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Originally Posted by randya
(Post 9688371)
Real sharrows are BIG and hard to miss, like 3' x 6', according to the proposed MUTCD standard.
IMO, the more important reason to use sharrows doesn't have much to do with cyclists themselves, it's more about educating motorists that cyclists belong on the road, in the lane. |
Originally Posted by danarnold
(Post 9688482)
+1 That's it. Sharrows make that statement without implying cyclists must stay in the bike lane or shoulder.
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i'm suprised danarnold can comment on the effectiveness of them also. i doubt he's ridden across even one in eastern washington.
i've ridden miles of sharrowed roadscape, in three states. motorists can and will still honk if they think a bicyclist is 'obstructing' even with a shared lane arrow. if widths are sufficient, a bikelane is a preffered facility to facilitate bike travel along significant traffic corridors. Hey, high roller, you're an LCI ,aren't you? quit disparagin bikelanes, dude! didn't you get the memo?
Originally Posted by LAB policy paper to LCIs about bikelanes
bike lanes also make cycling much more accessible to many
more people and that benefit far outweighs the relatively minor costs incurred by a limited number of highly skilled and traffic tolerant cyclists. and new roadscaping designs include quite innovate and thoughtful, site specific infrastructure that combines the best features of wide lane, narrow sharrowed lane, or bikelane depending on traffic patterns on the roadscape. In a discussion about sharrows, one thing germane to the conversation is this: sharrows will be installed as part of bikeway planning and will be implemented along roads that are of hybrid bikeway design. these hybrid roadscapes combine best localized implementations of shared lane narrow outside lanes, bikelanes, or unmodified wide or narrow lane. this is something to keep in prspective in ANY discussion of sharrows: that they will be used in conjunction with other bikeway striping patterns. |
Originally Posted by Bekologist
(Post 9691977)
i'm suprised danarnold can comment on the effectiveness of them also. i doubt he's ridden across even one in eastern washington.
i've ridden miles of sharrowed roadscape, in three states. motorists can and will still honk if they think a bicyclist is 'obstructing' even with a shared lane arrow. if widths are sufficient, a bikelane is a preffered facility to facilitate bike travel along significant traffic corridors. Hey, high roller, you're an LCI ,aren't you? Originally Posted by LAB policy paper to LCIs about bikelanes bike lanes also make cycling much more accessible to many more people and that benefit far outweighs the relatively minor costs incurred by a limited number of highly skilled and traffic tolerant cyclists. quit disparagin bikelanes, dude! didn't you get the memo? and new roadscaping designs include quite innovate and thoughtful, site specific infrastructure that combines the best features of wide lane, narrow sharrowed lane, or bikelane depending on traffic patterns on the roadscape. In a discussion about sharrows, one thing germane to the conversation is this: sharrows will be installed as part of bikeway planning and will be implemented along roads that are of hybrid bikeway design. these hybrid roadscapes combine best localized implementations of shared lane narrow outside lanes, bikelanes, or unmodified wide or narrow lane. this is something to keep in prspective in ANY discussion of sharrows: that they will be used in conjunction with other bikeway striping patterns. |
:rolleyes: Actually, john, I believe that's an official dictat from the League of American Bicyclists to its instructors.
(your views are pretty much irrelevant to the LAB regards bikelanes, johhny! :D ) John Forester, how nice to see your commentary!! I thought you had forgotten our discussions in the other threads!! have YOU ever ridden a sharrowed roadscape on your bicycle? Ever ridden Market Street in San Francisco across the sharrows there? do you have any commentary germane to the conversation about sharrows that isn't distilled from your fallaciousness regarding bikeways? |
sharrowed streetscape
that's a 3 minute video of a ride along a hybrid sharrowed streetscape in Seattle, Stone Way Ave N. this is part of a hybrid roadscape bikeway plan for this transportation cooridor. there are bike lanes on the uphill side of the street, sharrows for the main part of the downhill, a section of unmodified two narrow lane configuration leading to a bikelane road diet that feeds into a RTO and bikes lane (restriction on cars, not bikes). thoughtful intersection treatments depending on traffic movements and well designed bike specificity at two five way + intersections. this is southbound and downhill, on the sharrowed side of this road dieted street. auto traffic thruput was increased on this corridor as a result of the road diet. this traffic corridor sees 10 percent rider modal share during peak rush hours. |
Originally Posted by LAB policy paper to LCIs about bikelanes
bike lanes also make cycling much more accessible to many more people and that benefit far outweighs the relatively minor costs incurred by a limited number of highly skilled and traffic tolerant cyclists.
