When two cyclists were tragically killed in hit-and-run collisions this past summer, a group of anonymous urban activists known as the San Francisco Transformation Agency erected a set of protected bike lanes using traffic cones. Usually such guerrilla interventions are temporary. They raise awareness but ultimately get taken down by municipal authorities. But when the same group recently (and illegally) installed a set of soft-hit posts alongside Golden Gate Park, the city reacted by making the change official.
Many of their interventions involve orange traffic cones, which do grab visual attention but are also impermanent and easily damaged. Adding more robust traffic delineators (also known as soft or safe hit posts) may have helped persuade the city to retain this particular recent installation along John F. Kennedy Drive.
