Bike-Eye View of Critical Mass

New York, NY —

The Bloomberg administration has been widely praised for its efforts in promoting bicycling. All across the city new bike lanes are being built and more riders are being drawn to biking. But one group of riders continues to be at odds with the city - the participants in the monthly Critical Mass bike rides. The rides returned to the spotlight 2 months ago, when a police officer was videotaped pushing a rider off his bike. WNYC's Arun Venugopal jumped in a pedicab during the last ride and has this eyewitness report.

REPORTER: Critical Mass isn't really a ride in the traditional, leisurely sense - more a monthly game of cat and mouse.

CYCLIST: Go left! Left!

REPORTER: The event is meant to be a joyous celebration of the biking life, with hundreds of cyclists coursing together through city streets. But things have changed. These days small groups of riders zig and zag around the city for hours in a desperate effort to dodge the police, who consider many of these cyclists unlawful.

ROSS: A lot of times when we leave Union Square the police swarm us.]

REPORTER: Barbara Ross is with Times Up, which promotes Critical Mass.

ROSS: So what we've been doing is having a new meeting place. Say we're going to meet at 7:45 at Tompkins Square, so that's what we're doing now. It's just been one of the strategies, because they've been so aggressive with the tickets, and it's been working really well. Their advantage is that they have hundreds of them around the city, so they can usually find us pretty easily.

REPORTER: Barbara rides alongside the pedicab I'm in, as well as about 10 other cyclists. The Critical Mass collective started out big but has splintered into a bunch of small groups roaming the East Village, trying to find each other by cell phone. We take so many turns, up and down 2nd and 3rd avenues, and down various side streets, that it's easy to get disoriented.

That's Robby Brennan, the pedicab driver who's hauling me around.

BRENNAN: And it's ridiculous that 4 years later this tomfoolery is still going on. The police are acting like bullies. Acting as if we're, I don't know, are somehow threatening the community.

REPORTER: As we ride along East 3rd street, we keep sighting police officers stopping Critical Mass riders and issuing tickets. But the group I'm with is on their best behavior, and determined not to get in trouble. Until...

MAN: Jesus Christ!

DRUNKEN PEDESTRIAN: What the %$*&?

REPORTER: A man, clearly drunk, has stumbled into the street and knocked into our pedicab just as it whizzes by. The back of the pedicab hooks onto the man's shirt and he's forced to stumble along with us, at first confused, then enraged. Confrontation ensues, but, somehow, Robby squeezes out of it and we're back on our way. As they say in Critical Mass: Still we Ride.

Critical Mass takes place in hundreds of cities. And by most accounts New York's rides were uneventful until 2004. The rides regularly attracted over a thousand riders, many of them families with children who felt safer riding in numbers.

But everything changed with the Republican convention in 2004, when hundreds of protesting riders were arrested. The police have been in a permanent standoff with riders since then. And the number of participants in each month's ride has dropped considerably.

Then, 2 months ago, Police Officer Patrick Pogan was caught on video assaulting a Critical Mass rider. The cyclist, Christopher Long could be seen just riding along, through Times Square, when Pogan walked over and bodychecked him. The YouTube video went viral, getting over a million views in a few days and drawing attention from the mainstream media. Bill DiPaola heads the environmental group Times Up, which promotes Critical Mass. He says videotaping is the only way to document what he sees as police harassment.

DIPAOLA: And I feel we're part of this thing now, where we have to embarrass the New York City police department to get change in the future. This isn't really the right way to go about it but for the last 4 or 5 years that's what's been happening.

REPORTER: He's also convinced that the Bloomberg administration's embrace of bicycling would not have happened without the long-term efforts of Critical Mass riders. But Mayor Bloomberg doesn't quite agree. In the immediate aftermath of the Christopher Long incident, the mayor said the police officer's actions were "totally over the top and inappropriate." But then, a couple weeks later the mayor was announcing Summer Streets, when cars were to be banned from a 7-mile stretch of Manhattan. And he shifted.

BLOOMBERG: Everybody has to obey the law. Somebody's going to get killed one of these days. You have a right to ride your bicycle, you don't have a right to break the law, period.

REPORTER: The differences between the city and Critical Mass are in part cultural. The riders say Critical Mass is not an organization with any actual leaders, merely the name of a ride that's open to anyone who shows up. But the NYPD refuses to accept that. NYPD Spokesman Paul Browne says any street event of this magnitude needs to have someone in charge, who can coordinate with the police and ensure that the ride isn't disruptive or dangerous.

PAUL BROWNE: They've claimed there are no organizers and that's patently not true. People involved in Times UP who are organizing. Early on they were giving out radios they were giving out cell phones to communicate as to which way the ride goes. There's this game of claiming there is no organization, but there is.

REPORTER: However, even among those in the cycling community, there are serious doubts about the effectiveness of Critical Mass. Miles Smith is an activist, now based in Boston, who used to do battle against the Koch administration's biking policies. He says too many Critical Mass riders can be anti-authoritarian, and tend to run red lights and block traffic.

SMITH: Critical Mass is respected in the bicycle advocacy communities, but it's also not the choice of many advocates as a way of moving forward with the legitimization of cycling.

REPORTER: On 6th avenue, near NYU, we pass by cyclist Alan Fox. He's standing in the lane, next to his bike, surrounded by half a dozen police officers. They're issuing him a ticket for driving without a headlight after sunset. Robby and Barbara watch on.

ROSS: This is what we're dealing with and this is why we want them to stop... See, this is taxpayer's money.

MAN: Keystone moment.

ROSS: They don't even try to hide it!

REPORTER: It's only a couple hours into the ride when the game lets up a bit. After searching for each other all over the East and West Village, the various groups that make up tonight's Critical Mass have finally reunited.

BRENNAN: A critical mass of humanity trying to show that human-powered transportation is a lot of fun.

REPORTER: The NYPD and the Manhattan District Attorney say they're still investigating Officer Patrick Pogan, who remains on desk duty. And the lawyer for Christopher Long says they intend to sue the city for assault and wrongful arrest. The next Critical Mass takes place this evening. For WNYC, I'm Arun Venugopal.