For some unexplained reason, Critical Mass will from time to time come to a complete halt in an intersection, and the ride will just stand around for a while in the street, blocking cars, busses, pedestrians — really doing nothing but taking the space because we can. Of all the bad tactics we’ve seen over the years, this must be the stupidest. What is the point of this tactic? No one knows. It just happens!

If you’d like a taste of how it feels to be on the other side of this sort of tactic, here’s a video made by a bus rider while he and the other passengers wait for Critical Mass to get off it’s ass and move. (It was posted in the comments to Chris’s recent streetsblog piece.)

Boring, isn’t it?

It’s true that Critical Mass causes delays for motorists and busses and other forms of transportation. But the idea behind Critical Mass is not to delay people for no reason, out of some misguided need to assert our power. The point is that we’re moving, like any other kind of traffic, using public streets to get around like everyone else — except we’re doing it together. As the slogan we’ve been using for years goes, “We’re not blocking traffic, we ARE traffic!”

Well, anyone delayed by in this manner, we’re sorry for the hassle. The sad truth is we have folks on Critical Mass who haven’t thought that hard about the issues.