… on a recent Friday evening, a trio of safe streets activists wearing brightly colored safety vests arrived on their bicycles with a trailer of orange cones. They spruced up the intersection with an eye toward making it friendlier for those on foot: Cones were placed to slow drivers making the turn and to shorten crossing distances for pedestrians.“There’s a psychological effect of the orange cone on the automobile driver, and we wanted to bring that to the street,” said one of the activists, who wants to remain anonymous because the installation isn’t legal. “We want the city to have more urgency protecting bikers and pedestrians in San Francisco.”
The activists say they’re inspired by similar guerrilla actions in Seattle, Portland and New York, and that they’ve been spurred to action by the high number of deaths and injuries on San Francisco streets.
I’m not a fan of guerilla action. That being said, there is no reason why SF couldn’t have implemented a fix like this. It is low cost and should increase safety. Sometimes, it takes activists to show cities how simple fixes can resolve safety issues.
On a local note, it will be interesting to see if the new cycle track on Beattie will increase the safety for cyclists on Dunsmuir due to the increased turn radius required when turning right off of Dunsmuir. I saw far too many near misses with the previous configuration.