Deskripsyon

I think "sharrows" would be a help on Colchester Ave from where the bike lane ends in front of the hospital all the way to the Winooski Bridge. A bike rider gets dumped into two lanes of traffic when the bike lane ends and needs to take the lane to keep going straight to Winooski. Once through the India House/East Ave intersection there are parked cars on the side (rider at risk of getting doored) and the street is very tight especially with all the bus traffic. A bike rider can easily maintain traffic speed on this busy road since it is downhill. If a rider leaves enough space to the car in front of them to be safe cars tend to "think" they are faster then a bike and accelerate up to 40, cross over the center line and then whip back in front of the biker and slam on their brakes even when a rider has taken the lane. There are "bikes may use full lane" signs along here but there is a lot of space between them and they tend to be ignored since they can be way off to the side behind parked cars. Getting some bike stencils every couple hundred feet down this section would help tremendously to give the driver visual cues that the bikers are allowed to be there since the sharrows will be directly in the drivers view. What can be done to make this happen? Seems like a quick, cheap and easy improvement for the time being. I have seen a huge increase in bike commuters on this section of road and also a huge increase of unsafe passes.