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[moominmolly]

An interesting article on Vehicular Cycling vs bike lanes/sharrows/infrastructure. One of the commenters nails it, in my opinion, by saying that vehicular cycling makes a bad policy but an excellent style of riding to aspire to. I am a fairly fearless vehicular cyclist when I'm riding -- my commute takes me over an overpass right here on McGrath/O'

Comments

[fraterrisus]

Can someone (clearly I should be asking my roommate) explain to me the purpose of sharrows?

[moominmolly]

Basically, to make skittish bikers say, "oh, okay, it's okay to bike here and not just hug the edge of the road and get doored", and to make cars say "oh, okay, it's okay for bikes to be here".

[srl]

Plus, on many Boston roads, they're useful because the roads aren't wide enough for (safe, non-door-zone) bike lanes.

[geekpixie]

Interesting article. I'm kinda nuts about behaving as a vehicle, and try to be respectful of automobiles and such. Sometimes I feel like a strong majority. Other times I feel that if I could just bond with the motorists about pedestrians it would all be ok ;)

[nonnihil]

The foremost thing that bugs me about sharrows, when they're done with pavement-bonded paint, is that they tend to become slick in the rain, turning a perfectly reasonable chunk of road into a bicycle death zone.

[ceo]

I'm on (but mostly ignore) the MassBike discussion list, and there are several of these anti-bike-lane troglodytes on there. This article is the best response I've seen yet.

And yes, when I commuted to Lechmere I ran that overpass too. The secret is, coming from Highland Ave, the light cycles are such that you don't have to worry about the traffic from McGrath (coming off the railroad bridge) until you're well down the Somerville Ave offramp. (People like palmwiz rode McGrath all the way in, but that takes bigger balls than I'll ever have.)

[totient]

Actually I generally went down the Somerville Ave offramp, and up Gore St from there.

A secret: Hit the walk button at Highland/McGrath. That'll buy you an extra minute in the light cycle effect ceo describes.

[arachne8x]

I found the article interesting and I don't even bike. I appreciated a lot of the article but especially when a commenter mentioned that more bike education is necessary, and that vehicular cyclists need to follow traffic laws. It's hard to keep people safe when cyclists run red lights if you are driving, and as a pedestrian I've had more than one cyclist bear down on me when the light was with me.

Unfortunately, things like Critical Mass corking the roads in Boston so people can't even cross at the crosswalk give many biking advocates a bad name. I wish that more moderate and skilled cyclists, like you Ms. M, were on the road.