Gearing up for protest

Add angry cyclists to the list of people eager to hold a rally in San Francisco.

At 9a.m. Friday, organizers with the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and their supporters will be pedaling to Market and Octavia streets to protest the city's plan to remove a short segment of bike lane at the dangerous intersection. Among those scheduled to make an appearance are supervisors Bevan Dufty, Ross Mirkarimi and Chris Daly.

Their beef is a plan by the city's traffic engineer and his bosses at the Municipal Transportation Agency who want to force bikers and drivers to share a lane in the hopes of reducing the chance of collisions between two-wheelers and cars and trucks. Since the freeway ramps opened in 2005, there have been at least 16 collisions in which bikers were hit by vehicles making illegal right turns onto the Central Freeway from eastbound Market Street. more here