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.
These sign posts have been right in the middle of the bike lane for months as a hazard to everyone. I've seen some get decimated. It's nice they're warning us pic.twitter.com/VnWshgVAhz
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.
One of SFMTA's hazardous signs, indicating people at work, except nobody's working anywhere near most of the signs. From SaraShort's Twitter.
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."
With fatal crashes on Valencia in San Francisco, Lakeshore and International in Oakland (five in the past week on various streets Oakland), it seems like time to highlight some good news in the midst of the despair