Cool!

This is a great idea - a lightweight and unobtrusive way to give drivers a heads up about their two-wheeled roadmates.

I'm really excited to see Portland embrace this innovative, successful idea, and I look forward to seeing the results of the test pilot. I hope we will conclude that they are a great fit for our bike-friendly city and expand their use.

not that I don't consciously look for bicyclists as it is when driving around P-town, but it will be nice to see a little reminder that we all need to watch out for each other...glad to see Portland is jumping on this in its early stages.

Shouldn't bikes and cars be sharing the road as it is? Why do we have to waste our tax dollars to put these markings on the pavement; we don't! Just share the road, obey traffic laws, and be smart.

Put our money to better use.

PDXrocket:
Yes! bikes and cars should share the road regardless of pavement markings.

But just FYI, we spend our tax dollars on these markings because they have been proven get more people on bikes...period.

More people on bikes means more healthy people, less polution, less traffic, etc...which all end up saving us millions in health care and highway maintenance costs.

What would you consider a "better use"?

I like the idea but I am not sure how I feel about transportation department deciding when it is safe for me to ride on the side and when I need to take the lane. Perhaps they should start by simply putting the markings in every lane in downtown Portland. It would be a good PR start and would get the message across that every lane is a "sharrow".

If we're going to be putting money towards road improvements, why not improve the roads? I know it's a large cost, but anything helps at this point.

If I didn't already commute to work via bus and bike, I wouldn't be talked into it with some markings on the pavement...period.

PDXrocket:

While sharrows might not influence your behavior, they really can make a huge difference for less experienced bikers whose decision on whether or not to ride hinges on how safe they feel on the road.

Sharrows have been shown to keep cars from squeezing bicyclists uncomfortably up against the side of the road and keep bikers feeling safer.

Considering the relatively tiny cost of marking the roads, I think that this public safety investment is more than worth it. Five cycllists have been killed this summer, and that is unacceptable. We need to keep the streets safe for everyone, and the small sum of money will be expended on this project will help do just that.

Roland:
I do see the positive to the sharrows, as some of my friends that are hesitant to bike tend to ride on sidewalks (slap!) and maybe these will encourage new bicyclists to take to the streets. If these are very low cost as you say, then I say "paint!"

As for the bicyclist's deaths...and I'm not trying to say they deserve anything they got, because they most certainly didn't. I wouldn't mind seeing all the data for all those deaths. For the ones I remember it didn't always involve a reckless driver; it really almost read like a 50/50 split. How about helmets? I don't even think one of them were wearing a helmet! What's with this town anyways? Does everyone think it's very "unhip" to ride for safety? Then when someone like that gets killed for not wearing protective gear, and/or some lights at night (and trust me, I ride early morning and late night, always with plenty of bright and flashing lights) they blame the driver. I have almost come close to hitting cyclists because they weren't being smart. It's just a shame that so many people ALWAYS side with the cyclists.

Let's see a full, indepth, all the data report!

Ross, since these are going to be used first on NW 19th, our neighborhood transportation committee had a chance to review them with Roger. The strategy for placement is pretty rational. They're going in places where for some reason a continuous bike lane was not possible, but where auto volumes are low enough that an auto often has the opportunity to change lanes to avoid the cyclist. So this is really a 'gap filler' in the existing network.

Thank you for your actions to increase safety on our roads. It is easy to be critical and cynical, but difficult to actually create positive change. Let's try the "sharrows" and see if they help!

Maybe we ought to pressure the automakers to add distinctive lights that signal when a car door opens.

This would help protect both passing cars and passing bikes.

how about having the bicyclists pay for their share of the roads?...and obey the traffic laws on occasion...you know, when they feel like it...and how about talking to your buddy "Taliban" Tommy Potter about not setting a bad examply by running red lights with his friends from Critical Mass?
Lars

Hey, we've got enough graffiti artists and taggers in town, why don't we just give 'em a cardboard template and pay 'em $5 per sharrow?

I bet that would be a pretty cheap way of blanketing the downtown streets...

Somewhere I read that Portland has completed the easiest stages of making the city bicycle friendly: installing bike lanes on many major streets, creating bicycle maps, and so on.

However, to truly make Portland work for bicyclists - beyond waterfront park, the esplanade and springwater trail corridor (kudos on the bridges, btw - can't wait until they are done!), it's going to take some heavy investments, I fear.

I would absolutely love to see more springwater trail corridor 'bike highways' that are grade separated from street traffic and allow anyone easy biking access from the burbs all the way close into downtown. The entire Metro area should be looked at - not just Portland (although it is up to Metro and the burbs on how to do that).

