The sting of defeat
October 19, 2017 § 35 Comments
I winced when I saw a couple of recent tweets by Peter Flax and Ted Rogers acknowledging that their support for the road diets in Playa del Rey and other parts of Los Angeles have been beaten back by the entitled cager class. Peter has written a great article about the fake democracy, fake news, and relentless trolling that has played an outsized role in perverting government on the local level into what it mostly is on the national level: Everything for me, nothing for you, with “me” being the wealthy and “you” being everyone else.
Flax, Rogers, and a whole host of advocates are feeling the pain that South Bay cyclists felt last year when the PV Estates City Council, fueled by the trolling of Garrett Unno and his horrible wife Zoe, the unprincipled rage of bad people like Cynthia Zaragoza, and the anonymous, pseudonymous trolling by Robert Lewis Chapman, Jr., voted to shelve any proactive steps that would make PV safer for vulnerable road users. Flax and Rogers have come to grips with two nasty realities:
- The trolls oppose policies that can prevent killing or maiming vulnerable road users.
- The trolls see such bloodshed as a reasonable price for their convenience.
- The trolling powerfully affects the levers of governmental power.
When the realization hits, it’s devastating. Voting, canvassing, public debate, even modest funding by advocacy groups … all of these things lose to the power of the trolls. The power of a few moderately wealthy, angry trolls who have lots of time on their hands and limitless spleen to vent can galvanize entire voting blocs and can steamroll the needs of the many for the selfish wants of the few. Facts, data, logic, and republican ideals of protecting the weakest in society are laughable concepts that mean nothing when it comes to making transportation decisions regarding bicyclists and pedestrians.
With regard to making LA’s streets safer for vulnerable road users, though, the defeat is largely a function of advocates’ failure use existing law. Road diets, road striping, segregated cycle tracks, and bike lanes are the byproduct of a cyclist-inferiority pathology that has been vigorously promoted by cagers and motordom. Thanks to relentless fearmongering, many cyclists now believe that the only way they can safely use the roadways is by being segregated from it, and their overwhelming fear is of being hit from the rear, even though statistics show that such collisions are a minority of all car-bike collisions.
The bitter truth is this: Whether or not cyclists think that lane control works, road diets and bike infrastructure won’t work in Los Angeles’s angry, white urban areas. White and affluent cagers have shown that they are more than happy to subsidize the perception of speed and efficiency with more pedestrian/cycling deaths. It’s no different from the blase attitude towards the Las Vegas Massacre and Terrorist Attack. Such deaths are the well known, well accepted, and perfectly irrational price that America is more than happy to pay for the unrestricted right to have and use guns. Why should additional dead and maimed vulnerable road users be any different?
Hint: They aren’t.
Unlike the road diets that are never going to happen and the citywide carving out of bike lanes from normal traffic lanes that will never come to pass, lane control uses existing law to empower cyclists and make their activities safer. But empowerment isn’t something that comes and knocks at your door. You have to take it.
This means knowing the circumstances under which you are entitled to take up the full travel lane, when you have to ride as far to the right as practicable, and when you have to pull over to let faster traffic through. Learning these things and pounding them into the heads of cyclists is a task that few advocacy groups want to do because they are so committed to the infrastructure policies that angry cager Angelenos have proven they will never accept. I challenge anyone in LA County Bike Coalition to come to PV Estates or Rancho PV, two of the best cycling destinations in America, and make any headway at all against the evil mayor and her callus henchwankers. To add to the impossibility of positive policies, monstrous and slothful bike hater Zoe Unno now sits on the traffic safety committee. It’s like putting the wolf in charge of the henhouse and giving her a carving knife and gas range to boot.
If bike advocates haven’t gotten the message, they need to listen again: Los Angeles isn’t going to cede an inch of roadway for your exclusive use. So admit defeat and take up arms using existing law: Teach your friends and fellow cyclists, and most importantly teach yourself how to ride safely and legally in the traffic lane. After my years of experience with this technique, I’m confident you’ll find that the water is fine.
