Car Less Brit

“The infamous “manif spaciale” developed by the Montreal group Le Monde a Bicyclette (the world by bicycle) is simply a group of cyclists riding around with giant “space frames” attached to their bikes, making them take up the same amount of space as a car.

First there’s the humour of it - a bicycle taking up so much space is kind of ridiculous. And that is precisely the point: why take up so much space to move one person around? How wasteful!

And you will experience the motorists finally giving you wide berth, not squeezing right up next to you, forcing you into a gutter! You can pedal along at your own leisurely pace, not worried about flying-open car doors, having to ride right next to the curb, or speeding cars coming close to you since car drivers will be afraid of marring their shiny paint jobs against your ‘bike frame’.

The frames are cheap to make, and can be transported in pieces to the demo site, and then assembled there. The frames can be made more colourful with balloons, clever “licence plates” like I Kill or Carmageddon and the like.

Even with a small group of people this demo feels great. The action is very “media-genic”, so that with only ten cyclists the event looks substantial. If you have a megaphone you can ride along and chant slogans, or just tell passers-by, who are usually quite curious about the event, what’s going on. Of course, if you have a small leaflet to hand out, that improves the event even more.

From its creation in April 1975, Le Monde a Bicyclette performed “cyclodramas” (street theatre) attempting in this way to change people’s perceptions of the bicycle and car in the city.

The immense space that each car uses - to transport an average of 1.3 people every working day - has led to the mass destruction of buildings, countryside, and green spaces into parking lots and roads throughout North American cities.

To graphically illustrate the huge waste of space of the car and the negligible space taken up by the bicycle, we used wood frames to convert our bicycles into the approximate size of cars and cycled in unison down the main street of Montreal.

frame making instructions open to adaptation!

Drill a hole in a 3x2 metre-long piece of wood. Do this four times. Make sure the wooden narrow planks are a little longer than the bicycle itself. Insert a long cord or wire into the four holes. Grasp the cord or wire with the same hands as the handlebar and brakes. Assemble in a park near downtown and practice riding together with these attachments. It is best to peddle together on a main street downtown as turning is tricky with these attachments and best avoided.”

—based on article written by Tooker Gomberg and Bob Silverman
Carbusters Magazine