Anna Fox: Why are you doing this?
Daniel Erpelding: I have always loved cycling, but it was during my time as a student in Aachen that I realised that the bicycle is the most useful vehicle when you live and work in a city. Even after my father bought me a car, I found it quite useless, since there were too few opportunities for parking. Back in Luxembourg, I had the same problem: I had a car, but my first employer had no reliable parking space, so I switched to using a combination of car, train and my bicycle.
After the return to my home country, I noticed that riding a bike in Luxembourg was much more difficult than in Aachen. German cities had lousy bike paths mostly integrated in walkways, nowadays considered as a bad solution, but at least they existed. Luxembourg only had touristic ‘pistes cyclables’ in some regions in the countryside but not where they were needed: in the cities! And I noticed that even the situation on the roads had worsened since I was a kid, because the number of cars had significantly increased and they were much more aggressive compared to the 80s. So, as soon as I felt settled down in the job, I wanted to improve the situation of cyclists.
Many people in Luxembourg have forgotten that the bicycle is an everyday means of transport. They think cars are for driving and bikes are just for sports. But this became only true in the late 1970s. My grandparents, for example, never had a car. A very narrow minority never forgot about the bike, and in the last 30 years, it was rediscovered, thanks to technical progress, providing better bikes.
When did Critical Mass start in Luxembourg?
That is a good question, it was long before I joined the movement in 2018. Gary Diderich was the founder of the Luxembourg chapter, and they started with some actions in the early 2000s.
Who is behind Critical Mass?
Well, Critical Mass is a movement, not a club, party or syndicate, so there is no structure. There is a core of activists, who take part in the rides more or less regularly. Most who take part in the rides do not live in Luxembourg City, but they work here! We are using the bicycle to [commute to] our offices. That is why, our rides, we call “critical masses”, are held during the week, in the evening hours, and not on Saturday or Sunday when we are off work.
What are the main objectives of Critical Mass in Luxembourg?
We want to take back the streets! We want the bike to be seen as something normal on the streets, not an exception hindering cars.
Make cyclists visible in traffic. There will be many motorists who will not like the idea that they have to respect us and take care of cyclists. But I’m very confident that we will find a huge majority of car drivers who will see that the person on the bike could be their neighbour, their friend, or their child.
We want to be able to ride our bicycles safely. Most bicycle crashes, especially those in which cyclists get severely wounded, are with motorised vehicles, especially cars. Three-quarters of these crashes are due to the inattention of car drivers. So we want something to happen to change this. We want either better infrastructure to prevent errors made by any car driver or cyclist leading to crashes, or other measures, such as the lowering of speed limits.
How can people support the movement/get involved?
Join us in the ride. Take part in the discussions, perhaps on Facebook. Be prepared for actions.
Who else would you support as biking activists in Luxembourg?
Anyone, including the LVI, today called ProVelo. For the moment, we support especially Siggy the Cyclist, a group of anonymous cyclists, who use parts of the Critical Mass concept. Vélorution in Esch. Besides Luxembourg, we have good relations with Critical Mass in Trier.