Cyclists want sharrows to indicate shared travel lanes

Local bicycle enthusiasts have asked the city of St. Petersburg and the Metropolitan Planning Organization to look into installing sharrows on roads to enhance safety for bike riders.

What's a sharrow? We wondered the same thing and asked cycling advocate Kimberly Cooper, who gave up her car and depends on pedal power for her commute from downtown St. Petersburg to her job in the Carillon area and all other points in between.

"Sharrows are paintings on the pavement that let people know that bikes use the same lane as cars and other vehicles," Cooper said. Sharrows usually depict a bicycle with chevrons indicating the direction in which traffic flows on a particular street.

But why would cyclists want to use a regular traffic lane, especially when St. Petersburg has gone to all the effort of installing bike lanes?

Cooper says that some of the bike lanes are basically on top of the spaces designated for parking. Think about the configuration on First Avenue N for a visual. Riders using the designated bike lanes are at risk to be hit by the opening doors of parked vehicles. Florida law requires that cyclists riding past parallel-parked cars should maintain a clearance of 4 feet to avoid risk of collision with an opening car door. But this distance often places bike riders in the regular traffic lane.

Cycling on sidewalks also creates risk that a cyclist may hit a pedestrian or that a biker might be hit when crossing driveways, alleys and crosswalks.

"If there are people who want to bike in bike lanes next to parked cars, on sidewalks, and on shoulders too narrow to be bike lanes, I'm okay with them having that option,'' Cooper said. "However, 30 years of bicycle safety studies have shown bicycling in bike lanes next to parked cars and on sidewalks increase your chance of crashing with cars.''

Response to the request for sharrows on the part of county and city representatives has been lukewarm. But Clearwater has installed a few sharrows downtown. Cooper says this is an encouraging sign but more education needs to take place. She says she has found that when biking in a lane and using good lane position, most motorists pass with 5 or 6 feet of space. Although state law requires 3 feet, Cooper says in practice it really isn't enough.

"If you're 5 or 6 feet tall and unexpectedly go down due to road debris and there's a car passing the legal 3 feet from you, what is the car going to run over?"

For information about sharing the road, check out the Florida Bicycle Association at floridabicycle.org.

Detour signs removed as soon as possible

Now that 38th Avenue N has reopened in St. Petersburg, folks are wondering when the detour signs will come down. Motorists who travel the corridor infrequently have been confused. We checked in with Pinellas County Public Works and were told the signs are coming down as quickly as possible but the number of current projects combined with the county's scaled-back workforce means they are stretched thin.

Rehab project will slow travel to Honeymoon

If you're a regular weekend visitor to Honeymoon Island, take note. A six-month rehabilitation project of the Dunedin Causeway Bridge will begin in October calling for intermittent daytime and nighttime lane closures. For updates, check pinellascounty.org.

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