2010: A Sharrows Odyssey

8:37 AM PDT on June 5, 2009

Yesterday's e-blast from the Los Angeles County Bike Coalition contained the sad news that the city's ongoing study to think about installing Sharrows is going to be delayed yet again. The LACBC tried to put a happy face on the announcement by focusing on their progress; but with cyclists already riled up by the Bike Master Plan maps it's hard to imagine that the LADOT's excuse for delay is going to go over well

In
addition to working with Garcetti's office and LADOT we have begun to
have constructive conversations with the Mayor's Office, SCAG, and
Metro to discuss moving forward with the project.
At a
meeting, held last week, the pilot project timeline was reevaluated and
due in part to LADOT and Alta Planning's priority to finish the Bike
Plan, the Sharrow Project prioritization won't begin until September.
We were hoping to see paint on the ground before the end of 2009, but
unfortunately it looks like we will not see paint until early 2010.
We
do, however, have a preliminary list of 9 streets that are allocated
for Sharrow implementation and we will be reviewing them in the next
two weeks before they become finalized.

That the LADOT is busy with the BMP, a document they early in the week claimed was being done by Planning and that they had no control over, is the most recent in a series of weird excuses. My personal favorite was that they were delaying so they could research what kind of paint to use that wouldn't be slippery when it got wet, a process that should have taken about ten seconds. But seriously, Alta Planning has proven themselves to be a top flight planning group around the country, but if they couldn't do the Sharrows Study at the same time as the BMP, couldn't we have found someone else? It's not like we don't have some top-flight planning groups here in L.A. as well.