They weren't up for long, but Thursday afternoon SFMTA's construction signs in the middle of Valencia's center-running bike lane had some honest messaging. That was courtesy of a guerrilla installation that covered the construction signs with some stark things to say about SFMTA director Jeffrey Tumlin's life-and-death "experiment" on humans who ride bikes.
Apparently, a cyclist-advocate who lives in the area was fed up with the danger and dishonesty of the center-running installation and decided to print out some orange signs to cover SFMTA's generic "person at work" symbols. The signs themselves, of course, present yet another hazard, by greatly reducing the limited space cyclists have to maneuver.
Meanwhile, SFGate had another story questioning whether the new bike lanes are making (or will ever make) the street safer. It quoted an SFMTA official repeating the lie that the lanes aren't completed (for all intents and purposes, they are) which is the flimsy justification for leaving these signs in the ground.
On the other hand, claiming the lanes aren't completed also allows more people to get hurt without SFMTA being forced to count the injuries caused by the experimental bike lane.
Alas, the honest signs were all removed a couple of hours after they went in, due to a bit of bad luck on the part of the guerrilla installer. "Some SFMTA bureaucrats were having lunch at Souvla, around noon, and saw me do it," explained the person who made the signs. Those SFMTA workers tore down the signs. "Kinda unlucky."
