Originally Posted by San Rensho
Great! The more I read about it, the more sense the shared lane concept makes. The symbol first of all tells cars that bikes have just as much a right to be on the road as they do. It is surprising how many drivers still believe that legally, bikes have no right to be on the road and that they must ride on the sidewalk or bike path.
Once an expectation of cyclists is established with no imposition of a legnthy set of rules on cars, then, as you say, the cars and cyclists will intuitively figure out how to co-exist.
Did you see the link to the SF Bicycle Program? The results of the study they commisioned are in a PDF there. Very interesting reading IMO. I especially liked this finding, because it addresses a pet peeve of mine:
Originally Posted by Alta Report
" The bike-and-chevron marking significantly reduced the number of wrong-way riders by 80%. The bike-in-house marking did not have any significant impact on the percentage of wrong-way riders.
Also, to John E's point below, that they'd have to paint every road -- they are actually going to do that, for some values of "every"
Just the roads that are deemed part of the bike system, and are Class III (shared/signed) facilties. Obviously some driver education (a billboard campaign, inclusion in drivers ed classes, etc) would go a long way.
In my little neck of the woods, though, I want a) to stop getting honked at for riding in the place where the chevrons would be painted, if there were chevrons painted there, b) to make it obvious for the rec cyclists I see teetering along in the gutter that they don't have to be there, and c) to save us taxpayers a bunch of money on a blue-sky bikelane project that won't fix anything outside the 20 yards of underpass.