Coast Highway through Encinitas - How long has this been there?
 

Rode with a friend yesterday out of Escondido and did a coastal loop. When we got to Coast Highway I was shocked to see a pretty long stretch of the road that had the entire right lane dedicated as a bike lane. In the past we have usually ridden Vulcan to avoid the crazy traffic.

This was an awesome luxury! It almost felt wrong doing it, too!

I know the picture doesn't completely show it but you get the idea...

http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/m...IMAG0668-1.jpg

are those not sharrows? sharrows designate shared lanes, and are not exclusively lanes for bicycles. they aren't much different from an unmarked lane, except they lend a small bit of legitimacy to our presence.

Yeah I guess my use of "dedicated" lane was not quite accurate, but still - we've never seen anything like it in this area.

The ribbon cutting was this morning.

Yeah, they are designed to improve awareness and make it more obvious that cyclists can take the whole lane.

I've been seeing whole BILLBOARDS up in my area explaining that cyclists may occasionally need the whole lane - please share the road. :eek:

That makes sense. It must have been opened up this week.

I heard about the ribbon cutting just this morning. Can't wait to ride it. They eventually plan to calm the traffic on that whole stretch. Local merchants are behind the idea of slowing traffic that passes their storefronts. Bikers win too. I've talked to locals who ***** about having to slow down. My reply to them is that I-5 parallels a half mile east. This was the main L.A to San Diego highway before the freeway, but those days are long gone.

The sharrows have been there for over a month now after all the road work was finished.

Yep, about a month, and in addition to the sharrows on the road, there are also signs that say, "Bicycles may use entir :thumb:e lane."
And they even cut away one of the Northbound lanes and turned it into a wide, beautiful bicycle lane! It's pretty sweet.

Up north in Orange County, the City of Newport Beach put sharrows on PCH through Corona Del Mar. Still kinda 'tight' riding through there with all the auto traffic and cars parked along the curb anytime after mid-morning (that pic in Encinitas looks like a blessing to ride compared to PCH in CdM). .

I don't know about northbound 101, but they were already there on the southbound side when I was there on 2/16.

I was talking with a couple of people who were whining about having to drive behind slow cyclists who now take the lane. I said "It's a 2-lane road, why don't you just drive in the other lane and pass the cyclists?" They both stared at me as if the thought had never occurred to them.

There are a lot of sharrows in Long Beach. I also found one on very busy 6th St in Corona, though you'll have to be quite brave to actually use it. You won't hear this from me very often, but "Thanks, city planners!"

Funny... I've had the same reaction before. Similar to that, once I carefully signaled and then took the only lane open in order to get around some construction. A driver (yeah, he was in a pickup truck) pulled a pretty stupid stunt to pass me. I caught up to him literally 15 seconds later at a red light and said to him, "You know, you could just wait for a few seconds!" First he gave me a baffled look, but then he said something I shouldn't repeat. Oh well, maybe he'll think twice next time (wishful thinking).

I've also wondered why drivers don't think twice about waiting or changing lanes to pass a tractor or large lawn mower that's moving at 15 mph, but scream obscenities at a 20mph bicyclist. Oh well, some things I'll never understand.

Actually, the OP had it right. 101 north of Leucadia Blvd. used to be a 2 lane nightmare for cyclists. The cars barreled down the road at 50+ mph, there was no bike lane, and the road was chewed up badly. When it rained during the night, big puddles of water accumulated on the road, forcing cyclists into the left side of the right lane.

The improvements on 101 included painting sharrows markers all the way to Leucadia Blvd. Then, a couple of hundred yards north of Leucadia, 101 goes on a "lane diet": the left lane is for cars, and what used to be the right lane is only for bicycles.

This has turned 101 from one of the worst places in North County to ride to one of the best.

Now if Solana Beach would just do the same thing around Via de la Valle, we'd be in great shape!

