Big heavy hearted sigh, wish i lived in Portland.

If you paint ‘em, they will scrape ‘em.

Repaving 3 miles of the 710 freeway with “hardier” concrete, only 72 million dollars, no problem.

What I really want is that whole right lane, as a full width bike lane, with big fat sharrows in it. In lieu of the parked cars / bike lane / auto lane squeeze. Cars could come in, but bikes would be overstatedly free to ride two abreast, etc. Grandma and kids would have overstatedly have the right of way at super low, turtle speeds. Cars could come in, but only very cautiously.

That’d be some kind of road diet.

They should never be used as a substitute for more superior infrastructure, such as Class 1 or 2 bikeways. However, they would be useful to designate a class 3 bikeway, or indicate a route to connect two bikeways.

And I’d love to see sharrows on the Block of Death at the east end of the bike lanes on Santa Monica Boulevard, to show riders where to go once the bike lane abruptly ends — even though they’d have to stop at the border of bike-unfriendly Beverly Hills.

I’d prefer 1) that car parking be removed more widely, and 2) that we be allowed to use sharrows much more widely.

Go to http://lacbc.wordpress.com/ and copy/paste the letter and email/fax it to the contacts provided.

I expect that sharrows will help some. To me, their best function is like a sign in the middle of the road that says “bikes belong in the road” (versus the current semiotics of LA streets that read “drive all the time – cars own this place.”)

Hopefully I’ll have a chance to have my closed mind opened to the effectiveness of sharrows, but if they aren’t coupled with more meaningful roadway design (to slow cars and reduce auto volumes) then I don’t see them as being very effective.