Many residents have queried the markings on the Minchinbury Terrace roadway particularly in respect to cyclists.  We asked the Department of Planning, Transport & Infrastructure. A brief summary of the DPTI reply follows:

The symbols painted along Minchinbury Terrace are sharrows (shared lane markings). These are relatively new road markings in South Australia, intended to position cyclists away from parked cars, where doors often open.

There is nothing in the Australian Road Rules which addresses behaviour on roads marked with these sharrow symbols, so the ordinary rules apply.

The purpose of the sharrows on Minchinbury Terrace is to assist cyclists with:

• lateral positioning on roads with on-street parallel parking in order to reduce the chance of being hit by an opening door of a parked vehicle.
• lateral positioning on roads that are too narrow for a motor vehicle and a bicycle to travel side by side in the same direction.
• navigating a designated bicycle route.

These sharrows are also intended to:

• Alert road users that they are on a designated bicycle route.
• Alert road users of the lateral location cyclists are likely to occupy within the roadway.
• Encourage safe passing of cyclists by motorists.

Your efforts to educate your local community in the interest of road safety are appreciated and I wish you all the best with it.

Don’t you just love that last line? All the sharrows seem to have achieved is to encourage cyclists to ride down the middle of the road. The full text of the DPTI letter, should you wish to read it, is here.

If you want to read something that makes a bit more sense, read this article. It’s American, but that’s where Sharrows came from!