Bike advocates have spent the last five decades stepping up their requests. They started out asking for the right to ride on sidewalks in the 1960's, but gradually moved on to asking for signed bike routes, bike lanes ("Just a little paint") and now protected bike lanes. The case for the safety and utility of protected bike lanes is impossible to deny, but is there still a place for paint and the dreaded flexposts?
I've noticed often that when new facilities are installed they're quickly criticized for not being protected, or for being protected but still having cars parked in them. "Flexposts aren't protection," "Flexposts are useless," "Sharrows are bullshit" or other such statements are made. "Paint is not protection" is another favorite.
[At the point let me implore you good readers to be patient. Nearly without fail, when a new facility is being installed someone takes to twitter to complain about it the day after work starts, which is often before it's completed. Then a few days later, the work is completed and the thing they complained about - no protection for example - has been addressed. Do not be that person. Put all critiques under your hat for a solid week.]
I like protected bike lanes. We should build a lot more. But I also think sharrows, flexposts and buffers have their place. It's true that they're not protection, just as it is true that a banana is not a helicopter. But as long as no one tries to claim that their banana is a helicopter, it seems odd to yell that at them when they offer you one. The appropriate time to call out a flexpost as not protection is when someone tries to say it is. The mere installation of a flexpost does not warrant it.
While I'm not going to waste my time asking for a sharrow these days, they do have utility. As do flexposts and buffers.
Sharrows are much maligned, possibly because they're much abused, but despite offering no protection, they have their place. On roads where, for whatever reason, there isn't room for a bike lane, they can serve three purposes - reinforce the legitimacy of bicycle traffic on the street, recommend proper bicyclist positioning, and offer directional and wayfinding guidance. Should cyclists have to "reinforce our right"? No, but we shouldn’t have to do sexual harassment training every year either. It would seem like once would do the trick. But it doesn't. So sharrows are like repeated training. A 2010 study showed that where they’re installed, cyclists ride farther to the left, as intended. And they can serve a wayfinding role, guiding cyclist between facilities, especially in places where I've seen them designed for that purpose. Sharrows can't offer protection, and have little safety benefit even when used properly, but they're not bullshit. If a DOT downgraded a plan from PBLs to sharrows, that would be bullshit; but merely using them is not. They’re not a substitute for other facilities (though they might be better than door zone bike lanes in some cases), but they’re not "worse than nothing." They are marginally better than nothing, which I understand may not be enough for some.
Buffered Bike Lanes
Buffered bike lanes often garner the "paint is not protection" complaint, which is largely true - it's not. But buffered lanes, lanes with more than a foot of painted shy space on one or both sides, can improve safety. Studies show that buffered bike lanes, especially those with flexposts "yield significant increases in perceived comfort for potential cyclists with safety concerns (the interested but concerned)." We've seen that on Pennsylvania Avenue NW, where the buffered bike lanes led to more cyclists using the road, and fewer crashes (there was an issue with cars making illegal U-Turns which is pretty specific to that unusual design, but the main idea remains). Furthermore, buffers in the door zone help keep cyclists from riding too close to parked cars. And while studies are needed to determine the safety of traffic-side buffers, it seems reasonable to expect that creating space between drivers and cyclists - even if it enforced only by paint is better than not creating that space.
Flexposts
Finally we come to flexposts, not as hated as sharrows, but often dismissed. As mentioned above, Flexposts put "interested but concerned" cyclists at ease. Flexposts are also effective at preventing cars from parking on a bike lane or driving in it. When they were added to the bike lanes on 1st Street, SE the number of cars parking in the bike lane dropped to zero. They were also usefyl in limiting the number of cars driving down protected bike lanes (when they go missing, it's noticed). Again, they aren't protection, but they serve a purpose.
While we can continue to work for more PBLs, the glamorous Marshas of bike facilities, can we also learn to stop hating these other Jans?
If we do, we find that the sharrows were inside of us all along.
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