"Four Solid Uses For Sharrows"
Last year, Delaware got a tiny taste of the new, MUTCD-approved “sharrow” marking. In 2011, we expect to see sharrows on Market Street in Wilmington and on Main Street in Newark.
But not everywhere. The sharrow marking tells both cyclists and motorists that it is permissible for cyclists to “take the lane“. But sharrows should not be used where bicyclists can not, or are unlikely to, travel at the normal speed of motorized vehicles. On major arterial roads, cyclists will almost never bike in a travel lane (no matter how many sharrows tell them that it’s legal for us to do so). This kind of inappropriate application of the sharrow will bring the marking into contempt and degrade its usefulness in places where we really want to use it.
So, where should we use sharrows? The MUTCD guidance is notably unhelpful but, fortunately, Mia Birk (the former bicycle coordinator in Portland) has given some much more specific and helpful guidance. Specifically, she recommends these four uses for this new tool:
1) Gap closure between other bikeway infrastructure, where the gap is no more than 1/2 mile
3) On a street going downhill, where a bike lane on the other side going uphill exists
4) Streets where cyclists can keep up with traffic (rule of thumb: 15 mph speed limit or less)
If all you have is a hammer, then every problem can start to look like a nail. The sharrow has some reasonable uses, but it should be used prudently, not promiscuously. And, most importantly, it should not be oversold: it can’t on its own make a bicycle-unfriendly street into a friendly one.
