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Guerrilla bike lanes: San Francisco makes illicit infrastructure permanent (2016)

137 points • by zenincognito • today at 3:01 PM • 61 comments • view on HN

Comments

chmod775 • today at 5:31 PM

Students at my university in Berlin need to cross a busy road to travel between campus areas, which meant jaywalking or a long trip to a crossing with traffic lights down the road. A steady stream of students late to their next class sprinting across a six lane road is not great.

At some point students started painting their own crosswalk, which would be removed again and again by authorities, until the city eventually got the hint and installed a permanent crosswalk with a traffic light and a pedestrian island.

Sometimes the way to get something is fixed is by demonstrating the fix.

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darkstar999 • today at 4:56 PM

It reminds me of The Guerrilla Artist Who Fixed L.A.'s Worst Freeway Sign

https://thelandmag.com/richard-ankrom-guerrilla-public-servi...

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nonethewiser • today at 5:18 PM

This is an intractable problem with normal sidewalk/streets. Bikes don't belong on the road with cars and they dont belong on sidewalks with pedestrians and they don't belong in between. This is why both drivers and pedestrians hate bikers.

Ideally we have entirely separate paths for bikes. Of course this is infeasible for most established cities. Doesn't mean they are't inherently a problem in these cases though.

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ortusdux • today at 3:31 PM

The logical escalation of desire paths - https://99percentinvisible.org/article/least-resistance-desi...

stetrain • today at 3:50 PM

Some DOTs have given official support to Tactical Urbanism, with methods for communities to propose and implement small projects themselves on accelerated timelines like bike lanes or pedestrian crosswalks.

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FinnLobsien • today at 5:37 PM

This is similar to The Oval at Ohio State University. Instead of planning walkways across a field of grass, they looked where students actually walked and then paved those routes.

I think this applies to so many things. Centrally planned things rarely work exactly as planned, especially if the people doing the planning are separate from those executing the plan.

Much of the time, it's better to observe what's working in practice (even if in a messy way) and systemize it rather than have a perfect concept that disintegrates upon contact with reality.

Sharlin • today at 4:30 PM

Similar grassroots (heh, quite literally) activism is the idea of guerrilla gardening. Around here, a local nonprofit Villi vyöhyke (Wild Zone) [1] started as a small group of guerrillas but is now advocating, consulting and involved in many major rewilding projects initiated by municipalities and private companies.

[1] https://www.villivyohyke.fi/en/

irjoe • today at 3:39 PM

Title needs (2016) appending

gchamonlive • today at 4:56 PM

Reminds me of https://translate.kagi.com/www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-366...

  The lesson from residents who built a bridge for less than 2% of the budget projected by the city government
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bragr • today at 4:00 PM

There's another side of stuff like this. People living up in the hills above LA near trail heads will put up fake no parking zones in front of their houses. People have gotten real tickets in fake zones.

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jimbokun • today at 4:35 PM

The return of Civil Disobedience as a tool for inspiring social change.

Maybe not as profound or important as the Civil Rights movement. But important nonetheless for public safety. (Assuming the guerrilla bike lanes themselves are safe and well thought out.)

jgbuddy • today at 3:55 PM

if you want it done right, you often have to do it yourself

luqtas • today at 3:28 PM

what an absurd the hipster population taking over spaces of deadly, noisy and polluting vehicles and having the state collaborating with them /j