Sharrows Are Not Effective Substitutes for Bike Lanes (Study)

"Study: Sharrows Don’t Make Streets Safer for Cycling"

Sharrows are the dregs of bike infrastructure — the scraps cities hand out when they can’t muster the will to implement exclusive space for bicycling. They may help with wayfinding, but do sharrows improve the safety of cycling at all? New research presented at the Transportation Review Board Annual Meeting suggests they don’t.

A study by University of Colorado Denver researchers Nick Ferenchak and Wesley Marshall examined safety outcomes for areas in Chicago that received bike lanes, sharrows, and no bicycling street treatments at all. (The study was conducted before Chicago had much in the way of protected bike lanes, so it did not distinguish between types of bike lanes.) The results suggest that bike lanes encourage more people to bike and make biking safer, while sharrows don’t do much of either.

Full Article:

http://usa.streetsblog.org/2016/01/14/study-sharrows-dont-make-stre...

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Irvin Steinert on January 20, 2016 at 3:33am

Does it mean:

  • share road?
  • narrow share?
  • share row?
  • share arrow?

It looks like it's the same rules as regular road but provides a bit of education to the driver that it is OK for bikes to be there. Unfortunately some might then think its not OK for bikes to be on roads where there are not clearly marked "sharrows".

So maybe they should be on every major thoroughfare that cannot support a separate bike lane. Or maybe they should not be used at all and there should instead be other types of public awareness/education on bike use?

Permalink Reply by mike w. on January 20, 2016 at 3:56am

You bring up a good point about marked routes. How often have you been out riding and have someone point out that there is a "perfectly good bike trail over there, so why are you not on it?"

 The biggest problem with designated bike routes is that many (most?) drivers -and many road/city planners- believe that bikes should only be ridden there, never mind if the marked routes and trails go nowhere a rider needs to be. Sadly, in this country, bikes are seen as recreational vehicles (?) at best and children's toys at worst.

  Despite that somewhat reasonable argument against sharrows, i do prefer them to "protected" lanes or no markings at all.

Permalink Reply by Irvin Steinert on January 20, 2016 at 3:51am

found this too 

Please keep in mind that one single study is not a complete analysis. Similar to "I know a guy.....", but haven't we all told that story? So it's evidence but not a verdict.

I don't think these "sharrows" are final solutions but I think it is at least a baby step in the right direction for some communities.

Permalink Reply by Yasmeen on January 20, 2016 at 4:08am

I'm so glad we are having this discussion. When I first posted the article, I thought this was a pretty straight forward issue based on my experiences. I was concerned cities or towns would implement sharrows instead of planning and building bike lanes and consider it sufficient. When I lived in Oak Park, I really didn't care for the sharrow on Chicago Avenue because cars really didn't make space for me. After trying it once or twice, I opted for quieter side streets where I didn't have to be in competition with the cars for a too-narrow busy street. While this was my experience, I can see how, in a more-established bike infrastructure sharrows can be effective.

Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on January 20, 2016 at 8:31am

When they added sharrows and "bikes may use full lane" signage on Wells St. south of Wacker, I noticed a significant improvement in driver behavior. I think that having the signage in addition to the sharrows made a difference.

Permalink Reply by Skip Montanaro 0mi on January 20, 2016 at 9:10am

Agreed. Though I still see plenty of people going to the right of the supports for the El tracks, only to pop back into the flow of traffic a few yards later. I don't know what's riskier, the possibility that you'll get doored, or that someone in a travel lane won't see you as you merge back into traffic.

Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on January 20, 2016 at 9:17am

Both are scary possibilities, which is why I insist on taking the lane there.

Permalink Reply by Yasmeen on February 6, 2016 at 8:07am

Another article popped up about sharrows, using the same study. The article titled, "Some Bike Infrastructure Is Worse Than None at All, It’s time to put the sharrow to rest."

"But far from giving cyclists a safer ride, or even doing nothing at all, sharrows might actually be doing some harm by tugging bikes into moving traffic. Some research has found they do reduce dooring (when the door of a parked car hits a cyclist). But only one study to date looked at whether or not sharrows had any impact on overall car-bike collisions—and that study found they could be increasing the risk of injury."

Conclusion from the study highlighted in this article:

"'As sharrows do not provide designated space for bicyclists and do not enhance the overall bicycle network, all cities should (as many already have) begin to consider sharrows simply as signage as opposed to actual infrastructure. It is time that sharrows are exposed for what they really are, a cheap alternative that not only fails to solve a pressing safety issue, but actually makes the issue worse through a sense of false security.'"

http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2016/02/sharrow-safety-bike-infras...

Permalink Reply by mike w. on February 6, 2016 at 10:28am

Makes me wonder if those conducting this study actually ride bikes?

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