Bike Talk

A West Hollywood memorial and ghost bike placing for cyclist Blake Ackerman, killed by hit-and-run. Streets Are For Everyone Director of LA County Advocacy, Brett Slaughenhaupt https://www.gofundme.com/f/remembering-blake-ackerman (3:00). Hit and runs from a Legal POV: James Pocrass (6:01). A simple four point plan to stop hit and runs. BikinginLA.com blogger Ted Rogers https://bikinginla.com/2025...

Taylor made it to Michigan, and having ridden to LAX in 56 minutes, he's never going back...to driving (1:13). Taylor talked to Tal Babcock, employee of a cafe in a former railroad depot where his grandfather was the Station Master, on the Michigan North Central bike route (2:41). A NY judge rules NYC Mayor Adams can remove protections on the Bedford Ave bike lane, undoing years of advocacy, becau...

Taylor's riding his bike to LAX, then biking to car-free Mackinac island, MI (0:56). Bike activist and Cascade Bike Club volunteer Merlin Rainwater was brushed by a bus after being let out in a dangerous place by a Seattle bike lane. After a hit and run on a cyclist in the same spot, Merlin and others formed a people protected bike lane. Seattle DOT put in real barriers for protection THE SAME DAY...

Magnus White’s not-accidental car killing and the language of car "accidents," with No More Ghost Rides and Trash Panda Cycling’s LA bike calendar organizer Raphael Hernandez. (2:31) Fight Back: Talking Back To Bikelash with CalBike’s Kevin Claxton. www.calbike.org/talking-back-to-bikelash/ (13:20) RAGBRAI: The Great Iowa Fall Ride with “Shift” documentarians/Des Moines Register journalists Courtn...

At the virtual Bicycle Film Festival, Taylor sees a woman set a new record of riding a bike at 183 mph (0:22). Nick visits Los Angeles, runs into a Hollywood ride out, and meets bike dancer Denis (4:42). Taylor will use any pretext for a bike errand, reveals his wife Marga (7:05). Money for protected bike lanes in Denver was about to be spent on removing them, until the Mayor's Bike Advisory Counc...

Taylor bikes to a No Kings protest, and meets a friend of the show (3:30). Our lawyer, James Pocrass, on what to do if the authorities take your bike at a protest-and how to avoid it (6:04). Original cohost and bike mechanic Jim Cadenhead on the plusses and minuses of tubeless tires (12:30). Sammy's Law was meant to allow New York City to reduce car speeds to 20mph. NYC Mayor Adams cynically used...

LA Bike Advocate and Altadena Town Councilmember Dorothy Wong on rebuilding her home and her town after the LA fires destroyed both (2:17). The "Born To Be Wild" bikepackers of Northampton High School reflect on their annual 4-day tour of Western Massachusetts (13:29). New York City is dragging cyclists to criminal court for minor and sometimes made up traffic infractions under a new anti-bike pol...

Listener email: the difference between bike packing and bike touring, and what handlebar bags and panniers to get (1:11). New York City has begun a policy of criminalizing minor traffic violations for cyclists. We talk to Carl Mahaney of Streetopia Upper West side and Open Plans, and Josh Wood of the New York City Bicycle Messenger Association (7:08). The legality of criminalizing cyclists, with J...

Janice Walrafen loves Bike Talk on WGDR in Vermont - a listener email (1:09). Summer bikepacking! Nick's Berkshires tour and Taylor's cross country plans (3:05). Are Waymo robotaxis safer than humans? And when AVs hit cyclists or pedestrians, who's liable? Our lawyer, Jim Pocrass, advises (6:49). The Consumer Protection Safety Commission regulates bikes and bike parts, and was working to standardi...

Nick's daughter Penny learned to ride on two wheels using the towel technique (1:50). Bike To Work Week with Mayor Chelsea Lee Byers in West Hollywood, Ca (7:33). Bike To Work Week in Northampton, Ma with Mayor Gina Louise Sciarra, Representative Lindsay Sabadosa, and All Bodies on Bikes organizer Jacob Sheppard-Saidel (11:44). The debate over Autonomous Vehicles' safety record versus cyclists and...

Ontario Premier Doug Ford tried to remove Toronto's bike lanes, but Toronto bike advocacy organization Cycle Toronto and allies won a court injunction pausing the removal. Executive Director Michael Longfield discusses what it means (2:42). The City of Oakland denied liability for a cyclist's serious injuries due to bad pavement, arguing that the liability waiver the cyclist had signed with AIDS L...

News: It's Bike Month! Also- an Ontario, Canada court may save Toronto bike lanes, Waymo says its AVs are 25x safer than human drivers for cyclists and pedestrians on the road, Trump's tariffs will devastate the bike industry, and Americans are losing interest in buying cars (1:47). The QUIMBY movement = Quality In My Back Yard, and it means high quality codes/laws/permitting/planning high quality...

