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.
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."
"There were blocks that felt very safe and very secure," he said. "But then you're immediately – voom! – disgorged into three lanes of moving traffic with no protection."
What happened in West Portal was entirely predictable and preventable. The city must now close Ulloa to through traffic and make sure it can never happen again