Traffic safety activist group SF Transformation (SFMTrA) had a busy evening last night, installing unauthorized soft-hit posts to separate cyclists and pedestrians from cars on four more turn lanes around the city.
The new posts went up on Crossover Drive near Transverse in Golden Gate Park, at Geary and Leavenworth on the Tenderloin border, on the Wiggle turn from Scott to Fell, and on Folsom Street near 13th Street in SoMa.
The group is hoping to capitalize on its partial recognition by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency last week, when its unofficial installation of posts on Kezar Drive in Golden Gate Park was accepted ex post facto by the agency.
Citing the recent purchase of small new street-sweeping vehicles that can clean without damaging bicycle separation posts, the SFMTA explained that it had been planning to add its own posts anyway.
We've been active tonight.
— SF Transformation (@SFMTrA) October 12, 2016
Take photos of any new installations you see tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/wrARvjSUM2
A member of the so-called "safety vigilante" group gave us some more color on last night's effort:
I particularly want to call attention to [this image of] Crossover Drive at Transverse in Golden Gate Park.
This is an absurdly dangerous pedestrian crossing in our city's largest park. Have you ever crossed here and seen how fast cars move? The road is leftover from a 1950s-era car-first street design.
If you use street view, you can see that the SFMTA did some paint treatment to claim back some of the road space for pedestrians — but paint doesn't work. We have to redesign our roads to be more narrow. This is the engineering solution to slowing cars and making walking and biking more safe, which is done by the best cities around the world. Poorly designed car-first roads such as this are the direct cause of high car speeds through a space where people are meant to walk, bike & play, and are indirectly responsible for the death of Heather Miller.
This install narrows the road to the SFMTA paint lines, which will reduce car speed, and also brings more driver awareness to the fact that this is a pedestrian crossing.
This is SFMTrA's second semi-permanent install in Golden Gate Park, and notable for being our first pedestrian safety install in the park.
The group also successfully completed a fundraising effort to add new posts to the downtown bike lane at Market & Gough, so look for new posts there sometime soon, too.