One thing that really grabbed my attention the other day was in Lyon, France - where they have rental commuter bikes, very similar to flexcar:

http://wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,68576,00.html

the bikes are free to rent for the first 30 minutes, $1.20 thereafter. You need a credit card (which wouldn't be very useful to young people, unfortunately - but then, neither do they drive much), and can pick up and drop off your bike from any of the 150 bike stations.

This, of course, is the uber-platinum level of bike-friendliness... however, I think one very significant step we could achieve is already evident on N Mississippi avenue: Creating dedicated bicycle parking spaces on the street! This really tells people that the entire area is bike-friendly.

Since free parking for cars is a huge reason people drive in the burbs... why not give free parking to other non-auto users? Bicycle, scooter... EVERYWHERE in the city?

Or at least starting with all the major destination shopping streets (NW 21st, NW 23rd, Hawthorne, Mississippi, Belmont, Clinton, etc, etc)!

Lars,

Cars burden society with a lot of things they don't even come close to paying for. The automobile-oriented roadway system and its maintenance are heavily subsidized by the average taxpayer, whether they drive on it or not. Cars also create what economists call "negative externalities" - that is, costs that they burden others with that are not paid for by either the consumer or producer. It's a market failure. Some examples are the costs of pollution, the medical costs of respitory health issues and diseases of obesity, national security concerns, and the general, shared macroeconomic health of our country. Imported oil, much of it from the Middle East, is the biggest driver of America's massive trade deficit.

When the price of cars and their maintenance cover all of that, THEN your argument will begin to hold water - and we can have a conversation.

Justin,

I, too, read about the "Flex-Bike" system that is unfolding in France. It certainly is a very captivating, innovative, and in many ways appealing system... As you may or may not know, Portland experimented with a similar public "yellow bike" system a decade ago, but it ran out of capital, largely because the rate of theft of the bikes was so high. But this system seems different -and very promising- because of the new credit-card and bike-lock technology, which promise to keep theft and capital loss to a minimum...

I wonder if their are any private entities that might want to follow the lead of the French firm Vélo'v and consider investing in such a program. If there's a way for such a program to turn a profit, and I bet in Portland there is, maybe we'll see a private entity start it up soon...

Apparently it also charges a $180 (or something) deposit when you check out a bike. Keep the bike for 24 hours, it's yours!

Lars,

I challenge you to bike to work for 2 weeks straight. Only then can you a get even a faint undertanding of the road issues that cyclists face (unless your too "unbalanced" to ride a bike that is). Otherwise you just come off as a typical right wing chickenhawk.

As far as the sharrows, I don't know how well they'll work, but it's worth a shot. A constant reminder to motorists that they are not the only ones on the road is obviously needed. Even in a bike friendly city like Portland. Good work, Sam.

Matt

Matt,

While I like the idea of sharrows (to help both motorists *and* bicyclists remember the rules), I suspect what you are seeing from Lars (in an admittedly somewhat less than convincing fashion) is a sort of backlash from drivers towards cyclists. Cyclists tend to be quite vocal (up to shutting down roads once or twice a year) about drivers not "being aware" of them. Unfortunately what drivers fail to hear from the cycling community is criticism of their fellow cyclists who would probably have their licenses revoked were they in a car. Every day I see cyclists run red lights, pass turning cars on the right, ignore pedestrians in crosswalks (and getting hit by a moving cyclist can vary from painful to fatal)... the list is endless. As far as I can tell, cyclists believe themselves to have unlimited right-of-way.

Undoubtedly there are more instances of bad driving than bad cycling simply due to sheer numbers of cars. If you looked at *per capita* bad driving, however, I'd bet a lot of money that reckless cyclists outnumber reckless drivers by a wide margin. Of course, this is a much the Portland Police's fault as anyone's since they regularly fail to enforce traffic laws on cyclists (I personally witnessed a cyclist run a red light at the intersection of 39th and Powell right in front of a police car who did nothing about it).

I think the sharrows are a great idea. Let's help pay for them with income generated by police enforcing traffic laws on cyclists.

P.S. Before you get on your high-horse and claim everyone you know obeys the laws (at least *most* of the time, right?), ask yourself "how many times have I come to a *complete stop* before turning right onto a cross street?" I'd bet the answer is pretty close to "never". In a car that's a ticket, on a bicycle it's the norm.

Re: Sharrows -
I don't think there's enough education of motorists OR cyclists about who's entitled to use a lane of travel and when/why their entitled. If these pavement markings get people thinking and learning about the law, they may not be necessary in all places. My hope is that people will learn to think "this lane is too narrow for safe passing, so I should expect to share it with other road users, single file" even when they don't see a sharrow.

