Charlottesville bicycle advocates have reason to celebrate this spring, when the city introduces shared lane markings, dubbed “sharrows,” onto local streets, reports NBC 29. According to the 2012 Capital Improvement Program, City Council plans to spend $250,000 on Charlottesville’s bike infrastructure over the next five years. The funding and new safety measure are good news to the Charlottesville bike community, which faced a slew of setbacks last year—including the failure of safety legislation proposed by Delegate David Toscano and Senator Creigh Deeds.
The first sharrow will be placed on Water Street, a busy roadway that parallels the Downtown Mall and provided a few obstacles for cyclists and pedestrians alike when the Landmark Hotel asserted its presence. The marking indicates that motorists and bicyclists are sharing the roadway, rather than restricting cyclists to the side of the street.
In 2004, San Francisco introduced these shared lane markings in order to address the issue of “dooring”—when a cyclist riding on the side of the road gets struck suddenly by someone opening the door of a parked car. San Francisco city officials observed that more experienced cyclists often ride towards the middle of the lane in order to avoid getting doored, but that this practice “often irritates motorists who are not aware this is permitted.” Thus, sharrows were developed to alert motorists that bikes have a similar right to the road.
After the death of graduate student Matthew King last April, City Council renewed its pledge to make Charlottesville a bike friendly city. In October, another UVA student was struck by a University Police SafeRide van while riding through the intersection of McCormick and Alderman Roads, reports the Cavalier Daily. These accidents sparked the creation of Toscano’s bicycle safety legislation, which called for the expansion of the legal car passing distance to 3′ from 2′. The bill was ultimately tabled in January.
