Thus spoke bicyclists: Give us room
‘Sharrows’ give riders right to take over lanes from cars
FORT LAUDERDALE— Bicyclists contending with impatient South Florida motorists can add a new hand gesture to their repertoire: pointing directly at the markings on the road.
A new traffic marking is increasingly appearing on South Florida streets, showing a bicycle beneath two arrows. The socalled “sharrow” means the lane is to be shared. In that lane, a Schwinn has just as much right to roll down the middle of the lane as the Porsche behind it.
The markings are being considered for busy Las Olas Boulevard and are already in place on Federal Highway in Fort Lauderdale, among many locations.
Part of an overall movement toward a more pedestrianand bike-friendly road network, sharrows draw attention to Florida laws that give bike riders some of the same rights as motorists. If a road has a bike lane, the biker must use it. But if not, the cyclist can use the drive lane, whether it’s marked for sharing or not.
“Today, no matter what, if the speed limit is posted 45 miles an hour or less, I can ride on a road today and there’s not a dang thing anyone can do other than a car plowing me over or shooting me a bird,” said Fort Lauderdale’s Diana Alarcon, the transportation and mobility director.
That doesn’t mean the bike rider has to move to a sidewalk when possible. It doesn’t mean the bike rider should squeeze over to right edge of the lane. Rather, the bike rider can take over the lane entirely, if there’s not enough roomto safely share it with a car.
“The bicyclist is allowed to be there,” said Greg Stuart, a bike rider and head of the Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization, a countywide transportation agency that’s marking lanes as sharrows. “People need to understand that.”
The shared lane markings have been criticized by some bike riders who say they’re not as safe as a dedicated bike lane, and in fact could be dangerous. The state’s shared-lane markings on Federal Highway in Fort Lauderdale are often pointed to as a risky invitation to cyclists. South Florida is notoriously dangerous for bike riders and pedestrians.
“Do I feel comfortable riding my bicycleon Federal Highway? No,” Stuart said.
Renny Ortiz, 58, a bicycle mechanic who rides a racing bike on the streets of Weston, said the drivers he encounters in what is supposed to be a bike-friendly city don’t recognize his right to be there. The markings, he said, are supposed to help educate the public.
“They ride close to you. They try to hit you with their mirror,” Ortiz said. “They get [angry] and they say things to me, and try to hit me, and throw things at us. They do all kinds of things.”
State law requires drivers to give bike riders a 3-foot buffer when passing, but Ortiz said they don’t. In a shared lane, a vehicle would have to pass the bike like passing a car, leaving a wide berth.
Shared lane markings are accepted by federal and state transportation authorities and are generally used on roads that don’t have heavy traffic and have speeds of 35 mph or less, Alarcon said.
A 2010 report by the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration said shared lane markings, or sharrows, were designed to make riding safer for cyclists. Their main goal was to prevent what’s commonly referred to as “dooring,” the report says. That’s when someone opens the door of a parked car, injuring a cyclist.
The markings could reduce the number of bike riders using the sidewalks or riding the wrong way, both of which are associated with accidents, the report says. The markings “help convey to motorists and bicyclists that they must share the roads on which they are operating.”
Without them, the report says, drivers “often neglect to safely share travel lanes with bicyclists.”
Another report, by researchers at the University of Colorado, found that bike lanes were more effective at keeping cyclists safe and encouraging riding. Sharrows didn’t make streets safer for bike riders, the Chicagobased study found.
Associate professor Wesley Marshall said more study of shared lane markings is needed.
“Sharrows certainly aren’t bike infrastructure, but they do at least remind drivers that these streets might be used by bikes,” he said in an email.
The explicit reminder that cars are not king is part of a shift in thinking about roadways, Stuart said.
As many roads are redone in Broward, driving lanes are removed, crosswalks are added, sidewalks are widened, and if there’s no room for a bike lane, sharrow markings are painted.
Those in cars will have to be patient if they end up crawling along behind someone on two wheels.
“We have to start thinking differently about moving,” Alarcon said. “Because we can’t be all about just the car.”
According to Fort Lauderdale’s five-year plan, sharrows are planned on East Broward Boulevard, the Commercial Boulevard and OaklandPark bridges to the beach, the Davie Boulevard bridge, and Sistrunk Boulevard, among other places.
One pending, $4.4 million, public-private redesign is on the city’s premier boulevard, Las Olas.
The city is considering narrowing the drive lanes from four to two. Each would be marked as a sharrow, so drivers would know to expect bike riders pedaling down the middle of the lane.
Alarcon said there’s not enough room to include a separate bike lane, but she said she doesn’t expect traffic jams caused by slowmoving bike riders.
“Las Olas is 25 miles an hour,” she said. “Bicycles won’t be the cause of a backup.”