Birmingham’s Ride reaches Critical Mass

4.3.2007
The first Fri­day of every month sig­nals the call for cyclists and oth­er forms of human-pow­ered trans­port to meet up in Birm­ing­ham’s Pigeon Park (St. Phillip’s Cathe­dral) and go to mass, Crit­i­cal Mass, that is.

Brum’s Crit­i­cal Mass has been gain­ing momen­tum, with the last two month­ly rides see­ing num­bers exceed 30. Fri­day’s ride was accom­pa­nied by a trail­er sound sys­tem pump­ing out cycling-relat­ed grooves and, for the first time, an in-line skater rode with us.

As there are no pre-set routes or led rides on Crit­i­cal Mass, rid­ers get to nego­ti­ate a route, through the con­gest­ed evening traf­fic, on the fly. Birm­ing­ham’s city cen­tre road sys­tem can hard­ly be described as wel­com­ing to cyclists. The city’s inner ring road sys­tem was designed exclu­sive­ly for the car, where cyclists come way below motorists in the high­way’s impact­ed food chain.

Some of us come to mass to reclaim the roads, where we’re often forced to ride dan­ger­ous­ly in the gut­ter by petro­le­um guz­zling road users. Noth­ing beats the exhil­a­ra­tion of rid­ing safe­ly togeth­er like a shoal of fish, through the busy roads and three-lane round­abouts, whilst mak­ing a state­ment about cycling cul­ture. Crit­i­cal Mass suc­ceeds in turn­ing the high­way’s tables over for once in favour of cyclists and motorists are made to respect cycle cul­ture.

We aren’t stop­ping traf­fic; We are traf­fic!

On Fri­day’s ride, just after turn­ing left onto Suf­folk Street Queensway, a cab dri­ver attempt­ed to under­cut the mass by accel­er­at­ing up a bus stop lane and dan­ger­ous­ly col­lid­ed with a cyclist. Hav­ing just wit­nessed a cab dri­ver try­ing to run him over, the mass respond­ed by briefly stop­ping to mutu­al­ly help the shocked cyclist, and then con­tin­ued on its way down to Hol­loway Cir­cus.

Last night’s mass also saw, for the first time, attempts by the police to inter­vene in the ride. At Hol­loway Cir­cus, a WPC leaned out of a police van and ordered us to cycle in sin­gle file. As the last ride’s theme was a cel­e­bra­tion of cyclist Daniel Cad­den’s vic­to­ry in the courts to ride in the mid­dle of the road, and not be forced to ride in the gut­ter, we were a lit­tle con­fused, to say the least.

Whilst not will­ing to cre­ate an obstruc­tion, rid­ers con­tin­ued on their way around the round­about. One cyclist paused briefly to respond to her claims that we were cre­at­ing an obstruc­tion by point­ing out that, rather than cre­at­ing an obstruc­tion, we were mov­ing and we were traf­fic. Then, in plain view of hers, anoth­er motorist shunt­ed into the leg of the cyclist talk­ing to the WPC. “You just wit­nessed a car try­ing to run me over. What are you going to do about that?!” asked the cyclist, whilst the WPC’s eyes glazed over.

At that point, the sounds of KRS-One’s ‘Sound of da Police’ could be heard on the trail­er sound sys­tem punch­ing through the rain.

The mass con­tin­ued up Small­brook Queensway and then on to St. Mar­t­in’s Cir­cus Queensway, with the cops lag­ging far behind, whilst we weaved in and out of the con­gest­ed traf­fic. Just before the cross­roads of Moor Street Queensway, a set of dif­fer­ent cops final­ly caught up with us with sirens and lights flash­ing. The mass spon­ta­neous­ly opened up to let the van though, think­ing they were on a 999 call. But they pulled over a cyclist and booked them for rid­ing with­out lights. This all seemed a lit­tle triv­ial con­sid­er­ing the rid­er was accom­pa­nied by near­ly thir­ty oth­ers with lights. (So remem­ber, peo­ple, make sure you all get lit up for the next ride!)

“Can I talk to some­one, the leader?” demand­ed PC 1275.
“We haven’t got any lead­ers; it’s a cycle ride,” came the reply.
“It’s some kind of protest, you can’t do this!” he shout­ed.
“With all due respect, it’s just a cycle ride; it’s not a protest.”

PC Leaver (1275) then claimed it was an arrestable offense to pho­to­graph the police and even threat­ened to arrest the light-less cyclist for assault if they tried to pho­to­graph him, but we man­aged to get a pho­to of his ‘bet­ter side’ in the end.

After hear­ing sirens on Moor St. Queensway and allow­ing the emer­gency vehi­cles to pass, one of those vehi­cles blocked the car­riage­way on James Watt Queensway. Cyclists attempt­ing to cross the road at the pedes­tri­an cross­ing found them­selves penned in by the two occu­pants of the police car at one end of the pedes­tri­an island and anoth­er police vehi­cle at the entrance to the cross­ing. At least three police vehi­cles were now engaged in attempt­ing to dis­rupt the Crit­i­cal Mass ride.

On the island, the police ques­tioned rid­ers as to who their leader was, but when this ques­tion was met with the response that we don’t ride under any sin­gle indi­vid­u­al’s author­i­ty, a “friend­ly con­ver­sa­tion” was had. The out­come of this con­ver­sa­tion was that the offi­cers rec­om­mend­ed that we should not occu­py both lanes when we are rid­ing upon dual car­riage­way, and we agreed to head to the booz­er since we were all get­ting cold and we’d been out for about an hour and a half. The police did com­ment on the envi­ron­men­tal­ly sound nature of our mode of trans­port at this point. As soon as these offi­cers had left the scene, how­ev­er, anoth­er pair arrived and called over one of the group, the same indi­vid­ual who’d had the inci­dent with the taxi dri­ver ear­li­er. A com­plaint had been made against him by the taxi dri­ver and the police took his details and he is now wait­ing to see what will come of this com­plaint. Let’s hope that the taxi dri­ver’s attempt­ed mur­der of a cyclist will be fol­lowed up by the author­i­ties, if any fur­ther action is tak­en against the cyclist.

The next Birm­ing­ham Crit­i­cal Mass is on 6th April. Meet up from 5:30pm to ride for 6pm at St.Philip’s Cathe­dral, aka Pigeon Park.

Sign your­selves up to the Birm­ing­ham Crit­i­cal Mass mail­ing list to get more info on the next mass and cycling relat­ed tings. There’s talk of a sum­mer event includ­ing films, food and cycling cul­ture.