Last week Friday, Critical Mass—a monthly “mass” bike ride—held the first ride of the year. The ride was attended by about twenty to twenty-five people, a number that has become fairly consistent in Grand Rapids, as the ride has generally had between 25 and 35 participants. The ride itself was fairly non-eventful with no reports of aggressive drivers and no harassment from the Grand Rapids Police Department (GRPD) allowing the Mass to travel through downtown and the Westside of Grand Rapids for an hour with ease.
Critical Mass Grand Rapids is now in its sixth year, with the first ride being held back in June of 2000 and rides occurring fairly consistently throughout the past few years on the last Friday of every month. While its consistency is noteworthy in a town that generally has a history of short-lived political projects, for example Food Not Bombs in the late 1990s and in 2005, Critical Mass’s consistency also threatens to border on stagnation as the ride continues to attract a small group of people given the comparatively large population of the Grand Rapids metropolitan area. However, many of the people attending the ride typically show up for a year or two and then stop coming because they move out of the area, creating a situation in which the ride lacks continuity.
Back in 2002 some participants in Critical Mass, who were generally frustrated with the ride’s lack of direction, did attempt to use Critical Mass as a means of improving conditions for bike commuters and urban recreational cyclists in Grand Rapids. Organizers produced a video on biking in Grand Rapids featuring interviews with Critical Mass participants and other cyclists so that there would be some documentation of their experiences—good and bad—in using bikes as transportation. The video was passed along to various planning entities and following a City Commission meeting at which several Critical Mass participants demanded that the City of Grand Rapids spend more money on bike lanes, the group of cyclists was granted a seat on a committee dealing with bicycle issues in Grand Rapids. While the committee focused most of its attention on extending recreational trails such as Kent Trails and participants did succeed in gaining a minor degree of potential influence over bike policy, participants on the panel quickly became frustrated with the lack of progress on bike lanes and stopped attending the meetings. However, in light of the new “cool cities” initiative, some current and past Critical Mass participants have informally stated that they believe building a “bike friendly” with bike lanes and more bike racks may be an achievable goal that Critical Mass could be involved with in order to avoid the current level of stagnation.
Of course, such an involvement is complicated by the fact that Critical Mass Grand Rapids—following both police harassment involving the targeting of perceived “leaders” and the emergence of such “leaders”—has made a conscious effort to become as decentralized as possible, making it largely impossible to make collective decisions. The lack of a system for making decisions has also already been a problem this year, with several participants expressing frustration as to whether or not the group should obey traffic lights and whether or not the group should ride two abreast as specified via Michigan law. The traffic light question, which has in the past been handled on the fly by the people in the ride, generally revolves around the question of whether or not the ride should proceed through a red light if the first half of the group has already made it through the light in order to avoid the potentially more dangerous situation of being split into two small groups while the question of riding two abreast is largely irrelevant as Grand Rapids has a city ordinance that requires cyclists to ride single-file. In the past meetings have been scheduled to try to come to some consensus on these and other issues facing Critical Mass, but they have typically been attended only by two or three people and consequently lacked the participation to make decisions collectively.
Moreover, the ride has also suffered in terms of outreach of the past few yeas. While the situation has improved so that a number of different people are putting up flyers around town, the outreach still lacks coordination and seems to outside observers to be fairly haphazard with posters attached to telephone and utility poles but few attempts to reach cyclists directly. In the past, some members of Critical Mass have put up flyers at area bike stores and worked to form relationships with environmental groups, and while the successes of such efforts were mixed, they have not been pursued for several years. Moreover, there has never consistently been outreach during the ride—aside from a few rides in which participants affixed signs to their backs or wore Critical Mass t-shirts, there has been little effort to explain the purpose of the ride to motorists and others. When people have asked about the ride, there has been little time to give an adequate response. In other cities, Critical Mass participants frequently distribute leaflets explaining the ride to motorists stopped in traffic and, based on experiences in a couple of cities, generally do a better job of explaining the purpose of the ride.
In response to some of these issues, some participants have expressed interest in holding a meeting to discuss ways in which the ride could be improved. People interested in participating in a meeting are encouraged to send an email to cmassgr ( at ) riseup.net. For more information on Critical Mass, visit the Grand Rapids Critical Mass website.
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