City ups the ante in bicycle safety with sharrows

JANN HENDRY/Acorn Newspapers REMINDER- - A sharrow alerts drivers to share the road with bicycles on Thousand Oaks Boulevard. That white painting of a bicycle on T.O. Boulevard near the Civic Arts Plaza isn't a chalk outline of a tragic accident.

The new marking is called a sharrow, a blended word that combines "share" and "arrow." The symbol is being added to roadways in Thousand Oaks that don't have marked bike lanes.

By September there should be sharrows marking a space about 3 feet wide for cyclists and drivers to share along Thousand Oaks Boulevard between Moorpark Road and Duesenberg Drive.

The symbol originated in San Francisco in 2004, where, according to a Thousand Oaks Police Department spokesperson, it worked to reduce wrong-way and sidewalk bicyclists.

Caltrans has adopted the sharrow as an official marker.

In numbers provided by city public works staff member Jay Spurgin, of the 32 bicycle collisions in Thousand Oaks in 2005, 90 percent were auto-bike incidents. The bicyclist was traveling on the wrong side of the road in 41 percent of those collisions with motor vehicles.

Legally, bikes are supposed to go with traffic. In Thousand Oaks, bikes can also legally ride on the sidewalk and are required to stay to the right, but the ordinance doesn't specify if a bike on the sidewalk must go with traffic, said Sgt. Don Aguilar.

"If the bicyclist is going against traffic on the sidewalk and comes to an intersection, the rider must get off and walk his bike across the intersection," he said.

Drivers coming out of driveways don't expect a fast-moving bike to come down the sidewalk against traffic, according to Aguilar. That's a good reason for bicyclists to stay going with traffic when riding on the sidewalk, he said.

If the San Francisco research is accurate, sharrows will make the streets safer for bikes and get bicyclists off the sidewalks.

"Sharrows are a strong reminder to vehicles that they are sharing a road with bicycles and tells bicyclists where they should be at so the two can coexist," Aguilar said.

Symbols to let bicyclists know where to be on the road so the traffic signals will see them will also be appearing soon. Those symbols, bike lane striping, the sharrows and other "Share the Road" signage will cost the city about $15,000, Spurgin said.

The city public works department will paint the symbols themselves, and that will keep the cost down, he said.