Stripeless Bikelanes ("Sharrows")By Fred Oswald

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Sharrow stencil

The best bicycle facility is simply a correctly designed, properly built and well maintained road.  Where traffic volume is high, a wide outside lane can help motorists and cyclists travel at different speeds within the same lane, minimizing conflicts between different road users.

Some people propose stripeless bikelanes as a compromise.  Instead of a stripe, there is only a stencil, in the form of a "bike in a box" plus a direction arrow.  The stencil is called "sharrow" for shared lane and arrow.  Another stencil pattern is a bike and chevron markings [4] to indicate direction of travel.  The photo at right [from ref. 3] shows sharrows in Denver.  Unfortunately, these are a bit too close to parked cars (in the door zone).

Here are some guidelines for bike stencil placement: Where parking is permitted, stencils must be 13 feet (or further) from the curb so they do not encourage cyclists to ride in the door zone.  Also, it is a good idea to add hatch marks at the left edge of the parking stalls to discourage parking too far from the curb.  Better still is using "parking crosses" to mark a door zone buffer,. Even where parking is not allowed, the stencils should not be too close to the edge of the road.  Finally, any bicycling encouragement program must have a proper educational program at its core.

Stripeless bike lanes can have some advantages:

• They avoid most of the hazards of the bike lane stripe, such as encouraging errors like the "right hook" (motorist passing the cyclist, then turning right cutting across the cyclist's path); or cyclists overtaking motor vehicles in the driver's blind spot on the right.
• If stencils are placed on enough important roads, they may alert motorists to expect and accept cyclists.
• Stencils near the center of the right lane on a road with multiple narrow lanes may condition motorists to expect cyclists to use the full lane.
• If "bicycle advocates" will accept stripeless bike lanes, we may avoid the old facilities debate.
• If stencils are placed correctly (far enough from the curb) and backed by an effective education campaign, they may help encourage better lane position by cyclists.

However, stripeless bike lanes may also contribute to problems:

• Often, as in the photo at right, the symbols are in the wrong place, too near the edge of the road.
• Stencils placed on one road may encourage harassment of cyclists riding on other roads because the cyclists are not "where they belong".
• They make it harder to gain improvements on routes parallel to the bike route.
• Stencils do not reduce the need for education.  The money spent on paint is not available for education.
• Stencils in the right spot tend to be quickly worn away by traffic.  Ironically, incorrectly placed stencils may last longer.

This author concludes that these stencils without the lane stripe are a considerable improvement over traditional bike lanes.  The "best practice" would simply be to provide adequate space with no extra paint.  Adding the stencils is an example of second-best practice.