SA-WEET!
Friendship Ave sharrows...
... being laid today from Negley Ave all the way to Penn Ave. Both sides. Woot!
How did I ride past this today and not even notice, I must of been in a fog
SWEET. I've been growing more and more frustrated riding on friendship. The surface is pretty terrible between Gross and Evaline and cars are always anxious to pass me to stop at the stop sign or traffic light, but I generally take the lane to avoid being doored.
Nice. And kudos to the City for freshening the sharrows on Penn Avenue. They were nice and bright last evening.
A cyclist was in front of me at the light at Penn and Butler, inbound, just before 7 p.m. He (relatively cautiously) ran the light at Doughboy Square, while I had to stop and wait for a turning vehicle. By the time I got through the intersection, I could see his taillight, about 3 blocks ahead. He totally smoked me through the Strip. I was really wanting to be on a bike at that moment. (I wasn't because my previous trip had included stops in both Moon Township and Harmarville....)
Cool. My summer route includes Friendship for a stretch.
This project is also supposed to have legit bike lanes around friendship park and bike lanes and sharrows down milvale.
from oakland, there is supposed to be bike lanes going up hill on milvale and sharrows going downhill. then there should be a combo bike lanes/sharrows on neville to fifth as well
i really hope it gets completed, this is one of the projects that i am most excited about.
This is so great! I saw a couple of different groups of guys putting the sharrows in at S. Aiken and S. Winebiddle. If you're riding by please take a minute to stop and thank them. I did and they're really nice and appreciative. It's also chilly out there, so if you're in the neighborhood and want to bring them hot chocolate or something, we can use all the good will possible when it comes to getting more sharrows and lanes put in!
Also new this week were sharrows along Merchant and Martindale Streets on the North Shore!
Sounds awesome Erok. I hope it gets done as well.
Like like!!!! But how about sharing sharrows-love to Penn Avenue @Garfield area? And doing some re-paving too?
Killer. Way into it.
Something bigger is being talked about for Penn Ave.
I like the sound of that!
@erok+scott !!!!!!!!!!!!
Our knights in hi-vis armor
@quizbot ... being laid today from Negley Ave all the way to Penn Ave. Both sides. Woot!
I read this without looking at the topic subject and found it ... puzzling.
*insert bass slide*
Its pretty funny. So at least 3 of us took pics.
These dudes are probably used to cars honking
and being pissed, and then we ride up smiling
and take pics!
I am surprised that they were able to find 4x4
squares on which they could put the image
without it being in a 6" pothole
Ha. That road is pretty chewed up. I look forward to some traffic calming lanes around Friendship Park, so many jack asses fly through there.
Saw the sharrows on Friendship this morning = very sexy!!!!
looks like they were marking out where the milvale ave and neville st sharrows are going. can't wait to see the bike lanes thru here too
Not a biker here, just a hardcore pedestrian, so forgive my ignorance.
I'm not understanding the purpose of sharrows. Are they put on roads to remind drivers that bikers are around? Could they actually confuse drivers into thinking "I guess bikers are allowed on Friendship ave since there are bike paintings, but they aren't allowed on Coral cause there are no bike paintings"?
Thanks for any answers. This is a great message board btw.
Are they put on roads to remind drivers that bikers are around?
Yes, and they also remind cyclists of where they should ride on roads where they are placed. In the case of Friendship, the lane is too narrow to "share" so it's suggested that a cyclists ride on top of the sharrow.
I guess bikers are allowed on Friendship ave since there are bike paintings, but they aren't allowed on Coral cause there are no bike paintings
There is that too, but I haven't come across anyone who thought that. My wife did think that a lane with sharrows in San Francisco was a bike lane though.
Never really come across that either. They are also really helpful for wayfinding, ie. helping people on bikes find the better streets to get where they need to go.
here is an FAQ that we put together a few years ago: http://bike-pgh.org/campaigns/bicycle-advocacy/shared-lane-markings/
@DVR - "I guess bikers are allowed on Friendship ave since there are bike paintings, but they aren't allowed on Coral cause there are no bike paintings."
No. As a general rule we can ride on any street or road unless specifically banned -- such as limited access roads. The other one is roads that are so car-centric that they are unsafe to ride on so we self-limit our choice to use them.
