Self-help for bicyclists and other civic activists

Rough!
Originally uploaded by danonbike

(Flickr image from danonbike. Caption: The railroad crossing on Lindberg Road is rough, and someone was nice enough to warn us.)

1. The Yehuda Moon and the Kickstand Cyclery comic strip that Ken has alerted us to, had a thread about how Yehuda one night went out and painted bike lanes.

2. This has happened in places like Toronto too. See "Bike activists going guerrilla" from the Toronto Star. (And in Indiana, a man painted pedestrian crosswalks. See "Streetsblog » Refused by His City, Man Jailed for Painting a Crosswalk" from Streetsblog.)

3. And now in New York City, although not for bicycle lanes, but providing additional "information" in bike lanes about illegal parking and fines. See "Bike Lanes, Intended for Safety, Become Traffic Battlegrounds" from the NYT City Weekly, compliments of Christopher.

4. What do you think of this kind of "self-help?"

I am working on a project that is self-help, a "guerrilla wayfinding and history" sign, modeled after the Heritage Trail signs, using the same design style and height and width.

And I have been thinking at the very least that bicycle lane markers in DC ought to have a block of color around the painted-on-the-street sign, in order to stand out.... The Toronto people painted their symbols in red. But somewhere I saw an official painted symbol in colors.