Another harsh reality has gradually become clear. As unfair as it may be, and as much of a double standard as it is, we are at a point in cager-bike relations when you have to take care of yourself first. This means lights. If you’re running anything less than two powerful headlamps and anything less than 3-4 powerful lights from the rear at all times, day and night, you are heaping additional risk onto yourself, especially if you are still riding in the gutter or in the door zone. As much as the PV cagers may hate cyclists, the chances are slim that they will kill you intentionally–with the exception, of course, of John Bacon, who appears to have died precisely because of an intentional hit.
In short, the people have spoken: They hate you and don’t care if you die. But at the same time, they don’t want to get your blood on their hood or, even worse, see an increase in their insurance premium. So take the lane. Ride like a Christmas tree. It still beats living on Mom’s couch.
END
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Cycling in the South Bay 
BRILLIANT! Sharing now.
Thanks, Deb!
As someone who has been converted from gutter bunny to a lane control advocate, I agree with every point in your article. However, I do have one quibble. Why is that you assume only the wealthy fight against cyclists or are unwilling to cede roadway for bike lanes? There are plenty of examples in less wealthy parts of LA county than PV where bike infrastructure has been attacked by locals and otehrs. I think the key determinant is free time, not wealth, that makes a troll truly effective at corrupting government as you described.
You’re probably right. But I notice that bike lanes have gone into Compton and other poor areas with little or not blowback. Also, I’m probably biased because I live in the South Bay. As far as race is concerned, the well funded, most aggro opponents seem to be white. But I could be wrong about that.
I think you may be biased by your experiences in predominately wealthy neighborhoods. I’ve had plenty of “blowback” riding through central LA including the woman who buzzed me today and then when I caught her at the next light said, “I was teachin’ you to ride on the sidewalk. You ain’t no car. Don’t be thinkin’ you can be in the road.” She then swerved away through traffic before I could get her on camera. She is not from the same socio economic group that you typically encounter in PV. This event was notable for me not because of her actions, but because her grammar was so atrocious. Unfortunately I get honked at or yelled at like that every few rides, but I figure if they honk at me it means they see me.
Maybe, but I’ve ridden a bunch of times from the South Bay to DTLA and beyond and have never been honked at, yelled at, buzzed, or bothered. Just anecdotal …
Nicely put Seth.
Thanks, Greg.
Hello Seth and All,
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-17/smartphones-are-killing-americans-but-nobody-s-counting
Attack Of The Killer Phones!!
Excerpts:
“There are many reasons to believe mobile phones are far deadlier than NHTSA spreadsheets suggest. Some of the biggest indicators are within the data itself. In more than half of 2015 fatal crashes, motorists were simply going straight down the road—no crossing traffic, rainstorms, or blowouts.
Meanwhile, drivers involved in accidents increasingly mowed down things smaller than a Honda Accord, such as pedestrians or cyclists, many of whom occupy the side of the road or the sidewalk next to it. Fatalities increased inordinately among motorcyclists (up 6.2 percent in 2016) and pedestrians (up 9 percent).”
=========================
The road to victory (of at least improvement) will have some defeats.
Get used to it.
We still need to fight for bicycle infrastructure …. including protected bike lanes …… they work ….. when we can get them.
And keep in mind that motorcycles are bigger than pedal bicycles and they get mowed down regularly …. in the travel lane …. 26 times as likely to die riding a motorcycle for same miles traveled ….. as driving a motorcar.
Be aware out there!!
Even the most committed bike infrastructure person on earth must recognize that these changes are far, far, off into the future in the South Bay and most other parts of LA. While waiting for the infrastructure–which I personally am skeptical about at best–you better have a very, very, very solid Plan B, which is lane control. And a plan C, which is Christmas Tree.
Good perspectives here, Seth.
Given the reluctance of motorists to give up an inch of “their car lanes” (which are in fact general travel lanes intended for both motorized and human-powered traffic), it’s important to know that there are other ways of making our streets better for cyclists that don’t involve road diets. These include (a) lowering speed limits (and enforcing them), (b) installing well placed shared lane markings (“sharrows”) along with BICYCLES MAY USE FULL LANE signs, (c) linking up networks of quiet neighborhood streets into “bicycle boulevards” or “neighborhood greenways” as done in cities like Berkeley and Portland, and (d) creating a system of bus-bike lanes, sections of which I’ve used on Wilshire Boulevard and work great for both bus passengers and cyclists.