Just because Coral isn't marked doesn't mean you can't bike on it. Streets chosen for marking are selected because for various reasons they are considered to be preferred routes for cyclists to use. The marking alert drivers to watch for us on those streets. And as rsprake said, they tell cyclists where they should ride in the traffic lane.
I just noticed a whole bunch of sharrows on Ellsworth Avenue between Neville and Devonshire. It is a major bicycle route and I'm glad to see some paint laid down here!
I think it's a good thing when new folks jump on the board with honest questions. This tells me (a) There is a real information deficit in the general community, i.e., there are likely 500 more like DVR who have the same question; and (b) People are finding out that this message board is the place to ask those questions.
Keep 'em coming, folks! For the newbies and lurkers, we have a good many properly informed folks on this board. Ask a well formed question, and you will get the information you need, if not in the first response, then check back in a few hours or day or so.
@ccdavey - Based on DVR's question, I believe HE is clear that bikes are allowed on un-sharrowed streets, but to reiterate the question, "Could they actually confuse drivers into thinking "I guess bikers are allowed on Friendship ave since there are bike paintings, but they aren't allowed on Coral cause there are no bike paintings"?"
I believe that is a valid concern. Where there are bike paths, I have experienced verbal harrassment from drivers with shouts of "get on the bike path" where I was under no legal obligation to be so. This needs to be strongly made clear with the (currently craptastic) driver education and licensing process, as well as the media, that bikes are permitted to travel on all streets, sharrows or not, except limited access highways. Also bicycle advocates need to strongly affirm that there will be no concessions to relinquishing the right to travel on all roads even as some kind of "bargain" in return for the construction of bike specific infrastructure, as was discussed on some other thread.
I believe people are easily confused, period.
Thanks all for the info and that link from Erok is very good.
@edmonds59 Yeah, that's what I meant. I seriously think there are some stupid people out there who would think this.
@erok, maybe this has already been thought of, but I'm wondering if a link to that handy FAQ could be distributed via the impacted neighborhoods' CDC newsletter? A lot of Pittsburgh's neighborhoods have Community Development Corporations that maintain email lists or paper newsletters: it'd be great if at least the residents got some info on the new marks.
@edmonds59 -- referring to ALMKLM's entry, I guess like me.
I misunderstood what he was saying. And then made it really apparent. DOH.
Fresh Sharrows on Hamilton & Dallas!!!
Fresh ones on Ellsworth Ave too. Saw them painting this afternoon (and torching them to dry them).
Those are thermoplastic. The torch is to melt them into the pavement.
it looks like one side (outbound) got thermoplastic and the other side got paint. i told my gf that i doubt the inbound side will last the winter. it's already pretty faint. i presume they ran out of thermoplastic?
Or ran out of time. Sort of a placeholder so the guys know where to lay it down.
Is it true that te thermoplastic ones can be slippery when wet?
(@cdavey - I was intending to refer to humanity as a group, not you directly. Please take no offense.)
The plastic tape (the tape applied a year or two ago by the city) can be slippy and is not permanent by any stretch.
the latest version of the sharrows are true thermoplastic markings. by that i mean that its component materials are mixed in a device and applied to the pavement like icing on a cake. Once applied tiny tiny glass beads are broadcasted over the marking on the pavement.
the glass beads provide the retroreflectivity and the traction.
you can typically feel the thickness and grip of thermoplastic markings. they're not in the pavement surface like regular paint, and they're thicker than the tape that's applied by heat. i think the birmingham bridge has thermoplastic shoulder and center lines, as an example.
**I of course sincerely appreciate sharrows, especially since this is my daily commute**
I really wish more effort went into educating drivers as to what sharrows mean. Try asking someone who is not involved with cycling/general outdoor activities what they think sharrows are for. Most of the people, and I do mean most, that I have asked really have no clue.
I'm also really curious about the idea of bikelanes in friendship park, because that would involve removing the onstreet parking there, or making the park smaller..?
Would be swell if they could repave a large portion of the road from main to negley as well. Those craters terrify me in bad weather and make doing anything but riding on the double yellow a challenge.
