Tag: Sharrows

Creative Greenius Loves Hermosa Beach Sharrows & You Should Too

Categories Bicycles, citizen volunteer, climate change, environment, Sustainability, Yes We Can!Leave a Comment on Creative Greenius Loves Hermosa Beach Sharrows & You Should Too

 

Members of the newly formed South Bay Bicycle Coalition are happy with the Hermosa Beach "sharrows," which allow bicyclists to use a lane of traffic on Hermosa Avenue. The group hopes to see more South Bay cities install such bicycle-friendly facilities. (Steve McCrank, Daily Breeze Staff Photographer)

 

I’ve written before about the sharrows Hermosa Beach painted on Hermosa Ave earlier this year and how much I like them.  I continue to use them and I like them even more now.  I feel safer when riding on Hermosa Ave and the cars on the road don’t seem to have any real problems going around me if they need to.

Since I stop at all the stop signs, I get a certain amount of respect from the vehicles I’m sharing the road with too.

I think a lot more streets should feature sharrows throughout Hermosa Beach and the newly resurfaced Upper Pier Ave is a good place to put them next. I think most of my friends in the South Bay Bicycle Coalition and the Beach Cities Cycling Club agree with me.

My recent bicycle tour of Long Beach with their Mobility Coordinator extraordinaire, Charlie Gandy, further convinced me of the benefits of sharrows.  Their green painted sharrow lane on 2nd Street in the Belmont Shore neighborhood produced 30% more cyclists with fewer crashes, 20% fewer cyclists riding on the sidewalk and a 50% reduction in car/bike crashes.

A big part of the reasons sharrows work so well in Long Beach is because of the great job they did educating their elected officials, the police force and the public.  They made sure they got the word out, that people in the community understood what the rules were and what the benefits would be from  working together.  The result?  Long Beach is fast on the way to becoming the most bicycle friendly city in California.

There’s no reason Hermosa Beach can’t follow that same sharrow story of success and indeed if Hermosa really wants to be taken seriously as a “Green Idea City” or wants to actually achieve carbon neutrality it’s going to need sharrows and a lot more bicycle infrastructure and friendliness to get there.

Step one to get there is for a strong bicyclist turnout for Wednesday (Oct 20) night’s public forum on Hermosa Beach Sharrows.  Check out the details after the jump.

Continue reading ➞ Creative Greenius Loves Hermosa Beach Sharrows & You Should Too

South Bay Bikes! Greenius & Friends Take To The Streets To Change The Rules of the Road

Categories environment, Saving Energy, Yes We Can!Leave a Comment on South Bay Bikes! Greenius & Friends Take To The Streets To Change The Rules of the Road
Members of the newly formed South Bay Bicycle Coalition are happy with the Hermosa Beach "sharrows," which allow bicyclists to use a lane of traffic on Hermosa Avenue. The group hopes to see more South Bay cities install such bicycle-friendly facilities. (Steve McCrank, Daily Breeze Staff Photographer)

Last Thursday your friendly, neighborhood Greenius hopped on my bike and cruised on down the hill to the beginning of the bike path on the beach that I’ve ridden on as far as Malibu in the past.  But last week it was just a short carbon-free spin over to Pier Plaza in Hermosa Beach to meet up with my fellow members of the new South Bay Bicycle Coalition.  That’s us in the photo above, with group founder Todd Dipaola on the far left and the CG in the red shirt on the far right.  I’ll tell you all about it in an upcoming post, but meanwhile why not read this informative piece in the good, old Daily Breeze by clicking here.