A Personal Message to Critical Mass.

[longers]

I've always seen it as an attempt to change peoples attitudes towards bicycles on the road.

I thought that's what they were for, hence the thread being started as it was felt that some people's actions were detrimental to the cause or attitudes were being changed but for the worse.

 

[theclaud]

I totally agree on facilities, but then that's a bit OT for CM surely? I've always seen it as an attempt to change peoples attitudes towards bicycles on the road.

Quite. CM's about reclaiming public spaces for the use of people. I can't see that it has anything to do with cycle facilities.

 

[Rhythm Thief]

I totally agree on facilities, but then that's a bit OT for CM surely? I've always seen it as an attempt to change peoples attitudes towards bicycles on the road.

Yes, fair point. Even so, I can count on the fingers of one hand the incidents I had while commuting around the midlands, and if you discount those which were insignificant but annoying, or down to carelessness (rather than "attitude"), the number of incidents becomes vanishingly small. Hardly worth clogging up Wolverhampton's ring road every Friday afternoon rush hour for that.

 

[Rhythm Thief]

Quite. CM's about reclaiming public spaces for the use of people. I can't see that it has anything to do with cycle facilities.

It was the stated aim of the Wolverhampton mass I attended, to "show that cyclists need facilities". Hence the colonisation by a slow moving peloton of one lane of the Wolverhampton ring road in the rush hour, which did cyclists generally no favours at all. I freely admit that this is my only experience of CM, but if it put me off attending another, what must it have done for any motorist wavering on the edge of becoming a cycling commuter?

 

[theclaud]

It was the stated aim of the Wolverhampton mass I attended, to "show that cyclists need facilities". Hence the colonisation by a slow moving peloton of one lane of the Wolverhampton ring road in the rush hour, which did cyclists generally no favours at all. I freely admit that this is my only experience of CM, but if it put me off attending another, what must it have done for any motorist wavering on the edge of becoming a cycling commuter?

I didn't realise. But I know Wolverhampton quite well - the ring road is a hideous affair, entirely unconducive to pleasant cycling and allowing fast motor traffic to dominate the shape of the town, and I don't blame them for wanting to draw attention to this fact and do something about it. Deliberately slowing it down seems entirely appropriate. What do you suggest they do instead?

 

[Rhythm Thief]

I didn't realise. But I know Wolverhampton quite well - the ring road is a hideous affair, entirely unconducive to pleasant cycling and allowing fast motor traffic to dominate the shape of the town, and I don't blame them for wanting to draw attention to this fact and do something about it. Deliberately slowing it down seems entirely appropriate. What do you suggest they do instead?

Well, they could do what I did for fifteen years and use it quite happily, peacably co-existing with the rest of the traffic. Surely that would be better than showing what a pain in the arse cyclists can be when they really try, which was what they actually did?

 

[GrumpyGregry]

Quite. CM's about reclaiming public spaces for the use of people. I can't see that it has anything to do with cycle facilities.

Eh? So where are the people participating in CM who are not on bikes? Can a cabbie join in a CM in his cab? Or a MAG member on his FireBlade? Joggers... I want 200 joggers to jog along with the cyclists. What about the pedestrians who can't cross the road when they want to because the road is being claimed by the mass of cyclists at that particular moment. A mass trespass a la Kinder Scout of an open space it is not.

Regardless of the philosophies of the participants what is being practically 'reclaimed' is a public highway not a public space, and it is being reclaimed through might of numbers and a calculated disregard for the laws of the road. The very laws that, if everyone abided by them, would protect the vulnerable a good deal better than they do at present.

 

[theclaud]

Well, they could do what I did for fifteen years and use it quite happily, peacably co-existing with the rest of the traffic. Surely that would be better than showing what a pain in the arse cyclists can be when they really try, which was what they actually did?

Forgive me, RT, because personally I'll cycle on anything short of a motorway, but anyone who is "happy" with the Wolverhampton ring road needs their head examined. Why on earth should cyclists bimble along "happily" on roads that are designed to dominate and intimidate them and to exclude pedestrians entirely? You call it peaceable co-existence - I call it submitting to being marginalised for the sake of cars.

 

[theclaud]

Eh? So where are the people participating in CM who are not on bikes? Can a cabbie join in a CM in his cab? Or a MAG member on his FireBlade? Joggers... I want 200 joggers to jog along with the cyclists. What about the pedestrians who can't cross the road when they want to because the road is being claimed by the mass of cyclists at that particular moment. A mass trespass a la Kinder Scout of an open space it is not.

