Advocacy & Safety - Critical Mass in Regina

My City is having it's first Critical Mass ride today, I am debating weither to participate or not. The city already has adiquate bike lanes (especialy around the university) and alot of parks with paved paths for genral use including biking. I think that maby the organizers of the ride may just trying to stur up trouble......What do you think? join em, or stay away?

Cheers :beer:
Snoop DuJour

Hey snoop...if you are into stirring up resentment towards cyclists, then that's the place for you! If on the other hand you are a responsible individual...you know where you should be :)

Here's hoping you let the malcontents get along without you!

Different Critical Mass groups can have very different flavors. The Chicago Critical Mass, for example, has a festive feeling to it, like street theater or parade. We have a lot of people, even ones in cars, cheering us on and smiling. Some riders will wear crazy costumes or ride unusual bikes or do stunts. On the other hand, I once attended a Critical Mass ride in LaGrange where the ride was organized by some teenagers who thought that it would be cool to annoy motorists. Each Critical Mass group operates independently without central leadership, which may explain why people have such widely different experiences with Critical Mass.

In the Chicago Critical Mass, different people can propose route maps, and we vote on which route to take prior to the ride. On most routes, we rarely stay on any major road for any significant length of time. We may, for example, go on Chicago's Michigan Avenue, but we may only be on it for a couple of blocks before we turn off onto a different road. Between the fact that we don't stay on any one road for long and the fact that many cars in the Loop during Friday evening rush hour are slower than bicycles and the fact that we try to keep people entertained, we don't create much in the way of resentment.

I tend to think critical mass does create resentment and doesn't really help our cause a great deal. The Gold Coast has cycling facilities that are the envy of most major cities in Australia, the one thing we don't have is a critical mass. Join the dots on those.

If you really want to improve cycling facilities in your city, how about turning up to a few council meetings and opening your mouth.

Chris

If you really want to improve cycling facilities in your city, how about turning up to a few council meetings and opening your mouth.

There are members of the Chicago Critical Mass who do precisely that. I don't know if our group is atypical or not, not having direct experience with many of the Critical Mass chapters around the world. When the City of Chicago has events designed to promote cycling as viable transportation, there are Critical Massers who volunteer. When an alderman recently proposed a law that had really harsh penalties for a particular minor bicycle infraction, some Critical Massers got involved politically at a local level, and the alderman was persuaded to make the law more reasonable. The Chicago Bicycle Federation, an advocacy group that lobbies state politicians regarding the sometimes contradictory laws regarding bicyclist in Illinois, gets a good deal of members from Critical Mass.

This is not to say that all Chicago Critical Massers get involved in politics. A number of Critical Massers, after all, just want to have a fun ride. But there are plenty of Critical Massers around here that are involved in grassroot politics.

Critical Mass in my town are just like IOC's (Idiots In Cars) They are IOB's (Idiots On Bikes)

As It turns out my brother-in-law and his fiancee showed up from outta town, so we went out for dinner....took care of my dielema I couldnt attend anyhow. I am still interested in how the ride went, if at all (this place is a hotbed of apathy) I do hope everything was peacefull and noone did anything stupid. If anyone knows anyone who attended, let me know.

Cheers:beer:
Snoop

I prefer positive political activism over CM rides. We do need to be tactful and polite, but we also need to be assertive and to protect our rights vigilantly.

CM Rides are the best way to stir up resentment Towards cyclists.

ride safe....Dudley