Concerning the empowerment of bicyclists to know their rights and responsibilities as road users, there is now an educational program called CyclingSavvy whose primary goal is to empower cyclists to use their full lane rights while being communicative and cooperative with other road users. Any cyclist with a computer or smart phone with an Internet connection can now go to http://online.CyclingSavvy.org to become both educated and empowered.
As a first step, I’m going to be pushing for sharrows and BIKES MAY USE FULL LANE signs to replace the bike lanes that will soon be removed from my neighborhood of Playa del Rey. All are welcome to join me in this effort.
Are there going to be regular live Cycling Savvy classes in LA Area? When’s the next one?
We also need to remove the regularly misenterpreted “Share the Road” signage from the MUTCD and the roads.
Hey Seth — good post; you’re attractive when you’re angry.
I probably should let things settle before I try to respond in depth but maybe I have a few thoughts now.
First, this whole situation sucks shit. Hard for me to get my head around the sense of palpable celebration in MB, which connotes that a few dead pedestrians and cyclists are acceptable collateral damage for restoring commute times to the way they were six months ago. And most everyone who has repeatedly said that they cared about the safety of vulnerable users will just go back to their lives. And when someone dies, they’ll either blame it on the victim (for wearing black, jaywalking, not having a helmet, fill in the blank) or public officials who just got beaten to a pulp for trying. It’s depressing.
Second, as much as comprehend your feelings about lane control, I have trouble seeing it the same way you do. I used to be more of a serious road riding enthusiast — mostly doing fast group rides, and this approach is super smart in this case. But as I’ve shifted into being commuter guy, I see this huge group of slow riders, casual riders, people on the bubble of riding regularly, people who ride afraid — and though all those people probably would benefit from asserting themselves in the lane more, the stark reality is that many of them are going to ride less or take spin at the gym or just feel shitty and scared when they ride. Every day I see folks taking bikes off bike racks in Playa — even though they live a mile away — because they don’t want to cross Culver. I commute every day, and I have ridden home in the rain at 2am when Ballona Creek is closed, and the choices for a sane person are not acceptable.
Third, I’ll admit that in this moment I have no better solution to propose than yours. The battle for infrastructure will continue, but I think it will be a losing battle for a while. I feel confident that eventually LA will be a safe place to ride. The big question is how long it will take and how many people will die before it happens.
I followed the situation in PV from afar and experienced PDR on the front line. There are seriously bad actors in our communities — people who really don’t give a shit about the realities vulnerable road users. A lot of people who don’t necessarily see themselves as allies need to come together to fight back. Obviously, no one is just going to give us what we need.
Thanks for what you do.
Peter
I agree with everything you just wrote, not to mention virtually everything you have ever written.
Regardless of what eventually wins the day, for now it’s our duty to ride brightly lit, and to avoid the gutter whenever we can.
The astounding emotional beating that any sentient being takes when the trolling sets in is epic. It is sheer evil–bad people doing bad things for the wrong reasons and reveling in the pain they cause others. I was unable to get involved in the PDR/VDM battle; call me a shell-shocked soldier who couldn’t bring himself to stagger back out of the trench and into the concertina wire. Massive props to everyone who fought that losing battle.
In a wry way, I found solace that the blistering beatdown administered by the evil people in Dick City wasn’t due to me or anything I did or didn’t do. There is a shared illness among many that will target every person trying to walk or ride a bicycle if that means ceding speed or road space; you don’t have to be named “Davidson” to get your ass handed to you on a plate, apparently. The trolls and their minions have made a clear choice and compelled government to do their bidding: More perceived convenience at the cost of dead and maimed people, and they’re good with it.
There are a whole host of steps that advocates can take, but sustaining the energy and passion is incredibly hard. Unity would be a good start. Active resistance, which we used to initial great effect, would be even better.
Eagerly awaiting your next words on the subject.
These cyclists Peter refers to have three choices:
1. Restrict their cycling to bike paths and other special infrastructure for cyclists. Hopefully they have a car to get their bikes there.
2. Wait until everywhere they want to cycle has special bicycle infrastructure along the way. That may be a very long wait.
3. Learn how to use the existing road system safely and confidently (including smart route planning) so they can go anywhere they want to go by bike right now. This is cyclist empowerment and it works very well for many in L.A. and other U.S. cities today.
