Ian Sikonia, the City of Orlando’s Bicycle & Pedestrian Coordinator, writes about how the addition of sharrow routes are part of our efforts to make Orlando a more bike-friendly city.
With the addition of sharrow routes, our efforts to make The City Beautiful more like The City Bikeable continue.
A sharrow, or shared-lane marking, is a roadway marking that is used to indicate a shared lane environment for bicycles and automobiles. These markings are often used when it is not possible to create a separated bicycle facility within the existing conditions of the roadway.
BLOG: 11 Ways We’re Becoming The City Bikeable
Adding these markings to applicable roadways has many benefits:
- Increases awareness of the presence of bicyclists within the travel lane
- Adds an element of bicycle way finding to the roadway corridor
- Reduces the incidents of sidewalk riding and wrong way bicycle riding
- Advertises the presence of bikeway routes to all users
Orlando’s sharrow routes are located on the following roadways:
- Orlando Urban Trail to Cady Way Trail – Lake Highland Drive, Illinois Street and Coy Drive
- Bike Share Station Connection – Magnolia Avenue from South Street to Livingston Street
- Gertrude’s Walk/Bike Share Connections – Central Boulevard from Gertrude’s Walk to Eola Drive
Following their first year of operation, Juice Bike Share provided the City of Orlando with a heat map of all bike share trips. This bike share ridership heat map was compared to the City’s existing bicycle facilities map to see where additional bicycle infrastructure was needed in the Downtown Core.
We found that Magnolia Avenue and Central Boulevard were among the higher ridership corridors on the heat map. Since these two roadways did not have any biking infrastructure we decided these should be the first corridors to receive sharrow markings.
These sharrow routes provide bicycle infrastructure where bike lane installation is not feasible. These two routes connect the Central Business District to the bike share program, providing safer, more convenient access for the surrounding residential and office buildings to five bike share stations.
Becoming a more bicycle-friendly city promotes the health and wellness of our citizens and creates a transportation network that better addresses all users. Over the next few years we will continue to improve our bicycle network, which includes adding these sharrows to applicable roadways that have a high-use of bicycle traffic.
