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Spokes
People It was rush hour on 6th Avenue in downtown Eugene, but the cars weren't rushing. Rather, they were rolling at a 10 mph crawl behind a cohort of about 25 bikers spread across all four west-bound lanes. Some of the cyclists wore helmets and stayed to the right side of the road; others rode unprotected and took up the middle of the street, whooping. For a few minutes, bikes were the dominant traffic on the busy highway.
Some motorists gripped their steering wheels and slowed down, foreheads wrinkling. Others pushed forward aggressively against the mass, honking and cursing. A few shouted encouragement to the bikers; many made calls on their cells. A red-faced man who looked to be in his 60s drove a pickup into the throng of bikes. "Get the hell off the road!" he yelled out the window. "Stop spewing fossil fuels!" retorted a skinny young biker. "Slow down! Watch out!" other cyclists urged the driver. Then, as quickly as it had descended, the bicycle mass turned left, leaving the motorists on 6th fuming but free. Seven Eugene police officers were waiting for them, their squad cars blocking the cyclists' path. They tackled several cyclists off their bikes and charged six with disorderly conduct. It was a charade that had played out before — not just in Eugene, but in many of the 400-odd cities around the world where bikers get together for a monthly ride called Critical Mass. The idea is that when enough bikers cruise together, they can subvert the status quo on the road so that cars and trucks have to yield to them rather than vice versa. On a broader scale: When a critical number of people get out of their cars and onto bikes, urban transportation systems will lose some of their motor bias in favor of friendlier laws and infrastructures for non-motorized vehicles. While the ride has no official message, Critical Massers cite lots of other reasons for participating, from combating global warming and oil dependency to enjoying a healthy community ride with fellow bikers. But critics — including many in the biking community — say that there are better ways to advocate for the two-wheeled. They argue that bikers can gain more ground by following traffic laws and cooperating with motorists and police than by trying to subvert the rules of the road, as often happens at the leaderless, spontaneous Mass rides. Is Critical Mass an effective "moving billboard" for bike advocacy, or does it just foster bad blood between cyclists and motorists? That question fuels a discussion of traffic laws, police priorities and bike safety in Eugene.
Josh Schlossberg, a local environmental activist and UO grad student, joined the February ride on a whim when Critical Mass passed him on Willamette. Moments later, police blocked the cyclists on Mill Street. Schlossberg claims that EPD Officer Dorman threw him off his bicycle, injuring his vertebrae, then handcuffed him and charged him with disorderly conduct. The next month Schlossberg again joined the ride, only to find 19 cops tailing fewer than a dozen cyclists. Police cited Schlossberg again, this time for running a red light. Schlossberg pled not guilty, saying that he had no choice but to cruise through that intersection; he was sandwiched between the front of the Mass, which had already passed through the green light, and the back, which was rolling forward on the rain-slicked street. Schlossberg says that he broke into the intersection as the traffic light turned yellow, and it turned red as he passed under it. After touring the town's intersections with a timer, Schlossberg concluded that Eugene's traffic lights turn from yellow to red in about three seconds — not enough time for a bike to pass through. "The laws are prejudiced against anyone who isn't driving a car," he said. He emailed a complaint to the mayor and City Council, asking for an explanation for what he saw as repeated police abuses at Critical Mass. Eugene Police Chief Robert Lehner responded to Schlossberg's email on June 14, writing that because previous rides had prompted citizen complaints, the EPD increased police presence at Critical Mass "to both encourage the riders to follow the rules of the road as well as ensuring our ability to respond if they do not." Lehner added that Massers refuse to fill out a parade permit to allow police to escort the ride. (Any regular Masser will retort that as a leaderless, spontaneous event, Critical Mass simply can't have a parade permit or a pre-planned route.) At the beginning of the April 28 ride, several Eugene police officers on motorcycles handed out cards listing common bike infractions and encouraging cyclists to follow the law. One Masser hefted his bike above his shoulders and turned to the