@robjdlc - sometimes on-street parking serves as defacto traffic calming. I would fear that removing on-street parking from Friendship Circle and replacing with bike lanes would result in drivers feeling freer to drive faster. (IMHO).
@ALMKLM: There's lots of ways to slow traffic (though not implying that the city would do so):
1) speed bumps
2) chicanes
3) enforcement (ok, hah...)
4) Awesome DIY road signs like the one that recently appeared on Gold Way that says something like "Local Traffic Only - Road Spikes!" and depicts a tire being impaled on a row of sharp objects. It's day-glo orange with a black stencil (think Banksy-meets-PennDOT- for-drunken-freelance-wayfinding-gig)
@ahlir - apparently there's a whole science to traffic calming and tons of means of achieving it. I was just responding to the suggestion someone made about trading parking lanes for bike lanes. That swap might just backfire.
But if the question is straight traffic calming (and not improved bicycling) through the Circle, then there are probably more effective means than leaving the cars there.
no parking is being removed in friendship park. this shot demonstrates how wide that lane is:
what kind of person parks on the sidewalk right by a hospital?
what kind of person? the kind who works for a landscaper, obviously.
Hey, at least now he will have a bike lane to park in.
My experience on the daily tells me that drivers will end up halfway into the bike lane. I hope I'm wrong.
@rob +1
@rob: my point exactly.
As nice as it would be to remove parking there it's never going to happen that close to a hospital and business district. My experience with the Liberty Ave bike lanes has been positive as of late. Drivers stay out for the most part.
I had a similar reaction as rsprake. The Liberty Ave bike lanes stay pretty much car free in my experience, and I imagine that Friendship lanes would be the same. It's amazing what simply having a line on the ground can do to influence drivers.
I was actually behind a work van where the lanes end today and he moved over to the center of the lane to give me room to pass. I also saw a woman drive right into the back of a truck while stopped at a traffic light but that's another story.
I always see drivers in the bike lanes on liberty. They use them to pass you On the right (as a driver) if the front of your car isn't in the back bumper of the car in front of you. If I have to drive, I am starting to avoid liberty cause drivers make me so angry
I gave up on Friendship long ago in place of Coral. Even with sharrows, in what situations wouldn't that calm street be preferable to the relative hustle and bustle of Friendship?
There are a lot of situations depending on where you're going.
It's all degrees, isn't it? Penn or Baum are busier than Friendship. Friendship is busier than Coral. I guess it depends on your tolerance. I must say, though, Friendship does a really nice job of connecting the dots, IMHO.
Even with sharrows, in what situations wouldn't that calm street be preferable to the relative hustle and bustle of Friendship?
friendship connects much more than coral, and i feel safer on friendship by myself at night.
one thing friendship has that coral does not: a 77 bus driving up your ass. that's the main reason i always preferred coral, although coral does often have cars darting out from side streets
I have come across a couple of drug transaction when I was on coral at night so I tend to prefer Friendship, in-fact I find Friendship uneventful. I agree about it being about what you can tolerate Friendship doesn't bother me but Butler St. does, I talk with a lot of people who love Butler. I hate Negley and prefer Highland but I know lots of people who feel the opposite.
I really dislike riding on butler st. Friendship, too. I usually just walk across the park and then continue riding on whatever that one street is.
On liberty ave I've had good experiences with the bike lanes, but I rarely ride on liberty.
My fears with friendship are taking into consideration how often I have to take the lane because there isn't enough room between cars passing and the curb.
"one thing friendship has that coral does not: a 77 bus driving up your ass."
Noah, that's the ghost of the 77 bus up your ass. It's the 87 now.
i meant to post on sunday: saw some new thermoplastic sharrows on neville, too, between centre and i presume fifth, though i only rode to bayard.
i also saw one under a car on gross, right near friendship. i didn't see any others on gross, so i wondered if they were just practicing, or showing the way to kraynick's.
i also saw one under a car on gross
Was it actually a sharrow, or a crime scene stencil?
haha. i saw that one.
here's a bit of an update on what to expect: http://bike-pgh.org/blog/2011/12/06/city-extends-marked-bike-network-into-bloomfield-shadyside-oakland/
^ This is awesome!