Category: Transport

23 Feb 2007
A crit­i­cal mass of over 40 cyclists con­verged this Fri­day on Edin­burgh city cen­tre. After meet­ing between the art gal­leries near the mound they under­took a live­ly cycle ride, last­ing near­ly two hours through the town.
Click on image for a larg­er ver­sion

The mass had a gen­er­al­ly uncom­pro­mis­ing atti­tude to traf­fic, cork­ing lanes at red lights to keep the mass togeth­er, ensur­ing the event was safe and fun for all involved.

Pound­ing tech­no music from the sound sys­tem set a real­ly good mood for the cycle. There was a 25Watt mega­phone-soundsys­tem with some uplift­ing tunes from Aphex twin, Square­push­er, a bit apoc­olyp­tic orches­tral. One of the par­tic­i­pants said “The music was quite amaz­ing, it brought a whole dif­fer­ent atmos­phere to the ride. By chang­ing the dai­ly real­i­ty of peo­ple, with cars blocked and silent bikes rid­ing to the music that fill­ing the whole street, there is a vision of what is pos­si­ble. I think crit­i­cal mass is a rev­o­lu­tion­ary moment.”

Four police motor­cy­cles arrived halfway through the ride, inter­cept­ing the pro­ces­sion out­side the mosque near Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ty. Sev­er­al indi­vid­u­als were pulled to one side and warned that their lights were not legal. Despite forty cyclists being quite con­spic­u­ous and eas­i­ly observ­able by motorists, they com­plained that sev­er­al par­tic­i­pants in the crit­i­cal mass were break­ing the law. Appar­ent­ly flash­ing red lights are not ade­quate­ly safe and vis­i­ble, despite forty peo­ple with flash­ing red lights look­ing much like an xmas par­ty. The name and address of one Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent was tak­en, but no-one was arrest­ed or for­mal­ly cau­tioned, although they were warned that they may face an on the spot fine if caught again with­out legal lights. Despite this, the four police motor­cy­clists left the mass and no police were seen again after this unnec­es­sary con­fronta­tion.

An Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ty anthro­pol­o­gy stu­dent who was accost­ed by the a police motor­cy­clists com­ment­ed: “the prob­lems they had with me were rea­son­able, i was cycling with­out any lights, they were just enforc­ing the law, I did­nt go home when warned and was going slow on the inside lane and par­tial­ly obstruct­ing the police motor­cy­cles”

One of the par­tic­i­pants, an unem­ployed man liv­ing in Lei­th said: “the police were being antag­o­nis­tic. So what if some of us had flash­ing red lights, and did not have the legal­ly nec­es­sary white lights on the front of our bikes, haven’t they got bet­ter things to do? I think they just hate it when a bunch of peo­ple get togeth­er in a group to do some­thing fun or rad­i­cal and they cant con­trol or dom­i­nate the sit­u­a­tion. Despite the police, it was the best crit­i­cal mass i have been on, good peo­ple and good atmos­phere.”

A com­put­er pro­gram­mer from near the mead­ows said “I thought it went just dandi­ly, it was good that we went slow­ly and blocked the whole road and there was noth­ing they [the police] could do about it because we were well with­in the law.”

“I’m going to dress up like a fuck­ing christ­mas tree for the next crit­i­cal mass, then they cant com­plain!” exclaimed one cyclist.

The vast major­i­ty of those in the mass were not intim­i­dat­ed by the police and con­tin­ued with the crit­i­cal mass demon­stra­tion, con­tin­u­ing along George St., and enjoyed cycling around the round­abouts and along the pic­turesque cob­bled streets.

Edin­burgh’s crit­i­cal mass meets at 5.30pm on the last Fri­day of every month, out­side the art gallery at the foot of the mound, It appears to be grow­ing in num­bers and enthu­si­asm as the warmer and lighter sea­sons approach.