With current population expansion in the Bay Area and increased motorist traffic, along with mayor Willie Brown's ineffective approaches towards relieving many of the citys traffic and transport problems, our streets have become more congested and more dangerous than ever. From inside the steel shell of a ton or more motor vehicle, one risks their life on a moment to moment basis. To a bicyclist, these unsafe conditions, poorly planned routes, and roadway overstuffing present ten times the fear it does to the motorist.

Depending upon what sources you follow for your news you may have heard many tales of Friday's notorious Critcal Mass ride. The bottom line is that a planned route somehow was changed or abandoned and things ran amuck from there. The result of this was the arrest of at least 250 bicyclists. Many bicyclists made it through critical mass unscathed, with clean criminal records, and happy about a demonstration well done. Others weren't so lucky and were the unwilling recipients of fisticuffs with pedestrians, motorists and police.

All of this has put more of a focus on the "bad" bicyclist and less of a focus on the real message. San Francisco police even went so far as to step up patrols in case Critical Mass riders took to the streets again on the next business days following the ill-fated ride. There are alot of folks out there who need to wake up at this point. Each day motorists jump into their vehicles and run red lights, park illegally, bring traffic to a screeching halt on their commute routes and worse -- drive so poorly the result is often loss of life or bodily harm. Never, have I been witness to the type of task force used to "stop" Critical Massers from continuing to ride bikes. Bicyclists were tackled, bikes were confiscated and participants were placed under arrest for disobeying traffic laws. If the SFPD did this with motorists on a day to day basis we could probably solve many of the revenue problems this city has been plagued with for years. Being a daily commuter hour motorist myself I would welcome the arrest and confiscation of vehicles of every red light runner andy ill behaved, misguided motorist that plagues the freeway.

Muc of the local press made Critical Massers out to be an unruly tribe of chaotic fiends. I believe the wrong spin was taken on the issue. The Friday July 25th Critcal Mass episode clearly points the finger at motorists who were threatened by the existence of something other than their cars on the road (clear bigotry and discrimination) and local political officials who would rather silence and ostrasize those that are helping them recognize the shortcomings of a city's planning and transportation provisions. Civil disobedience takes its name from the occurence of peaceful disobedience focusing on civil notice, change or reformation. Blatant illegal action would be to tackle or abuse a bicyclist participating in an act of Civil Disobedience.

Instead of looking toward Critical Mass as a demonstration of the current systemic shortcomings the police have declared future monthly rides "illegal activities". It just doesn't seem to me that a daily bicycle commute to and from work could be deemed illegal or viewed as an "organized activity" so maybe a different approach to Critical Mass needs to be taken. Bicyclists in the SF area should just plan to ride their bike every day to and from work and do so in the commute hour as much as possible. If there are 5000 bikes "commuting" on a daily basis they will get noticed and no one can really stop it from happening.

It will be interesting to see what the future holds in store for the San Francisco bicyclist. The rest of us, police, motorists, pedestrians, also need to welcome the bicycle onto our streets. In many European countires and especially China the commuter bicycle can sometimes appear more practical and more common than the auto. As our population continues to increase in the Bay Area so will the number of bicycle commuters. Critical Mass has just managed to show us what sort of chaos can and will ensue if the rights and concerns of the urban bicyclist are not addressed. We should also keep in mind that continued resistant coupled with fear of accomodation of the presence of the bicycle on our streets will also adversly effect our environment and city's infrastructure. If we continued the rapid growth the Bay Area is experiencing we are in for a wake up call of epic proportions. Look at the copper-color band of exhaust pollution which hugs the city now, from a keen vantage point in the Berkeley Hills sometime and keep in mind that all that bad air is from the cars on the roads. We have no industry to produce that pollution, Dianne Feinstein saw to that a while back. As our air quality continues to approach the stagnant levels of that of LA's and New York's we should be hugging the bicyclists who stopped us all in our cars on Friday. They are actually thinking more about our future and our well being than you can imagine.