media cameras with an exaggerated grimace. "We're gonna crucify ourselves!" he cried dramatically. "Lord, the burden!" A few minutes into the ride, EPD's Officer Schulz gave cyclist Dinae Horne a $90 ticket for improper use of a lane, saying that her front wheel had inched up alongside two other cycles in the bike lane. Schulz said that it's illegal to ride three abreast, though city bike coordinator Lee Shoemaker said he knows of no such law. Horne took the ticket like a champ, but her disgust was palpable. "I feel like there ought to be something better they can do with their time," she said. "As a taxpayer, I feel like this is a waste of my money." Another Masser, who identified himself only as "Cairo," said he felt that the cops were there to harass cyclists, not to protect them. "If they were here for our safety, they would be blocking traffic for us," he said. "The cops will not cite the motorists who are tailgating, harassing and intimidating bikers; they'll only cite the cyclists. I've seen it time and again. They're making people uncomfortable. They want to destroy Critical Mass." In early June, Mayor Kitty Piercy replied to Schlossberg's complaint. "It is a challenge to assess how much is too much public safety presence and how much is too little," she wrote by email. "Your description does make it sound like the [police] response is too strong and unneeded. I will bring this up to our staff."
Only two officers showed up for the June ride, and one for July. But even that seemed too heavy-handed for 60-year-old Ed Gunderson of Creswell, a lifelong cyclist who joined his first-ever Critical Mass ride in Eugene on July 28. Gunderson said he witnessed EPD's Officer Rager bark at about 40 cyclists over a loudspeaker, ticket a young man for running a stop sign and ride into the throng of bikes on his motorcycle. "It was no longer comforting to see the police," Gunderson wrote by email. "Was the officer ordered to harass cyclists and why? … I've never witnessed police action like this and was told by others that it is not unusual. Why do Eugene citizens tolerate police state tactics?"
Eugene police maintain that safety is their main concern with Critical Mass. "We're all for them having the ride," said EPD spokesman Rich Stronach. "It's just when we start getting calls and they're blocking traffic that we have to do something about it." According to Stronach, EPD showed up for eight of the 12 Critical Mass rides from July 2005 to June 2006 — five times in response to citizen complaints and three times as "planned proactive responses." City taxpayers spent about $9,000 on those cop appearances, according to figures provided by Stronach. About $7,000 of that went to overtime pay for the pre-planned responses to the March, April and May rides (see chart). It's hard to argue that the city of Eugene is anti-bike. Public Works staff promoted biking and walking with the month-long July-in-Motion and until recently encouraged bicycle work commutes with the People Powered Fridays program. Our little city has 119 miles of bike paths and lanes and a thriving bike manufacturing industry (see sidebar). And if that's not confirmation enough, Eugene makes a regular appearance on Bicycling magazine's list of the best cities for cycling. The city brought Portland attorney Ray Thomas, a bike rights advocate, to the Eugene Library on July 12. His bottom line is safety for both bikers and motorists, but his sympathy is clearly with bikers. Although he has represented Critical Mass participants in court, Thomas isn't a fan of the ride. He recalled a time when he was driving his mother-in-law to a Portland hospital to see her dying son, and Critical Massers blocked them in. "So here I am, a bike advocate, and my brothers and sisters of the road are making this woman's heart go into a state of upset because we can't get across the roadway," he said.
Thomas views Critical Mass as an act of civil disobedience that is controversial by nature and likely to exacerbate the very problems that he's trying to fix. "As a trial lawyer, I have to get the jury past their irritation at Critical Massers," he said. "It's difficult to maintain a positive relationship with car drivers when you're holding them up on a Friday night. It's not really a necessity; it's a political statement." The same argument can be applied to other progressive social change movements. In forest activism, for example, there are the embedded organizations, like Sierra Club, that use legal avenues such as lobbying and outreach to make change. Then there are tree-sitters and EarthFirst!ers who get in people's faces and break the law for their cause. The legal approach may be more palatable to more of the public, but it's the civil disobedience that makes the news.
