23rd Street, Santa Monica. August 9, 2026, a driver in a green truck runs over bollards in the protected bike lane. On August 19, Councilmember Dan Hall reports that the Santa Monica Police Department “has identified the vehicle and owner. They have had the vehicle towed for expired registration and are following up with the owner on the vandalism of public property.” @electdanhal
Santa Monica has built 119 of the 187 miles of bikeway in its Bike Action Plan. Roughly five of those miles are protected. The half-mile on 23rd Street is protected by plastic barriers called “armadillos” while other areas, such as 17th Street are protected by concrete curbs.
I was getting unregistered jalopy vibes from the condition of the truck (dirty, preexisting body damage). Often also means uninsured, and an owner who doesn’t have anything to pay for the damage they cause. The good news is that this driver may not ever get his truck out of impound (in addition to towing + storage fees they’ll need to pay to get registration current, they probably wouldn’t have let it lapse in the first place if they could afford to do that), so he may be off the road for a while. The bad news is that he’ll probably never make the city whole for the damage caused here, though maybe they’ll recoup something by auctioning the truck.
You got all of that wrong somehow, while extracting numbers from that one paragraph.
119 miles in total.
5 of them protected, so 114 colored lines.
Of the protected ones this half-mile with these plastic bollards, 17th street with concrete curbs. Share of bollards to curbs not explicitly disclosed.
I live near enough to know the layout and while it’s mostly just colored line, the streets are still usually bike friendly, assuming you don’t see this nonsense.
What SM did was actually reduce parking to the point that it forced biking or bussing (and made permits for remaining spots, lol). Driving remains is almost all single lane torture with a 25 mph limit, single because when I was a kid it was two lanes and they decided they wanted a dedicated bike lane (specifically thinking Broadway but probably others).
SM is a small place, too. A ton of those miles are in residential areas with little room for expansion.
23rd Street, Santa Monica. August 9, 2026, a driver in a green truck runs over bollards in the protected bike lane. On August 19, Councilmember Dan Hall reports that the Santa Monica Police Department “has identified the vehicle and owner. They have had the vehicle towed for expired registration and are following up with the owner on the vandalism of public property.” @electdanhal Santa Monica has built 119 of the 187 miles of bikeway in its Bike Action Plan. Roughly five of those miles are protected. The half-mile on 23rd Street is protected by plastic barriers called “armadillos” while other areas, such as 17th Street are protected by concrete curbs.
I was getting unregistered jalopy vibes from the condition of the truck (dirty, preexisting body damage). Often also means uninsured, and an owner who doesn’t have anything to pay for the damage they cause. The good news is that this driver may not ever get his truck out of impound (in addition to towing + storage fees they’ll need to pay to get registration current, they probably wouldn’t have let it lapse in the first place if they could afford to do that), so he may be off the road for a while. The bad news is that he’ll probably never make the city whole for the damage caused here, though maybe they’ll recoup something by auctioning the truck.
Lol, 119 miles just a colored line, 5 miles this useless stuff? So none are actually protected
May be wrong
You got all of that wrong somehow, while extracting numbers from that one paragraph.
I live near enough to know the layout and while it’s mostly just colored line, the streets are still usually bike friendly, assuming you don’t see this nonsense.
What SM did was actually reduce parking to the point that it forced biking or bussing (and made permits for remaining spots, lol). Driving remains is almost all single lane torture with a 25 mph limit, single because when I was a kid it was two lanes and they decided they wanted a dedicated bike lane (specifically thinking Broadway but probably others).
SM is a small place, too. A ton of those miles are in residential areas with little room for expansion.
Sounds great. Make them actually protected and you have a neighborhood where people want to live and cars are unwelcome.