Sharrow the Road...

With the recent decision to fund the addition of a bike lane on Southeast Blvd, the thought that Spokane may one day become a biking city is gaining traction.  When put in place, the Southwest Blvd. strip of bike lane will cost about $50K.  Money well spent on a critical piece of transportation infrastructure.  But even if money was not an issue, not every street needs a bike lane.  In some cases a simple visual reminder that says, "Hey there Mr./Ms. Driver, bikes use this road frequently, so be on the lookout," can be just as beneficial.  Enter the "sharrow".

Related to bike lanes they aren't meant only for bicycles.  Instead they indicate a section of roadway that is deemed a shared space for both cars and bicycles.  Shared+Road+Arrows=Sharrows.  They're cropping up allover the place like Denver, New York, San Francisco, and Portland.  They work to fill in gaps in the network of bicycle lanes in a city, and they move riders away from the door zone in the curbside edge of the lane towards the left and center improving safety.  They're also effective in reducing poor rider behavior like riding the wrong way or riding on sidewalks.  A San Francisco pilot project showed that sharrows reduced the number of sidewalk riders around 25%-35% (pdf-p.11).  That would be huge here.  This is something we hope gets implemented in and around Spokane.  Anything that works to raise awareness that roads are an asset to be shared means progress.

Comments

[Spencer]

By Southwest Blvd you mean Southeast Blvd, right?

[John Speare]

Sharrows make a lot of sense to me for some applications. I like that it sends a message to cyclists/drivers alike that bikes belong on the road. I also think they are better than lanes in most cases, as lanes tend to provide a false sense of security for the cyclist which may make them overly relaxed as they ride through urban areas. In addition, most car/bike impacts happen at intersections -- putting bike lanes on a given stretch of road doubles the intersections.

One bit that makes implementing sharrows really hard in Spokane is that the sharrow goes in the same spot as the right wheel of car traffic on the pavement. Keeping these on the streets after a mean winter of studded tires grinding them away is a significant issue that needs to be figured out if we wanted to install them here.

I actually think the big money idea for Spokane is bike blvds. Soon, I'll write up an explanation on Bike Blvds and why I think it's where we should focus our bike facility energies in the short term.

[METROSPOKANE]

Yes, we meant Southeast. Good points John about the false sense of security. It may be possible to create a 'Spokane-unique' version of the sharrow that fit's between tires, thereby avoiding the wearing down. And bike-boulevards are a waay cool concept in and around the surrounding neighborhoods.

[Dave Rockwood]

The name "sharrow" is going to be officially changed to "shared lane marking" in the next version of the Manual of Uniform Transportation Control Devices (MUTCD), which is the legal authority from which all jurisdictions in the US determine their use of all trafiic signs and signals. SLMs presently are only being used in areas that the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has designated as Pilot Projects, or where local jurisdictions have obtained permission from FHWA to "experiment" with the marking (which several have done). The language of the MUTCD states that the SLMs should only be used on roads with on-street parallel parking, which is creating alot of debate. Hopefully that gets changed in the MUTCD. Research that has been done so far show, by drivers' actions (but not neccessarily perceptions), that the SLMs work much better than signs (bike route). That is, drivers on roads with SLMs are giving cyclists more space than either they were prior to SLMs , or on roads that were previously not signed.