Bill Holmstrom put together a video clip illustrating sharrows in Salem!
Holmstrom is a member of the Downtown Vision 2020 Bicycle and Pedestrian Workgroup, and regularly rides his bike around town. He produced this at CCTV.
Thanks, Bill!
Portland election turnout alarmingly low
15 hours ago
4 comments:
One worry about the sharrows... If we're training drivers to share lanes with bicycles when there are sharrows present, will that somehow change their behavior on lanes that lack sharrows? If drivers see me riding down High Street, where there are neither bike lanes nor sharrows, will they think that I do not belong?
Now, in addition to calls of "Get on the sidewalk!", will people start yelling, "Go ride on the sharrows!"?
Perhaps not, but I wonder if, subconsciously, drivers will become less aware & tolerant on non-sharrowed streets.
Good question. Portland's putting down over 2,000 sharrow markings. Salem is just starting to work with them. Hopefully there will be a lot more! Maybe as a rhetorical move we need to be stressing "guide," and "recommendation" - words that imply choices among many options, rather than words that suggest exclusive sorting and channeling.
In the meantime, I think the sharrows have been a happy non-story and non-issue. I haven't heard of any "get on the sharrow" yelling by people driving cars, have you? People are noticing them, but in a quiet and gentle way - not a defensive, "you're asking me what?" kind of way. Drivers are used to construction cones and flaggers - so what's a sharrow in comparison to those disruptions? Maybe we are overestimating them as disruptive agents of change!
Very nice video! If I can make one suggestion: the section (at about time 0:52) says don't try to pass a bicycle and it shows a car going around a bike -- I think some people that watch the video will get the visual message that it's okay to pass a bike like this, and tune out the words. If Bill can change the video to superimpose one of those circles with a line through it over that part, it would reinforce the "no passing" message.
But overall, this is a fine video.
BikePortland has a post discussing sharrows as wayfinding and the legal environment for lane positioning!
Post a Comment