Anyone driving, walking or cycling down Guadalupe between MLK and 4th street Monday may have seen them being installed and wondered what they were.
City employees from the Austin Public Works department spent the better part of Monday installing sixteen, 3 by 2 foot symbols of a man on a bicycle into traffic lanes called "Sharrows".
The lanes are to be shared between cars and cyclists, but neither the city of Austin nor the U.T. Center for Transportation Research will go into the details of how they're supposed to work because the "Sharrows" are part of a nationwide experiment.
The U.S. Department of Transportation chose Austin as one of six cities across the country to try out the "Sharrows" to see if drivers and cyclists can figure out on their own how they work. The city of Austin and U.T. have installed cameras in strategic areas of the"Sharrows" to collect video to be shared with the federal government to see whether or not the "Sharrows" are working.
"This device was first used in San Francisco and it's part of a research project and ongoing data collection to see how these devices function in the field", said Jason Wilkes an employee with the City of Austin's Public Works Department.
70 "Sharrows" are expected to be installed across the city by the end of the week according to Wilkes.
"We put 16 in today, it was our first day working. We're putting them in on Guadalupe, Lavaca, on Dean Keeton next to the lanes that we already put in earlier this year and then up on 51st street", said Wilkes.
The "Sharrows" are just one of four bicycle safety improvements the city of Austin is spending $97,000 on in the next six months.