Number 3 does not preclude making changes using inclusive street design that are important for making our communities better for all types of cyclists.
Davidson and Kao (Overwhelmingly supported by the Lunada Bay Boys) both won office in PVE on a platform that prominently argued against any cycling safety infrastructure. Coincidentally, the two council members they replaced were 1) a cyclist and 2) a supporter of bmufl signage, Both ousted council members had families threatened and harassed by one of the Bay Boy leaders, Robert Chapman. These two new council members pushed the appointment of the Unno for the TSC, who at least had the courage to voice her opinion publically that Bikes should be banned from all PVE streets and that PVE is not subject to California law. Unlike the apparent president of 701viahorcadallc who enjoys filming children of local political leaders to intimidate them.
That’s why you take the lane when legal. Every time. Because you don’t know what vehicle is behind you. Every time. Because when a bus comes up behind you on pch, we all the feeling of air pressure moving your car at a stoplight, the same air pressure that sucks you in – even more – on your bike. Every time. Be nice and wave cars by when legally required, or it is safe. But get out if the freaking gutter. Every time.
Yep. And shrub fund manager has to live with being a 14-carat douchebag.
I live in San Diego and have experienced some of the sting of anti cycling infrastructure, too. We have been fighting for bike lanes in Hillcrest for years and the anti bike lane lobby there is very strong and entrenched. The published a slew of anti cycling articles after we managed to slip by a Bike Corral past them, in Hillcrest. Luckily we have a few cycling advocates on the city council.
Sit tight. The backlash is coming. In the meantime, ride in the lane and use a bunch of lights.
Part of the reason for the backlash in Hillcrest is for the exact reasons that Seth states in his post.
Our local advocacy groups (BikeSD especially) seem to work primarily towards promoting segregated bikeways which makes business owners in Hillcrest nervous with the loss of parking and the possibility of increased travel times. While we understand it’s not the end of the world to park a few blocks away and walk to our destination not everybody understands that.
Even a few weeks ago BikeSD posted a photo applauding a new bike lane in City Heights striped in the DOOR ZONE. A few years ago they called Sharrows a “cop out” and cited a bogus study claiming they aren’t effective. Their latest Twitter post applauds NACTO “standards,” which are often dangerous and don’t accomdate cyclists well.
These efforts only wedge people who ride bicycles and people who don’t further away from each other and galvanizes the groups toward two extremes. Pretty soon if you piss off enough of the Hillcresters they will turn into the Mar Vista residents or even worse the PVE trolls who won’t even accept sharrows and BMUFL signs.
In my opinion, all the advocates are about is getting more people bicycling no matter the cost or comprise to one’s safety. They don’t care about the rights we already have or the idea we can go virtually anywhere using the skills and attitudes taught in a class like Cycling Savvy.
That said I think they have their hearts in the right place. They want to see less people getting injured or killed, nevermind the facilities they promote can make things worse, but they also want to see cleaner air and less congestion. These changes can’t be made overnight though and placing bicyclists as pawns in Vision Zero and the Climate Action Plan doesn’t help us at all. If they really care about bicyclists they should focus first on the rights we already have, push for education, and push for law enforcement and the legal system to hold those who endanger us accountable.
Those of us who are already out controlling the lane fare fine with other drivers even here in SoCal where the cager-entitlement syndrome runs strong. We’re visible, predictable, and they simply treat us like the driver of any other vehicle.
I’m afraid the more these advocates push toward more segregation the more issues we’ll have being accepted on the road as normal users of traffic though.
As long as everyone agrees to control the lane and ride with lots of lights until the complete infrastructure network is approved, funded, implemented, and maintained over vigorous motordom opposition, I think everyone will have won.
[…] KPCC Interviews Bonin About Playa Del Rey Rollback …Cyclists, Angry Drivers Won’t Give You An Inch (Bicycling in the South Bay) […]
Hey Seth,
Good to meet you at Phil’s ride last Sunday. I think we’re all feeling it right now. We’ve used logic and balanced temperaments going up against fake news and road rage. We know what wins nowadays.
While my frustration with this has overwhelmed me enough that it’s cut into my sleep and all around attentiveness, I’m not giving up hope. I know there’s many people equally passionate about making LA more livable and safe for everyone. This is a pretty big setback and one that might take years to push through, but I don’t think most are going to give up.
