'Guerrilla Bike Lanes' Prove a Reluctant City Wrong

When city officials insist there’s no room for bike lanes, how can you change their minds? For cycling activists in Latvia’s capital, the answer was to do it themselves.

Riga’s main drag, Brīvības Iela, is the latest entry in the guerrilla bike lane chronicles. For years, the city has been promising to add dedicated lanes on both sides of this street. It hasn’t followed, through, at least in part because of politicians’ insistence that they just won’t fit. But Friday, Riga’s residents woke up to see that that’s just not true. Generously sized lanes were secretly installed overnight by activists who were tired of waiting for action, and who were keen to show that it could, in fact, be done.