Seattle Critical Mass Needs to End

Ride Civil has organized a monthly ride as an alternative to Critical Mass. The next ride is this Friday (08/08/08) beginning at 5:30 from Westlake Center.

Information is at Ride Civil

There is a Facebook group as well.

Join up and join the ride too.

Best,

Andrew

"It needs to stop being used as a way to intentionally piss off the drivers in this city by flaunting the laws."

I believe you mean "flout", not "flaunt".

I also believe you've got it perfectly correct. Critical Mass is a display of arrogance, poor manners, and just about everything that they're supposedly trying to fight against. Shutting down traffic is not the way to get people to respect bicyclists' rights to the road.

I don't want to take sides here but hopefully add a wider context.

I am from the UK and have lived in Canada too, right now I'm based in Shanghai - where I've lived for 7 years. I also used to write for Shanghaiist on and off which is how I got here.

Shanghai downtown (within the inner elevated ring road) is about 8 or 9 km east to west and about half that north to south. Inside this area 90% of roads have dedicated bicycle lanes at the sides. They are separated by a solid yellow line and on major roads, especialy with more than one lane a side, they are separated by a safety fence. The other 10% are almost all the under construction parts.

Now, it's fairly well known that drivers seem to be nuts here, with public bus drivers often blowing through red lights - but, in reality, there are traffic cops on various intersections doing checks, some speed cameras and a logical grid system. It evens out to what we are generally used to.

Now, with the basic provision of these lanes, and having a bike with working decent brakes and riding safely/attentively, I have never had an accident in 7 years and can get anywhere within the city in 20-30 mins ... it only gets to 30 mins and above if i'm really going from end to end.

Now I grew up riding a bike in the UK and actually can't imagine going back to a world where I have to share lanes with motor vehicles. It seems crazy to me now and certainly, in todays age in a modern city downtown, it is a cause for activism.

Shanghai is certainly pursuing a car economy, but 10 years after the first elevated highroads went up, the bike lanes are still here ..and have been included on all new roads.

Like five12, I'm a Toronto resident. I used to live in Cap Hill, nearby the B'way Grill and Vivace kiosk. What these two cities share (along with a slew of others I've visited or previously resided) is a bona fide disconnect between cycling road infrastructure, motor vehicle traffic by-laws, and the people who use those roads.

Having road infrastructure designed for motorized transportation, there is no provision (or, in the limited places where there is some exception to this, no continuity between sections of town) for non-motorized transportation to safely and contiguously move about. Motorists (whether they ride a bicycle or not) recognize the road as a motorized thruway, not a bicycling arterial. Pedestrians (again, whether they ride a bicycle or not) recognize sidewalks and designated paved paths as walkways, not a bicycling arterial.

A bicyclist (or person actually riding a bicycle on one of those periodic occasions) is stuck: under traffic safety by-laws written (and traffic signage posted) with only motorized vehicles in mind, they're aware that sidewalk-riding is deemed illegal in most places (unless, for example, the bike has small wheels suited for children), but by the same token, following the same rules as motorized vehicles on a thruway engineered for motorized vehicles results far too often in irate motorists who don't want cyclists on that roadway and, in some instances, will do what they must to dissuade a pedaller to step aside or press them into breaking the law (e.g., moving onto a pedestrian arterial) to avoid being run over.

Moreover, when a cyclist is at a traffic light and stopped with foot on ground, but a motorist honks to force the cyclist to move so the car can make a right turn on a red light, this defeats the legal intent of following the motor vehicle traffic by-laws as a bicyclist. It basically foists a double-standard on the cyclist: follow the motorized vehicle rules, but *not* when it slows down a motorist. When this happens, it triggers unnecessary tension, and that tension ultimately builds up as the cyclist is confronted with a cognitively dissonant message which cannot be resolved then and there.

More gravely, places where the municipality sticks in a roadway bike path as a civil engineering afterthought, smack between the flow of motorized traffic and parked cars, is a death trap for a bicyclist. For a bicycling lane to be effective *and* safe, it must be divided by a physical berm, and not sandwiched between moving cars and parked cars. Ideally, both directions of non-motorized vehicle traffic should be integrated as a two-way, two-lane unit and physically separated by said berm (or concrete divider).

