Mighk forwarded me this article titled Critical Miss or Critical Mass? he found on Copenhagenize.com. A brief excerpt from the article:
"Let's get one thing straight. While we're not banner-waving activists, we think activism is fantastic. We're all for it, especially the activism towards creating bike culture like we have in Copenhagen in other cities in the world.It's a great article and I recommend all of you that care about this ride take the time to read it. While I may not agree with everything in the post, he makes very good points worthy of consideration; especially in regards to certain perception issues the Orlando CM ride is currently facing. One comment in the comments section really stood out:
We just feel the need to play devil's advocate regarding the Critical Mass movement.
It's a brilliant concept. Democratic to the core. Celebrations, even. Even if there are only a couple of dozen cyclists. Although we would love to ride in Budapest, with tens of thousands of other bikes. That would be a rush. We also think that movements like the Naked Bike Ride protests tackle important issues with humour.
We despise the exaggerated crackdowns by police in various cities, but we're not too thrilled about those participatnts who are aggressive towards motorists. Democracy becomes anarchy. We don't fancy much the elitist attitude of many in the environmental activist movement either. Those who look down their nose at motorists.
We figure that the point of Critical Mass is to profile the need for bike culture and all the environmental plusses inherent in it. A good thing. Therefore one of the primary goals is to get more people to ride their bikes. For whatever reason: sustainability, oil-dependence reduction, better health for fellow citizens.
If so, does Critical Mass work? We don't know. 15 years on and are there any cities that have made massive gains towards a bike culture similar to many European cities?
Critical Mass in Prague (3000-4000 people this week) is I think a succesful movement. It profiles itself not targeted at blocking the motorists, but targeted at creating force at the politicians. It tries to minimize impact by informing newspapers about the route, public transport authorities, associations of taxi drivers etc., there is very good cooperation with police). To sum it up, I could say that the Critical Mass in Prague has 3 objectives: 1) create an event for cyclists to enjoy, celebrate, unite, meet each other 2) show polititians the growing support for cycling 3) as a communication tool towards the media. There is nothing in that against cars -- even apology information fliers are distributed to drivers. It's a nice, colourful event, and it definitely has its successes here -- although it takes much more to really change things. Most important, it takes time.While on this blog, I also came across a post detailing his participation in the CM ride in Budapest that according to him had 20,000 participants. This number is amazing in my mind and while I think it's crazy in a good way, I can't help but wonder if there is any exaggeration to this figure. Here's the link to that article in case you are interested: Budapest Bike Ride with 20,000 Friends.
Can something like this work here? Comments, thoughts, rants welcomed...
4 comments:
the idea of the huge mass broken down into smaller groups in Budapest is interesting. maybe the ride we know as CM can change so that we all leave at the same time but become a part of traffic by stopping at red lights and riding two abreast in one lane. the mass would inevitably break apart, but maybe the smaller groups would have more of a positive impact by obeying traffic laws. i think if there was no question of legality people's arguments against the ride would seem much more petty. i'm not saying this is the direction i personally want the ride to take, but it's one i had not considered before i read this article.
Bencott is describing part of a concept I had a while back. Call it Critical Radius perhaps (though "critical" has a negative connotation).
You could have groups head off in a number of directions at the start, then naturally split into even smaller groups as the signals split them. Or some folks might just split off to do a longer route.
Then you come up with a number of destinations, much like the current CM.
You end up with cyclists all over town, riding legally and being noticed.
The rumblings of conflict building between CM and OPD might be seen as a natural trigger one should react to to push a shift from Critical Mass to Critical Radius.
There's definitely something fun and energizing about riding all together. That's what I love most about CM. I think we can still do that responsibly and respectfully. Let's shoot for that.
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