>>884021It's not a waste because most people drive. Places that have Critical Mass events are places that are gentrifying and have ped traffic. It's a waste of time because the type of people that show up to a CM event treat it as an excuse to go around breaking shit. There's plenty of people that take buses or carpools to work that can be convinced to ride a bike. But, if you smash windows, taillights, or just straight up start attacking and mugging people they're not going to want to deal with the association. More importantly, regular drivers, businessowners and residents see it and become fearful of riders and have a justification for stalling bike lane (or similar) construction.
The fact of the matter is that CM's whole thing is to shut down car roads. That's not safe to do in the US when many drivers don't expect pedestrians and everyone knows it so smart people don't go to CM things here. And the whole point of CM, to "raise awareness" of bikes completely backfires as it causes people to hate bikes and bike riders and become hostile to them. Things like bike licenses are probably going to become a thing within our lifetimes because of CM events.
