News, Links and Others Views
San Diego region
- Tired of the slew of bad biking news that’s been hitting us lately? Sara Kazemi’s Bike Nice blog promises only positive news for your reading pleasure.
- U-T’s Logan Jenkins comes out from the rock he’s been hiding under since 2004 when sharrows were first approved in California, to give his readers an introduction to sharrows. The OB Rag lives up to the “rag” moniker by being similarly unaware of existing state laws on where riders can already legally ride. Meanwhile, North County Times’ Thomas Arnold isn’t impressed with the sharrows and has envisioned what he’d like to see on the 101.
- Encinitas residents, rejoice! For you now have a mayoral candidate who wants to make the city more pleasant to walk and bike in.
- Coronado’s Larry Hofstetter is working hard to make his city more bike friendly.
- SDSU is going full steam to become a bike friendly campus and they plan on launching a bike rental program this fall.
- Escondido has seen the dollar signs and hopes to host the Amgen Tour by making a bid to be the host city in 2013.
- Temecula is introducing the joy of riding to kids.
- Good news: the SR-163/Friars Road interchange will be fixed by eliminating the free right turns that make for dangerous riding conditions. Bad news: changes are slated to happen in 2014.
- Jordan Hickey’s killers are currently on trial for shooting Hickey last year when he was on his ride home.
- The region’s roads aren’t just dangerous for riders, but also for drivers. A more forgiving road design would allow for human error without creating the sort of conditions that contribute toward fatalities.
- San Diego makes national news but not in a good way as the city’s heartless quest to remove ghost bikes is highlighted.
- Caltrans wants to increase the speed limit between Imperial Beach and the Coronado Strand. The DEA may want to investigate Caltrans because the Caltrans staff is clearly smoking some very potent stuff and forgetting what their focus on implementing Complete Streets is all about.
State news
- If you ever wondered why it took so long to get any bike infrastructure built or bike lanes striped, wonder no more and be prepared to celebrate soon. CEQA, a well intentioned environmental law that puts an incredible burden on cities to justify why bike infrastructure needs to be built, is on its way to being modified to be more bike friendly. Your friendly bike advocates up in the state capitol are monitoring this bill very carefully in light of the single (and unexpected) source of opposition: The Sierra Club. Hope the Sierra Club decides to focus on a more worthy environmental disaster – the upcoming widening of I-5.
- If you are a victim of a hit-and-run and want justice, better make sure you die because we have “quirks” in California law. However if you do survive, report the crash even if you’re not badly injured.
- Instead of fixating on individual behavior, perhaps policy makers need to address how a bicycle is different from an automobile.
- L.A.’s Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, was interviewed by L.A. Streetsblog and shared some of his thoughts and visions for his city.
Elsewhere
- Ditched your auto insurance and are you now looking for equivalent coverage for your bicycling needs? Spoke Insurance offers complete coverage to assuage that uneasy feeling.
- Portland is going to become less auto-centric in the future.
- Bike sharing can be a solution in solving the last mile problem.
- Latin America is becoming more bike friendly and has already surpassed San Diego’s mediocre goals. For example, Buenos Aires has built “48 miles of bike lanes, from virtually zero in 2009” and they’re doing it right, “unlike bike lanes in European cities like London, which are merely painted on the road, the lanes in places like Buenos Aires and Mexico City employ concrete barriers along many stretches to protect cyclists.”
- Even highway builders see that the future is multi-modal.
- Caltrans staff and the rest of the region’s traffic engineers may want to understand the Projections Fallacy.