nothin Whose Lane Is It? | New Haven Independent

Whose Lane Is It?

CT Transit puts share the road” placards on its buses. New Haven painted sharrows” on streets to establish where bicyclists should ride.

Then there’s reality.

Personal admission: I appreciate the hard work city government and cycling advocates are doing to try to make streets safer for two-wheel commuters.

And I also soon gave up trying to ride within those sharrows” (share-the-road arrows) painted to give us some room in lanes to avoid doors abruptly swinging open from parked cars. Drivers kept honking at me to get out of the way.

The other morning I tried the sharrows again on Edgewood Avenue. A CT Transit driver behind me started honking, pulled around me, then stopped to let off passengers.

Click on the play arrow above to see what he said when I asked him why.

Thomas MacMillan Photos

In general, the sharrows have already made riding New Haven’s streets better and encouraged more riding since they appeared in late August, reports Thomas Harned of Elm City Cycling: A lot of cyclists I’ve heard from have been very pleased with the initial implementation and are asking when the city is going to roll out the next round of sharrows. These symbols really make it clear that bicycles belong on the road and are part of traffic. I’ve certainly noticed that drivers are more respectful on the routes that have been marked with sharrows.”

Harned hadn’t heard about problems with CT Transit drivers but he expressed hope that, as part of the Street Smarts” campaign, the city will contact the bus company and continue to find ways to explain to people what the sharrows mean in order to clear up some of the initial confusion.”

CT Transit spokesman Philip Fry said that the company has emphasized sharing the road with bicyclists during when training new drivers as well as in bulletins and information” distributed to veteran drivers. That’s not to say everyone understands it 100 percent, or some people don’t pay more attention than others.”

As for New Haven’s new sharrows, that was not a term they were familiar with,” Fry said. He said future training will incorporate information about them.

Click here to read the information CT Transit distributes to drivers about bicyclists.

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