It’s a sharrow.
A sharrow is:
(a) a shared lane marking
(b) a portmanteau of “shared” and “arrow”
(c) a portmanteau of “shitty” and “arrow”
(d) a waste of paint
A sharrow, according to the State of Connecticut’s driver’s manual, is “two chevrons painted above a bicycle symbol on the road, indicates the lane is shared. Vehicle or bicycle traffic may be in the lane.”
The marking is redundant.
Except for highways or other roadways where specifically prohibited, bicycles are allowed on all roads. Our driver’s manual spells it out:
“Bicyclists are considered vehicles when used on roadways. They are expected to follow the same rules of the road as motorized vehicles. As a motorist, you should know that a bicyclist has the same rights, privileges and responsibilities as you. You should expect to see bicyclists on the road, driving with traffic. You should not be surprised to see a bicyclist using the left lane when turning. Additionally, when a lane is too narrow for cars and bikes to drive side-by-side, the bicyclist will ‘take the travel lane’ which means driving in or near the center of the lane.”
Put more simply: “Bicycles are classified or treated as vehicles in all 50 US states, which means that bicyclists have most of the same legal operating rights and responsibilities as motorists, including the right to occupy a full travel lane.”
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says it even more bluntly: “People on bicycles have the same rights and responsibilities as people behind the wheel of a vehicle.”
If sharrows do not indicate a separate lane for bicyclists only, why have them at all? Why not skip them and use that money toward more robust projects?
The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) say that sharrows “reinforce the legitimacy of bicycle traffic on the street, recommend proper bicyclist positioning, and may be configured to offer directional and wayfinding guidance.
In other words, they inform motorists that yelling “get on the sidewalk” at bicycle riders is dumb. Not that somebody easily agitated and full of entitlement is going to be hushed by paint on the road. But for those who will stick around to fight it out with that enraged driver, it gives us a symbol to point to before the bully squeals off into the sunset.
As for positioning, these are intended to indicate specifically where on the road the bicycle should be. This makes sense if installed with care, but less so if applied haphazardly. They should not be painted on the shoulder. In theory, sharrows would keep cyclists out of the door zone.
Directional guidance is the only benefit that I can see in sharrows, as the arrows point which way a person should be riding and the image of the bicycle just looks wrong when viewed the wrong way. Going with the flow does matter. It reduces awkward turns. If struck by a vehicle, it’s less deadly to get hit from behind than head-on.
I understand why people ride the wrong way. When I first started riding on the street, I wanted to do this. It felt safer to see the biggest threats as they were coming at me. The more I learned about crash types and severity, the more willing I was to accept riding with traffic. The percentage of cyclists who get rear-ended is low.
Sharrows have earned skepticism and criticism.
Angie Schmitt, a fellow non-mincer of words, has said this: “Sharrows are the dregs of bike infrastructure — the scraps cities hand out when they can’t muster the will to implement exclusive space for bicycling.”
Momentum Mag has taken a similar stance: “Sharrows are what cities install when they want to appear as though they care about bicycling, but can’t or don’t want to muster the political will to actually change anything significant in its favor.”
Where does this animosity come from? Not nowhere.
Sharrows, originally rolled out in Denver, were done for the reasons hinted at above: “Part of it was the city of Denver’s reluctance to do much of anything for bicycles. So I figured, this would be a less expensive approach versus the conventional bike lane markings. A lot of the agencies don’t want to do anything involving change or spending money for bicycles. I was always under pressure to do less as the Denver bicycle planner.”
It’s not that they are utterly useless. Studies indicate that sharrows in some locations are responsible for some increase in cycling. This has not been true everywhere.
The New York Times in 2011 ran a piece by Scott James:
“Devoted cyclists like to brag that they will bike anywhere in San Francisco, regardless of daunting hills and traffic.
But there is one place you will not find cyclists: on two bike lanes created by the city’s Municipal Transportation Agency.
Most bike riders believe the lanes are just too dangerous.
They are called “sharrow” lanes: white bicycle-shaped graphics with directional arrows painted onto street pavement that instruct cyclists where to share the road with other vehicles. [ . . . ]
On a recent weekday morning during rush hour, from 8:30 a.m. to 9 a.m., a total of 37 cyclists were seen riding on [one of the roads with sharrows]. Not one used the bike lane.
Instead, 35 cyclists stayed to the far right side of the road, which is normally where bike lanes are placed, but which on this street is reserved for buses and taxis. Two cyclists opted to ride in the left lane, which is intended for automobiles.”
But do they have an impact on safety? A study of injured cyclists from 2008-2014 found that in dense urban areas, sharrows “were associated with a decreased risk of injury; however, when injuries do occur, they tended to be more severe. In our logistic regression model, we saw a 94% increase in log odds of having increased injury severity when bicyclists collided with a motor vehicle at locations having sharrows” and that “results suggest that increased injury severity is most severe with shared bicycle routes.”
Much of this comes down to where and how sharrows are painted, and what other infrastructure exists for cyclists in the area. Sharrows are not intended for high speed roads, and to Hartford’s credit, they have been painted on (and planned for) lower speed streets. Yet, these are the streets that are not begging for infrastructure improvements. The featured photo was taken on Sherman Street, where there have been no reported bicycle crashes from 2015 to present.
The question, though, is if our sharrows are the dregs, or if they will truly be one more piece in a complex system of bicycle-friendly infrastructure. With our handful of bike lanes to nowhere and bike lanes misused as car storage, we shall see.
