Bike ‘sharrows’ may only boost confusion, not safety: study
A new study suggests the use of shared bike-car lanes on major roads doesn’t increase cyclist safety, and may pose a greater risk if the lanes only confuse motorists and cyclists.
The City of Edmonton created 13 kilometres of painted “sharrows” in Mill Woods in 2010, several more in the south-central neighbourhood of Queen Alexandra in 2011, and is planning more shared lanes as it rolls out a 10-year plan to add nearly 500 more kilometres of bike routes in Edmonton.
The sharrows are seen as a simple solution when the city, neighbourhood residents or local businesses don’t want to remove street parking or a lane currently used for vehicle traffic. A bike and arrows are painted onto the pavement, and signs erected.
When researchers at the University of British Columbia looked at 690 cyclist collisions
For a full list of proposed bike lanes for 2013, information on public consultation and photos of the Danish bike lanes Coun. Ben Henderson says Edmonton should consider, visit edmontonjournal.com/ edmontoncommons.
serious enough to land a cyclist in the hospital, they found the only bike infrastructure that significantly reduces risk is having a separate route for bikes.
“When you separate it, then you really have a dramatic effect ... (It) was about a ninth or a 10th of the risk,” said Kay Teschke, lead researcher on the study, published in the American Journal of Public Health.
Streets such as Whyte or Jasper avenues are the most dangerous because they have parked cars and traffic moving at significant speeds, said Teschke.
If a cyclist rides on a busy road that lacks street parking, the level of risk drops almost in half.
A busy road with a bike-only lane has exactly half the level of risk, and a bike lane that is physically separated from vehicle traffic has only a 10th of the risk level a cyclist would find on that busy road with cars. That is by far the safest option.
A cyclist riding on a residential street faces half the risk as someone riding on a Whyte Avenue-style road.
Like Edmonton, Vancouver has only a few shared bike-car lanes, and they are fairly new. There were 16 crashes on the sharrows, too few to make an accurate risk calculation except to say they didn’t improve safety, said Teschke.
In August, 21-year-old Isaak Kornelsen was killed after getting trapped between a parked pickup and a cement truck while biking on Whyte Avenue. His death rekindled a debate over what kind of bike routes Edmonton should be spending money on, and cyclists in the Strathcona area started a task force to lobby for and plan better routes.
Since the Bicycle Transportation Plan was approved in 2009, Edmonton city staff have been picking the easiest places to add bike infrastructure first, trying to co-ordinate with road repairs and get as many kilometres constructed as possible within budget limitations.
But Coun. Ben Henderson said he is convinced Edmonton needs to change that strategy, and focus the dollars it has on creating real, separated bike lanes in key locations where the most cyclists already ride.
“If we’re going to do this, we should do it right. We’re putting an awful lot of effort into a halfway measure I’m beginning to question,” said Henderson, who leads the bike strategy for city council.
“We may not get as many kilometres done of good infrastructure, but let’s build good infrastructure where people are actually going to use it, in the areas we have heavy bike traffic already: closer to the centre of the city, around the university,” he said. “We may not get as much done, but let’s do something that actually works.”
Shared bike-car lanes don’t encourage casual or new cyclists to try biking on the street, said Chris Chan, executive director of the Edmonton Bicycle Commuters’ Society.
“They don’t get new people cycling and that’s what we want to see. It’s safer for even hardcore cyclists if there are more cyclists on the road,” he said. His experience with sharrows is mainly on the 76th Avenue and 106th Street route, which alternates between a bike lane and a sharrow, “dumping” cyclists back into traffic whenever the curb juts out, an intersection appears or parking was needed for a church.
“People don’t like that,” he said. “It’s really not a continuous bike lane.”
Andrew Siggelkow, the city’s project engineer, said the UBC study won’t keep staff from creating shared use lanes. “It’s one study. We’re not giving up on sharrows.”
He cited a 2004 study from San Francisco that suggested shared bike-car lanes encourage bikes to take a safer position on the road, staying further away from parked cars. They also alerted drivers to the presence of bikes, and caused the cars to stick closer to the middle line.