Originally Posted by
patc
I could say the same in reverse - so I still see no reason to prefer/like/use sharrows at all. But like I said, we only seem to have them on one short stretch, so I can't comment much on personal experience. I can tell you that with cars driving right over them, they are very faded, and are covered by snow/salt/sand for about 3 months of the year - the period in which it is hardest to share the lane. They are also places way to close to the curb, implying that the narrow lane should be shared.
I have yet to see ANY bike lane here but cyclists in the door zone, though they probably exist. I'm sure sharrows could be implemented just a badly
Indeed a bad sharrow placement is not helpful. They need to be pretty large and placed prominently in the lane, otherwise we're better off without them. The sharrow was born in Denver long ago. These original sharrows were graphically clumsy and small, and were placed poorly, and were generally useless and virtually unnoticed for decades, so if this is the type of sharrow deployment you've got going on there it's no surprise that you feel how you do. The new generation sharrow is a different animal, but the effect can still be nullified with lame placement.
But in my opinion a good sharrow is better than a bike lane because it shows everybody, bicyclist included, that bicyclists are legitimate road users -- not just legitimate bike lane users -- and should be riding in the street in the direction of traffic, and it does this without keeping the bicyclists farther right than is necessary or safe and without suggesting to motorists that bicyclists always need to be, as Forester would say, "shoved over to the side." I think it does what bike lanes are supposed to do better than the bike lanes, and without the disadvantages.
There's a street here that I've ridden down many thousands of times. Busy one way downtown, five or six lanes. One day they sacrificed the rightmost traffic lane and put in the nicest bike lane that I've ever seen in my life. About seven feet wide, and placed so far from the parked cars that the right line of the bike lane was far from the door zone. It was spatially luxurious. It was a bike lane advocate's dream come true is what it was. But I noticed one thing about this wonderful bike lane. It made virtually no practical difference to my rides down the street. It didn't help, it didn't really hurt. But then they put these new stylish and large sharrows on the part of the street that didn't have a bike lane (as Bek says, they are not in the business of replacing bike lanes with sharrows, yet) and guess what? I noticed an immediate difference on that section. An immediate improvement. Hard to quantify of course. Maybe I'm just fooling myself. I don't think so though. After many thousands of trips down the street I think I can notice subtle changes that the sharrows bring. I'm a believer.