We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12953625 and marked it off-topic.

I mean, in the primary example given, the bike lane already existed, they just upgraded it.

Personally I'd say it's more of a reaction to the often glacial pace of government action. Cities like SF, Seattle, and NYC have embraced Vision Zero's safety-oriented goals in theory, but are moving very slowly indeed to meet them.

These groups are actually helping the city meet their own self-imposed targets. How does that translate to "fuck democracy"? More like "fuck overly bureaucratic processes" if anything.

To be clear, in all the projects that I've seen by the SFMTrA, the crosswalks or bikelanes already existed—both physically and legally—but their usability was/is extremely compromised due to fundamentally lacking infrastructure and very minimal enforcement of moving violations in San Francisco.

Like Tullius mentions, these are improvements that should have been installed by the government (and may be eventually), but which aren't due to incredibly untimely bureaucratic processes.

I've seen the SFMTA response to these changes and I have a lot of sympathy for them going in and removing them. There are a ton of laws and regulations around how road markings, etc can be changed and the SFMTA has no option other than to follow those laws.

Maybe the guerrilla group should try and tackle some of the regulations and laws rather than point the finger at the SFMTA?

I really don't see how you get the improvement of lacking bureaucracy as an affront to democracy.

Civil disobedience is an important part of democracy

s/democracy/bureaucracy/

Exactly, if that kind of stuff is OK, then I'd like to make a public call to improve Cesar Chavez St for cars, as the last 'improvement' SFMTA did over there actually transformed the street in a parking lot! :)