Sharrows, icons painted onto the roadways, tell cyclists which way to ride on the streets & theoretically let drivers know that they need to share the road with bicyclists who will, presumably, be riding where the sharrows appear.
Sharrows have recently been added to Spring Grove Avenue between Crawford Avenue & Mitchell Avenue. The room for the added bicycle space has been made by eliminating some of the center lane on the roadway & re-striping. Re-striping & keeping the curb clear of debris are, to a great extent, all that really needs to be done to make life happier for cyclists. Slow moving traffic is supposed to stay to the right of it's lane. I maintain that by trying to further accommodate cyclists, dull witted motorists will just get confused & further alienated.
While headed outbound on Spring Grove, already an easy cycling stretch, things are fine til you approach Salway Park. Then things get interesting.
yeah, I want to go there
Passing the park, the road narrows as you approach Winton Road. Here we find a rather ominous sharrow.
Where's the rider ?
ok, on reviewing my photos, I realize the sharrow images are not all the same. More confusion? Who knows what rationalization the chowderhead driver will make of these differences.
The stretch between Winton & Clifton is narrow due to a group of buildings built along the south side of the road. There used to be sidewalk all the way out to the curb.
When the city tore up the sidewalk, I thought, "great, they are going to widen the road & make it more bicycle (and truck) friendly".
Nope
They planted grass. The companies along this stretch do a good job of keeping their sidewalks clear in the winter which is hard with the city ploughing snow up onto their sidewalks whenever it snows. Now the companies have the added expense of having to maintain a grassy area.
Candidate for a Seed Bomb ?
Looking at the picture of Spring Grove Avenue, above, however, one sees a really obvious bike lane with a bit of separation from traffic via the utility poles. That is, put the bike lane to the right of the poles where the weeds ~er~ grass is. AH, who am I kidding, auto junkies would be careening into 'em constantly.
Approaching Clifton Avenue, the lanes split into right turn only, straight or right, straight only & left turn only. The Sharrow now moves into the most dangerous lane, the straight or right turn lane. Why? Beats me. What if I want to turn left? Also, when do I switch lanes? Back in front of the park there was a kind of lane switcher thingamabob. If this doesn't frazzle the Little Nemos of Autoland, nothing will. Well, if the zombie like driver even notices. After taking these pictures I returned home along Crawford. Going around a blind left curve, I heard an automobile coming up behind me. As I cleared the curve & saw nobody coming, I started to signal the motorist to pass but he had already driven completely over the double yellow line into the oncoming lane to pass me. These people have the self preservation instincts of lemmings. No amount of signage will help them. Adding more will just confuse and frustrate them more.
For more positive outlooks on this tom foolery check out UrbanCincy and Queen City Bike.
I feel like I should change the name of this blog to the bicycling curmudgeon.
2 comments:
Your analysis of the situation is a bit unfair, and somewhat ill-informed. It doesn't help that the line painting wasn't finished when you took these pictures, and I'll admit when I first saw these photos I was a bit confused myself. I rode through there today though, and it makes perfect sense, with one exception that I'll elaborate on shortly.
For one thing, yes, there are two different bike markings, because there's two different things going on. Between Crawford and Winton there is a separate dedicated bike lane, which in your first picture does not have the solid white line that separates the bike lane from the rest of traffic painted yet. This bike lane is along the curb southbound, and partially along the curb northbound except by the the park where it swings out to allow for on-street parking (your "yeah, I want to go there" photo). However, when there's no soccer or baseball games going on, the parking lane is available to ride on instead. This is all good.
Between Winton and Clifton however, there are sharrows (technically called shared lane markings), hence the different symbol. The sharrows start out in the right lane as they should be, but they absolutely cannot stay in that lane under any circumstance. They must shift to the second straight/right lane because cyclists cannot proceed straight from the rightmost lane lest they get swiped by someone turning right from that second lane. Of course if they're turning right they can do so from the right lane, but if they're going straight they must use that second straight/right lane.
Now, all that said, the one disconnect here is that there's no indication of the sharrow lane changing, it simply jumps from one to the other without any notice. When the road is clear it's pretty easy to see, but if there's traffic then it would be obscured and likely missed. What is needed is a dashed line or more of those chevron arrows to connect the two markings where the change happens. Other than that one thing, this is exactly the way the bike facilities should be laid out under the circumstances. Ideally there would only be a right turn lane then a straight-only lane, instead of the shared straight/right, but even in that case the sharrow would still have to shift out of the right lane anyway.
As for the sidewalk situation, the removal of the full-width concrete was done for further storm water management. While not as effective as the rain gardens between Clifton and Mitchell (which I think are a bit over-engineered with all the inlets and such), it makes what was once a 100% impervious surface now 50% permeable, and able to handle the runoff from the other 50%, so they basically eliminated all the runoff from the sidewalk. Could that space have been used for a bike lane? Yes, but there would be a big conflict at Clifton Avenue with the huge amount of turning traffic there. As it is now, bikes are deflected to move with the through northbound traffic, but with a "side path" between the curb and sidewalk, bikes would then have to cross perpendicular to everyone turning right from Spring Grove onto Clifton, only to end up in the road again, or to have to deal with the same problem at Mitchell.
ok, I had not considered the runoff facet of the remodeling. The thing is, I get it, I know how to drive/ride. Most motorists do not. When they see a cyclist in the "middle of the road" (on the right side of their lane - where they should be) they freak out.
Motorists are terrible about turning right while they pass bicycles in intersections. YOU CANNOT PASS IN AN INTERSECTION !!!
But who knows this? My point is - the average motorist will just be confused by the new road painting.
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