Eyes on the Street: Glendale’s Brand Boulevard Complete Streets Project

The north end of Glendale's iconic Brand Boulevard has new concrete-barrier protected bike lanes and brightly painted pedestrian curb extensions

By Joe Linton

12:58 PM PDT on May 13, 2024

Glendale’s North Brand Boulevard complete street project. Photos by Joe Linton/Streetsblog

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The city of Glendale is putting the finishing touches on its quick-build North Brand Boulevard Complete Streets Demonstration Project, which features painted curb extensions and new barrier-protected bike lanes.

Glendale's Brand Boulevard demonstration is located just north of downtown Glendale, along one of the city's most renowned streets. The project extends a half-mile between Glenoaks Boulevard and Mountain Street.

City of Glendale map of the North Brand Boulevard Complete Streets Demonstration Project

This part of Brand is about a hundred feet wide, so the city was able to add two protected bike lanes while preserving plenty of driving capacity and diagonal parking. Much of the project involved a road diet, trimming five lanes for cars down to three.

The project includes a lot of bright paint: light green pavement in bike lane conflict zones and bike boxes, and bright geometric patterns in pedestrian areas.

Glendale's Brand Boulevard project features brightly painted geometric patterns in sidewalk extension (bulb-out) areas. (In this photo, the cyclist opted for a common vehicular left turn instead of using the bike turn box provided.)

The Brand project includes painted curb extensions, high visibility zebra crosswalks, and green pavement in bike lane conflict zones and bike boxes (for left-turning cyclists)

The north end of the Brand project - at Mountain Street

North Brand Boulevard concrete-barrier-protected bike lane, with green pavement in conflict areas (mainly driveways)

The new bike lanes are protected by concrete jersey barriers, which are fairly easy to add, remove, or adjust if needed. (Glendale uses similar barriers - with decorative paint treatments - at its in-street Al Fresco outdoor dining locations.)

Brand's new bike lanes are protected by concrete barriers. There are openings in the barrier big enough to allow pedestrian and disabled person access, while the openings are small enough to prevent cars from intruding in the bikeway.

Walk Bike Glendale has posted a highlight reel ironically titled "no one bikes on Brand." When Streetsblog visited the project last Saturday, there were a handful of cyclists using the new lanes. The project was mostly serving people on foot.

Dozens of people were walking in the new bike/ped spaces, which serve as a needed extra sidewalk, especially at the south end of the project where there is commercial development with some sidewalk space used for outdoor dining. Cyclists and pedestrians share these sorts of spaces fairly easily.

Several pedestrians taking advantage of Brand Boulevard's new protected bike lanes

Pedestrians in Brand's new painted curb extensions. (The curb-extension and pedestrian signal predate the current project.)

Learn more about Glendale's Brand project at the project webpage and the city's Share Space and Place story arc site, which includes a feedback survey. The Brand demonstration project is temporary. The city is committed to keeping it in place through this fall, and may make it permanent - depending on community feedback.

There are several other Glendale active transportation projects in the works: extending Glenoaks bike lanes, adding protected bike lanes on La Crescenta Avenue, a new gap closure bikeway (between Burbank and Griffith Park) on or near Victory Boulevard, a new walk/bike bridge to Griffith Park, pedestrian upgrades on Colorado Street, a planned speed camera pilot, and more. Get involved with Walk Bike Glendale to support these and further improvements.