Sharrows vs Bike Lane

[Roadtrip]

My hometown, Cincinnati Ohio, has been trying to cultivate a more bike friendly environment. They've developed a master plan, which includes both sharrows and actual bike lanes in the city, along with finally connecting several larger bike trails that would allow you to ride all the way into downtown Cincy from the outer burrows. It's a 25 year plan. When a road is due for repaving, they'll do so with this bike plan in mind, so tis the plan.

On one of the very heavily congested roads I'm seeing yellow bike signs with the message "Share the Road", so I'm assuming that the wide berm (about 5' wide) is meant to be this "new" sharrow. By new I mean the road ALWAYS had a wide berm and was more of an e-lane with glass and other debris, or when someone didn't want to wait to make a right turn, they'd ride the berm to get up to the light. This is a four-lane road with a turn lane and traffic normally runs about 40mph. I honestly wouldn't ride here, just as I wouldn't a year ago before they put up these signs, so if this is what the city is thinking is "innovative" and forward thinking... pffffffttttttttttttttttttt.

Is it too much to at least ask for a stencil and a few gallons of paint to at least mark that area? Perhaps it's still too narrow to be considered a bike lane or some regulation on curbs and the like for the road itself, but the only real difference here is a sign every block kindly asking the drivers to "share", like they have to give UP something that was inherently theirs.

Road:


This part of the road doesn't have a turn lane, so berm is quite large here, but it seems down the road a bit where there are turn lanes, the berm is smaller.
Perhaps I've got it all wrong here as I'm finding it hard to find information on sharrows and how they legally differ from bike lanes.

I thought I'd ask what you ladies (and men) thought.

Shannon