In the wake of the Oct. 5 death of cyclist Bernard “Joe” Lavins in Porter Square, some Cambridge residents want to take bike safety into their own hands.

A group of Cambridge cyclists plan to privately fund and install a series of bike posts separating bike lanes from other traffic in Porter Square, according to a page on the fundraising website gofundme.

Cambridge resident Matt Cloyd created the gofundme page. He wrote the group’s goal is to raise $650 to install 15 reflective posts along “carefully chosen segments” of bike lanes in Porter Square. In four days the page has raised $840.

“We are a small coalition of bikers, not affiliated with any bike advocacy organization -- and we're done with bike fatalities,” reads the gofundme page. “We will install the delineators politely -- securely, but in a way that protects the road surface if removed.”

The gofundme page cites a similar situation in San Francisco last month, where a group of bike safety activists installed a series of bike posts along a bike lane on a heavily trafficked road. A San Francisco city official said the privately-installed posts would stay until the city could install its own.

City officials in Cambridge feel differently.

“We’re not conceptually against this, it’s just a tough location to make it work,” said Joe Barr, director of traffic parking and transportation for the city of Cambridge. “In the end it would result in a bike lane that’s less functional.”

Barr cited a number of reasons why flex bike posts wouldn’t work along the bike lane in Porter Square. For starters, he said the lane is not wide enough. Barr said according to MassDOT, the minimum width to place posts would be on a five-foot wide lane with a two-foot buffer, which the lanes in Porter Square don’t have. He also said unlike the location in San Francisco, bike posts here would cause issues with snow plowing in the winter.

“If they go ahead and put them in they would leave us without too many choices but to take them out,” he said.

Lavins was the second cyclist fatality this year in Cambridge, following the June 23 death of Amanda Phillips, 27, of Cambridge. Phillips was riding her bike in Inman Square and was struck by an open door of a Jeep as the driver was getting out. She was pushed into the travel lane where she collided with a moving dump truck.

A 47-year-old cyclist sustained non-life-threatening injuries after crashing with a tow truck in Kendall Square on Oct. 3 and in February, a 63-year-old Cambridge psychotherapist was struck and killed crossing the street in Porter Square. Marcie Mitler, who had two sons, died from injuries sustained after being struck by a car at the intersection of Somerville Avenue and White Street.

The Cambridge City Council moved forward on a number of bike safety initiatives at its Oct. 17 meeting, including installation of flex-post separated bike lanes, adding a bike/bus lane to Pearl Street, adopting a pilot program of protected bike lanes on Cambridge Street and Broadway, separated bike facilities on Massachusetts Avenue, protected bike lanes on Huron Avenue, further restriction of truck routes and a study to determine what other measures should be taken.

Barr said the city is anxious to move forward as quickly as possible on both short-term and long-term strategies to improve bike safety in Porter Square and across the city. He also said the city would be open to working with the group of cyclists.

“We’d be happy to talk to them to see if there is a location where we could support this,” he said.