Re: reckless scofflaw cyclists
Clearly, too many cyclists are scofflaws, ignoring traffic signals. Clearly, too many skateboarders are also, and pedestrians, and motorists... and clearly there's too little enforcement to change these behaviors. What's often missing from this discussion, however, is recognition of the great difference in conesequences between different road users' violations of the traffic laws.

Pedestrians jaywalk at their own peril. They might dent your car if you hit them, but I don't hear anyone clamoring for less jaywalking on the grounds that pedestrians damage cars when they're hit. Skateboarders move fast enough to dent a pedestrian... cyclists faster still, and these faster moving road users have greater responsibility to safeguard pedestrains...

But only the cars/trucks on the road are _likely_ to seriously injure or kill another road user in a collision. People who move faster (i.e. on wheels) and who choose to use heavier vehicles (with more potential to injure or kill others) _must_ assume greater responsibility for their actions because the potential consequences of irresonsibility are greater.

Consider this: there are no laws governing how pedestrians move among each other on sidewalks; there's no need, since the consequences of collisions are minimal. There _are_ laws governing how cyclists move among pedestrians on a sidewalk. These laws place the burden of safety (requirements to slow, yield, signal in various situations) on the more dangrous user, the cyclist.

Here's some physics to illustrate the relative consequences of different road users causing accidents:
Assumptions:
Pedestrian weighs 150 Lbs.
Skateboarder weighs 160 Lbs.
Cyclist weighs 180 Lbs.
Toyota Prius (with gas and driver) weighs 3,100 Lbs.
Ford F250 (similarly equipped) weighs 5,300 Lbs.

This means that a Ford F250 hitting me on my bicycle at 10 mph packs the same punch (momentum) as a Prius moving at 17 mph, the same punch as another cyclist hitting me at _294 mph_. The potential for damage is huge.
Let's reverse this:
A cyclist hitting a car driver at 20 mph packs the same punch as a Toyota Prius moving at 1.16 mph. The potential for damage (to the driver in the car) is trivial.

Of course nobody feels good or safe hitting another road user, and motorists may endanger others trying to avoid an unsafe cyclist or pedestrian. There are many reasons (in addition to their own safety) why lighter road users must be careful. I'd just like to see motorists admit the dramatically greater danger (compared to cyclists) they pose to other road users.

That's a great diagram. It belongs in an updated version of the Oregon Driver's Manual emphasizing the necessity of not opening a car door into *any* traffic, bike, car, pedestrian. The cars don't need distinctive lights, drivers just need some distinctive common sense drilled into the brain, like training themselves to look first. (BTW, I'm also a driver).

What does the data show? What are the causes of bike accidents in Portland and how many would have been avoided by this new painting scheme? How many would be avoided if bikers followed simple safety rules:

I am amazed at the number of riders I see disobeying important rules of the road. Probably the most dangerous thing that they do is NOT HAVING LIGHTS AT NIGHT. I’ll even bet that, in most car-bike collisions, the biker was disobeying at least one law, even if the accident was not his fault.

We have had a number of bikers hit by drunks. I wonder how many might still be alive if they had of had really good lights, not just the legal minimum (on the few bikes that even bother with lights). I MEAN BRIGHT LIGHTS LIKE CARS AND MOTORCYCLES HAVE.

I cannot stress this enough: it is not enough to just have a light, IT MUST BE VISIBLE EVEN IF YOU ARE DISTRACTED (perhaps by watching a child that looks like he may be about to run in to the street.)

One of the basic principles of safety is redundancy and overkill in the direction of being safe. A dim light is harder to see, therefore less safe. Same goes for riding behavior: continually taking chances because you are more maneuverable will eventually result in a mistake and perhaps death.

Bikes need to obey the other traffic laws too. That means RED LIGHTS and STOP Signs. You say that wastes your time and effort? Well they waste motorists time and gas too. Maybe we just have too many of them.

Bikers should recognize that riding is inherently dangerous and behave accordingly. Even in Europe their death rate appears to be over ten times that of motoring. See:

http//www.bicyclinglife.com/Library/SteppingStones.htm

The article claims that cycling is safer than driving, by using an unusual measure of safety, but when comparing on a per passenger mile basis, their chart, using European data, shows that cycling is OVER 10 times more dangerous than driving. Locate the chart below the text: "Existing agenda is making things worse", then read the footnote: “car users X10". That means that the line showing auto death rates just a little below bike is multiplied by ten to get a rate a little less than bike. Again, the auto death rate is less than 1/10 the bike rate. (I haven’t seen the source data for this, but this is consistent with estimates I have seen.)

Special accommodations for bikes are costing a lot of money that should paid for by users, just like roads are paid for by users (except for transit which receives a subsidy from gas tax).

