A “sharrow” is a shared lane marker painted on the street. Sharrows should not create de facto bicycle lanes, i.e. be painted on the road in such a way that it shunts bicyclists to side of the road in the manner of a bicycle lane.
Dan Gutierrez has posted some interesting photos on Facebook that show what’s happening in California:
Cities in southern California are starting to place Sharrow symbols on roadways. Unfortunately cities are not always placing them in the best lateral position or painting them frequently enough for them to be effective notices to motorists and cyclists. Part of the problem is that the federal and state standards don’t give effective lateral placement guidance with a too close to the curb minimum of 11′ [see the Door Zone Bike Lane and Sharrow Clearance album showing the 13' recommended minimum for sharrows] though the lateral placement guidance requiring them at intersections and every 250 feet mid-block is reasonable, however many cities are not heeding this guidance.
For example:
I mention this because sharrows are part of the new plan for the Springfield Bicycle Route System with the CIP renewal. Along with the new route signs (that create numbered bicycle highways), our system will become, I believe, a model for other communities to follow. We’re making great strides, and I am proud to play a small role in this progress as part of the STAR Team of Ozark Greenways.
But we will be a model for others only if we get the sharrow placement right. And “right” doesn’t necessarily mean by minimum state or federal standards. By “right” I mean better than minimum so that the true meaning of a sharrow — a shared lane indicator — is communicated clearly to all road users.
For advocacy information regarding street engineering, I recommend Advocacy How To: Road Design Review by Cyclelicious. Also see this guide for reviewing road design and bicycle accommodation.
I’ll be following this issue closely and including more resources (and comments/criticism of those resources) as we move forward.
Comments 6
Sharrow placement only matters if the sharrow actually has some legal effect AND if both motorists and cyclists have some idea of what the intent is. I interviewed a lot of people in Seattle about sharrows when I was up there last spring and NONE of them had any notion that the chevrons were intended to imply something about lane position. I think Dan will confirm that, regardless of where the things he saw were placed, virtually nobody rode over the point of the chevron, but rather rode far right, usually in the nearest door zone. I certainly never saw anybody use the point as a guide. And I was particularly watching how sharrows might affect traffic.
An educated cyclist will ride where it is safe regardless of where a sharrow is painted. A person riding a bike by trial and error will ride where they think is safe regardless of where a sharrow is painted. Unlike door zone bike lanes, no law attempts to compel me to ride in an unsafe location when poorly located sharrows are present.
If you really want to know what “Joe Cyclist” thinks about sharrows, go to the website link of this comment (Bikeskirt is the blog) and read what the poster AND commenter have to say about sharrows.
Posted 03 Aug 2010 at 6:31 pm ¶These are actually an enormous improvement over the sharrows I saw in Baltimore in May. Most of the sharrows had the right hand edge of the sharrow within 2″ or so of the parked cars. The good ones were on streets with no parking (the right edge of the sharrow lined up with the storm drains; yes, the grates were parallel to traffic).
The bad sharrows were approximately centered in the left tire track of the parked cars. (Yes, half the sharrow was under a parked car).
Posted 03 Aug 2010 at 9:30 pm ¶The bike lanes in Maryland in general and Baltimore in particular are mandatory. Since the bike lanes were laid out as well as the sharrows (mostly in door zones), I assume the city had to make them mandatory to make bicyclists use them more than once.
Posted 03 Aug 2010 at 9:35 pm ¶Steve… Agreed re: bicyclists are likely to ride where they want to regardless of sharrow placement. I’ve always assumed the most important potential effect of sharrows is a signal to road users about who gets to be in the road. In that sense, I think placement is important. But I am also interested in checking out any information that demonstrates the point of the chevron is not persuasive.
Angelo… Mandatory bicycle lanes that put bicyclists in danger are immoral, IMO — bad news for Baltimore.
Posted 03 Aug 2010 at 11:05 pm ¶Sharrows are great for people who know what they are. I live around the block from a Bike St. Louis route, and it took me months to learn that the unfamiliar arrow on the street (see website link for a photo) wasn’t just a new form of graffiti. Seriously. I had no idea it was an official bike route designator. I thought the city was probably peeved that someone had been painting up the street. A bike lane seems fairly self-explanatory, it obviously goes from here to there, but a sharrow without context is just mysterious to the uninitiated. No, I don’t think all sharrows should be replaced with stripes, but I do think that if sharrows are intended to encourage new cyclists to take to the streets it’s important to know that the invitation-to-bicycle message of sharrows is probably coming through least clearly to those who are most in need of that message.
Posted 04 Aug 2010 at 7:31 am ¶Joyce… We expect to promote our sharrows with some kind of public education.
Posted 04 Aug 2010 at 11:11 pm ¶