So it's not surprising that nerves get frayed on all sides of this dispute, and why the occasional CM goes awry in some sense when someone loses their patience or cool -- be it fixie rider, Subaru driver, or irate foot cop, or whether it's on Aloha Street, on the Gardiner Expressway, or in Times Square. The problem, with no solutions being offered within most municipalities, is that there's no functional infrastructure to accommodate bicycling as a bona fide transportation mode choice, and there's no coupling of bicycling-tailored by-laws (or road signage) specifically geared for bicyclists to adhere. What you get, thus, is a slight tinge of anarchy where everyone (motorist, bicyclist, and pedestrian) expect (and want) order, since order at least offers safety.

The tactic of telling cyclists to simply "go away" is a failure, and it doesn't remedy this quandary. People will cycle as long as there are bicycles, just as people will drive motorized vehicles as long as they're available. There must be another way, and unfortunately, this other way takes time, effort, thought, planning, and even money. The investment of these would be well worth it to lower the tension on all fronts, and it assures that sense of order over entropy.

So long as civil engineers, city planners, and city councillors are loath to review this catch-22, this tension won't abate, and there will always be a group willing to ride each month in CM, some of whom even getting so upset as to lash back or vent their frustration en masse, even resulting in sour grapes and fisticuffs. Find a system whereby all mode choices are adequately covered by physical infrastructure, signage, by-laws, and even licensing, or the problem will unquestionably continue to fester with infection.

Start with looking at already-deployed infrastructure in places like Berlin, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Tokyo, and even Portland and Vancouver. There's plenty of published scholarly research on these and other places where traffic integration is successful. Our cities need to do this forward-thinking legwork, or else it'll continue to be frayed nerves all around.

I propose perhaps forming a Critical March, on foot, inline skates and so forth. Bicyclists are not the only parties who's rights are not respected.

What about pedestrians?

The contrast in motorists regard for pedestrians between Seattle and Bellevue is night and day.

It seems in Seattle that pedestrians are a component of the surface level dynamic and treated with courtesy. Not so in the eastside just footsteps away from the central bus terminal.

Let me just say that those exiting 405 South onto 4th St all seem to have fused cervical vertebrae limiting their head mobility to observe only oncoming traffic approaching from the left. Crosswalk signals be damne.

It's pretty easy to become self absorbed when insulated by a frame of steel and fiberglass but I find it inconceivable that human beings, once placed in the periphery, assume the status of other navigational hazards in the eyes of the negligent and oblivious.

agreed.

As someone who grew up in Portland and lived in SF I am used to seeing CM rides thru the city the last Friday of the month. I remember as a teenager in PDX being excited and seeing the riders being respectful and only taking up a city block or two at a time and so many people dressed up. It was like a mini-parade for someone who grew up in a small town and was not used to this experience.

The first experience I had with CM in Seattle is when I decided to jump in 99 when I was coming home. I entered right before the Tunnel off Bell and was witness to about 150 bicyclists, basically being assholes to the cars, yelling at them, and locking in hands and purposely stopping in front of cars who 'didnt get their hint' and openly mocking them. They proceeded to do this from where I entered all the way to 45tyh exit, never going more then 10mph, and usually not even that. Yelling at people, being fairly big jerks.

I've never seen such outright disrespect and law breaking as I did that day by bicyclist and it has tarnished my opinion of them, especially in this city.

Taking over city blocks that are easy to navigate around is one thing, but blocking 3 lanes of traffic for 2+ miles on one of the few highways in this city?

That's a completely different matter.

Seattle CM folks, either grow up, get that chip off your shoulder and be considerate adults and share the road or you don't deserve to be (ab)using the CM name.

I never understood critical mass, or the militant belligerence of my fellow cyclists (granted, I'm in Toronto, not Seattle, but I imagine it's similar). How does ganging up to ride in a totally unsafe manner promote bike safety? How does being righteously indignant or stubborn prevent you from getting injured by a car?



I don't disagree that cycling infrastructure needs improvement in most cities, and motorists need to be more aware of cyclists, but there absolutely must be a better way than critical mass.

"It needs to stop being used as a way to intentionally piss off the drivers in this city by flaunting the laws."