Eugene's ride is just one spoke in a global bicycle revolution. Since beginning in San Francisco in 1992, Critical Mass has spread to 417 cities across the globe. In San Francisco, 2,000 to 5,000 bikers generally show up for the monthly Mass rides — yet SFPD Captain Al Casciato estimated that police have arrested no more than four Massers over the past year. In Eugene, where rides seldom have more than 50 cyclists, police have charged 16 Massers with criminal misdemeanors (mostly disorderly conduct) since June 2005 in addition to an untracked number of traffic violations, Stronach said. The difference is in the policy. The SFPD treats the Mass as one large vehicle, which means that if cyclists at the front of the ride enter an intersection on a green light, the rest of the Mass may proceed even if the light changes. Volunteers from local bike advocacy groups wear orange vests and block the side roads so that motorists won't enter the Mass. That cooperative approach makes the ride safer, more peaceful and easier on the police, Casciato said.
The San Francisco rides weren't always so smooth. There have been mass arrests, angry mayors, angrier bikers. But the SFPD eventually got the point: The system wasn't working. The new approach, with less police presence and more volunteer monitoring, has dramatically cut both the numbers of arrests and motorist complaints. "Now, I can do Critical Mass with my eyes closed," Casciato said. "Normally at the end of the night we say, 'The ride is over,' and we all clap." Portland police haven't had as much luck. First they monitored the cyclists heavily and got complaints that they were being overbearing; then they left the rides alone and got complaints of vandalism and assault. "Our presence has ebbed and flowed with the tenor of the ride," said Portland Police Bureau spokesman Sgt. Brian Shmautz. "It's morphed and gotten much calmer over the last year or so." Now the Portland police generally hand out fliers at the beginning of Mass rides to inform cyclists of traffic laws, but they don't lean on riders as heavily as they have in the past. "We don't want to put all these resources and police overtime into an event, but you also can't take over the road," Shmautz said. EPD spokesman Stronach said he didn't know if the Eugene police had looked to other cities for guidance on Critical Mass.
Josh Schlossberg pled not guilty to his Critical Mass-related charges at a June hearing in Municipal Court. The judge dropped the disorderly conduct charge, but upheld the citation for running the red light. Schlossberg plans to appeal to the District Court. His attorney, Misha Dunlap of the Civil Liberties Defense Center, parses no words about the police responses to Eugene's Critical Mass rides. "It's clear harassment," she said. "The charges are not going to stick in a lot of these cases. It's a waste of resources from A to Z." But Dunlap is encouraged by the chilled-out police presence at the June and July rides. "The over-reaction of the police department is beginning to wane, and that just makes it safer for everybody," she said. Meanwhile, Critical Mass continues to inspire spin-offs — like Critical Ass, a regular nude ride in New York City, and Critical Tits, an all-woman topless ride at Burning Man. In Eugene, we have biweekly Thursday night Whiteaker bike rides, where costumed Eugeneans on bikes decked out with rainbows, glitter and faux fur zip around town, disco music bumpin' from bike-mounted speakers, and grace local businesses and parks with spontaneous dance parties. No matter how you spin it, bike riding is gaining popularity, and Oregon's bike laws and urban infrastructure will have to evolve to better accommodate the two-wheeled kind. The tide will turn when the number of bikers on the road hits that critical mass.
