Critical Mass and Carfree day in Brussels

What a week­end for cyclists. Fri­day evening and the reg­u­lar Brus­sels Crit­i­cal mass was held one week ear­ly to coin­cide with mobil­i­ty week. Around 80 cyclists sprout­ed up at the Porte de Namur and reclaimed the streets of Brus­sels for an hour or two. This month there was a prac­ti­cal theme to cre­ate a DIY cycle lane. Recent­ly the Major of the city decid­ed that the cycle lane along the main boule­vard through cen­tral Brus­sels was a men­ace to traf­fic and even encour­aged cyclist to get in the way of hon­est car dri­ving cit­i­zens. What to do when that Major takes away the cycle path. A sim­ple ques­tion, you get togeth­er with your friends and paint it back again. Get­ting rid of the cycle hat­ing Major will prob­a­bly be the next step but that’s anoth­er action.

Brussels Critical Mass 1
Brussels Critical Mass 2
Brussels Critical Mass 3
Brussels Critical Mass 4
What a week­end for cyclists. Fri­day evening and the reg­u­lar Brus­sels Crit­i­cal mass was held one week ear­ly to coin­cide with mobil­i­ty week. Around 80 cyclists sprout­ed up at the Porte de Namur and reclaimed the streets of Brus­sels for an hour or two. This month there was a prac­ti­cal theme to cre­ate a DIY cycle lane. Recent­ly the Major of the city decid­ed that the cycle lane along the main boule­vard through cen­tral Brus­sels was a men­ace to traf­fic and even encour­aged cyclist to get in the way of hon­est car dri­ving cit­i­zens. What to do when that Major takes away the cycle path. A sim­ple ques­tion, you get togeth­er with your friends and paint it back again. Get­ting rid of the cycle hat­ing Major will prob­a­bly be the next step but that’s anoth­er action.

Brus­sels is a city of con­tra­dic­tions and for Sat­ur­day lunch time the city invit­ed cyclists for a sump­tu­ous nosh up. Any­one who was a cyclist was wel­come to help them­selves. A won­der­ful feast for non veg­e­tar­i­an wine lovers and the deserts were out of this world. Not so good on the cycle lanes but the free food almost makes up for it.

Sun­day was the car­free day and it real­ly was car­free in the whole city, not just one or two streets. It’s hard to describe the dif­fer­ence ban­ish­ing the cars can make to a city. Brus­sels, if only for one day became a place for peo­ple. Swarms of cyclists filled the streets peo­ple on foot could and did move about with­out risk of being run over by impa­tient dri­vers. The sun was shin­ing the air was clean for once and the angry honk­ing of car horns beau­ti­ful­ly absent. If only every day could be like this. The street is a place for peo­ple, city chil­dren need to play and a cup of cof­fee on a pave­ment café some­how tastes bet­ter when there isn’t traf­fic roar­ing by a few feet away. This might just be my opin­ion but the peo­ple of Brus­sels did seem to agree with me, well at least the ones who still remem­ber how to move about with­out a car.

Also for mobil­i­ty week the Brus­sels based envi­ron­men­tal group, Auto-nomie pre­sent­ed an envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly car, tru­ly an envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly car. Zero emis­sions is a thing of the past, this car has neg­a­tive emis­sions. If you care about the plan­et but still want a car that turns heads this is the mod­el for you and the con­ver­sion is cheap and easy. Take out the engine replace is with a few wheel­bar­rows full of good qual­i­ty soil and plant your favorite fruits and veg­eta­bles. Cruis­ing through the streets of Brus­sels in a cus­tomized car like no oth­er is the way to go. When your friends get tired of push­ing what bet­ter way of revi­tal­iz­ing them than a tasty car grown straw­ber­ry. The car was on dis­play in cen­tral Brus­sels all last week.