The Oklahoma Gazette is reporting that Oklahoma City is beginning to lay down the first of many new miles of designated bicycle routes:
The city of Oklahoma City is laying out the first of what will be approximately 200 miles of new bike routes around town.
The designated routes are individual bike lanes or lanes shared by cars and bicycles, known as “sharrow” lanes — named as such because of the combination of “share” and “arrow.”
Designated by pavement markings and new signage along the routes, sharrow lanes are intended to remind motorists to share the road with cyclists, and convey that a specific street is a preferred bike route. They are marked with a bicycle symbol beneath two arrows.
While not a rabid “vehicular cyclist” fanatic, I do share concerns about traditional on street bicycle lanes in that they, from the motorists point of view, box in the cyclist to a very narrow and potentially dangerous strip of road way. I consider these “sharrow” lanes to be the best of both worlds. They increase awareness of bicycles on popular routes while at the same times not boxing them in to places with limited maneuverability. And while the city is still spending a large amount of effort in planning for the traditional bike lanes, it’s nice that these types of infrastructure changes will be available as well.
You can see a map of the full plan here: PhaseOneBikeRoutes.pdf.