One thing I’ve learned from the CalBike Summit this year is if any of these projects are expected to go through, the government has to put real $$ behind it. CicLAvias are great, but there has to be more outreach than that to get people behind better street configurations.
I’m figuring out on my own how to combat all this. There’s many groups and political aspirations that can be I don’t know if it’ll work, but I know I’m not going to take this sitting down.
I hear you. And in the long term, the prognosis is good.
In the short term, advocates need to focus on teaching people how to utilize existing traffic laws to ride safely.
And wear lights!
Great article as always, Seth.
Despite the long odds, I’m not ready to give up the fight for cycling infrastructure just yet.
I know as an experienced cyclist of 45 years (with a 10-year stint drinking the Kool-Aid in my twenties trying to be a competitive cyclist) that taking the lane is the practical, logical, and safer thing to do. But it’s an emotional hurdle that no casual cyclist or someone who wants to take up commuting can probably make. Try describing how they should safely move over when required and all they think of is that two-ton BMW speeding down upon them from behind. Hell, I “gulp” every time I do it with all the insistent hand-signaling I can muster and my backside lit up like a Christmas tree.
I’m also one of those rare beings that has survived the uncommon event of having a motor vehicle try to drive up my backside and actually live. Fortunately, my bike took the brunt of the 40+ mph collision when this individual decided to pass some cars on the right shoulder where I just happened to exist at the moment, riding happily along like a happy idiot. Having gone through that event and come back from it to still be able to walk, run and cycle, I’d like to make sure that no other person has to go through that terrible experience.
The area around Playa del Rey and Westchester just cries out for some sort of cycling infrastructure. We’ve got Otis and LMU in our midsts and aside from the three blocks up Loyola Blvd. into LMU there’s little to no infrastructure to help those college kids that live in the area and want to ride to school. Instead they see the high-speed roadways we have on Culver, Lincoln, and Manchester and decide the better part of valor is to drive to school, adding to the gridlock in the area every day. I could almost scream every time I heard someone opposed to the road changes in PDR that the bike lane on the beach was available. Yeah, well it doesn’t go anywhere useful, chump.
Right now, I don’t know what the path is forward. Drivers over the last 45 years have become more entitled, more impatient, drive faster, and flout more rules of the road. In the meantime, autos have gotten faster, more powerful or bigger or some combination of all three. I can remember training in the 1970s and actually getting the friendly wave from motorists while out in the Santa Monica mountains or polite conversations at a stop sign. Sounds quaint, I know. But we need infrastructure if we’re ever to get those courageous fools who have the notion that maybe today they’d like to bike to the store rather than taking the car to believe it’s a viable thing. Those are the people who will lead us out of gridlock if we can ever give them the chance to do so safely.
So, I’m not giving up yet. In the meantime, I’ll get keep “gulping”, point like a nut where I’m going, and take the lane when out and about.
And wear lights!!!
I think a lot of people are where you’re at. Keep pushing for infrastructure but accepting that until they get it, they’ll utilize existing law and the travel lane.
Great article! The reversal of the road diet is very sad.
Diets are un-American, apparently. Certainly appears that way when you walk through any US airport.
If they rode their bike places instead of flying they wouldn’t be that way. Hopefully the lanes in PDR go back on a diet eventually once people realize the traffic isn’t any different.
That would be nice …
Sorry to be so late to the party! Just catching up, and I have a few thoughts on the subject.
First – thanks for shining light on all this, Seth. You mention Advocacy Fatigue… something I well understand. And by continuing to talk about these things, we keep the ideas alive, and keep the enthusiasm up. If we stop discussing it, it falls off the back burner.
Now…
I know that the gang here is mostly of the “strong, confident” type. And I humbly count myself in that group. Let’s call it the 20-60 enthusiast crowd. Most of the time we can take care of ourselves, and too often the fancy bike infrastructure costs too much money, slows us down and gets in our way.
(and as an aside, please know that I’ve heard directly from John Forester (recently and loudly and angrily, as per usual) that any bicycle infrastructure is the devil that will end all bicycling as we know it).
