Today I learned the official name for a certain ubiquitous graphic painted on the bike lanes of city streets: “sharrow.”

A “sharrow”— in case you also didn’t know what to call this thing you’ve surely seen many times—is the “signage” designating bike lanes on city streets, which technically are “shared” lanes (with cars and other vehicles). Sharrows usually take the form of a white bicycle symbol topped by a directional arrow, which in Milwaukee always seems to be a double chevron like the one in the photo below.

“Sharrow Grand Street (Manhattan”) – Photo by Jim Henderson (Jim.henderson) via Wikipedia (public domain)

“Shared” plus “arrow” equals “sharrow.”

The photo I took this morning isn’t really a sharrow symbol at all, of course. But because the bike parked on the sidewalk was casting its shadow/outline into the street, it reminded me of those painted signs I see everywhere. Then when I wanted to refer to it in this blog post’s title, I realized I didn’t know what it was called and had to go looking. Now I know. And so do you 🙂