Tuesday 11/15/05 CM/PPB meeting

Long, not particularly well-organized notes but packed with cool details about how the PPB works (or doesn't).

Present: Mark Ginsberg (bike lawyer, facilitator), Cmdr Sinnott of the PPB, and CM reps Nemo, Blue, and Wurster.

Jasun was sent a letter by Dawn Y. at the City's revenue department, who is concerned about Critical Mass' permitted routes avoiding messy downtown light rail construction in 2006. No one in the room seemed to know what to say about this. Jasun had called and invited her to the meeting, but she did not show up.

The Halloween ride was fun, everyone agreed. It went smoothly from the police side--there was one arrest, for DUI. No citations were issued, despite some bilateral confusion about lighting requirements.

One way the police try to maintain consistency in enforcement on issues such as lighting is to brief officers on a particular topic during the "roll call" before leaving for CM. They also issue training bulletins, for instance about the new bike laws going into effect in January.

Cmdr Sinnott is concerned that riders need lights. He's reluctant to make CM a focus of the cop light giveaway program because he doesn't want to make it the place to go for free lights.

One thing the cops are doing in conjunction with their lights giveaway is handing out a little pamphlet with basic lighting laws.

Apparently Lars Larson spent a couple whole hours railing against the police lights giveaway program as a waste of public funds on arrogant etc. cyclists.

Someone brought up warnings vs. citations. Apparently warnings are a good tool for changing motorist behaviors because your license is entered into the system. But they are purely symbolic if no driver's license is entered--as is the case with most warnings issued to cyclists, because you don't need to carry id to ride your bike.

The 26th and Clinton sting resulted from complaints to PDOT about cyclists blowing those stop signs. Sinnott went down there one day and watched *everyone* blow the signs, including pedestrians acting rashly. Thus the enforcement action.

We broached the topic of having a plan for the police to exit gracefully from Critical Mass. Sinnott indicated that this will happen in time, and that delays are in part because CM is politically touchy. Police will definitely start reducing their presence to a less way-out-of-proportion size.

Even if the police stop showing up they would probably still send a motorcycle officer or two to spot-check the ride.

We said that an internal-combustion-free CM would be a great gesture of goodwill on the part of the police. Fred and Jasun suggested that two or three bike cops per ride wouldn't be out of place even after the police have largely left the ride. Sinnott said he would worry about liability issues if something happened and there weren't enough cops to deal with it. He thought maybe it would work to bring up the end of the ride with a few bike cops with backpacks covered with bright lights, who could protect against drivers slamming into the rear riders, which is the current role of the motorcycle cops.

Fred objected strongly to the use of motorcycle cops to cork permitted rides (such as memorial rides) since they do this by constantly zooming past bicyclists at 40mph. He suggested that CM would be a great way to train bike cops to cork, so that they'd be well-practiced for future larger memorial rides. Sinnott said nice try.

We talked about lane use, which was interesting but not conclusive. I said that it rankles when police tell us "we're going to give you the right lane," and Sinnott said that this doesn't exactly mean what it sounds like. The model for enforcing CM is the same as for a presidential motorcade--and this is the only way the cops are trained to enforce anything that looks like a parade. So giving us the lane technically means keeping it clear of other traffic by various means, including putting motorcycle cops at the end of the ride, 'picketing' the edge of the lane, or zooming ahead to cork if it's a permitted ride.

I asked if it is illegal then to use other lanes when the police are "giving" us one. This was the inconclusive part. It's illegal to disobey a police officer's orders, but those orders have to hold up in court as legal requests. Sinnott said that a cyclist taking the center lane on a higher-speed street like MLK might be "impeding traffic" and Ginsberg responded that the speed limit is an upper limit only, and that another slow-moving vehicle like a scooter wouldn't be ticketed.

We talked about the previous standard practice of CM taking any lane(s) but leaving one lane open for other traffic on major roads. Sinnott said this seems reasonable to him, but I did not get the impression that he was going to convey that to the officers doing the actual policing--so we'll see.

The corking debate continues. Sinnott: "I don't see how police and a "true" Critical Mass can coexist."

Maria Rubia from the Mayor's office has requested a white paper from Mark and Roland C (from Sam Adam's office) re/all currently outstanding issues with Critical Mass. They'll be doing that this month, probably.