<story><title>Guerrilla Bike Lanes: San Francisco Makes Illicit Infrastructure Permanent</title><url>http://99percentinvisible.org/article/guerrilla-bike-lanes-san-francisco-makes-illicit-infrastructure-permanent/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>brandur</author><text>I love 99% Invisible, but in my opinion this piece is far too generous to the actual SFMTA, who occasionally respond to the SFMTrA&amp;#x27;s work reasonably (as covered in the article), but who usually just strip it wholesale, to the detriment of the safety of thousands of pedestrians and cyclists. For example, these markers on Folsom St helped improve safety considerably and were constructed in an incredibly professional way, but are now gone completely [1].&lt;p&gt;The group itself puts it best here [2]:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;The SFMTA is glacially slow to install pedestrian and bicyclist safety infrastructure, yet was able to remove our simple safety improvements within a week,&amp;quot; the group said in a statement sent to SFist. &amp;quot;We call on SFMTA to immediately replace these pedestrian safety improvements with protection at or above the level installed by SFMTrA.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Everyone who walks or bikes in SF can atest to the truth of this statement firsthand. Progress _is_ being made, but it&amp;#x27;s frustratingly slow.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.sfmtra.org&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;26&amp;#x2F;the-sfmta-removed-safety-infrastructure-on-folsom-st-and-they-need-an-email-from-you&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.sfmtra.org&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;26&amp;#x2F;the-sfmta-removed-safe...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;sfist.com&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;19&amp;#x2F;sfmta_says_street_safety_improvemen.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;sfist.com&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;19&amp;#x2F;sfmta_says_street_safety_improve...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Guerrilla Bike Lanes: San Francisco Makes Illicit Infrastructure Permanent</title><url>http://99percentinvisible.org/article/guerrilla-bike-lanes-san-francisco-makes-illicit-infrastructure-permanent/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>TulliusCicero</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m all for this kind of citizen action. They&amp;#x27;re volunteering their own time to improve public safety. Kind of like how neighborhood watch groups can supplement police, these volunteers are supplementing departments of transportation. Of course it&amp;#x27;d be even better if they could do it without breaking the law, but I doubt there are rules in place to permit citizens to do their own DIY infrastructure improvements.&lt;p&gt;Also, unlike what some commenters think, this doesn&amp;#x27;t really go against democracy. The cities where these groups work have embraced Vision Zero at least on paper, so they&amp;#x27;re generally for these sorts of improvements. Government just tends to move slowly, and they often have to deal with NIMBY groups that are more concerned with keeping as many parking spaces as possible in their neighborhood than public safety.</text></comment>