And though I don’t personally need much in the way of bike-specific infrastructure, I still work for it. Because in my work, I deal with those riders who have not been mentioned here – the 8-80 crowd. And honestly, it is mostly the 8-18 crowd that gets most of my attention. School kids. Kids who ride for transportation. They ride to school, ride to activities, ride to friends’ houses. They are the future of cycling if we allow it. They’re the ones who are making a difference – Mom and Dad are not driving them to school in the family tank. And many of these kids have never topped 10 mph on a bike. And as great as lane control is for us confident adults, I cannot in good conscience start shoving newer, slow, young riders out into the middle of 30 or 40 mph car traffic. John Forester never mentions this important group or riders, and I don’t see them being accommodated in this discussion either.
I love that Gary mentioned doing the smart stuff like lowering speeds (we can’t just lower limits, we need to lower the speed!). Because I fully agree that we don’t need much special infrastructure if the traffic is going human-speed. Like 15 mph. But if we don’t have the will to make that sort of change – where does that leave our inexperienced, low-speed transportation riders? Mixing it up with high-speed death-machines?
And a final thought: We need to stop calling a proper road redesign a “diet.” Nobody likes diets. People suffer with diets. They go on diets due to self-loathing and for cosmetic reasons (yes, as well as other compelling reasons of course). I’ve been fighting this word ever since we designed one here in Davis (huge success by all metrics, btw). The road was redesigned. We took four travel lanes, and created five lanes of travel (adding two bike lanes, and one central turn lane). When we call it a diet, everybody understands that we lost something – yet all we did was gain. Bicycle traffic in this corridor rose from 0% of the traffic (used to be four lanes of curb-to-curb 40 mph traffic) to about 15% a week after completion. The speed limit was lowered, and travel time for motor vehicles… IMPROVED. Amazing. Not a diet. Words matter.
Anyway. Enough rambling.
Summary: What do we do about the kids?
Forester addresses kids and the elderly. He states that by teaching them the rules of the road they will fare much better than being thrust into the clearly dangerous and badly engineered hodgepodge of bike infrastructure.
I agree with John, but I don’t agree that because riding as a vehicle and obeying the traffic laws is the best way that we should antagonize those whose methods are not as good. To the contrary, we have to accommodate other ideas, even when some of them are bad, because there is so much institutional opposition to any non-cager travel mode that we can’t afford to alienate our own base. It’s the reason no one has successfully opposed Trumpism–too many litmus tests and too much alienation of our own allies simply because we fundamentally agree on what’s the “best” while unanimously agreeing that anything is better than what we’ve got.
Anything is better than what we’ve got, which is spiraling deaths and catastrophic injuries among vulnerable road users. And that nattering detail, a melting planet.
Thanks Seth. I agree that trying to convince parents that their kids belong in 40 mph traffic will indeed alienate that segment of the riding population. The kid thing is complicated by the fact that not only does the kid need expert training… the parent needs to be convinced as well, or the parent won’t allow it. Why we don’t teach riding skills in grade school is beyond me.
OOps, right. John hasn’t completely ignored the more vulnerable ends of the spectrum. He makes many bold statements like this that sound like fact, using anecdotes for support. And we all know that far to much bicycle infra is advocated for in the same way – without supporting data, and with merely an anecdotal “feel” for what’s best. Once John recovers from his current injury, I’m looking forward to seeing how his elderly self “fares best” when he again gets out there to again mix it up with high-speed traffic.
The low hanging fruit here still seems to be tragically out of reach. We don’t need to build billions of dollars of anything before taking the first step that should be so much easier and un-contentious. Yet… We can’t figure out how to teach drivers to use the road properly, and we can’t seem to muster the time or resources to teach cyclists how to use the road properly. If we can’t even turn THAT corner at the state or national level, how do we get ahead?
Yes, yes. Lane and Xmas tree. Yet even when we saturate the market of strong and fearless riders who are willing to do that, the rest of the population is still right where they’ve always been – in the gutter and on the sidewalks.
And right now this morning – ironically, considering my diatribe above – I’m heading out to teach a group of 12 children how to properly ride in the lane on the mean streets of Davis.
Cheers,
We just have to keep believing and fighting for our rights as cyclists to improve road conditions to accommodate us. Do not get dismayed by those in opposition.