What is a sharrow you might ask?
It's the picture of the bike on the ground....
A sharrow is in between a bike lane and having nothing on the road to indicate cyclists might be using the paved road as well. Recently, the GREAT (insert slight sarcasm) city of Glendale California, has added these little items. Here is a link to the article on the Glendale News Press: http://www.glendalenewspress.com/articles/2009/12/16/publicsafety/gnp-sharrows121709.txt
The article is written by possibly the worst writer for a news paper that exists, but it gets the idea across.
Glendale also added a really nice bike lane to Glenoaks Ave. about a year ago, so the city is trying to do a lot for cyclists. It also helps when you have someone really pushing for cyclists rights, which we do. I have lived in this little city all my life, and I like it. I am also not one to have extreme changes in my life. The only time I have lived away from Glendale was when I was in college and spent 2 years in Downtown Los Angeles near USC and 2 years in Brentwood near UCLA. Both cities are okay, but I always get this warm and fuzzy feeling when I drive into Glendale, I know I am home.
Glendale is also notorious for having horrible drivers that do not care about anyone else in the world. I will leave it at that, because if you are a local and have been around Glendale…you know EXACTLY what I am talking about. We actually have the highest rating of pedestrian deaths because people in cars just choose to run over pedestrians instead of stopping to wait for people to cross the street. The motorists are in a hurry, they have the right away, right? (insert more sarcasm)
Will the sharrows help? I am not sure, motorists still don’t want to share the road. Are they a good effort? Absolutely! I prefer to have bike lanes, but something is better than nothing I guess and I am glad that Glendale is taking a step toward being a bike friendly neighborhood.
Posted by Danica on December 21, 2009 at 6:20 pm
There are sharrows in Belmont shore too! I ride them a lot and they are fun. Mostly they just piss drivers off though. Ha ha there is a video of me riding them on my youtube channel youtube.com/danicakoo
they are fun though and helpful if you are not a motorist!