Friday
Nov062009
Sharrows in Austin!
Friday, November 6, 2009 at 5:36AM Austin is part of a Federal program to install sharrows in streets.
http://www.kvue.com/news/local/110209sharrows_10-68802522.html
In a true mark of genius, they are not telling anybody what they are for to see if people can "figure it out".
Reader Comments (3)
I like that part......." lets let them guess like research pigs"
Right....We have these in Toronto, do they work? Not really, the mentality of a car driver is that a cyclist does not have a right to take up that entire lane eventhough the symbol is painted on the lane. The expectation is that the lane is shared between both modes of transportation, just as if there was no designated symbol. Which begs the question, what's the use of such a symbol on the road? Is this not what happens on a regular basis? It appears to me that such symbols are only reminders to drivers that they shouldn't be flipping off cyclists since the road also belongs to them. As-well, your tax dollars could have been better spent, these road markings are useless without education!
The only way to go is to either fully isolate the bike lane from the rest of the road like i've seen on some pics from New York, or to have a solid line separating the car traffic from the bike traffic (this is the preffered method in Toronto and it seems to work well for the most part, the difficulty with this is that the bike lane runs parallel to the parking lane on tighter streets, can you say door prize?)
John - I understand your point. Which is why I question the whole idea of not educating the public. It's like they want them to fail.