This morning North Kansas City started installing what are probably the KC region’s first sharrows or shared lane markings. NKC has broughten it! Who will be next? KCMO? Shawnee? Lee’s Summit? Place your bets!
Photos by Steve Rhoades.
Sharrows, or share lane markings, are a relatively new invention designed to signify a bike route on streets that don’t need or can’t fit full bike lanes. NKC’s sharrows are on Swift Avenue, from the Heart of America Bridge bike/ped all the way to the city’s northern border with KCMO, Swift connects with a future BikeKC route on North Cherry Street.
The only caveat to this news is that Swift Ave is lined with head-in angle parking, so cyclists need to be cautious for vehicles back out of parking spaces and into our path of travel. Hopefully a successful implementation of sharrows will give NKC the confidence try converting Swift to back-in angle parking, which is much safer for bicyclists as well as motorists and pedestrians.
