Forsyth

Long-Promised Bike Lanes on the Spring Street Bridge Could Be Coming Soon

From LA.Streetsblog.org

By Damien Newton

The effort to get bike lanes placed on the North Spring Street Bridge in Downtown Los Angeles has been a long and tortured one. However, that road may be coming to an end, with the bike lanes finally added.

Streeetsblog reached out to the Los Angeles Bureau of Engineering after an alert reader noticed that the Spring Street Bridge project is no longer listed as active on the Bureau’s website. One of the bureau’s engineers responded that the city is still planning to add the lanes soon, and they may be added “early in the fiscal year” that begins on July 1.

“We are still intending to stripe the bike lanes on the Spring St Bridge even though the project contract itself is completed,” explains Kevin Minne with the Bureau’s Bridge Improvement Division.

“The striping work itself will be performed by city crews.  The block between Avenue 18 and Avenue 19 is scheduled for resurfacing by the Bureau of Street Services (StreetsLA) this coming fiscal year (FY22/23) and the intention is to have the bike lanes installed when that resurfacing is completed.  BOE and LADOT are working with StreetsLA to have this block done early in the fiscal year so we can finish up the striping. I hope to have a clearer idea on the schedule in the coming weeks.”

Photo by Pedro Marroquin on Unsplash

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Get ready for a road closure in Griffith Park

From TheEastsiderla.com

Los Feliz — A section of roadway through Griffith Park will be closed to cars starting next week. It’s part of a pilot program to find ways to reduce cut-through traffic and improve safety for pedestrians, cyclists and wildlife in the city’s largest park.

Starting June 27, the north end of Griffith Park Drive near the 134 Freeway will be closed to personal vehicles from Travel Town to the top of the hill near the Mount Hollywood Drive turnoff, according to information posted by the Recreation and Parks Department.

“If all goes well after a few weeks, it is anticipated that we will move to a permanent closure of this stretch of road,” said a posting on a NextDoor group by the Recreation and Parks Department. City of LA vehicles will still be accessing that stretch of roadway during this time.

Department officials did not return calls and emails for information about the closure and timeline for other possible traffic calming plans.

Closing the road was one of the recommendations in a study to improve safety and transportation on Crystal Springs and Griffith Park drives. That study was already underway when a 77-year-old cyclist was struck and killed by a driver on Crystal Springs Drive in April.

At the May meeting of the Griffith Park Advisory Board, the transportation consultants working on the study presented an overview of the problems on the two roads, including speeding and a lack of separation between motor vehicle traffic and pedestrian and bike paths. The study described the section of the upcoming road closure as a “conflict area” involving speeding drivers, cyclists and vehicles headed to the Griffith Park Composting Facility.

Photo by Connor Jalbert on Unsplash

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We Bought The Best Budget Bikes & Entered An Elite Road Race!

We get a lot of requests from fans of the channel about doing more content featuring affordable bikes. So, we gave Si, Alex and Ollie £500 each and asked them to buy the best budget bikes they could find, then entered them into an elite road race. Do you need to spend thousands of £/€/$ to go racing? Let’s find out how they got on!

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The Arroyo Link

From ArroyoLink.com

A SAFE, MULTI-USE PATH FOR WALKING, BIKING, RUNNING, & SCOOTING

The Arroyo Seco is the “jewel in the Crown City’s park system,” yet it’s difficult to access without a car.

The building of the 134, 210, and 710 freeways carved up and partially erased the path — and along with it, mini-parks and historical sites — that Pasadenans once traversed to get to the Arroyo.

The Arroyo Link proposes to uncover and rejuvenate that 1.5-mile path so that we can fully access and enjoy the nature and recreation offered in the Arroyo and beyond, along the regional L.A. River corridor to downtown L.A and Long Beach.

We’re in a time of re-examining our community roots, history, and values as they’ve evolved over the past 140+ years. The Link follows a route of culturally and historically significant sites like Carmelita Gardens, where a nexus of artists and thinkers inspired the young John Muir’s early ideas about nature conservation. As it crosses the 710 Freeway stub, the Link will offer an opportunity to mark the communities displaced by freeways in the name of progress.

The Arroyo Link project is small, but it has it all!

It’s the missing link in our mobility between city and nature, and between our backyard and our region; it looks back our rich history of ideas and ideals while laying a path toward a vision of a healthy, sustainable future.

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The Science Behind Bicycle Helmets Protecting Cyclists

From DiscoverMagazine.com

By Rena Kingery

Medical research supports the personal use of a bike helmet to protect from serious head trauma and traumatic brain injuries. But mandatory helmet laws are a more complicated matter among bicycle advocates.

With the arrival of summer, many people have swept the cobwebs from their garage-bound bicycles and taken to the roads and trails with their pedal-powered transit, and likely, a protective helmet for their head. But can this hard cover for your skull truly protect you from injury and death in a crash? Mounting research says yes, reinforcing the idea that it’s best to dust off that helmet and don the lid as you hit the streets.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), injuries to the noggin occur in one out of three cyclists who are involved in non-fatal accidents; and trauma to the head poses the greatest risk of disability and death for bikers. One CDC study found that bicycling resulted in the highest number of sports-related traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs. You or someone you know may have experienced a mild TBI known as a concussion. Generally, people fully recover from concussions, but moderate and severe TBIs can cause lasting health consequences and death, especially for children.

