Who’s painting ‘sharrows’ all over town and why?
Q Our neighborhood streets were recently peppered with street paintings — some sort of bicycle/share the road symbols. They’re every 100 feet or so on Scott Street and Pfeffer Lane. This is a residential area with very little traffic. Was this really necessary? Tony D. A First, let’s swing over to another city street. Q We came home one night to find our street, St. Elizabeth Drive in San Jose, had been defaced by road crews. Huge “share the road with bicycles” images are stenciled all down the street, and they’re a real blight on the neighborhood.
There was no need for them. Motorists and bicyclists have coexisted peacefully here for years. We’ve seen this “graffiti” in San Francisco, too.
This is such an outrageous waste of money. What is this program and, most important, how much is this costing us? J.V. and L.V. A Not a lot. The St. Elizabeth project cost $4,000 and money came from a state grant to install the shared-lane markings with arrows, also known as “sharrows.” They comply with state standards that cities generally must follow. There are more than 1,000 sharrows in San Jose and tens of thousands throughout California.
Sharrows may be used on streets when lanes are too narrow for a car and bike to ride side by side. In these situations, bicyclists may travel in the middle of the lane, whether there exists a sharrow or not.
But, said John-the-CityBike-Man:
“People driving and biking often don’t realize this, resulting in the person on a bike getting squeezed between the curb or parking and the moving car. Adding sharrows informs people where bikes can and should be riding for safety purposes: in the middle of the lane and outside the door zone of cars parked on-street where a suddenly opened door can cause a bike collision.”
In San Jose, more than a thousand miles of streets are eligible for sharrows. They generally only apply them to streets where the city wants to encourage biking or where there is no reasonable alternative route for bikes.
Sharrows were installed on St. Elizabeth Drive to provide connections to the Downing-Westfield BikePedestrian Bridge over Highway 17 via Stokes, to the Los Gatos Creek Trail and to future bikeway connections north to the CollegeParkmoor Bike-Pedestrian Bridge over Interstate 280. Q I’ve noticed new bike route signs going up around Sunnyvale with numbered routes on them. I can’t seem to find a map of these routes. Will all bike routes eventually be numbered?
Jason Roberts A Many will. Sunnyvale’s Safe Routes to School and Neighborhood Guided Bike Routes project provided funding for various improvements to signs and pavement markings along school routes citywide. This included implementing a network of guided bicycle routes that provide ways of traveling the city other than on major streets. Guide signs with route numbering, augmented by destination signs, were placed at key points.
The city’s website is being updated, and soon you will see the signs and routes.