critical mass Oct 2010

It was a good ride BUT I don't agree with people corking the intersections.
The ride gets more accomplished when the riders obey all treaffic laws including stopping at red lights. What would happen if you were out on your bike and couldn't get through an intersection because some cars were corking the street so that all the rush hour cars could get through the red lights??
Well they would get ticketed, right? Same for cyclists. One of these days some hothead in a car is going to challenge a corker for the right to go through his green light.

The Mass accomplishes far more by obeying the rules-of-the-raod than by appointing themselves trafffic cops!

Last month, (Sptember) the CM went so smoothly because the police were with us making sure we obeyed the laws of the road. But this month its back to anachy!

Corking is a simple way of ensuring that cars don't get stuck in a large cluster of bikes, and it also helps communicate to drivers that they should wait until the ride has passed.

The only serious safety issue I have seen with the with CM rides is when they get so loose that the density of bikes allows for other vehicles to inject themselves in the mix (plus it adds to the wait time for drivers). There are many videos on YouTube that 'show what happens when cars get pinched in a stream of bikes.

Keep in mind, the person 'corking' an intersection is made more safe by the hundreds of bike passing behind them. Corking is good, and instead of handing out tickets the Police should realize that they would be better off blocking intersections too.

But isn't blocking cars on a green light impeding traffic and letting cyclists ride through the red light a ticketable offence of $150.??

Yeah - it's illegal, but safer.

The police started enforcing 'corking' about 18 months ago. Before that I think the matter was largely left alone.

During the CM ride on G-20 Friday the Police agreed to stop traffic so long as the ride didn't go close to the "zone".

hpvrider, I think you need to think about what CM is to you. What have you learned about its history and what appeals to you.

It has strong roots in xerocracy. Before Face Book ideas, including opposing ideas, were exchanged on xeroxed flyers that were passed about. It created a political space. If a CM ride remains peaceful and non-destructive one could argue that it is protected as a communication. No different from the protections a political protest gets.

You gave the example, "...cars were corking the street so that all the rush hour cars could get through the red lights??" If there was a political purpose to it they could possibly be protected. There are protests every year where people take their cars and block, cork and/or slow down roads. Farmers, dump truck drivers, and cabbies have all done it.

hpvrider, corking is in the very nature of CM and street reclamation. The mass is not about following every traffic rule, it is about remaining as a mass, united. Traveling bikes in unity, comraderie, and continuity is something cars can never achieve. Besides, the bike-tourage rarely lasts for longer than 10 mins, so asking cars politely for their tolerance as a massive roving herd of bikes passes I think will allow drivers to feel some level of credulity that bikers DO have a place on the street. It may not go so far as to increase bike-driver respect ( angry driver to corker: "I TOLD YOU WHY I HAVE TO GET HOME!!!! I HAVE A ROAST IN THE OVEN#$#_($)#_ "), but the majority of drivers have a high level of tolerance, and even (as it seems) reverence to seeming something so novel as a bike herd.

No, we are not above the law, and we are not technically protesting a cause, but what does the 'mass' become if we are fragmented at every stop light? Well, the same as any other tiny bike platoon moving about on any given day, on any given downtown street. We just ask for the right to be a non-segmented mass on evening, once a month.

No one has commented yet on the lack of Bike-po at last Friday's mass - any comments? Explanations? Whatever the reason, it was THE most enjoyable ride since the po started their presence last year.

I've been on a number of CM rides both "chaperoned" by the police and without and can say unequivocally that from a cyclist's point of view, when traveling in a group this large, it is 100% safer without cars being 'embedded' in the mass.

At the same time, with a mass the size of last week's group, I suspect traffic will actually flow better when people (whether police or CM riders) cork. The reason is simple: Recent rides have been able to maintain their cohesion when police are not allowing or performing corking one way and that is for the mass that made it through the red light to stop at the other side and allow the rest of the mass to catch up. The alternative is for the group to become completely fragmented or to allow cars to embed themselves unsafely. So in the end, while you have cross traffic moving as smoothly as before, right and left-turning traffic cannot proceed until the mass has completely left the intersection. At the same time, the entire mass (and any traffic behind it) that might have been a few blocks further down is now moving much more slowly through the city causing far more chaos than when someone (and frankly, I don't care who) blocks traffic for it.