Helmets Save Lives

While helmets don’t protect against concussions, they have consistently proven to reduce severe head injury and death for cyclists. In a meta-analysis that reviewed more than 100,000 crashes involving cyclists, a Norwegian researcher showed that helmets reduced the risk for serious head injury in riders by 60 percent. Another analysis of 6,267 patients admitted to hospitals for brain hemorrhaging after bicycle accidents found that those wearing helmets had a 51 percent lower risk of developing a severe TBI and had an overall lower mortality rate.

 

Image courtesy of Giro

 

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The Biggest Mistakes You Are Making Cycling In The Heat

Cycling in the summer can be the absolute best time to ride a bike, but there are some crucial mistakes which you may be making! Conor is well versed in riding and adapting to hot weather, and he has some top tips to bear in mind – he’s made the mistakes so that you don’t have to!

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Is Urban Arrow’s new family electric cargo bike the luxury SUV of the e-bike world?

From electrek.co

By Micah Toll

Amsterdam-based Urban Arrow has just updated its Family Cargo line of electric bicycles, making these family-centric electric cargo bikes better than ever for replacing a car in your garage.

Cargo bikes are one of the coolest inventions on two wheels. They take a bicycle’s narrow and convenient form factor and turn it into a heavy-hauling tool that can actually carry your family around or drag home a week’s worth of groceries.

But if you thought pedaling a normal bike was rough, imagine adding several kiddos and maybe a dog into the mix.

Fear not though, because electric cargo bikes solve that issue beautifully. They get you all the cargo space you need, but make the pedaling much more manageable – and even fun!

The new 2022 Urban Arrow Family Cargo line includes a front loading cargo e-bike (the kind with the big bucket up front) that features a number of updates such as Bosch’s latest Kiox display and a new Gates Carbon Drive belt included as standard equipment that is designed to replace the chain with a quiet and maintenance-free drivetrain.

The belt connects the Enviolo Heavy Duty continuously variable transmission to Bosch’s Cargo Line Gen 4 motor. That motor puts out 85 Nm of torque, making it one of the most powerful European mid-drive motors (even if it can’t hold a candle to the Chinese motors that don’t have to play by the same power-limiting rules).

The motor is still listed as a “250W unit,” though the company is winking so hard on that figure that it’s in danger of pulling an eyebrow muscle. The true wattage is almost certainly higher.

https://na.urbanarrow.com/family-bikes/

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Actor Mark Curry says stop complaining about high gas prices and ride a bike

From Pennlive.com

By EmilyAnn Jackman |ejackman@pennlive.com

Actor Mark Curry has one solution to the insanely high gas prices that has been wreaking havoc across the nation – travel less and ride a bike!

When TMZ caught up with the “Hanging with Mr. Cooper” star at LAX on Monday, he gave the outlet an earful about the constant complaints from folks about the rising gas prices but instead of joining the increasing number of celebrities voicing their opinions about the pain at the pump, he insists that drivers should just fill their tanks and get over it.

According to TMZ, he says Americans shouldn’t look at the gas prices because it makes no difference and the fact that we’ve been dealing with high gas prices for years, so there’s no point in worrying about it now.

Photo by Yassine Khalfalli on Unsplash

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Hottest Bikes & Tech From The Women’s Tour

With the third stage of The Women’s Tour taking place just down the road from GCN Megabase here in the UK, we went down to the race to take a close-up look at all the hottest bikes and tech on show. Manon gets a sneak peak inside the Trek-Segafredo team car and also asks the riders what they love most about their bikes!

 

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More people in California are buying eBikes to combat record-high gas prices

From ABC10.com

The electric bike market in the U.S. has experienced a recent boom in sales, particularly in California.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — As gas prices hit a new record high every other week, more and more people are opting for more fuel efficient methods of transportation, specifically electric bikes.

A recent study reveals that electric bikes, also known as eBikes, are dominating the market with upwards of 130 million units expected to be sold globally between 2020 and 2023.

Jacob Stabler, co-owner of ATV Wholesale Outlet in Sacramento, is experiencing the spike in eBike sales firsthand as lately he is hardly able to keep up with the demand.

“We tapped into just the right market at just the right time,” Stabler told ABC10. “We’re starting to see a little bit of a downturn in sales on the gas powered stuff and now we’re seeing a shift in desire from consumers for the electric bikes,”

The long-standing family-owned motorsports shop has made the decision recently to stock up on eBikes following soaring gas prices and a noticeable trend in the consumer market.

“In the last year, we decided to dabble with some of the electric bikes and it absolutely exploded,” Stabler said. “We’ve traditionally for 17 years been a gas-powered dealership, but every day we open up the store and people are coming in for more and more electric bikes.”

While already an extremely popular mode of transportation for decades in Asian and European countries, the U.S. is only considered at a median growth rate in eBike sales and popularity.

Nonetheless, the U.S. is seeing higher rates of growth and interest in electric bikes every year.

Stabler thinks people are opting for electric bikes because they are only pennies at a charge compared to the amount people are paying to get around in a gas-powered vehicle these days.

Pat Kendrix, who works in San Francisco, says she has to commute four days a week from Castro Valley and spends over $100 a week on gas.

Image courtesy of RadPower

 

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