CALIFORNIA BICYCLE NEWS AND CYCLING SAFETY TIPS BLOG

Attorney Joshua Bonnici was recently invited to speak at the 13th annual Bicycle Film Festival in San Diego on Friday, February 28 and Saturday, March 1 in the North Park area. The festival was founded in 2001, when Brendt Barbur was riding his bike in New York City and was struck by a bus. Rather than let the accident breed resentment and bitterness about urban cycling, Barbur decided to turn his experience into an educational and celebratory event for everyone. By celebrating the bicycle through music, art and film, he could promote bicycle awareness and safety. In the thirteen years since Barbur’s accident, the festival has grown to international proportions, garnering the attention of media outlets around the world. According to Anthem Magazine, “[a]s the Festival grows, so too does awareness of bicycling as a legitimate (not to mention health) movement.” San Diego is a shining example of the growth…
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The Supreme Court decided eight-to-one in favor of the plaintiffs in the Wyoming case, Marvin Brandt Revocable Trust v. United States. The plaintiffs sued the federal government over the addition of bike pathways that ran through their property. However, the federal government granted the Brandt family the land which was previously a part of the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest because they produced railroad ties in their sawmill. In the mid-20th century, many American families and businesses working in the railway or auxiliary industries received land grants on the condition that trains would have the right-of-way on the land.  With time, most of the railway land grants were abandoned with the decline of the railway industry, so in 1983 the federal government started converting the abandoned land into hiking and biking trails through the Rails to Trails program. The Brandt family sued over the federal government’s right to repurpose their land…
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