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San Francisco authorities respond to guerrilla bike lanes... by making them permanentFolsom Street bike lane (SFMTrA via Twitter).jpg

San Francisco authorities respond to guerrilla bike lanes... by making them permanent

City is leaving campaigners’ temporary soft-hit posts in certain places until it can install permanent ones
by Alex Bowden
Fri, Nov 18, 2016 17:36
2

Earlier this year we reported on the San Francisco Transformation Agency (SFMTrA), a group of cyclists who have been creating mock-protected bike lines with cones as a means of pleading for better infrastructure. As often as not, this kind of campaigning appears to have little impact, but the city has reacted to several of SFMTrA’s recent interventions by making them permanent.

Folsom Street has a bike lane that SFMTrA has returned to multiple times.

At first they added cones.

But the group subsequently graduated to soft-hit posts, making these changes.

Shortly afterwards, the city took them down. But not for long. To many people’s surprise, they made the posts permanent.

Speaking about another SFMTrA intervention on John F Kennedy drive, Paul Rose from the city’s official agency, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), told sfist.com:

"Previously, we have not placed safe hit posts at this location because the lane wasn’t large enough for the street sweeper to go through without destroying the safe hit posts. The city is now moving towards smaller street sweepers, which will allow us to install more posts across the city, including this location on JFK. At this specific location, we plan to leave the SFMTrA posts in place until we can install our own."

San Francisco
traffic cones
bike lanes
guerilla bike lanes
SFMTrA
Alex Bowden

Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.

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2 comments

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emishi55 | 8 years ago
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This may well need to be the way forward in the UK.

With things having stalled badly in London, and growing resentment at back-tracking by Sadiq Khan (perhaps we should have realised what was at stake with his suggestion before the election that cycle lanes should be "made narrower"!!).

Campaigners don't have another eight years (or even three and a half) to educate another mayor as to the monstrously obvious and obscenely essential need for cycling provision (now even more necessary than ever).

It's taken nearly half a year just to keep the Tavistock scheme - which as a trial demonstrated clearly the huge desire for humans choosing to cycle to on safe, simple and efficient routes that keep vehicular diehards at bay.

We cannot afford this kind of time and energy for every bit of few hundred metres of provision. How many years would it take to get the network in place that would with the right will, take a few months?

A quick and easy option to ensure that bits of routes join up, is to close side streets to through-traffic, to create clean-air, safe corridors for cycling. These would connect from one area of London (or Birmingham or Southhampton) to another.

If TfL (or TfM) aren't going to start doing it, then someone needs to show them what it would look like. Keep the motors on the main roads. A zero-tolerance to rat-running (access for visitors/ residents etc only - just not through traffic.

Those currently 'too afraid' to cycle aren't registering their vote after all; nor their comments or their opinion about the curtailment of their freedom and right to choose to be able to cycle or walk in safety.

These are the people for whom action needs to be taken.  

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Grahamd replied to emishi55 | 8 years ago
1 like
emishi55 wrote:

This may well need to be the way forward in the UK.

I am sure somebody has already placed cones along miles and miles of motorway in readiness for just this sort of thing, we just need to add signs....

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