20 Miles of Sharrows in One Weekend…More Facts and Figures from LADOT

Last weekend, in an impressive display of what LADOT can do on city streets when it puts its mind to it, 4 teams of LADOT employees spread out throughout the city and placed 803 Sharrows over 20.61 miles of city streets.

LADOT caused some controversy when it announced it would include these Sharrows as part of its commitment to “40 miles of bike infrastructure every year.”  Including those Sharrows with other infrastructure, mostly bike lanes, that have been installed LADOT has installed 30.3 miles of bike facilities since the fiscal year started on July 1.

Starting last Friday night at 9:00 P.M., the first crew took to the streets with the last one starting at 2:00 A.M. on Saturday morning.  Crews worked around the clock until the 803’rd Sharrow was placed on the ground at 2:00 P.M. on Sunday.

LADOT lays out the case for Sharrows both at the LADOT Bike Blog and a Fact Sheet (available here) handed out at this morning’s CicLAvia press conference.  The Bike Blog adds that some Sharrows made the final list that weren’t on the original list in part so that there would be some Sharrows on the CicLAvia route.

There has been criticism of the Sharrows list both on the LADOT Bike Blog comments section and by Joe Linton at the L.A. Eco-Village blog.  The main concerns are that Sharrows are being used in places that would better suit bike lanes, cycle tracks or more progressive infrastructure and that LADOT is backing off its commitment to implementing 40 miles of infrastructure from the Bike Plan if they count these Sharrows which weren’t part of the plan back in March.  For its part, LADOT claims it still plans to implement the Bike Plan as quickly as it can and that it won’t be limited to 40 miles of infrastructure, even if that number includes these Sharrows.