Robert Hurst writes about “super sharrows” on this Industrialized Cyclist blog this week:
If these sharrows are good, wouldn’t larger sharrows be better? I don’t know, I say let’s try it. The standard sharrow size leaves something to be desired. They could easily be, say, twice as large and still be reasonably sized. Sharrow standards have not yet been fully finalized, so there is still time to super-size them. A large enough marking will have the added benefits of making wear and faulty placement less critical problems, perhaps non-issues. Let’s try extra large Super Sharrows and see if they can improve streets as much as I imagine they could.
Take another look at this graphic by Keri Caffrey of Commute Orlando. It shows the proper placement of sharrows according to a bicyclist who knows a little something about riding in traffic.
Now imagine those markings twice as large.
Sharrows are getting some attention in Springfield. It’s not going to be good enough just to let the city put any ol’ marking in any ol’ position. Sharrows need to indicate that bicyclists have a right to the lane and be big enough to get the point across.
Comments 3
Pretty off topic but I was riding on traficway recently and the bike lanes were covered in gravel and other road debris making it un-ridable for me, my bike has skinny tires. Could use some street sweeper love ever now and then
Posted 17 Jun 2009 at 3:42 pm ¶James… Yep. That’s one of the problems with bike lanes. Cars sweep the road.
Posted 17 Jun 2009 at 7:04 pm ¶Yes, street sweepers are necessary to clean bike lanes. And proper snow clearing and gritting in winter. Toronto is getting new and improved street sweepers. From the official City website at:
http://www.toronto.ca/transportation/environment/index.htm#sweepers
According to recent studies, a major source of fine particulate matter in our air comes from fine road dust. The source of this fine road dust comes mainly from the wearing down of asphalt, rubber tires, brake discs and brake pads of motor vehicles. The City’s current fleet of street sweepers have only limited ability to remove fine road dust and are even more limited in their ability to contain it from dispersing into the air.
That’s where the new sweepers come in. They are capable of removing and containing over 90 per cent of the fine road dust from road surfaces. Removing this road dust will lead to a substantial improvement in the city’s air quality. These new machines will also be able to operate year round and help Transportation Services to avoid the winter build up of debris and fine particulate matter and the need for a spring cleaning catch-up
Posted 17 Jun 2009 at 8:42 pm ¶