Irvine Police Put Bicyclists in Their Place : Safety: Officers, responding to motorists’ complaints, give cyclists the rules of the road. Tickets will be issued next week.

Officer Charles Baxter slowly drove up to a pack of about 55 bicyclists standing together along Main Street on Saturday morning, waiting four and five abreast for the red light to change at Jamboree Road.

“See? They’ve got the whole right lane blocked,” Baxter said, pointing out the 100-foot-long stretch of cyclists. “There’s no justification for that.”

When the light changed, Baxter gunned his patrol car ahead of the group and pulled over to block the entire pack.

Baxter’s stop, his fifth and final of the morning, was part of the Police Department’s first day of a crackdown on cyclists flouting traffic laws. This weekend’s enforcement effort, which continues today, will be followed in future weekends by four traffic officers following orders to issue tickets for just about every bicycle violation they see.

The crackdown follows an increasing number of calls to the city from motorists complaining that large groups of bicyclists block traffic lanes and ride dangerously close to the cars whizzing past, Lt. Al Muir said last week. The ticket-writing campaign will continue on weekends for at least a month and then will be evaluated for its effectiveness, Muir said.

On Saturday, as Baxter halted each group of cyclists--most of them clad in black riding shorts and neon-colored jerseys--he gave each a brief speech about the problem the city is having with them and warned of the flurry of citations that will be given to violators next weekend. “Next weekend, the hammer is going to fall,” he told one pair of bicyclists. “Just a little word to the wise . . . “

Most of the cyclists stopped early Saturday morning greeted Baxter’s speech with understanding--although not in total agreement with the enforcement plan.

“Not to defend ourselves, but it’s early in the morning,” said Tony Boyd, 38, who was on his way to Laguna Beach with Marc Jensen, 36. The pair were pulled over on Alton Parkway for riding side-by-side, which the law says should be done only for passing. “There’s no cars, so we’re riding tandem. But it’s not sympathetic to the motorists,” Boyd said.

“Motorists can see us better if we ride double,” contended Mark Prather, 30, a computer programmer from Bellflower who was riding through Irvine en route to San Diego with five colleagues from work. When he rides single-file, Prather said, motorists seem to drive inches from the bicycle lane. But when cyclists ride in tandem, he said, drivers give them wider berth.

The final pack of bicyclists had some harsher comments about the enforcement effort.

“They’re trying to stop bicycling in Southern California,” one rider shouted just before Baxter began his short roadside lecture. “We’ve got the same right of way as vehicles,” another shouted.

The group of cyclists had begun their ride to Laguna Beach, less than a mile away, at 8:30 a.m.

One of the riders, Rick Kaupp, 37, of Irvine, complained that his is the only city to enforce traffic laws so strictly. In most cities the riders pass through, police either ignore cyclists who take up traffic lanes or sometimes even try to clear traffic out of the way for them, Kaupp said.

“Irvine police are the only guys to ever stop us,” Kaupp said. “The only ones, for years and years. We’ve had to go to other areas to start our ride because they constantly harass us.”

The cycling group sometimes has as many as 100 riders together, making it impossible to remain in the bike lane unless the group is strung back for 1 or 2 miles, he said. The group often takes up an entire traffic lane or more on the beginning leg of the trip, but thins out as the trip progresses, he said.

But taking up traffic lanes wasn’t the group’s only violation, said Officer Dale Lawrence, the second patrolman on Saturday’s warning campaign. He watched as about 25 members of the group pedaled through the red light at Jamboree, trying to keep up with the leaders. That violation was captured on videotape by Russ Sindt, a reserve officer, who recorded the morning’s crackdown for possible use in a bicycle safety film.

The purpose of the crackdown isn’t to harass the bicyclists, Baxter said, but merely to stop dangerous and flagrant violations of the law.