SFMTA ripped out an activist-built safety treatment consisting of yellow plastic posts at 4th and Channel late this week and put in their own posts. The installations were done in response to a driver running down and killing a two-year-old child late last month.
"SFMTA replaced our guerrilla install with a separated bike lane," wrote Safe Street Rebel, the shadowy vigilante safety group that put in the yellow posts, in an email sent to Streetsblog on Thursday. "This follows a similar pattern of the city being shamed into action by the community after a similar install led to them removing one of two right turn lanes at 4th and King after a similar tragedy. Direct action gets the goods."
The SFMTA installation was done a couple of weeks after crews repainted the fading crosswalks at the intersection. Both were done as part of SFMTA's quick-response strategy after the deadly crash.
"Teams are currently evaluating additional infrastructure that can be implemented," wrote Parisa Safarzadeh, Director of Communications for SFMTA, in an email to Streetsblog.
Certainly, it's better for the city to install replacement posts (and more of them) than just to rip out the guerrilla installation and leave nothing, which is often the response. The bigger question is why does SFMTA refuse to use real, concrete protection. The plastic posts—sometimes derided as "vertical paint"—don't physically stop errant motorists from entering bicycle or pedestrian space. Other cities are shifting to concrete barriers to protected cyclists and pedestrians.
So why can't the city truly upgrade the guerrilla posts and put in temporary concrete barriers, like the ones in the image above at a construction site in Oakland? After all, they install temporary concrete barriers for the Dreamforce convention every year and other events and then remove them.
Safarzadeh said there is "a cost associated, which adds to time. The quickest option is plastic, in the interim while this undergoes evaluation and review." SFMTA did not provide cost figures comparing plastic to concrete by press time.
Of course, as Streetsblog readers are aware, that "evaluation and review" can take years. In the meantime, people are dying on city streets while known solutions sit unused.
There will be a public safety meeting about the tragedy and the city's response to it with Supervisor Dorsey and SFMTA officials on Thursday, April 9 at 6 p.m. at 1251 3rd Street. See flyer below.
