|
Williams Greens ride for a better future with Critical Mass
Created by eli_beckerman. Last modified on 2008-03-17 14:21:58 WILLIAMSTOWN - Gas prices are too high. Traffic is a nightmare. There are never any parking spaces. You're just going up the road. All are good excuses to leave that car at home and hop on a bicycle and reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. "I've noticed a lot of transportation laziness," said Sean McKenzie, a member of the Williams College Green Party, which sponsored a Critical Mass bike ride last week at the college. Critical Mass is a monthly bike ride event that has been held in various cities around the world since its beginnings in San Francisco in 1992. Five cyclists from San Francisco who were sick of the city's clogged streets started the event, which drew 48 people its first year. "The ride increased in size by about 75 percent each month, so that by the time 1993 came about, Critical Mass had almost 500 riders and was becoming well known among bicyclers in the city," according to one of many unofficial Critical Mass information Web sites, critical-mass.info. For this ride, the first ever at Williams College, approximately a dozen bicyclists showed up to participate in the ride on a brisk, cold afternoon in February. A few spectators showed up just to cheer on the group as they took off riding from the Paresky Center, through campus and down Spring Street. Teddy Bourgeois, an admissions counselor at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, participated in Friday's Critical Mass. He was also responsible for spreading the word to MCLA students. "I thought the ride was completely successful," Bourgeois said. "With the cold weather, I wouldn't have been surprised if five people showed up. Twelve people riding down Spring Street is a lot." McKenzie echoed that sentiment. "We certainly turned some heads of motorists, which is exactly what we wanted to do," he said. Not only does bicycling save money and any hassle with traffic, it is also a CO2-neutral way to travel, McKenzie said. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, transportation is the second largest source of CO2 emissions in the U.S. after electricity generation. "Automobiles and light-duty trucks account for almost two-thirds of emissions from the transportation sector and emissions have steadily grown since 1990," according to the EPA's Web site. McKenzie said many of the places people need to go in their everyday lives are within five miles, so biking is the much more environmentally friendly way to get where they are going. "A lot of where we need to go is self-contained," he said. McKenzie said he hopes both the town of Williamstown and the college will start using bicycles, and he will continue local Critical Mass events to encourage that. "We would like to see it continue. Dave Schwab, Matt Britton (the other two leaders of the Green Party) and I are all seniors and thus won't be here next year, but we hope that it will continue next year," he said. "We would like to make this a monthly event if possible." Bourgeois, for his part, said he will be there. "We're planning on riding the last Friday of every month to coincide with other Critical Mass rides worldwide," he said. "I am excited to see what kind of turnout we get when the weather warms up." Anyone interested in Critical Mass can e-mail McKenzie at 08scm@williams.edu |
|||||||||||||||