
This is who we share the road with. An unlicensed driver with four previous DUIs over the past decade hit and killed a pedestrian in Orange Tuesday morning, and was arrested after fleeing the scene and leading police on a short chase. And yes, he showed signs of intoxication as he was taken into custody. Which is what happens when authorities take someone’s license away, but let them keep their keys.
Caltrans will provide millions of dollars for a pilot program to build parks, bike lanes and other amenities to reconnect communities in southeastern San Diego and National City that were divided by the 805 Freeway; the program will also seek to reconnect similarly divided communities in Arcata and San Francisco.
A man suffered major injuries when he was struck by a driver while riding his bike in Palm Desert last night.
National
That’s more like it. An Oregon man got 12 years behind bars for killing a woman biking with two friends while under the influence, and in possession of controlled substances. Although it’s shameful that it took seven years for the victim to get justice.
The horrific story of the Washington mountain biker attacked by a mountain lion gets even worse, with news that the 60-year old woman’s entire head was in the cougar’s mouth for a full 15 minutes before her companions managed to pin it down with a bike frame; a crowdfunding campaign has raised nearly $75,000 for the victim.
They get it. The Baltimore Sun, which was recently purchased by the owner of a conservative media group, asks why bike lanes won’t work there, if they’re so successful in Cambridge, Massachusetts, even though the Baltimore bike plan has recently come under from residents and city leaders.
In news that will undoubtedly confound California officials, the District of Columbia will somehow managed to launch their new ebike voucher program next month, just seven months after it was approved by the city council. Which is 26 months less than California’s moribund program’s failure to launch has taken — and counting.
International
Momentum offers 33 reasons to start bike commuting this spring, ranging from reducing your carbon footprint to getting some alone time while connecting to your community. Although they forgot to mention that it’s a lot more fun than driving, too.
British Columbia will invest $50 million in active transportation projects over the next three years.
He gets it. A Toronto columnist questions why the city is cutting funding for safe streets, when it just experienced the deadliest month for bike riders and pedestrians since the heady days before the pandemic.
The Dutch Cycling Embassy explains how fire trucks and bike lanes can peacefully co-exist, despite the largely debunked belief that they slow response times and limit the ability to respond to emergencies.
An Austrian tech company is training AI to enable smart bicycles to analyze their surroundings. On the other hand, would you want to trust your safety to a technology that draws people with three legs, and gets lawyers sanctioned by making up legal precedents?
Dubai opened two new separated cycle tracks in the residential communities of Al Khawaneej and Mushrif, part of the emirate’s goal of building 1,000 km — 621 miles — of bike paths by 2030.
Here’s your chance to mountain bike the Serengeti this fall, while you help fight poaching.
Bike Radar highlights eight weird and wonderful road, gravel and urban bikes from the Taipei Cycle Show.
Police in Australia are revisiting the seven-year old cold case shooting of a 72-year old man, who was shot multiple times in the head and chest by a man who got out of a parked car to fire at him as he rode his motorized bicycle on a rail trail; he somehow survived, but even a half-million dollar reward hasn’t been enough to solve the case.
An Aussie professor says subsidizing micromobility-share programs can benefit people on low incomes or with disabilities.
Competitive Cycling
Pro cycling gets its kicks from caffeine.
Ghana’s Sports Minister blamed the country’s Cycling Federation for the national team’s equipment fiasco at the Africa Games, as cyclists were forced to compete using the same worn gear they’d been training on.
Triple world champion Ellen van Dijk won the time trial in the final stage of Spain’s Vuelta Extremadura Féminas on Sunday, just five months after giving birth, while Dutch cyclist Mareille Meijering took the general classification for the three stage race; no American finished in the top 25.
Finally…
That feeling when they build a new separated bikeway, and leave a lamppost in the middle of it. Or when you get a call from your dead friend’s phone asking for his bicycle back.
And a snow covered reminder of why we ride in California.
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Ramadan Mubarak to all observing the Islamic holy month today.
Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin
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