Cities to play in, safer cities and cities where you can also ride a bike. These are some of the requests that led a few hundred children and adults to occupy the avenues of Alvalade last Sunday.
They pedaled with the mothers and fathers, but their request was not only for "more bicycles" - they also asked for safer streets, areas where you can ride at 30 km/h, and "streets to play". In the first Critical Mass of Childrenbetween 300 and 400 people took to the streets this Sunday morning and cycled along Avenida do Brasil and Avenida de Roma, a circular route that started and ended in the Campo Grande area.
The Critical Mass of Children (or KidicalMass) is a global initiative that takes place around the same time in various cities around the world. This year, it's the first time it happens in Portugal in 20 different locations, on two different weekends - this one and the next. Between May 13th and 15th, there was KidicalMass in Alfragide, Cascais, Mafra, Massamá, Lisbon and Barreiro; on the 21st there is in Almada and the following day in Oeiras.
The Critical Masses of Children are being organized by an informal and spontaneous collective of people - mostly mothers and fathers with daughter(o)s - from north to south of Portugal, concerned about the over-reliance on the car for mobility and its impact on children's development. Several national and local associations have decided to support and join the initiative, such as Abimota, which represents the national bicycle industry, ACA-M (Associação de Cidadãos Auto-Mobilizados), Bicicultura, Cicloda, FPCUB, MUBi or Pedalar Sem Idade.
The heavy rain that fell on Sunday morning may have demobilized some people at the last minute. But at the time of the walk - which was scheduled to start at 10:30am next to the Rectory of the University of Lisbon - the weather helped. Several children and adults walked along the Avenida do Brasil, turned into the Avenida Rio de Janeiro, crossed the Avenida da Igreja, and at the Praça de Alvalade turned into the Avenida de Roma. Then they went around the London Square, returned to Avenida de Roma and from here to Campo Grande. The meeting ended with a lunch in the form of picnic and a conviviality in this Garden.
The route was accompanied by the PSP, which partially closed the streets to motorized traffic, since the initiative had the framework of a demonstration. The participants call for safe school surroundings free of air pollution, noise, and motorized traffic, safe routes to schools, child-friendly road traffic laws with a vision of zero pedestrian crashes as a top priority, a 30 km/h limit in towns and neighborhood streets, wide, continuous bike lanes with safe intersections on main roads, and more public space dedicated to active mobility and playtime.
KidicalMass came to Portugal by the hand of Rita Ferreira, who after attending a conference on school mobility in Guimarães last year started to gather people interested in the topic in a WhatsApp group, which today has 82 participants, including fathers, mothers, teachers and professors, from 24 different locations. Organizing this Critical Mass of Children would not have been possible without this step, he tells us. On the weekend of September 24th and 24th another demonstration of this kind is planned, which should count, like this one, with efforts from all over the country.