Do you mean "flaunt" or "flout"? I know that's kind of a troll question to ask, but I'm not quite sure from the context... I mean Critical Mass is all about flaunting the laws that say bikes are just like car traffic, but at the same time, that's a preposterous assertion, and I can see how a person would be against it. (Bikes are only slightly like car traffic; That's why it's often legal for them to ride on sidewalks, almost always legal for them to park on sidewalks, and why you would have to be an inveterate dickhead of a cyclist to, for example, try and claim an entire lane while biking up to Capitol Hill from downtown. It's also, incidentally, why bicyclists run stop signs and traffic lights.)

On the other hand, I can see how you might mean "flout" since Critical Mass riders often break traffic laws (In my limited experience with CM rides, people went out of their way to stop at traffic lights, but it has been a few years since I went on a ride, and it was just after an incident...)

It's funny, as a bicyclist, the thing that pisses me off about cars is how they are always trying to kill me, and as driver what pisses me off about bicyclists is how I'd rather not kill one of them but from time to time, I just don't see one (fortunately I've never actually hit anyone...)

Seattle drivers, for the most part, are respectful. But there are some jerks in BOTH camps that make the rest look like douche bags. It's important to not generalize the group by the actions of the radicals.

To Jym, Floop and the rest of the CM people who support what CM is doing. Sorry but you are losing support of your natural constituency left and right. Look at the Berkely vid........those bikers are riding like they own the streets. They are not making any effort to let other vehicles use the street....vehicles that travel much faster. It also is clear from the vid that the driver and his wife were terrified. Why do you think corking side roads and preventing cars and trucks from using main routes while freaking out seniors will increase your support? It won't.

And if you think the people of Seattle are not considerate.......sorry dudes think again. Your expectations are way, way too high. I have never ever seen a Seattle driver be anything but respectful towards bikers......giving them lots of room, and making every effort to not threaten them in any way. I am sure there are jerks out there who behave otherwise but they have to be far and few between because I have yet to see one of them mistreat bikers.

The incidents that happened recently in Seattle and Berkely are being replicated throughout the country. How long do you think it will be before the police start cracking down on such behavior? Like Charles says, CM needs to get its act together and grow up before there is no CM at all.

@Brad - those are examples where civil disobedience was the only means to a very justified end. It was the only way they could get the change that was needed because those people were not seen as equals and given no rights. Also, the violence in those examples ended up helping the causes by shedding light on them, the exact opposite of what's going on here.

@floop - I can and do share the road with cars everyday. I stop at lights, I signal, but I also take ownership of the road by moving into the middle of the lane when safety dictates (5th ave. anyone?) because I have the right to. Every once in awhile, I come across a driver not paying attention or an asshole and I yell to get their attention which generally works or get out of their way if my safety needs it. Getting places doesn't have to mean getting places first. You can stop to let that asshole driver pass and then go on your merry way with no death or law breaking necessary.

Breaking the law at all times because you think it makes you safer is just dumb. It ends up putting us all at further risk because of how it makes all bikers look to the asshole drivers.

@YourregistrationsystemiswhyIneverpost - two things, I didn't mean to imply that CM is just like traffic when I said "we are traffic too" is the reason many CM riders take part. By getting together in one big mass, some CM riders are saying, "hey, take note of how many of us there are. When you see us individually, remember that we are not just on the outlying roads. We are traffic too." It is something I DO believe.

That said, I don't want to see massive bike rides to call attention to us go away. I want to see them become truly organized. Starting at the same time every month is not enough. But massive protest has its place and taking over the streets in a sanctioned way may, with regards to this issue, may be ONE way we can affect change.

@virhecules - people have been trying to keep the reins on the most agressive riders looking to settle a score at rides as long as I have gone. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn''t. As I said above, an organized ride needs to happen. This will change the culture because there won't be any interactions between a 1 ton vehicle and a mass of bikes corking it.

@jauxmama - I do NOT think that the agenda of most people riding at CM is "jacked." We have valid complaints and valid suggestions for dealing with them. A few people riding can be jacked, but most of us just want more drivers to respect us and take notice of us, want the city to improve the bike infrastructure, and want to feel safe when we ride. What is jacked about that?

guys...you can't put these ingredients together and not expect to cook up something.

You get a LARGE group of people with an admittedly jacked-up agenda (just looking for someone to cross them, by the way) and put them in contact with someone who feels empowered by the horsepower they are in control of and this is what you get.