(To avoid the usual criticism, let me repeat it: cars pay their own way. Local (non-car) taxes DO NOT pay for our roads. Don’t disagree with his statement until you check the facts with someone other than an anti-auto group. The best data that I have seen says that there is, maybe, a one cent per passenger-mile subsidy for cars compared to almost a dollar per passenger-mile for mass transit users. As to externalities and oil consumption - buses use foreign oil too and at about same rate (per passenger-mile) as a modern car (not a light truck) . See “Transportation Energy Data Book: Edition 24", Table 2.12. Local TriMet data is similar .

JK

My son got hit by a car while he was riding his bike on Broadway east side near the bridge, the driver turned right (both had a green light) in front of him. My son was riding his bike in the bike lane, but we need more lights that give bikes a right-away for these right turn scenarios. Most drivers aren't looking right for a bike when they are turning right. fortunately, my son wasn't hurt too bad, sharows could help but what do other cities in Europe do?

John Kirkland: My son got hit by a car . . .the driver turned right (both had a green light) in front of him.

JK: Glad he was OK. That this situation was allowed to exist shows how little concern PDOT really has for safety.

Their encouraging people to stand close to fast moving traffic, on extended curbs, is another example. They don't even know if thses are dangerous, because they have never bothered to gather the data.

Another example is placing pedestrian obscuring bushes on traffic circles and pedestrian islands.

Thanks
JK

Jim,

I looked at your information source - “Transportation Energy Data Book: Edition 24", Table 2.12.

I urge others to do it as well at:
http://cta.ornl.gov/data/download24.shtml

The heading of the page you cite says:

"Great care should be taken when comparing modal energy intensity data among modes. Because of the inherent differences between the transportation modes…it is not possible to obtain truly comparable national energy intensities among modes."

But, besides the fact that your data is probably not usable for our conversation, another problem with your assertion is that buses are not a proxy for public transit more generally. Even using your data, if you add rail-based public transit to the equation, which is surely a legitimate thing to do, you'll see that its energy per commuter mile is SIGNIFICANTLY below that of automobiles and that it will bring down the average "energy/passenger-mile" for the category of "mass transit". (See figure 2.11)

Further, it seems sort of arbitrary for you to ask us to disregard the energy use contributions made by personal light trucks and SUVs considering their popularity as a personal mode of transportation.

Finally, even if one accepts your line of argument (based as it is on questionable data), this just means that A) mass transit ridership should be increased to realize greater efficiencies of scale, and B) that bicycling is still a significantly better option in terms of its impacts on society- exactly what we were arguing in the first place.

Roland Chlapowski | Sep 7, 2005:
I looked at your information source - “Transportation Energy Data Book: Edition 24", Table 2.12.

I urge others to do it as well at: http://cta.ornl.gov/data/download24.shtml

The heading of the page you cite says:

"Great care should be taken when comparing modal energy intensity data among modes. Because of the inherent differences between the transportation modes…it is not possible to obtain truly comparable national energy intensities among modes."

JK:
Very good, you actually looked at some data (or at least the page they were on).
Now you need to understand what it means. For instance the BTU for light rail does not count the energy loss in the power plant. To account for that, you need to multiply by THREE. So that low number becomes not so low (still better than bus, but no longer better than small cars which are far cheaper and more convenient.) For details, see: http://www.saveportland.com/Car_Vs_Tri-Met/energy-cost-death-02d.htm

Of course, it you really can’t compare modes, then YOU CANNOT CLAIM THAT TRANSIT SAVES ENERGY, BECAUSE YOU CANNOT DO THE COMPARISON. SO QUIT SAYING THAT TRANSIT SAVES ENERGY!!!

My point is a little different: transit, in the real world, does not save energy, or by implication pollution or foreign oil dependance.

More later when I have more time.
jk

Allen:

I hope you are right, but I fear that we may get the opposite effect: drivers who start thinking they do not have to share the lane where they do not see a sharrow. I don't see why it's so hard for people to read their Oregon Driver Manual (http://www.odot.state.or.us/forms/dmv/37.pdf or pick up at any DMV office), which would make the whole sharrow concept unnecessary. Sadly, they do not, and here we are.

In addition, I think it is helpful for people to read the Oregon Bicyclist Manual (http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/HWY/BIKEPED/docs/ORBicyclistManual2000.pdf) even if they don't ride, so they know what to expect when sharing the road with cyclists.

I was driving up NW 19th Avenue the other day and saw the "law of unintended consequences" at work. Most motor vehicles were in the left lane, either to go east on Everett or to avoid the Sharrows markings. A lone bicyclist was slowly climbing the slight grade when a car shot past me and raced up the righthand or Sharrows lane. Missed the bicyclist, but not by a lot. The question is why are bike lanes cut off all over the City at just the spot where you need them most!
Lenny Anderson

PS the Sharrows markings seemed to be already faded.