The City from the Seat of a Two-Wheeler
It’s 10 o’clock on a Friday night and I’m racing down a four-lane highway, running parallel to the now-defunct train station in Oaxaca. Cars, scooters, trucks with noisy engines huffing exhaust out from dirty mufflers race by on my left side—nothing between my exposed calf and their metal doors but my pant leg. I’m on a bike.
The Streets of Oaxaca
It sounds crazy, perhaps. And in a normal situation I would have been scared for my life—bicycling in a city with zero understanding for any kind of pedestrian or bike traffic. The difference: I am surrounded by one hundred other bikers. I’m on a night ride organized by Mundo Ceiba a local non-profit in Oaxaca started by a group of youth in 2004, working on ecological sustainability in the region. The group started with an idea to plant trees where deforestation was a problem. And after planting more than 16,495 over the last 5 years, their work has expanded to promote alternative urban transit in the city—namely bicycles—environmental sustainability being the common bond. In their own lovely words (a little clunk-ily translated into English on their site): “We look that people get directly involved in these activities and make from these experiences an opportunity to interact with other people interested in generating and supporting an ecological culture that will bring good things for us as a society.”
Night Ride in Oaxaca
That’s exactly what this night ride was—a chance to come out en masse to support and encourage a friendly attitude towards alternative transit in the city. There was a moment, as we screamed down a major thoroughfare, eyes wide in astonishment from those passing by, that I felt very connected to a collective celebration of a different way to do locomote. A system that was sustainable, cheap, easy on the environment, and frankly, in the clogged narrow streets of Oaxaca, a faster way to travel!
Bicycle transit has long been a popular topic for many. One of the most famous (and often contentious) bicycle initiatives worldwide is Critical Mass. Started back in San Francisco in 1992, Critical Mass was just a bunch of cyclist gathering to ride the city streets, where safety in numbers allowed them more freedom to trek a then-unfriendly Bay Area downtown. The first event in September of ‘92 was actually called “Commute Clot.” But after a local screening of Ted White’s documentary Return of the Scorcher about bike culture outside the United States the term “Critical Mass” caught on. In a scene from Return of the Scorcher (which you can watch here in four parts) designer George Bliss commented that both motorists and bicyclists in China shared an unspoken understanding for how to manage intersections without formal traffic signals. “There was a kind of critical mass thing, where all the cyclists would pile up and then go. All the cyclists…turning left in an intersection would wait in the middle until they had enough numbers to force through the cars and make them stop. And vice versa. And it worked!” Thus, the name of “critical mass” was embraced. Now urban biking groups all over the globe have sprouted up.
I should mention that from what I’ve read Critical Mass doesn’t claim to be an organization, with leadership or a formal body. “In every city that has a CM ride, some locals simply picked a date, time, and location for the ride and publicized it, and thus the ride was born,” states the site Critical-Mass.info. Without central leadership, groups with the name Critical Mass have emerged in various cities. And some have an inharmonious relationship within their own neighborhoods–using the rides as forms of political protest–that for many has been a source of conflict and friction. However, other rides, like the one I participated in in Oaxaca (which isn’t associated with Critical Mass, incidentally) simply wish to celebrate bike culture in a peaceful and mindful way. There’s a score of diversity out there amongst urban biking initiatives. As an example, some rides, like the two annual rides in Budapest, Hungary, have up to 80,000 riders, while others are just a dozen or so local cyclists. Is there an urban biking initiative in your neck of the woods? Here’s one place you can look.
Photo from NUBIJA
More recently, there has been a push around the globe for more than just organized, collective bike rides. Cities and social entrepreneurs have been imagining ways to integrate bikes into existing transit systems—making them more sustainable and accessible. Bike-sharing systems, as they are called, have sprouted up in cities and towns around the world. Andrew Posner on Treehugger.com writes, “Essentially, in a bike-share program bicycles are made available at special kiosks or racks that are strategically placed around a city. Users can access the bikes 24 hours a day, either by inserting a credit card or by paying an annual fee for a membership card. The bikes can then be returned at any of the stations in the city.” It’s like the Zip Car model, but with bikes. Bike-share programs vary from place to place; examples abound in Paris, Mexico City, Washington DC, Buenos Aires, for instance. And while programs have had to grapple with serious challenges, like bike theft—they continue to adapt the model to best suit the locality. I just recently saw this great video on a bike-share program in Denver called B-Cycle made by Good Magazine’s video department:
So it’s official—the bicycle movement is underway! Interested in getting on board? Well get out there, then. The more of us that take the the byways on bicycles, the more we’ll encourage our neighbors and friends to do the same. It’s fun, healthy, economical, eco-friendly and you can get where you want, when you want, all on your own steam. Can you imagine a tomorrow in which you and everyone you know heads to work on a two-wheeler every morn? I can. My ride on the 22nd helped me imagine that.
Saludos,
Megan