Originally Posted by
Bekologist
Seattle is placing sharrows on many main streets that serve as bike arterial and connector routes thru the city. The placements are a result of the city contracting with Toole Design Group to work with the cycling community at large in developing the recent bike master plan.
largely good treatments all around but there's some some small and next to curb placments (and in 18 hour a day parking lanes!) Some streets have mixed bike lane/sharrow treatments depending on the streetscapes that seem quite well thought out from a riding perspective. I think the better placements are more numerous than the poor ones. The city has also been proactive at reworking some designs that do not work well in their initial treatments.
I've ridden some of the sharrowed streetscapes of San Francisco, Portland as well as Seattle and find the effects quite palpable from a riding perspective.
Well, I only know of one area where the city actually fixed bad Sharrow placement. Otherwise Sharrows have been badly placed: 45th where the Sharrows meander from the right lane to the left lane then back to the right lane, Sharrows placed on dangerous roadways such as Admiral, and which end at a park (not useful), Sharrows placed on the wrong side of the white "fog line" on Beach Drive and have yet to be fixed in spite of numerous complaints, small Sharrows (Beach drive again, about 12" wide), Sharrows placed on the right side of the lane - encouraging cyclists to ride to the right and cars to think that's where they should be rather than placing large Sharrows smack dab in the center of the lane (California Ave), and as you state, Sharrows placed in lanes used for auto street parking so the marking is useless being placed underneath cars. The only Sharrows on my route that I actually think do a decent job are on Western, but even those could be larger and not placed so far to the right. Proper implementation is key and I do not think that SDOT understands it.
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