Roads: The New Bike Lane.

I took this picture shortly after composing this post which discussed an incident in which a bicyclist was hit at the intersection of Boulevard and Whiting Lane in West Hartford. As can be seen there are newly painted bicycle images in the middle of both lanes! I had never seen such a symbol in this area of the road and spent a few moments trying to figure out what they meant. This is a section of Boulevard between Troutbrook and Prospect but I have also seen them further along Boulevard, past Main Street, and along Quaker north of Farmington Ave. Most of these are areas where the oft-discussed shared bike/parking lanes have been created. So while the city has stopped short of painting bike symbols in the lanes they have painted these new images directly in the road! What does this all mean? My argument is that it confirms the fact that the road IS the bike lane! The images are a subtle suggestion to drivers that bikes and cars share the same infrastructure and a quiet reminder to motorists that bikers may be in the road. However if one looks at the picture below the reality is that much of the time the bike/parking lane is more of a parking lot and the road is our travel lane.

As you can see the bike lanes are full and riders are forced into the street. So are the new images a positive move to warn drivers of the presence of bikes or are they a failure to properly execute the bike lanes? Of course when I look at the pictures above I think delusionally of a time when the cars are relegated to the fringe parking/travel lanes and bikes take the primary center lane as the spray-painted alabaster icon suggests.