When city officials insist there’s no room for bike lanes, how can you change their minds? For cycling activists in Riga, the answer was to do it themselves.
Instead of waiting around for others to draw bike lanes, some people just painted the lanes on their, complete with signs, on the roads where they were most needed.
It is unclear why Latvian politicians have such strong opinions against this type of transportation in Riga, but these activists proved a point that should be taken into consideration by the authorities.
The cycle lanes installed on Brīvības Iela proved popular with bike riders, who started using them straight away, but less so with the city’s authorities, who wasted no time in having them painted over.
The rumor has it, that the lines were executed so well that a few locals took time to write the city’s mayor to compliment him on the job well done, when in fact he had zero to do with them.
