The plungers were back.
A week after a mystery person or group lined the 30th Street bike lane with 200 plungers to draw attention to safety concerns for cyclists, the ad hoc bollards again appeared on a Boulder road, this time on the street where a girl was hit by a vehicle on Wednesday.
Boulder resident Henry Koren said about eight to 20 painted plungers were used to create a sort of crosswalk on Lehigh Street Thursday morning, though city crews were already in the process of removing them when he biked past them.
“Whoever is doing this is a hero to a lot of people here, I think,” Koren said. “Captain Plunger! I was definitely cheering when I saw it.”
#captianplunger strikes again! A child got hit by a car here 24 hours ago. #VisionZero pic.twitter.com/Tkz8CTDyeO
— Henry Koren (@HKoren) September 5, 2019
As with the plungers on 30th Street, Boulder crews quickly removed the plungers on Lehigh Street as well.
“Anything placed in the right of way illegally poses a hazard to pedestrians, cyclists and motorists,” Boulder spokeswoman Meghan Wilson said.
Lehigh Street was the scene of an injury crash on Wednesday, when a motorist driving south on Lehigh hit a girl biking through a crosswalk near Darley Street.
Police said the girl was taken to Boulder Community Health’s Foothills Hospital with non life-threatening injuries, while the driver of the vehicle, David Ciarlo, 51, was ticketed with failure to yield to a pedestrian.
Koren said he bikes with his kids in that area, and seeing the news of another young girl being struck in that intersection hit close to home.
“The big problem is the speed that people go on Lehigh,” Koren said. “It’s supposed to be 25 (mph), but I routinely see people doing 40 (mph) on that street.”
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