Originally Posted by Bekologist
(Post 9696663)
:rolleyes: Actually, john, I believe that's an official dictat from the League of American Bicyclists to its instructors.
(your views are pretty much irrelevant to the LAB regards bikelanes, johhny! :D ) John Forester, how nice to see your commentary!! I thought you had forgotten our discussions in the other threads!! have YOU ever ridden a sharrowed roadscape on your bicycle? Ever ridden Market Street in San Francisco across the sharrows there? do you have any commentary germane to the conversation about sharrows that isn't distilled from your fallaciousness regarding bikeways? |
Originally Posted by Bekologist
(Post 9696663)
:
do you have any commentary germane to the conversation about sharrows that isn't distilled from your fallaciousness regarding bikeways? |
that statement i quoted is an offical dictat of the League of American Bicyclists.
why even try to argue semantics over the meaning of 'dictat'? Ever ridden a bicycle on a sharrowed roadscape, john forester, or are you unable to comment from direct experiences? Armchair bicycling, so to speak
Originally Posted by jf
I recognize that some bicyclists feel the need to have their right to use the roadway demonstrated by sharrows. Just so long as it never gets to the point of people arguing that sharrows produce the right to use the roadway, it doesn't bother me.
so your neutral stance would also not care about other vehicular roadway enhancements like RTO and bike lanes, and pocket bike lanes and bikelanes that do not contradict the adopted rules of the road for drivers of vehicles as part of hybrid, sharrowed streetscaping and bikeway design across communities, eh? |
does John even ride anymore? Chances are he's never even ridden on any of these new facilities he continues to bad mouth.
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perhaps we can keep the discussion centered on sharrows and not cantenkery.
Germane to the discussion is that sharrows are part of bikeways planning that includes bikelaned sections, sharrowed or completely unmodified narrow or wide lanes as shown in my video above. hybrid roadscape design rather that 'sharrows OR bikelanes'. it's going to be a combination of both. high speed arterial or multilane collector roads that are identified as significant bicycle transportation corridors, for example. Bicycle travel along these corridors will be served best by mostly preffered class bikelanes with sharrows deployed as part of hybrid roadscaping approaching intersections, versus a wide lane with limited intersection treatments. |
Originally Posted by John Forester
(Post 9699285)
I recognize that some bicyclists feel the need to have their right to use the roadway demonstrated by sharrows. Just so long as it never gets to the point of people arguing that sharrows produce the right to use the roadway, it doesn't bother me.
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so, your "solution" to better roadway treatment from motorists is no bike specificity.
you guys are SO OUT OF TOUCH as to what happens in communities that raise rider share thru infrastructure- as riders increase in share, motorists tolerance is raised because, yes, that's right, there's more riders on streets both with and without bike specificity across communities. complaining about perceived agressions towards traffic tolerant vehikular ideologues isn't a compelling enough argument against sharrows or bikeways planning. that's folly and one the LAB would consider 'irrelevant' when considering the 21st century american roadscape! Steve- what did YOU think of the sharrowed streets I showed in the video? see how it's part of a road diet, and contains elements of sharrow, narrow lane, wide lanes and bikelanes with varied intersection treatments? |
Originally Posted by Bekologist
(Post 9700630)
Steve- what did YOU think of the sharrowed streets I showed in the video? see how it's part of a road diet, and contains elements of sharrow, narrow lane, wide lanes and bikelanes with varied intersection treatments?
However, I liked the sharrow sections better than the door-zone bike lane sections. I saw a couple of bike lanes to the left of RTO lanes, which was good, but the rest of the bike lanes were so close to parked cars that only the leftmost portion of the lane, very close to the left line, is safely usable. I'd rather have no stripe (just a sharrow) if I'm going to ride right on top of the left stripe location. As for the "road diet" issue of reducing the travel lane count to two travel lanes plus center turn lane, I do think this design is more pleasant for cycling than what I assume was previously a 4-lane cross section without center turn lane. Now, I need a few minutes to get over my motion sickness. My stomach prefers bar-mounted cameras with a wide angle lens, passed through the video stabilization software I developed, and not helmet cameras. |
i'll be working on better video.... I had previously been using solely handheld and have been recently been experimenting with an inexpensive Go2Pro helmet camera.
I want to set up a boom system for it, i am more interested in touring video footage than city riding but hey my interests in bike advocacy extend further and further. I'm interested in becoming an LCI, btw, to counter the marginalizations i see bandied about in this forum by many of you LCIs about the value of the facilitated roadscape. I've got some more video that better illustrates right biased sharrows that, even in the absence of curbside parking, encourages too far right behavior or at least does little to discourage unsafe lane sharing by bicyclists in marginally wide sharrowed lanes. that will be next up, just have to process and annotate it. |
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Originally Posted by Bekologist
(Post 9701494)
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Originally Posted by randya
(Post 9702759)
...IMHO they should be centered in the lane, and/or be accompanied by 'cyclist allowed full lane' signage.
