Green Bike Lanes and Yellow Crosswalks Coming Soon to Channing Ave

Some colorful changes designed to improve safety for motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians on Channing Ave are coming soon. 

Construction work began yesterday to install green bike lanes and yellow crosswalks on Channing Ave, which was resurfaced earlier this month. Green bike lanes will be installed on short sections of Channing Ave near the Newell Rd and Center Dr intersections. Yellow "ladder type" crosswalks will be installed at the same two intersections.

Green bike lanes have been popping up all over the country in recent years, and are usually designed to highlight "conflict zones" -- areas where bicyclists and motorists should pay extra attention because they are crossing each others paths -- especially near intersections. The only Bay Area street that already has green bike lanes is San Francisco's Market Street; they were installed in May 2010.

The Newell Rd and Center Dr intersections will also include a special type of "intersection bike lane" -- dashed stripes with arrows to guide bicyclists safely across. They'll also help motorists due to more predictable bicyclist behavior - in other cities bicyclists like the intersection bike lanes so much that they nearly always stay inside them. This makes sudden and unexpected movements by bicyclists crossing intersections, the cause of many accidents, much less likely.

Yellow crosswalks are used near schools to indicate that children are present so that motorists can be extra cautious. The Channing Ave crosswalks at Newell Rd and Center Dr will be the "ladder type" -- painted with yellow stripes inside the crosswalk -- and will be wider than the previous crosswalks for extra visibility. Walking to Duveneck Elementary School and Eleanor Pardee Park will be safer for children and adults alike after the bright yellow crosswalks are installed.

Check out the construction photos -- the words "Green" and "yell" have been temporarily painted on the street to show where the new green and yellow paint will be applied.