Buffered bike lanes are clearly more comfortable than unbuffered lanes for lots of cyclists. Having more space between the bike lane and the traffic is a desirable thing. Taking a lane of the avenue away from car and truck traffic is lovely.

Sure, let's make the case with good studies, but let's also not lose sight of what's obvious and intuitive.

"Survey Finds That Buffered Bike Lanes Are Preferred by People who Choose to Use Them"

TA is a great organization, but sometime I don't get the point of some of their 'studies' or their 'statistics'.

TA surveyed cyclists using both the buffered and un-buffered sections of 8th Ave. So, I don't think it's any big flaw only to survey cyclists using 8th Ave.

I think you are correct to note that we can't say this survey shows buffered lanes are safer. It only shows that cyclists perceive them to be safer.

I do agree that the perception of safety is important, though: bicyclists will not use roads that they perceive as unsafe.

Besides, wouldn't surveying cyclists who are using the buffered lane indicate a self-selection bias of people already predisposed to such an arrangement? A better study would survey randomly chosen cyclists.

The survey is useless as a matter of guiding public policy.

1) Most motorists don't yet know what the sharrows mean.

2) Lanes are more visible than sharrows in heavy traffic. The cars are on top of the sharrows in heavy traffic, you can't even tell you are on a sharrowed street.

3) Sharrows have further visibility problem in that they seem to wear off sooner. Even if parts of a lane wear off, your eye "conencts the dots" and discerns the lane.
4) For most begininers, they feel better having their own segregated space in a lane (even if the lane is invaded in practice) than have a presumption that they are just like a car mixing directly with motor vehicle traffic.

5) For kids, a lane serves a visual guide that helps them ride more predictably which is safer for everyone.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not anti-sharrow. I think they would be an appropriate treatment in certain situations--for example, on the East Side Greenway connector routes on First and Second Avenues in midtown. On those routes, the cars would ignore a traditional Class II anyway. Class II lanes there would give a false sense of security, possibly create danger with bicyclists shifting in and out of the lane constantly to avoid cars while trying to obey the law requiring them to use the Class II "when safe and available."

But I would not want to replace non-buffered class II routes with sharrows. I would rather have every bicyclist that feels comfortable doing so taking the roadway as if it were sharrowed, with traditional Class II lanes in place for those who do not feel comfortable doing so.

Downtown, like near Grand St. itself, there's a stretch of road (Madison St.?) that has sharrows--and on ONE stretch, they're in the middle, and on the next couple blocks, they're off to the side!

To me, that supports my idea that when they're painted off to the side, it's genuinely a mistake by the painters.

WHY are they usually painted close to the edge, rather than in the middle of the actual travel space? On the edge, they effectively become an un-buffered Class II lane, which are, you know, crap.

Here are their merits and demerits:

Good:
The narrow car space.

Bad:
Uh, how much time you got?

While I don't see buffered Class II lanes as an ideal solution, they are SOOOO far superior to unbuffered ones that unbuffered ones should not be used at all, going forward.