Helmets and Seatbelts
Last year, about 500 people died in car crashes in Oregon alone — a figure close to the number of annual bike fatalities for the entire country. According to data provided by city bike coordinator Lee Shoemaker, there were 334 reported accidents involving bikers and motorists in Eugene between 2001 and 2005. Most resulted in injury, and five were fatal. Bicycles account for less than 1 percent of all trips nationwide, but cycling fatalities made up 1.5 percent of all traffic deaths in the Oregon in 2002. Although these figures imply a greater danger for cyclists than motorists, bikes may constitute a higher percentage of trips in Oregon thanks to our bike-friendly cities. In terms of motorist safety, residents of denser communities drive less and are at a lower risk of death from car crashes than residents of sprawling places, as reported in Sightline Institute's Cascadia Scorecard 2006. The same report says that only 12 percent of Lane County's residents live in compact communities, compared with a quarter of Portland's and two-thirds of Vancouver, B.C.'s residents. Meanwhile, a fifth of our state's population is obese, likely related to low levels of physical activity. Obesity-related ailments claim 1,500 lives in Oregon a year — many more than the lives lost to bicycle or automobile accidents. — Sarah Mazze
Bike Resources • Critical Mass info: www.critical-mass.org • Eugene Critical Mass' MySpace page www.myspace.com/eugenecriticalmass • We Are Traffic, documentary on Critical Mass history, available at Center for Appropriate Transport (CAT): 455 West 1st Avenue, 344-1197 www.catoregon.org • Critical Mass history: www.scorcher.org/cmhistory • Return of the Scorcher, bike culture documentary by Ted White • "How to Not Get Hit by Cars," www.bicyclesafe.com • "Why go by bicycle? 15 good reasons," www.gobybicycle.com • Oregon's bike laws: www.oregon.gov/ODOT/HWY/BIKEPED/docs/bike-ped_statutes.pdf • Pedal Power: A legal guide for Oregon Bicyclists, by Ray Thomas: www.stc-law.com/pdf/PedalPower_4th-ed.pdf • Bicycle Friendly Communities: www.bicyclefriendlycommunities.org
If We Build Bikes, They Will Sell Eugene is home to six bicycle, part and accessory manufacturers, all home grown businesses started by avid bicyclists. Co-Motion Cycles, Bike Friday, Burley Design Cooperative, the Center for Appropriate Transport (CAT), Rolf Prima Wheels and BicycleR Evolution Trailers all peddle their wares nationally and internationally, drawing dollars and jobs into the local economy. "To have bikes that are manufactured in the United States is unusual. To have four manufacturers in a town the size of Eugene is really unusual," says Hannah Scholz, marketing manager for Bike Friday. Scholz says that Bike Friday ships 95 percent of its collapsible bikes outside of Oregon and 20 percent outside of the country. Dan Vrijmoet, co-owner of Co-Motion, says that more than 99 percent of his bikes, which include top-of-the line tandems, sell outside of Eugene. The owners of every company but the nonprofit CAT are tight-lipped about their annual revenue, but together they employ more than 140 full-time employees. About 15 bike retail stores are located in Eugene — three times the national average for a city this size. If each store brings in the industry average of over half a million dollars annually, local bike retailers may contribute more than $8 million to Eugene's economy. Vrijmoet calls it coincidence that the manufacturers all chose to locate in Eugene, but Bike Friday's Scholz and Burley Marketing Manager Cary Lieberman credit the bike-friendly community. Both Burley and Bike Friday prefer to hire employees with a passion for cycling and the bike trade. Lieberman explained that it's the creativity and energy of Burley's employees that allows the company to remain competitive against low-cost products from overseas. — Sarah Mazze
Funky Bikes
If you've hung around Eugene long enough, chances are you've seen a double-decker bike, a recumbent, the Peddler Express cruisers or another creation built by students or staff of the nonprofit Center for Appropriate Transport (CAT). CAT runs a host of programs aimed at manufacturing, using and advocating for sustainable forms of transportation, including Oregon Cycling magazine, Eugene Rack Works and Human Powered Machines, which builds load-bearing machines that require pedaling or hand-cranking rather than engines to function. Through CAT's youth programs, students get their hands greasy building many of the funky bikes that can be as challenging to ride as they are to build. — Sarah Mazze
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