Long Beach Combines Sharrows with Green Stripe

Long Beach, CA, which is trying to become nothing less than the most bike friendly city in America, has taken sharrows to a whole new level.

Street by street, cyclists and motorists are seeing changes, the most dramatic of which took place last summer when lanes of green paint appeared on one of the city's busiest stretches, providing an early test of how the city will balance car traffic with cyclists' rights to safe routes.

The green strip created a "sharrow" -- a 6-foot-wide space in the middle of the right lane of traffic on both sides of 2nd Street in Belmont Shore. It was intended to be a stark reminder that drivers must share the road with cyclists.

Perhaps DC should try this in the northbound lane on 15th St NW.

Not everyone loved the green stripe at first, but people are adjusting.

"There was a lot of confusion from cyclists and motorists because there was green paint all over the place," said Dominic Dougherty, manager of the Bikestation, a business that provides bike rentals, parking and repair in downtown Long Beach. "And confusion breeds anger."

Gandy said the green strip "better articulates the existing law," which allows bikes to travel with vehicular traffic.

"We haven't given cyclists any more privileges than before the green stripe, we've just made it more obvious," he said.

But others say the green lanes have emboldened cyclists too much, with many weaving in and out of traffic, riding four-deep and making the already clogged street impassable.

"We just don't understand" the purpose, said driver Anne Long, an insurance agent who lives blocks from 2nd Street. "Are we supposed to pull over and go around them? I just stay behind them and go really slow until there's an opening in the other lane."

And that is what you should do, just like with a slow moving car.

But others say that slowly, behavior is changing; cyclists are being more consistent about where they ride and drivers are being more attentive.

"When it first got put in we thought, 'Oh, my God, everyone is going to get murdered,' " said Jean-Marie Garcia, a hair stylist who rides her baby-blue beach cruiser to work on 2nd Street every day.

"But gradually, over time, drivers have adjusted. They're slowing down."

The green lane is only part of the plan

At a time when cities are cutting expenses across the board, Long Beach has raised $17 million in state and federal grants to improve its bike system through traffic improvements, education and bike share programs. In the next six months, the city will be resurfacing 20 miles of streets to include new bike lanes, part of a plan that includes painting and paving more than 100 miles of bike infrastructure.

In spring, the city hopes to install traffic circles on less-traveled streets parallel to thoroughfares and designate them "bike boulevards" -- preferred routes for cyclists.

Also in the works are plans to replace entire lanes of traffic with protected bikeways. And in what's bound to be a controversial move, the city is looking at taking away prime parallel parking spots -- the ones most convenient to shops and restaurants -- and putting "bike corrals" in their place.

When Chris Woodyard, who writes USAToday's Drive On blog and who loves to put the word rights in quotes when referring to cyclists in the road, heard about it, he naturally lost his mind in a post entitled "City Puts Bicycles Directly in the Path of Motorists" (Notice they put things in the way of people).

bicyclists are kings of the road in an experiment that turns frustrated motorists into serfs.

Even though cars were whizzing by at 30 miles an hour yesterday, bikes were free to ride right in their path.

The speed limit on the road is 25mph. And he continues to point to the Leymeister fatality as evidence that cyclists don't belong in the road - when the real lesson should be that drivers should make sure their windshield is clear and then keep their eyes on the road.

But it in Maryland recently, center-of-the-road biking led to a death, a bicyclist killed by the car of a driver on the way to work one morning.

Now, it's a person who was killed by a thing. The driver was just the owner of the car that did the killing. [Fact check: the driver was going to school].

Bikers on beach cruisers are meandering along in the center of the lane, disregarding honking horns of the drivers being held up for blocks behind them, he says. One of them "just gave us 'the bird.'" For the bikers, "there should be signs saying 'Keep up with traffic.'"

If they're in the road, bikers are traffic.

To see it, check out this photo by redwagonteam

Comments

[IMGoph]

some people are never going to learn, and never going to change. you just need to keep sounding calm and reasonable, and ignore the spittle-flecked rage.

[guez]

This is interesting, but I wonder if it doesn't introduce some unfortunate confusion, as green paint is typically used to mark bike *lanes* (where cars do not normally belong). Do we want green to mean "bikes have a right to be here" or "cars stay out"?

[Jack Cochrane]

Long Beach has about 500,000 people, roughly comparable to D.C. or half the population of Montgomery or Fairfax county. Somehow it got $17M in state and federal grants for bike improvements and education. I can't even imagine Montgomery County obtaining that much in grants, unless it's spread over many many years.

[ontarioroader]

I think 'sharrows' create a sort of ambiguity that's just not necessary & possibly counter-productive to bicycle safety. Especially in a city like DC with so many visitors and drivers from other areas it help to have at least some consistency. To me 'sharrows' just seem like a politically easier/cheaper way for gov't to claim "look we have bike infrastructure" without actually creating bike lanes - or god forbid the every unpopular "taking lanes away from cars". Does anyone know if DDOT will be claiming 'sharrowed' roads in DC in their total miles of 'bike lanes' in DC? I think it would be pretty disingenuous for them to do so.

With regard to Long Beach's painted 'sharrowed' lane - isn't this basically just a bike lane that cars are allowed to use? The whole concept just gets so wishy-washy that at some point there need to be national standards as there are for highway construction. All this ambiguity is just going to lead to more collisions.

[washcycle]

I think the ambiguity of sharrows is going away as they become more frequently used. They even made it into the MUTDC this year, so standards have been defined. As I recall, and it's fuzzy so I'm not confident this is right, at the last BAC meeting DDOT staff said they weren't counting sharrowed roads in their bike lane mileage unless it was used to connect two bike lanes as is done on 14th St NW, but that they should keep a separate count of those.

I don't think sharrows are just a politically easier way to claim to have bike infrastructure, at least not as used in DC. The few places I've seen them used are where a bike lane wouldn't work (like a one lane road that is too narrow for a bike lane and a full traffic lane) or to connect two pieces of infrastructure, like a bike lane and a bridge.

What is a bike lane that cars are allowed to use? That's just a lane for cars and bikes, also known as a lane. So yes, it is a bike lane that cars are allowed to use, but that is a distinction without a difference.

Guez's point about green paint being confusing is a good one. We haven't used green paint in DC, so I actually don't think it would confuse anyone, but it is something to be cautious of in the future if paint does start being used to define space. Maybe one color for shared areas and one for bike only areas?

[guez]

Maybe one color for shared areas and one for bike only areas?

Good idea. Perhaps a relatively faint green for the former and a darker green for the latter, coupled with text ("share the road" "bikes only").

These kind of things can be tricky. At some point Greenbelt used diamonds on their bike lanes, but they found that motorists confused them with HOV lanes, so they covered them over.

[Michael]

Chris Woodyard is a real piece of work. I wonder what he would say about the driver (not the car) that sped up right behind me on Independence Ave. one evening and started flashing his lights at me, trying to get me out of the way, even though the entire left lane was empty. He was the only driver on the road for about 200 feet in either lane. That still burns me up. I didn't flip off the driver since he was the one with the 3,000-lb. hunk of steel.

Unfortunately Chris Woodyard seems to have the same attitude as that driver, that cyclists apparently have no right to use any road at any time.

[Richard Layman]

To me, all sharrows are is adding road markings to Class 3 bicycle facilities, which typically before had only been signed with Bicycle Route signs and "Share the Road" signs.

I like the idea of different colors of paint being used for Class 2 bicycle facilities (lanes, bike boxes, etc.) and a different color for Class 3, if you are going to use paint for class 3.