Our Lawyer, Jim Pocrass, assesses the lawsuit brought by Streetsblog Los Angeles editor Joe Linton. LA Metro has argued that because it's not the city, it doesn't have to make bike infrastructure when repaving city streets, as called for in ballot measure HLA. The agency claims it would have to destroy homes and buildings to both preserve parking and make space for bikes (3:40). The standoff betwe...

Amy, gravel rider (1:05). News: Street safety advocates call for protected bike lanes on California’s deadly Pacific Coast Highway. https://mailchi.mp/streetsforall/pch-master-plan-042025?e=efb877b7f5 The City of Sacramento will be the first in the Nation to use cameras on buses that detect cars parked in bike lanes. https://fox40.com/news/local-news/sacramento/automated-bike-lane-enforcement-laun...

News: Healthy Streets LA, the ballot measure which requires Los Angeles to implement bike infrastructure every time city streets are repaved, is being ignored by the county's transportation agency, LA Metro. Taylor talks with the founder of Streets For All, Michael Schneider, who led the HLA campaign, and the Editor of Streetsblog LA, Joe Linton, who's now suing the city (1:33). It’s been 100 year...

April is National Distracted Driving Awareness Month, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's "Put the Phone Away or Pay" campaign emphasizes education and enforcement but not engineering. Our Lawyer, Jim Pocrass, shares his practice of suing distracted drivers as a deterrent (0:26). A driver was found guilty of Reckless Vehicular Homicide in the killing of 17 year old rising US c...

Listener Email: John Gibilisco on the Sisyphean undertaking of Omaha bike advocacy (1:40). #Teslatakedown (2:45). The MAGAS are cutting all federal funding for bike infrastructure but also reneging on grants to projects like Reconnecting Communities, which would address the harms of highways. With Yonah Freemark, a principal research associate in the Housing and Communities Division at the Urban I...

Tesla’s polluting plants, Musk’s racist genealogy and the #Teslatakedown (1:53). Our new regime is anti-active transportation, so we check in with Strong Towns founder Charles Marohn for what we can do locally to make towns more bikeable and livable (7:17). Rochester University Campus Times writers Teddy Almond and Maya Brosnick debate NYC's congestion pricing (30:28). Robert Zaichkowski’s Bike Th...

Ontario's reactionary re-elected Premier, Doug Ford, aims to rip out Toronto's bike lanes despite his own experts' testimony that they work. Our correspondent Madeleine Bonsma-Fisher on the view from Toronto (2:31). The US DOT halts all active transportation funding that might reduce emissions or improve accessibility. James Pocrass, Los Angeles Bike Lawyer, gives his view (9:31). News: "Congestio...

Taylor's day of service fixing bikes and teaching kids how to ride safely with Brett Atencio-Thomas, Active Costa Mesa, California's Transportation Coordinator. Brett tells about the Three Pronged approach to making a 21st century city (0:38). On February 25th, a group of cyclists in Boyle Heights were handing out "Know Your Rights" cards with information on what to do if approached by ICE. They w...

LA Locals Taylor & Don saw the city like tourists on an Ebike Tour of Hollywood (0:22). Bike Director Kevin Wong on Chinatown's March 8-9 Firecracker Ride, the largest Lunar New Year Run, Walk, Cycling, and Dog Walk event in the US (4:59). Bike Indianapolis Advocacy Committee Chair Jakob Morales on the recent vigil and ghost bike placement for Dillan Lee Rogers (10:41). Jacquie Phelan, veteran mou...

Taylor’s science-backed brush with car-induced unhappiness (0:22) New York City congestion pricing will resist Trump’s attempts to kill it, predicts NYC Transportation Alternatives Communications Director, Alexa Sledge (3:25). Maybe the NYC toll program would fare better if we labelled them “Congestion tariffs,” suggests Listener Rick Bosacker (10:35). Congestion Pricing, climate change, and the d...

On vacation in Fraser, CO, "the ice box of America," self-proclaimed "single track capital of the world," Taylor talks track with Ben Quinn, owner of Ice Box Mountain Sports (2:08). Our friend, Los Angeles bike advocate, cyclocross racer, and survivor of the Eaton fire, Dorothy Wong, on rebuilding Los Angeles (5:23). A California court's ruling that recreational cyclists can't sue the city when in...

Donald Shoup, author of "The High Cost of Free Parking," has died. Tony Jordan, President of the Parking Reform Network, talks about Shoup's decades of teaching, writing, and speaking on reversing subsidized free car storage (1:16). Find our interviews with the Professor of Parking by searching "Shoup" at biketalk.org. CalBike Joins Amicus Brief in Safe Streets Accountability Case after lower cour...

Taylor almost gets killed, and Stacey does get hit (1:14). Taylor fixes up bikes for fire victims in Los Angeles with Jim Shanman and Walk n Rollers (5:10). News, powered by Ted Rogers' Bikinginla.com (9:41): Waymo reports AVs are safer than human drivers. Bike theft increased 15% last year The League of American Bicyclists is out with their latest list of the country’s most Bicycle Friendly Commu...