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July 27, 2008
Your four wheels are hazardous to my two.
Seattle's indefatigably excellent free weekly The Stranger has an online presence known as Slog, and its writers are excitable, opinionated, usually intelligent, and often very funny.
Seattle is large enough to qualify as a big city, but small enough to avoid being as Balkanized as, say, Los Angeles. And let's face it: The Stranger is a much, much better paper than the L.A. Weekly or Reader ever were. So when shit goes down—especially in an area these people care about—they're on it like a bum on a baloney sandwich.
So, let's say a Seattle motorist deliberately plows into a crowd of bicyclists during a Critical Mass ride. Think Slog will cover it? Um, yes; this is from the sixth post so far:
As the driver pulled away, [bicyclist Tom] Braun—who was not part of the group talking to the driver—was caught under the vehicle, and the car rolled over his leg. “I literally got run over,” Braun says. “I was hanging on the front of [the] car. I’m glad he made a left and tried to take off down the road. If he’d turned right, I would have been crushed.”Braun was taken to the ER, and although he miraculously avoided breaking any bones during the incident, he may have sustained internal injuries as doctors found blood in his urine.
Braun says he’s been consulting with other attorneys about filing suit against the driver. Braun says he was also getting ready to do an interview with KING 5 [TV] in the hopes of setting the record straight. “I saw the media reports this morning and I was shocked,” Braun says. “Somebody’s got to get out what really happened. This was a vehicular assault that could have killed people.”
“I Literally Got Run Over”, Jonah Spangenthal-Lee on Slog
I'm biased, of course, having just returned from a Midnight Ridazz excursion with about 200 of my fellow Los Angeles degenerates.
Taking over the streets with a massive crowd of very competent riders is a pretty amazing experience. Watching them pound beers and weed hits every six miles is impressive as well.
Update—On Monday, Slog poster "Chicago Fan" added an interesting point of view:
Critical Mass doesn't accomplish much in terms of concrete improvements in cycling infrastructure. All Critical Mass really does, in my experience, is piss people off. Pissed off people tend not to support the political causes of the people who piss them off, so I've never signed on with CM's agenda.
What does get things done? Corrupt politicians.
So, the only solution to Seattle's endless Process regarding a cycling map (whoo-hoo! Cartography, however inaccurate, will serve!), inadequate bike lanes on appropriate streets and bike routes and so forth: trade [Seattle Mayor] Nickels for Daley.
Richard M. Daley, Chicago's Mayor-for-Life-or-Until-Indicted, is a recreational cyclist. And he is an absolute dictator who pretty much gets what he wants (he has appointed or directly got elected the majority of the City Council's Aldermen, either to replace Aldermen who died or were indicted). So Chicago has a comprehensive bicycle plan that actually, you know, gets done. You want bike racks outside your business or local El station? Contact the city and they'll install 'em. Roads appropriate for bike traffic get sharrows and those which are perfect get bike lanes. A new park is built downtown, put in a bike center, with lockers and showers for bike commuters. Keep expanding the lakefront path. Drivers endanger cyclists? Increase the fines and have cops out writing tickets for drivers who door cyclists or cut them off.
All of this has happened because Daley wanted it to happen and then made it happen, not because a bunch of gear-heads block traffic one Friday rush hour a month. No single businessman can call up the city and whine and get a street taken off the plan for bike lanes. No community meetings, no endless planning, just corruption (Daley's supporters make money on all the road work, for instance) and a bike-able city.
We could use some of that strong-arm leadership here in L.A.
