Blog Jones

A long, long time ago, back when Blog Jones was still on Blogger, I wrote a post about a group called Critical Mass. On the last Friday of every month, this group clogs the streets of major US cities with thousands and thousands of bicycles. See the Wikipedia entry to see what I mean.

Well, yesterday I received an email from a guy whom I quoted in my first post on the topic. Here’s what I quoted from him in my first entry:

“We rode in the street and used the streets as a place to be, and socialize, and celebrate rather than just a place to pass through on your way to someplace,” says Joel Pomerantz, one of the original San Francisco riders

Now I’ll quote his email, with appropriate commentary, of course:

I only today stumbled upon your interesting commentary, which echoes comments I have heard many times before. If you are being up front and truthful that it is the delay to drivers which troubles you about Critical Mass, then there is one slight logic glitch you might want to think about.

It’s rare that any car driver “caught” by Critical Mass is delayed more than a few minutes–putting the delay well within the range that any reasonable driver expects from “regular” car traffic jams when driving in a city at rush hour.

So, apparently, it’s OK to inconvenience thousands of drivers, as long as it’s only for a little while.

If on the other hand your objections about the ride are something else (hinted at by the disdain oozing from your phrase “the car is obviously a faster, more efficient way”) then maybe you should write a commentary directly on that point. I would love to see your reasoned evidence that speed and efficiency are what make the world a better place. Many people think so for various reasons, but judging by the surge in the bicycle’s popularity for transportation, it seems that in some circumstances many people would rather have two hours a month where calm prevails in public spaces usually overwhelmed by motor traffic.

What you don’t see is the distinct lack of calm on the faces of the drivers you’re inconveniencing.

The roads–at least the parts of the road where cars drive on–are not for socialization. They are for getting from once place to another as quickly as possible. You should stay out of the way of the delivery men who are trying to do an honest day’s work, the ambulances which trying to get the sick and the dying to the hospital, the policemen, who are trying to prevent crimes, and the regular folks, who just want to get home and relax after a difficult week’s work.

Yes, speed and efficiency make the world a better place. Absolutely. If you doubt that, look at the places in the world where efficiency is apparently irrelevant, like the vast majority of Latin America and Africa: The people there are dirt poor. By consequence, they are hungry, sick, and without the things we in the first world would consider necessities, like regular electricity and indoor plumbing. On the other hand, look at the countries in the first world: The peoples of America and Japan prize efficiency, and so they are healthy, wealthy, and full.

Further, when your transit times are lower, you can spend more time doing the things you love to do. If I’m held up in traffic for a half-hour because a swarm of cyclists won’t get out of my way, that’s half an hour I can’t spend with my family, on my computer, or doing any of the things I enjoy. It seems profoundly selfish to me that these cyclists are enjoying themselves at the expense of thousands of others enjoying themselves.

As I said in my previous post, socialize all you want. Celebrate bike riding. But have the civility to stay out of the way of people with more important things to do.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 30th, 2005 at 2:40 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.