New bike lanes on Palm, Belmont avenues to offer wider safety margins for Fresno cyclists
Bike lanes are nothing new in Fresno. The city has many miles of lanes along some of its most traveled streets, denoted by a simple white stripe on the road a few feet from the curb, with an occasional street sign or stylized painted logo on the pavement.
But over the past couple of years, Fresno has begun to work on developing wider, dedicated lanes – called Class IV bikeways – that are physically separated from automobile traffic by more than a mere painted line. These Class IV bikeways are “protected” by wider painted margins as well as flexible posts that rise from the pavement.
The city has four miles of such bikeways – and within the next few days will nearly double that distance by re-striping and creating new traffic patterns on Palm and Belmont avenues in central Fresno.
On Thursday, construction crews were to begin the work on Palm Avenue from H Street just north of downtown, through the Tower District to Dakota Avenue. Palm, currently two lanes in each direction, will be reduced to one lane each way with a continuous dual left-turn lane. The lane reduction will provide space for the wider protected bikeways north- and southbound – about 1.7 miles, according to a city spokesperson. The paint work is expected to be completed Friday.
Similar work is expected next Tuesday and Wednesday along Belmont between Palm and Abby Street, adding another two miles of Class IV bikeways.
Two additional stretches of the protected bikeways are also on the drawing board: About 1.3 miles along Fulton and Wishon avenues between Weldon and Belmont avenues, including a stretch near Fresno City College; and about 3.5 miles along the eastbound and westbound lanes of Barstow Avenue between Blackstone and Cedar avenues, near the Fresno State campus in northeast Fresno.
The city’s existing Class IV bikeways are:
- About one mile (a half mile in each direction) on Maple Avenue between Gettysburg and Shaw avenues near Fresno State.
- About one mile along Van Ness Avenue between Elizabeth and Weldon avenues, near Fresno City College.
- About 0.7 miles on R Street between Tulare and Ventura streets in the downtown area.
- About 1.3 miles along First Street between Hazelwood Boulevard and Tulare Avenue, just east of downtown.
The new traffic patterns can be confusing for drivers who are not used to the separated bikeways. In some areas where people are accustomed to parallel parking next to the curb, the parking spaces are moved away from the curb and repainted between the automobile traffic lane and the bikeway, providing an additional margin between drivers and bicyclists.
