Originally Posted by
dynaryder
Personally,I'd prefer if instead of bike lanes and sharrows,cities would do proper traffic enforcement. Fines,loss of driving privileges,and maybe some jail sentences would actually correct bad behavior. Too any cities pretty much just let traffic deal with itself with the police only getting involved after there's a crash.
Wouldn't it be better if the streets were designed to discourage bad behavior in the first place? An ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure and all. Obviously you can't stop everyone from doing stupid things behind the wheel, but I'd be happy with stopping most of them.
Originally Posted by
RCMoeur
Shared lane markings are a treatment that can be used if circumstances don't allow for other options and the travel speeds are appropriate. Install them in the wrong place or inappropriately, and results are not likely to be good in terms of utilization.
There's the problem; cities use them inappropriately all the time, as rsbob demonstrated. Mine put sharrows on a busy street with a 25mph speed limit, but the design says 35, and drivers do; and of course they're in the door zone. I don't know if cities don't understand them or if they do and just choose to use them instead of actual infrastructure; either way, the outcome is the same -- people are maimed and killed.