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Entries tagged: Sharrows

As public works employees put paint to pavement on Friday, advocates and officials celebrated Oakland’s most successful year yet in biking and walking infrastructure.

Leaders from the East Bay Bicycle Coalition and Walk Oakland Bike Oakland joined Mayor Jean Quan to mark the installation of more than 18 miles of bike lanes and nearly 300 bike parking spots in 2011 alone.

Though it didn’t hit the organizations’ target of 30 miles by the end of 2011, the uptick in infrastructure has been a major victory for the Oakland Bikeways Campaign, a joint effort of the EEBC and WOBO. And city officials promised the next wave of sharrows and bike lanes should be on the ground by mid-2012.

“The bike lanes installed this year go a long way to fulfilling WOBO’s goal of connecting Oakland’s neighborhoods with safe, reliable and affordable transportation options,” Gloria Bruce, chair of the board at WOBO, said at the press conference. “Bicycling is fun, it’s healthy, and people want to do it. Despite the budget and other challenges, the City is moving forward quickly to build the network and we applaud them for that. Safe biking makes a big difference in people’s lives.”

“It’s not just putting down more miles, but miles that connect, and create a safe, continuous network that really gets you where you need to go and doesn’t drop you along the way,” Renee Rivera, executive director of EEBC, said. “We need to make Oakland a safe place to bike for everyone. We need to pay more attention to the eastern side of town, working with great partners like Cycles of Change and their earn-a-bike program, and bringing more infrastructure to the east side where it’s so badly needed.”

It’s worth noting that staff and volunteers from WOBO and EBBC worked on aspects of the Oakland Bikeways initiative at Alliance Winning Campaigns Training in 2008 and 2010 respectively. Jumpstart your 2012 campaigns by attending one of these workshops in your area. The first is coming up in a matter of weeks: Register now for the Winning Campaigns Training in Tucson, AZ, January 13-15th. The early bird rate — just $75 for Alliance members — ends on Friday.

Read more about last week’s celebration from the EBBC here.

Photo: Renee Rivera (left), executive director of the EBBC, with Oakland Mayor Jean Quan. (Credit: Gene Anderson)

This month, Jeff Stephens had some fun with street paint.

With the city’s permission, of course.

Last week, the executive director of Consider Biking (pictured) helped officials in Columbus, Ohio, install sharrows on High Street. After a year of waiting, nearly 190 markers are now alerting motorists that cyclists have equal rights to the full lane. Much to Consider Biking’s liking, the sharrows are highly visible and placed only 200 feet apart along the 6.5-mile stretch.

That’s not the only promising development in Columbus, a city that has a strong complete streets policy that aims to make roadways accessible to all users.

In addition to the paint sprayer, Stephens wielded some scissors, helping Columbus Mayor Mike Coleman cut the ribbon on new improvements to Morse Street. A critical east-west corridor, that artery now has three miles of bike lanes.

So it’s no surprise that Consider Biking gives the city some love in its latest newsletter: “Experience across the country demonstrates that bike lanes help encourage more people to bicycle on the road. And we know that more bicycles on the road translates to increased safety for bicyclists, too. We applaud the City for their commitment to building ‘complete streets’ and look forward to helping unveil more dedicated bike lanes across the city as the summer progresses.”

Check out Consider Biking’s Facebook page for more photos.

After nearly six years of delays, Los Angeles finally has its first sharrows.

This month, the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition celebrated the painting of the white icons that alert motorists of cyclists’ rights to the shared lane.

“For LACBC this marks a very important victory and we’re hoping today will be turning point for Los Angeles,” the LABC blog noted on June 11, the day city workers put paint to pavement. “Sharrows have been used in cities all across the U.S., in Canada and even in Australia. Los Angeles however had still not seen a single official shared lane marking.  But today we can say that LA has sharrows and they are here to stay.”

The LA Department of Transportation is planning sharrows on six streets, but the first pilots — on Fountain Avenue and Fourth Street — already are causing some debate. For instance, exactly where in the lane should the sharrow be painted for optimal efficacy? Eleven feet from the curb? Fourteen feet from the curb? Last week, the LABC weighed in on that, too.

“We understand the community’s concerns about proper placement of sharrows and we agree that in addition to getting sharrows on our streets the goal is to ensure that best practices are achieved,” the blog explained. “Moving forward, LACBC recommends that LADOT carefully consider alternate placement locations for sharrows depending on the lane width, traffic volume, size of parking lane, and other important factors that determine where they should be placed in order that sharrows are used effectively.”

Surf over to the LABC blog for more information.

The Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition (LACBC) is proud to announce that their involvement with the cities of Glendale and Burbank have led to momentous results in the two cities becoming bicycle friendly communities.

According to LACBC, “Due to our participation in Glendale as part of the Safe and Healthy Streets PLACE Grant, Glendale has started to take visible steps in becoming more bike friendly.” The most recent advancement is the newly painted sharrows, or shared roadway markings on some of Burbank’s neighborhood streets. These ‘sharrows’ are a relatively new street marking for bicyclists whose main purpose is to guide cyclists to ride outside the car door zone, where they could potentially collide with a door opened by a motorist.

In Burbank, LACBC welcomed the new Bicycle Master Plan that was adopted on December 15th, 2009. According to LACBC, “This plan offers visionary and creative options for the planning of bicycle infrastructure in Burbank and Los Angeles. LACBC was present at the adoption and brought up important points about how Burbank and Glendale could potentially work together to ensure mutually beneficial outcomes and good connectivity between the two cities.”

For more information visit http://www.la-bike.org/

After the San Francisco Superior Court was exposed to a city report stating that bicycle ridership has increased 53% since 2006, the court ruled to partially lift the Bike Plan injunction set three years ago. 

Since the ruling, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) has been working hard to make sure changes are happening and that the City is taking full advantage of the court’s partial lift. Just days following the lift, SFBC welcomed the City’s first bike lane in three years along with its first green-colored “Bike Box” (an advanced stop line that gives bicyclists priority waiting room in front of cars at stop lights). Various neighborhoods have also received additional improvements such as “sharrows” (shared lane arrows), new sidewalk bike racks, a temporary on-street bike parking corral as well as improved bicycle way-finding signage.

These improvements are a step in the right direction but more than 35 bicycle related projects still remain on hold until the injunction is fully lifted. In the mean time, SVBC will continue their efforts and push for a full lift of the injunction with a hearing set for June 2010. To view current improvements, follow the injunction’s process, and more information on SFBC’s involvement, visit www.sfbike.org

According to the San Luis Obispo County Bicycle Coalition, “We’re excited to report that the City of San Luis Obispo has installed Sharrows on Monterey Street. In fact, we saw them put down paint right in front of our office. Sharrows, or shared lane markings, are designed for streets that aren’t wide enough for a bike lane but need some kind of treatment so that bicyclists stay out of the door zone and motorists share the road. Watch our new video and get up to speed on everything sharrows. We’re already noticing a more friendly Monterey Street.” Congrats SLOCBC!

For more information, click here…

Bike Alameda is celebrating some,” long awaited, hard fought advocacy results!” A new bike lane segment and sharrows can now be found on Alameda, CA’s Central and Oak Street.  These are the first ever sharrows in Alameda. Also, the diagonal parking was changed to parallel parking resulting in less parking, too!

See the sharrows at bikealameda.org