(As irritating as I may find it for the City of Hartford to spend money on redundant road markings, my annoyance with sharrows pales in comparison to my feelings over what West Hartford did to Asylum Avenue near Elizabeth Park — sharrows squeezed in for those riding uphill, but a painted bike lane for those cruising downhill. . . not that it matters, as cars park in the bike lane anyway. Instead of using an overly wide median, they could have gone with something 25% that size, used the extra roadway space for bike lanes, and even put down pavers to add an extra buffer between people and cars. Athletic cyclists might have no trouble zooming through, but utilitarian/slow cyclists find this to feel like being driven into a chute. Can we have one nice road linking Hartford and West Hartford?)
What’s this? What’s this?
It’s a sharrow.
A sharrow is:
(a) a shared lane marking
(b) a portmanteau of “shared” and “arrow”
(c) a portmanteau of “shitty” and “arrow”
(d) a waste of paint
A sharrow, according to the State of Connecticut’s driver’s manual, is “two chevrons painted above a bicycle symbol on the road, indicates the lane is shared. Vehicle or bicycle traffic may be in the lane.”
The marking is redundant.
Except for highways or other roadways where specifically prohibited, bicycles are allowed on all roads. Our driver’s manual spells it out:
Put more simply: “Bicycles are classified or treated as vehicles in all 50 US states, which means that bicyclists have most of the same legal operating rights and responsibilities as motorists, including the right to occupy a full travel lane.”
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says it even more bluntly: “People on bicycles have the same rights and responsibilities as people behind the wheel of a vehicle.”
If sharrows do not indicate a separate lane for bicyclists only, why have them at all? Why not skip them and use that money toward more robust projects?
The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) say that sharrows “reinforce the legitimacy of bicycle traffic on the street, recommend proper bicyclist positioning, and may be configured to offer directional and wayfinding guidance.
In other words, they inform motorists that yelling “get on the sidewalk” at bicycle riders is dumb. Not that somebody easily agitated and full of entitlement is going to be hushed by paint on the road. But for those who will stick around to fight it out with that enraged driver, it gives us a symbol to point to before the bully squeals off into the sunset.
As for positioning, these are intended to indicate specifically where on the road the bicycle should be. This makes sense if installed with care, but less so if applied haphazardly. They should not be painted on the shoulder. In theory, sharrows would keep cyclists out of the door zone.
Directional guidance is the only benefit that I can see in sharrows, as the arrows point which way a person should be riding and the image of the bicycle just looks wrong when viewed the wrong way. Going with the flow does matter. It reduces awkward turns. If struck by a vehicle, it’s less deadly to get hit from behind than head-on.
I understand why people ride the wrong way. When I first started riding on the street, I wanted to do this. It felt safer to see the biggest threats as they were coming at me. The more I learned about crash types and severity, the more willing I was to accept riding with traffic. The percentage of cyclists who get rear-ended is low.
Sharrows have earned skepticism and criticism.
Angie Schmitt, a fellow non-mincer of words, has said this: “Sharrows are the dregs of bike infrastructure — the scraps cities hand out when they can’t muster the will to implement exclusive space for bicycling.”
Momentum Mag has taken a similar stance: “Sharrows are what cities install when they want to appear as though they care about bicycling, but can’t or don’t want to muster the political will to actually change anything significant in its favor.”
Where does this animosity come from? Not nowhere.
Sharrows, originally rolled out in Denver, were done for the reasons hinted at above: “Part of it was the city of Denver’s reluctance to do much of anything for bicycles. So I figured, this would be a less expensive approach versus the conventional bike lane markings. A lot of the agencies don’t want to do anything involving change or spending money for bicycles. I was always under pressure to do less as the Denver bicycle planner.”
It’s not that they are utterly useless. Studies indicate that sharrows in some locations are responsible for some increase in cycling. This has not been true everywhere.
The New York Times in 2011 ran a piece by Scott James:
But do they have an impact on safety? A study of injured cyclists from 2008-2014 found that in dense urban areas, sharrows “were associated with a decreased risk of injury; however, when injuries do occur, they tended to be more severe. In our logistic regression model, we saw a 94% increase in log odds of having increased injury severity when bicyclists collided with a motor vehicle at locations having sharrows” and that “results suggest that increased injury severity is most severe with shared bicycle routes.”
Much of this comes down to where and how sharrows are painted, and what other infrastructure exists for cyclists in the area. Sharrows are not intended for high speed roads, and to Hartford’s credit, they have been painted on (and planned for) lower speed streets. Yet, these are the streets that are not begging for infrastructure improvements. The featured photo was taken on Sherman Street, where there have been no reported bicycle crashes from 2015 to present.
The question, though, is if our sharrows are the dregs, or if they will truly be one more piece in a complex system of bicycle-friendly infrastructure. With our handful of bike lanes to nowhere and bike lanes misused as car storage, we shall see.
(As irritating as I may find it for the City of Hartford to spend money on redundant road markings, my annoyance with sharrows pales in comparison to my feelings over what West Hartford did to Asylum Avenue near Elizabeth Park — sharrows squeezed in for those riding uphill, but a painted bike lane for those cruising downhill. . . not that it matters, as cars park in the bike lane anyway. Instead of using an overly wide median, they could have gone with something 25% that size, used the extra roadway space for bike lanes, and even put down pavers to add an extra buffer between people and cars. Athletic cyclists might have no trouble zooming through, but utilitarian/slow cyclists find this to feel like being driven into a chute. Can we have one nice road linking Hartford and West Hartford?)
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