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Radical Cyclists Take to Freeways to Say Bikes Are Better

submitted by winkler1

1 decade 6 years 7 months 1 week ago

From Wired:
For the second time in two months, a bunch of Los Angeles bike advocates calling themselves Crimanimalz took to one of the busiest freeways in the world to make the case that, when your freeways are gridlocked, bikes are better.

About 30 cyclists rode onto the Santa Monica Freeway (I-10) at the height of Friday's rush-hour commute and went east to the San Diego Freeway (I-405), where they rode north to the Santa Monica Boulevard exit, moving easily through traffic. In all, they rode more than two miles.

"There's thousands of cars and you're just flying by," said one of the group, called RichToTheIE, by phone on Wednesday. "It's an amazing feeling."

The renegade rides are a radical off-shoot of the popular - and often controversial - Critical Mass rides held each month in cities around the world as cyclists grow increasingly vocal in asserting their rights to the road and extolling the environmental and societal benefits of ditching your car in favor of a bike.

Such rides are usually limited to downtown areas, but Crimanimalz are taking them to the freeways of Los Angeles to prove that riding a bike is faster than creeping through bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Crimanimalz first appeared around the end of last year after Santa Monica police started coming down hard on the monthly Critical Mass ride.

"The freeway is the last stronghold of the car, so when you've got 30 cyclists flying down the lanes, you feel like General Custer, you feel like the good guys," said Alex Cantarero, another of the group "People look on the bicycle as an anachronism. Now with high gas prices, the car looks like an anachronism."

Crimanimalz has held three Crimanimal Mass rides since April 18, when 15 cyclists rode almost three miles on the Santa Monica and San Diego freeways.

They haven't had much trouble with the California Highway Patrol, who managed to nab two of the cyclists in Friday's rides but let them off with a lecture even though Section 21960(a) of the California Vehicle Code gives police the authority to cite cyclists for riding on highways.

Bay Area cyclists haven't been quite so lucky. They've been busted biking over the Bay Bridge as part of their campaign to get a bike lane added to the span.

The Crimanimalz plan to keep pushing their luck - they're promising more Crimanimal rides. "We want to do a bigger freeway with more riders," said Cantarero.

The rides have garnered mixed reaction from cyclists at the Midnight Ridazz website.