Who gives a rats patoot who started what? The police, maybe. The lawyers, for sure.

Yo 1Digdug, you sorta forgot to mention that the old guy was running people over. Much like the Seattle incident, this looks like the motorist was every bit as much to blame or more so than the cyclists.

I know everyone views things like this with the filter of their belief system, but a woman's leg was trapped in her bike frame and the guy was running her down. If people did not force him to stop, she would have been severely injured or killed.

Edited or complete, that is clear on the video.

"Helpless motorists?"

That made me laugh out loud.

Some drivers are insane when they get behind the wheel, their worst traits come to the fore and they are anti social menaces, some Masser's suffer from the same affliction.

Neither are any good to anyone.

But that should not translate to the death of CM.

Critical Mass needs a relatively minor change of culture combined with some major self policing. CM is, or at least should be, an essential part of bicycle activism.

It amazes me how much "stinkin' thinking" is going on.

Critical Mass is not a random group of bicyclists who just happened to be riding on the same street at the same time, it is an organized event. The website promoting the event lists a specific time and date and start location. That means it is organized and intentional.

The attempts to present Critical Mass as the same thing as a bunch of cars driving on the road only with bicycles is just absurd. You don't see a "Critical Drive" event every month where hundreds of motorists gather at Westlake and then drive around the city as a mob, "corking" side streets with their cars so all those drivers can stay together as a group and run red lights and stop signs in the process, do you now? No, you don't.

So no, Critical Mass is not the same as the typical car traffic. The most similar thing with cars I can think of is a funeral procession, where a large group of cars gets together to all go as a group, and the larger versions of this do have a police escort and its the police who take control of intersections and countermand the traffic signals so that the group of cars can stay together, but its not the individual drivers who are part of the procession who take it on themselves to do this.

I think Critical Mass here should be shut down. I bike to work most days, and I think Critical Mass is creating more problems for me as a bicyclist, and I see them as an obstacle to a better biking environment in Seattle.

While the ideals behind a rolling communion of like-minded bike enthusiasts may be noble in it's intent, the transformation of individuals into a MOB is abhorrent.

The pack mentality of CM is a stick of unlit dynamite cruising the streets looking for someone with a match.

It's NOT a celebration. It's a roving band of defiant riders who have axes to grind and scores to settle.

This is a chance for PAYBACK, baby. It's the temptation of Revenge that seethes barely beneath the surface of all who ride against those that drive.

How predictable are these lamentable results?

You wanna ride? Go ahead. You want to lynch anyone who gets in your way? Go to jail.

@floop

so what you're saying is an eye for an eye; because a few motorists break the law that gives YOU the right to break the law? maybe the motorists are saying the same thing about riders like you?

what you are saying is exactly what caused the incident on friday and it's that elitist, self-important attitude which will likely get you killed one day - blowing through a red light.

"When I ride I roll through lights, take up whole lanes and generally don't obey traffic laws when it's in my interest..."

you are an asshat. there is no reason not to obey the traffic laws. i have no empathy for you.

I'm a long time bike commuter and I can say it doesn't matter how "nice" or "law abiding" I am. Drivers will always suck. I just got off the phone with my 56 yr old mother who told me the reason why she doesn't ride her bike anymore is because she gets honked at, yelled at and flipped off. My 56 year old, nice sweet mother. She wasn't blowing through lights or riding on the wrong side of the road or even taking up a whole lane. When I ride I roll through lights, take up whole lanes and generally don't obey traffic laws when it's in my interest of safety because I can't trust cars. You can't share the road with cars. Sharing gets you hurt. A friend of mine used to share the road, riding the sholder and stopping at lights until a bus crowed him into a parked car, landing him in the hospital. Bus driver saw it and didn't stop. The vast majority of people that drive don't want any cyclists on the road if it delays them 5 seconds. I don't care what drivers think. If you do, you're a sucker. Viva la Revolución!

Yeah, sorry, Jym, but in case you haven't noticed, the VAST MAJORITY of the public disagrees with CM and its tactics.

And if you've been around for 16 years, why haven't you been able to effect any real change, other than making more and more people loathe jerk bike riders in this city who fail to obey traffic laws and terrorize pedestrians on a daily basis? Great work!

I agree with Charles.