The sharrows have been improved greatly but are also still too small, imo. The current standard is one meter by three meters. The ideal sharrow I think would be about 2 meters wide and 5 meters long. It sounds a lot bigger than it really would be on the street. I would be curious to find out how sharrows work on all different kinds of streets, but I doubt we ever will. |
Originally Posted by RobertHurst
(Post 9703259)
The current MUTCD standards say to center the sharrow at least 11 feet from the curb on streets with side parking, and just a few feet from the curb on streets without parking. I don't think sharrows really need to be in the centers of lanes on most streets, but these standards put the sharrow too far right by about one foot. That single foot makes a huge difference. In Denver we've seen sharrows centered 12 feet from the curb that seem very effective and pro-cyclist; on the same streets are badly placed sharrows, centered 10 feet from the curb, which seem much too close to parked cars. The city has promised to repaint them eventually at 12 feet.
The sharrows have been improved greatly but are also still too small, imo. The current standard is one meter by three meters. The ideal sharrow I think would be about 2 meters wide and 5 meters long. It sounds a lot bigger than it really would be on the street. I would be curious to find out how sharrows work on all different kinds of streets, but I doubt we ever will. +1 . Robert mentions sharrow size as needing to be marginally larger, like a foot larger and a foot further left.. Seattles' sharrows have been developing, the ones seen in the 'sharrows too far right?' video have been supplanted on some streets by nearly center of the lane sharrows that are a bit larger and a foot or so further left. as sharrow standards develop in the US, I hope a foot or two larger and a foot or two further left gets codified in future MUTCD, current minimum sizes are just too small to be maximally effective. |
Originally Posted by High Roller
(Post 9700420)
I would like to agree with this. But my experience indicates that once such road markings come into widespread use, the public perception, as evidenced by aggressive driving behavior and harrassment, is that my rights are diminished when such markings are absent.
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Originally Posted by Bekologist
(Post 9691977)
i'm suprised danarnold can comment on the effectiveness of them also. i doubt he's ridden across even one in eastern washington.
It takes neither a mathematician nor logician, nor anyone who has ever seen a sharrow in the pigment to be able to reason that a sharrow should be placed more to the center of the road and outside the door zone. One also needn't have ever seen a sharrow to be able to reason that a sharrow is less directive and restrictive than a three foot painted lane. '[P]erhaps [now] we can keep the discussion centered on sharrows and not cantenkery,' _Bekologist. _ Dan :) |
Originally Posted by Bekologist
(Post 9701494)
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Originally Posted by High Roller
I would like to agree with this. But my experience indicates that once such road markings come into widespread use, the public perception, as evidenced by aggressive driving behavior and harrassment, is that my rights are diminished when such markings are absent.
Originally Posted by The Human Car
(Post 9706406)
Having experienced tons of harassment and aggressive driving behavior with near zero facilities I have a hard time supporting no facilities. While I have experienced some junk near facilities for the most part having facilities has improved the overall tone of drivers as more cyclists hit the streets.
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Originally Posted by danarnold
(Post 9706450)
Bek, I'm going to introduce you to a new concept: logic. Your post carries the implication that anyone who hasn't had direct experience with a phenomenon, cannot use reason to analyze it. If you were correct, formal logic and all of mathematics would be a waste of time since they involve pure analysis of abstractions.
It takes neither a mathematician nor logician, nor anyone who has ever seen a sharrow in the pigment to be able to reason that a sharrow should be placed more to the center of the road and outside the door zone. One also needn't have ever seen a sharrow to be able to reason that a sharrow is less directive and restrictive than a three foot painted lane. '[P]erhaps [now] we can keep the discussion centered on sharrows and not cantenkery,' _Bekologist. _ Dan :) If you were correct, formal logic would be all that is needed to prove that bikes belong on sidewalks and not mixing with faster traffic as that would certainly be found unsafe by some arbitrary logical standard. It takes neither a mathematician nor logician, to see that it is through observation and not logic alone that determines if something works or not. '[P]erhaps [now] we can keep the discussion centered on sharrows and not cantenkery,' |
Originally Posted by danarnold
(Post 9706465)
Then we can all agree that one effective solution is to at least have sharrows and 'bicycle' signs on all roads where cycling is appropriate?
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