Too late for Jim Schwarzman. :(
But perhaps his tragic death had some impact on Encinitas' decision, (because it's doubtful that it would impact the drunks traveling that stretch North of saloon alley in Encinitas on PCH. S'not like Joseph Ricardo Fernandez's slap on the wrist would impact them one iota.)

Rode southbound through this last Saturday. Lanes width isn't as bad as "old" Leucadia, but it is pretty tore up.

This is the truth. I used to avoid the whole area but for whatever reason we went straight through Rancho Santa Fe instead of making the right on Camino del Norte which is a more natural route to Vulcan. Much, much better now.

Do you think that a cyclist riding in a sharrow (i.e. in the middle of the right lane) at 1 a.m. is less likely to be hit by a drunk driver than if he were riding on the shoulder?

Less likely. It’s all in the odds. Not everyone driving a car is drunk, and if you must be on a bike at 1:00 A.M. on a Friday night/Saturday morning, your level of risk goes way up. Still, for most of us who ride this on weekends in the mornings or afternoons, it does improve our odds of survival. Yes, there are still drunks on the road at that time of day, and especially in areas like this that are largely entertainment districts. You take that, and other ri
sks whenever you put a bike on the street.

It does not improve squat.

It is a purely informative sign with no legal force, which tells us to do what we were permitted to do in the first place, even before sharrows were drawn, (but didn't want to because it was obviously unsafe), and encourages us to get out of the shoulder (or even out of side streets) and into main traffic lanes, where we are at a greater risk of being hit by a car. It is a cop-out, done when the city government does not have the money to make any improvements that actually increase cyclist safety, viz. bike lanes, protected bike paths, or multi-use paths, but wants to appear cycle-friendly anyway. It is, however, an excellent tool to aggravate drivers and to encourage anti-cyclist sentiment in the community.

The only situation where sharrows might have any positive effect for cyclists, is when the sharrow is drawn in a lane that runs past a row of parked cars. Southbound 101 was just such a road before recent changes. In this situation the sharrow moves cyclists out of the door-opening-soccer-mom zone into the 50-mph-hit-and-run-drunk-driver zone. It's not obvious that gains outweigh increased risks, but Encinitas obviously isn't going to ban roadside parking on southbound 101, and building a full-fledged bidirectional separated bike path in the dirt between 101 and the railroad would cost way more than a bucket of white paint.

Because tractors and lawn mowers generally don't go on long rides on public roads - if they ever get on the pavement, it's to drive a short distance from one offroad location to another? And when was the last time you saw a tractor on a 101? Trust me, if you try to go on a 25-mile tractor ride in the right lane of 101 at 15 mph, you'll hear a good deal of obscenities. It's just the question of doing what you have to do (driving a tractor from farm A to farm B) vs. being inconsiderate and slowing traffic because you're out to get some fresh air (taking full lane on a bike and refusing to yield to cars).

Not necessarily, but Jim was hit on the Northbound lanes, which had a very narrow, very bumpy shoulder before this improvement, which might have been the reason he wasn't riding FRAP. Yes, now that there is a very wide (and smooth) bike lane there now instead of two auto lanes, I do believe that a cyclist is less likely to be hit there.
I understand that the sharrows are not an immunity from a sudden, violent death, but by riding FRAP and showing motorists I'm not one of the A&S types of cyclists, I now get much more consideration than I used to when riding through that stretch. It's a lot less stressful and I haven't had a close-call since.

FRAP = Far Right As Practical?

Just for grins I checked Google and got:
Facilitated Risk Analysis Process
Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure
Ferric Reducing Ability of Plasma
Fire and Resource Assessment Program

Close, but at least I know this board isn't 100% full of perverts.

I miss Jim, been almost 2 years. :cry:

I rode it yesterday with a large group. I do not have a good feeling for this personally. I understand its need as there was no room and any cyclist was a car door or worse away from tragedy. Some of the cyclists I noticed were giddy as they took the lane feeling some sort of empowerment.

I normally have worked around that stretch on the side streets and will continue to do so.