Author: earthfirst

Writ­ten for Edin­burgh Crit­i­cal Mass.

My home­town Olo­mouc is a stu­dents´ city in Moravia, in the east of the Czech Repub­lic. The city has about hun­dred thou­sand res­i­dents and is locat­ed in the flood­plain of the Mora­va Riv­er. The flat ground makes the city ide­al ter­rain for cycling, but a major obsta­cle for cyclists is insuf­fi­cient sup­port­ing cycle infra­struc­ture. Often a seg­re­gat­ed cycle path will sud­den­ly ter­mi­nate at a bus stop or a pave­ment. With dis­con­tin­u­ous cycle lanes and absent inter­con­nec­tions rid­ing through the city cen­ter is a frus­trat­ing expe­ri­ence. Some town „squares“ are actu­al­ly road junc­tions or park­ing spaces in prac­tice so they need renam­ing. Uhel­ná Street is renamed to Uhel­né car park in the pic­ture below.

A local senior cycling advo­ca­cy group called Olo­moučtí kolaři demand­ed improve­ments to the cycling infra­struc­ture from the city coun­cil. Their voic­es had not been heard for many years. In ear­ly 2011 an open group of young cyclists inspired by Crit­i­cal Mass decid­ed to make demands for the infra­struc­ture loud­er and they ini­ti­at­ed grass­roots bike rides. I dare to say that it was the first case of reg­u­lar bike rides orga­nized non-hier­ar­chi­cal­ly in the Czech Repub­lic. Bike rides in oth­er Czech cities (Prague, Brno, Ostra­va, Pilsen) and gen­er­al­ly in the East­ern Europe are com­mon­ly called “Crit­i­cal Mass“, but they are orga­nized in a dif­fer­ent way than in most Eng­lish-speak­ing coun­tries. Czech bike rides are for the most part orga­nized by envi­ron­men­tal or cycling NGOs; routes of bike rides are well planned in col­lab­o­ra­tion with police and often politi­cians and even cor­po­ra­tions par­tic­i­pate on events. Hence these actions can attract much more peo­ple. For exam­ple „Prague Crit­i­cal Mass“ orga­nized by group called Auto*mat attracts about 5 000 cyclists two-time per year (April and Sep­tem­ber) and dozens of par­tic­i­pants in oth­ers months. In Olo­mouc we decid­ed to devel­op more anar­chist and spon­ta­neous style rides with­out for­mal orga­niz­ers.

The first Crit­i­cal Mass bike ride hit the streets of the city on the last Thurs­day of March 2011. Have a look at this video show­ing more than twen­ty cyclists cel­e­brat­ing non-motor­ized traf­fic.

This one was the first of many. Since then Olo­mouc Crit­i­cal Mass bike rides took place on the last Thurs­day of each month. The meet­ing point was in front of the dor­mi­to­ry on the play­ground in Šmer­alo­va Street, and cyclists used to assem­ble at 6:00 pm and start at 6:15 pm. Usu­al­ly 15 – 50 cyclists par­tic­i­pat­ed in a bike ride, but some­times espe­cial­ly dur­ing sum­mer hol­i­days there were only about three cyclists at the meet­ing point. In this case they often aban­doned the ride and decid­ed on an alter­na­tive plan. Sim­i­lar­ly from Decem­ber to Feb­ru­ary Crit­i­cal Mass­es did not hap­pened because of unfriend­ly weath­er dur­ing win­ter months.

In May 2012 a local group of Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al joined in with the Crit­i­cal Mass bike ride in a sym­bol­ic protest against oil extrac­tion in Nige­ria by Shell. One of three Shell petrol sta­tions in the city was closed for a short time (pho­to below).

In April 2013 about 50 cyclists who were in a good mood were stopped by police offi­cers at one of high streets in the city (pho­to below). They asked for orga­niz­ers, but after a while con­fused offi­cers left the scene and Crit­i­cal Mass went ahead.

After one year of Crit­i­cal Mass­es, a dif­fer­ent style of cycling action appeared. Unknown push­ers mod­i­fied five bill­boards adver­tis­ing cars into pro-cycling and anti-car mes­sages. Adbusters spread a wit­ty on-line man­i­festo stat­ing that the action was done in protest over occu­pa­tion of streets and squares by four-wheeled vehi­cles. Thanks to social media the man­i­festo was read by many thou­sands. One of the bill­boards (pho­to below) stat­ed: Death is cool — 2 549 dead on roads dur­ing two years.

Over the course of time it became obvi­ous that Olo­mouc Crit­i­cal Mass bike rides were attract­ing just a dozen or so cyclists and it was most­ly an enjoy­able event for a bunch of friends. It can be seen as a suc­cess for just that, but it most like­ly didn´t make enough pres­sure on the city coun­cil. Also the few altered bill­boards might not change a lot on the streets. This may explain why more pow­er­ful and empow­er­ing actions have devel­oped. Why should we wait for build­ing new facil­i­ties by author­i­ties if we can do it by your­self? This ques­tion could have been asked by those who made con­crete ramps up to high kerbs for cyclist at dif­fer­ent places across the city in sum­mer 2012. Besides spread­ing a procla­ma­tion of full of crit­i­cism about city coun­cil inac­tiv­i­ty, anony­mous activists had start­ed to do some­thing more tan­gi­ble for cycling.

In the sum­mer of 2013 oth­er cycling facil­i­ties appeared in the city. The first was dec­o­rat­ed home made cycle racks at a guer­ril­la gar­den in the city cen­ter in June. This instal­la­tion inspired oth­er activists who bought and posed cycle racks on pub­lic space in front of a new­ly opened shop­ping cen­ter in Sep­tem­ber. See the pho­tos of cycle racks at the guer­ril­la gar­den and in front of the shop­ping cen­ter.

A love­ly instance of direct action was car­ried out by cycling guer­ril­las who paint­ed 30 meters of miss­ing cycle lane in a park. They inter­con­nect­ed a cur­rent cycle path and a street road. The anony­mous painters used an orig­i­nal paint spe­cif­ic for hor­i­zon­tal road signs and as far as I know the cycle lane has still not been over­laid by com­mu­ni­ty ser­vices, hence it is still in oper­a­tion for more than half a year. Before the cycle lane was paint­ed police offi­cers had penal­ized cyclists at that stretch, but now that does not hap­pen any­more. Now cyclists pass through with­out fear of get­ting fines in July 2013 (pho­to below). Again the cre­ators spread an on-line com­mu­nique which crit­i­cized author­i­ties about cycling infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment in the city.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly Olo­mouc Crit­i­cal Mass­es stopped in sum­mer 2013 and since this time bike rides have not been hap­pen­ing because the per­son that was the most active burned out. But that is the risk of infor­mal hier­ar­chy. In any case whether there are rides or not there is still a com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple around Olo­mouc Crit­i­cal Mass who still meet with each oth­er for open com­mu­ni­ty veg­an din­ers, dump­ster div­ing, guer­ril­la gar­den­ing, food not bombs events, and oth­er activ­i­ties. Seeds are sowed and there are many who can hold the baton. Hope­ful­ly Olo­mouc Crit­i­cal Mass will be res­ur­rect­ed in a spring.

 Yours fel­low mass­er from Czech