Sharrow, meet our readers. Readers, meet the sharrow.
Shared Lane Markings, more commonly called "sharrows", are one way that Columbia has tried to make motorists more aware of cyclists. The one pictured above is an outstanding example of a well-placed sharrow. If you read the linked Wikipedia article (and for those of you who didn't), the purpose of sharrows are to:
- Assist bicyclists with lateral positioning in a shared lane with on-street parallel parking in order to reduce the chance of a bicyclist’s impacting the open door of a parked vehicle;
- Assist bicyclists with lateral positioning in lanes that are too narrow for a motor vehicle and a bicycle to travel side by side within the same traffic lane;
- Alert road users of the lateral location bicyclists are likely to occupy within the traveled way;
- Encourage safe passing of bicyclists by motorists; and
- Reduce the incidence of wrong-way bicycling.
When I first saw these popping up (not literally) on the streets of Columbia, I thought they were kind of dumb. As a friend of mine put it, "What's the point of those things? I just drive right over them." I initially thought that they were simply a more visible version of a bike route sign. However, after doing a bit of homework, I think I rather like them. That is, of course, when they're installed correctly. Columbia has many sharrows, some are in perfect locations and others are not. As the focus of this blog is to chronicle failures, we'll naturally be reviewing the ones that are less than perfect.
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