If you see hundreds of smiling children biking around Lake Merritt this Saturday, it’s because they’re participating in this month’s East Bay Kidical Mass, an event organized by local cyclists to promote safe and fun biking for youth.
The bike event is the fourth in the last year and the first one around the lake, which is Oakland’s most iconic location for protests, celebrations, and just chilling on the weekends. The last couple of rides included one from Emeryville to Berkeley and a Halloween mass where kids zipped around East Bay neighborhoods wearing sparkly and spooky costumes.
Saturday’s event begins at 10:30 a.m. at the Lake Merritt BART parking lot, where parents and kids can gather before riding out together. According to organizers, the ride will move at a light pace so people of all ages can participate and no one is left behind. Ride leaders will wear neon-colored safety vests for visibility and use radios to communicate with each other.
At the end of the circuit, expected to last at most a couple of hours, there will be free cold treats, like soft serve ice cream and popsicles, as well as spongy waffles with fried chicken.
To keep the ride safe, all cyclists will take over the main roadway, blocking car traffic for a short amount of time, and some cyclists will block off local streets to prevent collisions. While the organizers have not faced issues during previous rides, EMTs will follow along with the group in case anyone has an emergency.
While Kidical Mass is a relatively new event in Oakland, it’s been around for close to 20 years elsewhere, and the name is a riff on critical mass, a bike protest that began in San Francisco over 30 years ago and has since spread to cities across the world.
In 2008, the first big kid bike ride that used the Kidical Mass name was in Eugene, Oregon. The Oregon children’s ride followed others around the world, including in Amsterdam and Mexico City. These events have been used by advocates to call for improved infrastructure that people of all ages can use but that benefits children to more safely bike to school and other activities. According to the Kidical Mass movement website, the 900 kid bike events created over the course of the main bike advocacy month last year had 230,000 participants.
Riding bikes to advocate for safety and change
Marc Hedlund, a tech entrepreneur and Berkeley resident, is one of the organizers of the ride. Last year he was advocating for new bike lanes on Hopkins Street in Berkeley, but an acrimonious debate about the project led to inaction.
Hedlund said he was frustrated about that project turning too negative and decided to organize two adult rides and one kids’ bike ride to show people that ultimately, the infrastructure request was about making it safer and funner to travel around the neighborhood on a bike.
“A group of people thought the bike people were trying to steal their community and the number one thing I could do would be to demonstrate that there are a lot of people who just want to ride safely,” Hedlund said.
Also the Chair of the influential Bike East Bay advocacy group, Hedlund said his older daughter rides her bike on her own even though he knows it’s not safe and doesn’t trust drivers. He’ll often watch her from home on his iPhone through the “follow” feature to see “if her dot is still moving.” But his fear doesn’t take away from the joy of biking. His desire to see other kids get that experience drives his involvement in Kidical Mass.
“The parents just talk about how happy their kids are. They’re like, “This was so fun, our kids wanna bike to school now.” They feel like part of a group rather than just biking on their own.
Hedlund said he doesn’t want kids to focus on bad stuff, like how often bike riders are hit and injured by drivers. He wants them to have a memorable experience. The parents may get to develop relationships where they can get help to improve their roads, but it’s nothing like seeing their kids flip out with laughter.
“There’s probably not a safer way to bike in the streets than in a big group of people who are looking out for each other. And doing it together is fun.”
The kids look forward to the snacks and the friendships
Kiran Sreenivasan, an 8-year-old cyclist who rides in the East Bay with his dad on safe roads and trails told The Oaklandside in an interview that he is looking forward to the ride this weekend because there will be snacks at the end. He’s walked around Lake Merritt before with his family when it was raining and remembers seeing a rainbow at the end.
“I wonder what the differences will be [this time],” he said.
Kiran is proud that he’s biked up to 21 miles at a time and even though most of his friends are not into bikes, he still likes to ride because it’s fun and doesn’t take up as much energy as running.
“You need to propel your arms and legs and do it over and over again. I don’t think you know a lot about bikes, but there are gears that you can go on, the eighth gear is the hardest, so when you pedal slow, you go really fast. Instead of walking, you have to go the actual speed to go the speed that you want,” he said.
Kiran and his dad Arvi went to another Kidical Mass event and Arvi said it was noticeable how much safer it is when a lot of cyclists ride together.
“I think parents, especially advocacy-minded parents, can focus a lot on the negatives. The lack of safety and danger and it’s important we do that,” Sreenivasan said. “But Kidical Mass, you can kind of show up and ride and it’s really joyful.”
Carrie Hobbs, a parent from Albany, has two kids, ages 11 and 9, and together they attended one of the kid bike rides last year. She said she tries to minimize possible dangerous family biking by not riding at night or in unsafe areas. But she says she is aware of the risk every time they go out.
“I feel like I don’t wanna raise my kids to just hide. You know, I think biking is such a wonderful thing that I don’t want them to miss out on it because they’re scared,” Hobbs said.
A benefit that comes from riding together in a big group, she said, is that it makes kids want to ride longer since kids with different abilities tend to all be represented. And that experience can snowball into more confidence riding.
Most of the kids that have participated in the rides tend to be of the early grade-school age. Hobbs wonders if Kidical Mass organizers would consider creating a ride for just middle schoolers.
Jimmy Jessup, a transportation planner for a consultancy outside of Oakland, is also a new member of the city’s Bicyclist and Pedestrian Advisory Commission and is the parent of a daughter who attended a previous Kidical Mass. He told us he commutes to work every day and takes his daughter to daycare on a bike. He became accustomed to biking every day after living in the Netherlands for a few years.
Despite the obvious challenges a big city like Oakland has improving hundreds of streets, Jessup said he thinks it is getting safer, slowly. He’s going to probably carry his daughter on his bike for part of the ride because she may not have the stamina to go around the lake. But he knows they’ll have fun and meet a lot of people.
“The last two events she remembers so vividly,” he said. “She has asked me when’s the next time we’re biking with all the kids?”