Regardless of the philosophies of the participants what is being practically 'reclaimed' is a public highway not a public space, and it is being reclaimed through might of numbers and a calculated disregard for the laws of the road. The very laws that, if everyone abided by them, would protect the vulnerable a good deal better than they do at present.

Well personally I'd be all for 200 joggers jogging along with the cyclists. Have they tried? I don't know what a fireblade is, but if it's motorised then no - the point is symbolically to reclaim spaces that should be for people from the motorised traffic that currently dominates them.

 

[Rhythm Thief]

Forgive me, RT, because personally I'll cycle on anything short of a motorway, but anyone who is "happy" with the Wolverhampton ring road needs their head examined. Why on earth should cyclists bimble along "happily" on roads that are designed to dominate and intimidate them and to exclude pedestrians entirely? You call it peaceable co-existence - I call it submitting to being marginalised for the sake of cars.

Maybe. Or maybe not: personally, I never felt marginalised and used to get a bit of a kick out of riding on urban roads, including the ring road. I agree that there isn't much provision for pedestrians on the ring road, but I can't see that a load of cyclists bimbling around taking up one lane of it at sub-walking pace is going to change that; as for being "designed to dominate and intimidate" cyclists, well I can only repeat that I never felt dominated or intimidated by the design of the road myself. I apologise if my urban cycling experience was too happy for you, but there it is.
I commuted for a while along the Black Country route from Bilston to West Bromwich, and I have to say I enjoyed that too.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

Why on earth should cyclists bimble along "happily" on roads that are designed to dominate and intimidate them and to exclude pedestrians entirely? You call it peaceable co-existence - I call it submitting to being marginalised for the sake of cars.

Which is what many members f our society appear to want to happen; wedded as they are to their cars. Unenlightened of them I know, but there you go. The risk is surely of marginalising oneself by appearing to be anti-car?

 

[theclaud]

Maybe. Or maybe not: personally, I never felt marginalised and used to get a bit of a kick out of riding on urban roads, including the ring road. I agree that there isn't much provision for pedestrians on the ring road, but I can't see that a load of cyclists bimbling around taking up one lane of it at sub-walking pace is going to change that; as for being "designed to dominate and intimidate" cyclists, well I can only repeat that I never felt dominated or intimidated by the design of the road myself. I apologise if my urban cycling experience was too happy for you, but there it is.
I commuted for a while along the Black Country route from Bilston to West Bromwich, and I have to say I enjoyed that too.

You and I might feel happy mixing it with traffic, but most people are not (most will not even consider cycling on the road), and roads that cannot be crossed at will by pedestrians frankly have no place whatever in town centres. The reality is that traffic does exclude people, and shapes our towns according to the needs of the car. Perhaps they have a different vision to you, in which bimbling around at sub-walking pace is a perfectly normal thing to do, and people are at liberty to do it without fast-moving impatient vehicles endangering them?

 

[GrumpyGregry]

Well personally I'd be all for 200 joggers jogging along with the cyclists. Have they tried? I don't know what a fireblade is, but if it's motorised then no - the point is symbolically to reclaim spaces that should be for people from the motorised traffic that currently dominates them.

The motorised traffic is carrying people; vehicular traffic. The highway was often times built with that in mind. How are these people different to people on foot or bicycle?

 

[Rhythm Thief]

You and I might feel happy mixing it with traffic, but most people are not (most will not even consider cycling on the road), and roads that cannot be crossed at will by pedestrians frankly have no place whatever in town centres. The reality is that traffic does exclude people, and shapes our towns according to the needs of the car. Perhaps they have a different vision to you, in which bimbling around at sub-walking pace is a perfectly normal thing to do, and people are at liberty to do it without fast-moving impatient vehicles endangering them?

Yes, that's certainly possible. But I can't see that the number of these cyclists is going to be increased - quite the opposite - by effectively teaching them that the safest way to ride in traffic is to trundle along at walking pace. I'd have had more time for CM if we'd been given some guidance on how to safely coexist with "hard" traffic, rather than doing something which still seems to me to have merely further marginalised cyclists and shown us up to be somehow a different species of road user.
All that said, I can see your point. The Wolverhampton ring road was certainly not designed with cyclists in mind - it was built before the days of enlightened town planning - but hey ho, it is what it is and it's what we've got. Certainly I never saw that as a reason not to use it, and I'm not some kind of superhuman, just an ordinary bloke who happens to use a bike sometimes.

 

[theclaud]

The motorised traffic is carrying people; vehicular traffic. The highway was often times built with that in mind. How are these people different to people on foot or bicycle?

They are in cars! Have you not seen my sig line?