Also, CM hassles pedestrians as well. Its just the wrong way to get their point across. I dont have a car and I dont have a bike. Why the hell should I be inconvenienced by 2,000 asshats whos mommy didnt hold them enough?

I'm pretty sure Gandhi and MLK didn't allow lawbreakers to take part in their activist marches. Why does CM allow it?

Jym-

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with you. I am not using "one bad incident as a pretext to demand an end to a long-running movement." As you yourself go on to say, this is not the only incident at CM in Seattle. There are smaller incidents at every single one and I can tell you from experience that many of them come very close to exploding in the same way the one on Friday night did thanks to the shenanigans of the "cowboy" riders (awesome metaphor MvB).

Many of the people who ride in Critical Mass are peaceful bike riders who know when to back down from an insanely angry driver. But there are ALWAYS a fair number of people who are ready, willing and DO step up to those drivers, start yelling and hitting the car. Although I do NOT condone any driver hitting anyone, I can see how it would be a terrifying experience for a driver and would drive them to hate on bike riders in general.

The CM movement has been going on for 16 years. Somehow, it has failed to effect any change. I posit that that is because it has failed to mature.

I can get and would get behind massive numbers of bike riders taking over the city streets in protest of shitty infrastructure and motorists who don't respect our rights to the road if those rides were organized, announced ahead of time and put on with agreement from the proper authorities. THAT would get the message across in a way that could and would be heard, especially if it were done regularly.

The time has come for CM to grow if it wants to effect change in this city. If not, get off the road and leave it to those of us who simply want to get around on our bikes safely. You're making it harder for the rest of us.

I'd also like to say that the videos posted by #2 are besides the point and your point is off the mark anyway. While the video was obviously edited, the driver was obviously very much an aggressor in that instance. It's obvious from his position in the middle of the intersection with no other cars around him. I don't condone the destruction of personal property or the editing of the video, but you ARE using the events at one CM to pursue an end goal.

=v= There are nearly 500 Critical Masses happening every month, over 300 on this continent. That's thousands of rides over the years, the vast majority having taken place without incident. To use one bad incident as a pretext to demand an end to a long-thriving movement is faulty thinking at best, intellectual

dishonesty at worst.

Yes, this is not the only such incident, but motorist/bicyclist conflict predates Critical Mass and is an ongoing problem in other types of traffic. So long as motorists feel entitled to plow through us when they're delayed a few seconds, there will be a need for Critical Mass.

So long as they can commit vehicular assault with no worries about being held accountable for it, there will be a need for Critical Mass.

So long as they feel just peachy telling the press they were trying

"to be macho and scare people" but didn't realize the car was in gear (whoopsy doodle!) or "I thought I just knocked 2 bikes over," Critical Mass will be sorely needed.

We're not going away. In fact, the movement will be having its Sweet Sixteen birthday party in a few months. That's right, we're now old enough to drive. And wise enough not to.

Reddited.

Hear hear, well said. I agree.

I totally agree. Critical Mass must end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1eReGrbzkA

(Video played by News stations)

Critical Mass has created a pattern of attacking helpless motorists...the more non-threatening, the better. Besides the woman and children they attacked recently in Portland, this is a video THEY SHOT of them attacking an elderly couple with handicapped license plates in San Francisco. CM then heavily edited their film and sold it to a news station saying it was unedited...but the news guys figured out that CM was scamming. The assclown that did all this in this particular incident is the leader of San Francisco's CM group...named Jason Meggs.

Watch the video..the Critical Massholes ran the redlight, blocked the van, surrounded the van, beat on it, started rocking it to terrorize the driver, climbed UP ON THE HOOD AND KICKED IN THE WINDSHIELD along with destroying a windshield wiper and mirror and causgin other damage.

Full video here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6511010398472656040&hl=en

It's a little like the end of the Wild West--there are enough "townfolk" out biking now that the cowboys and their rough brand of frontier justice don't speak for everyone. And with so many more bicyclists on the road, cyclists who don't obey traffic laws make it dangerous for everyone. Just biking up from downtown after lunch, I saw a cyclist stop for the light on Pine, then decide to blow through the red in front of a car coming down the cross street. Last night I had to negotiate around a guy riding the wrong way down the street, who cut in front of me to start riding on the sidewalk. Passive-aggressive Seattle has got to find a way to make sure cyclists know the rules of the road and follow them.