Confusion reigns: Evolving cyclist signage

 A friend recently sent me two images of streets that had been newly painted with "bike lanes".  The first is University Place, which runs north-south at the western edge of UVM's main campus.  It's a one-way road with standard solid line markings with a bicycle symbol inside the bike lanes to show that motorists should keep out.  (unless safely passing -- you can even cross double yellow lines in VT to safely pass) 

The second is of Queen City Park Road (QCP), which runs south from Home Ave and then makes a 90-degree turn left to run east to Shelburne Rd.  I have mostly driven on the short section that connects connected the end of Pine St to Shelburne Rd, but the initial section runs by Burton and is around where this photo was taken.  

The problem is there are people driving QCP that think it’s one way, so they drive in the middle of the road and avoid the bike lanes even if cars are headed toward them.

At first glance I assumed the bicycle symbol was a sharrow, indicating that the lane was a shared space, but on second glance realized it was the cyclist with single directional arrow, which usually indicates a dedicated bike lane.  

10-15 years ago I would have said this signage was *wrong*, and there should be sharrows on QCP to signal to drivers that they could use that space.  

Sharrows were still fairly new 20 years ago, and then quickly proliferated, but over time, everyone began to hate them (e.g., "We Were Wrong About Sharrows" and "Sharrows used to make sense in theory, but are now mostly useless and possibly dangerous").

It looks like Burlington DPW may be moving toward eliminating the sharrow symbol and always using the cyclist with single arrow to make motorists aware that cyclists may be in this space, and then use dashed vs solid lane lines to show shared vs dedicated bike lanes.  (I have written to DPW to ask if this is current policy)

Signage around cycling infrastructure is struggling to standardize, but it is relatively new and will likely need to continue to evolve.  Until it reaches a more final form, everyone will be a little confused.