Interesting article about (the uselessness of) sharrows relative to "bike boulevards," etc. I tend to agree. I especially liked the following:

+1

Much that I agree that sharrows and some of the other road paint novelties abound are not only wasteful, but confusing for our lowest common denominator road user, I'll take one over another god damn left hand suicide bike lane in MPLS.

The pained lanes are will only be useful if they are a precursor to actual segregated lanes (with curbs/protection) and bike boxes at intersections.

The benefit of the sharrows, in my opinion, is mostly just that they tell people who don't understand the law where bikes are actually supposed to ride; i.e., out of the door zone, and not in the gutter. Yes, you are still riding as though they weren't there, but you have a guide on where to ride. Now, most of the people on this site probably don't need that, but a lot of people on bikes do, and most people who drive cars, in my experience.


Gabriel

Are sharrows and bike boxes in the law anywhere? Drivers handbook?

I do not think so.

[quote="castiron"... I'll take one over another god damn left hand suicide bike lane in MPLS.[/quote]

Happy to find out I'm not the only one wondering why Mpls is creating bike lanes on the wrong sides of one-ways.

Happy to find out I'm not the only one wondering why Mpls is creating bike lanes on the wrong sides of one-ways.[/quote]

Think of it as a two way road with one way exclusively for cyclists.

I ride the LH lanes on 10th ST and 6th St near daily. Both are with the flow of traffic.
The 10th ST one abruptly ends much the same way the old one on Hennepin did. The new one on 6th leaves you trapped between a concrete wall and 3+ lanes of freeway bound traffic.

Seriously, who thinks of this shit?

Any reminder to motorists that they can expect to see some cyclists on the road isn't a waste a paint.

I think sharrows and green paint made a huge difference on Bryant Ave. bikes seem to be far more numerous, and traffic better behaved.

I agree. But it also conveys the idea that Bryant is an "approved" bike route, and therefor other streets are not, and bikes shouldn't be on them. Whereas the reality is, bikes have the same rights on any city street.

AFAIK, the bike blvds extend the biker's rights versus a normal street. I believe a bike can take the lane on a bike blvd without any due cause. On a normal street, a bike is required to make an attempt to stay as close to the curb as possible and only take the lane for safety or turning purposes.

Sharrows seems to have some value as an educational tool. Anecdotally, I'd guess they don't have much safety value. I hope the City is investing some of their funding to do some R&D on these measures, so we can quantify the value.

The left-side lanes were some of the first lanes that Minneapolis striped. The original concern was bus traffic, IIRC

I don't see the connection with bus traffic.