Mike,
Thanks for the reply. My experience has been that the traffic load on the roads is much lighter than in Philadelphia or Boston, so there seems to be enough room for everyone, even on Broad. (I can walk 5 min to work, so I haven't had to try Broad in rush hour, and you are right, even on an empty Broad St on Sunday afternoon the occasional motorist will honk to express his displeasure at having only 2-3 lanes to pass me.)
I'm generally bicycling for transportation, rather than looking for quiet recreational roads, and I have sacrificed a number of Boston and Philadelphia bicycle to road salt, winter weather, thieves and vandals; I find it is still quite a bit cheaper than subjecting automobiles to the same hazards. I'll use a car for an occasional trip to Charlottesville, but driving seems like overkill for a 2 mile trip to the Willow Lawn shopping center. Since so many destinations here are right on Broad St, I'm bicycling on Broad a fair amount.
The snow this year has been a little disappointing - I brought my REI commuter rather than the MTB with studded tires, so there has been a week or so I haven't wanted to ride on this bike.
Richmond is older city with lots of streets parallel to Broad, so while I don't hesitate to use Broad to get to all the strip malls actually on Broad, the Christmas lights and architecture on some of the parallel roads downtown (Monument, Grace, Patterson) are more pleasant, and I have occasionally used 3 Chopt Road coming back from Short Pump. When I have used Broad, I haven't had any real problems; hardly motorists are personally offended, and even those two figured out that they could use empty lanes if they wanted to go faster.
Quite a few of the sharrows near the fan and Carytown are (correctly) placed in the middle of the lane this is a pleasant sight compared to many I have seen in MD and MA.