A group of six anonymous safe streets advocates installed 25 orange traffic cones, alternately topped with sunflowers, along the notoriously dicey bike lane that runs north on Chrystie Street from the Manhattan Bridge.

The group stashed cones along the route yesterday, and moved them into place in time for rush hour this morning, adding sunflowers to differentiate their political statement from any ongoing construction projects in the neighborhood.

Intended to protect cyclists on the two-block stretch between Grand and Delancey, the pop-up project is the brainchild of a new advocacy group called Transformation Department.

"Our mission is to show how easy it is to transform streets to make them better and safer for everyone," said an anonymous spokesperson for the group, via email. "In less than a half hour, and with about $500 worth of cones and flowers, we were able to achieve something that often gets delayed by Department of Transportation bureaucracy or political fear."

Streetsblog reports that the DOT agreed to study upgrades to the Chrystie Street bike lane this spring, but DOT has yet to share any upgrade plans with local Community Board Three.

"The city isn't moving fast enough to make things safer for cyclists," Transformation Department added. "While we applaud the mayor's Vision Zero program and some of the high-profile cycling projects DOT has undertaken so far this year, there are lots of small things that would add up to a far safer city."

At a press conference late last month, DOT Commissioner Polly Trottenberg announced plans for a mile-long protected bike lane on Sixth Avenue between 14th and 33rd streets, which the department says would bring the city-wide bike lane count up over 1,000 miles total.

By the end of this year, new lanes will be completed at Queens Boulevard (a.k.a. the "Boulevard of Death"), Columbus Avenue, and First Avenue, contributing to more than 12 new miles of protected bike lanes in 2015.

At the same time, recent rehab proposals for Atlantic Avenue, Riverside Drive, and Eighth Street between Sixth Avenue and Broadway are bike-lane free. (At the DOT's press conference for the Sixth Avenue bike lane, some neighbors argued that protected bike lanes are dangerous—that they increase congestion and, by extension, accidents.)

For Transformation Department, the Chrystie Street bike lane—often peppered with illegally-parked cars—exemplifies how the DOT continues to fall short. The group suggests that, like today's flowery cones, plastic posts or Jersey barriers would go far to discourage "casual bike-lane encroachment" on the part of drivers.

"We do not want to impact automobile traffic, but simply want to keep drivers out of spaces where they don't belong," they said. "Lanes that run along a park or a curb are good candidates."

As for the response so far, the group says it's been "overwhelmingly positive."

"While we were in the midst of our installation, a group of guys on racing bikes came up the lane," said one member of the group. "One of them snatched a flower from a cone and held it up smiling as he continued on. That was great to see."