Originally Posted by
flangehead
In Texas Sec. 551.103. OPERATION ON ROADWAY I see no such override. I may be missing a legal definition, and it is possible that a different part of the transportation code does grant MUTCD override. So I’m open to evidence.
Let's look at the obvious exceptions first:
(4) the person is operating a bicycle in an outside lane that is:
(A) less than 14 feet in width and does not have a designated bicycle lane adjacent to that lane; or
You said the project had 15 foot lanes, if that came from an engineering drawing maybe, if it came from a visual perception this could possibly apply
(B) too narrow for a bicycle and a motor vehicle to safely travel side by side.
As that (or avoiding a door zone from designated parking) are precisely why sharrows are used, their presence on the roadway would be an official determination that there is indeed insufficient space for parallel travel.
In the case of my road the sharrows were not due to the unquestionable wisdom of the designers.
I expect this opinion is based on not having sufficiently considered the various design guidelines that lead to that official determination. A lot of road projects are by now required to include bicycle accomodation, which means that they end up with sharrows when there isn't room to put in a bike lane - which would typically work out to needing about 12 for the cars, 6 for the bikes and 3 for buffer. If there's parking, a bike lane and its buffers take up just about as much space as a car lane.
This Houston-specific government document has some pretty good explanations and diagrams of how they're arriving at these determinations:
https://houstonbikeplan.org/wp-conte...pter_Feb17.pdf
Also
Texas DOT quotes the MUTCD in saying that sharrows should be at least 14 feet from the curb in the presence of parking and then goes on to say that they should be at least 4 feet from it without.
It was due to a CF.
Map location or name of the specific street so the rest of us can see?
And again, I'm not arguing that sharrows are
good, rather that they're an
official recognition of a bad situation where the only way clearance standards can be met is to take the lane.