Eyes on the Street: Glendale’s Nearly Completed La Crescenta Ave. Bikeway
Glendale is adding new bright green bike lanes on La Crescenta Avenue.
The project is currently a construction zone, but that didn’t stop Crescenta Valley Weekly criticism. A dismissive CV Weekly account recently spotted just “one… elusive cyclist” on a project that “destroyed an entire traffic lane” and “sacrificed … parking spaces.”
The La Crescenta Avenue Rehabilitation Project indeed “destroyed,” or some would say reconfigured, travel lanes to add a continuous new two-way center turn lane and new bike lanes.
It is a bike project, but as City Councilmember Dan Brotman stated in 2024 and newly elected Glendale City Councilmember Alek Bartrosouf stated in 2022, it’s not primarily a bike project, but more a street safety project. The La Crescenta Avenue project makes the street safer for lots of drivers, and for smaller numbers of pedestrians and cyclists.
In addition, the $15-17 million project features a broad range of public benefits: street resurfacing, rain gardens, sidewalk repairs/improvements, tree-planting, plus ADA, sewer, reflective pavement, and fiber optics upgrades.
The lower portion of La Crescenta Avenue has the fenced-off channelized Verdugo Wash running along its west side, hence there are few intersections and no driveways – essentially no “friction” – for southbound/downhill drivers. Though this area has a speed limit of 40 mph, drivers commonly exceed 50 mph. Reconfiguring the roadway takes cars out of the way of head-on collisions, and allows faster moving drivers to safely pass turning ones.
Reconfiguring the car lanes frees up space, which has been repurposed as bike lanes. This moves bicyclists – especially slower moving cyclists headed uphill – out of the way of fast moving drivers.
The north end of Glendale, at the edge of La Crescenta-Montrose is a mostly steep, car-centric suburb. Cyclists ride there, but it’s unlikely that, even when this project is complete, there will be tons of cyclists there. Nonetheless it’s worthwhile to keep cyclists safe; if the city is already planning to invest millions in resurfacing, it makes sense to add on safety and environmental benefits.
La Crescenta Avenue street width varies, so the type of bicycle facility that fits easily varies somewhat. The 1.5-mile project includes about 0.8 miles of protected bike lanes, a half mile of basic unprotected lanes, and a quarter mile of unprotected buffered bike lanes.
Construction is due to be completed this month. Resurfacing and new striping, including bright green bike lanes, are already in place. The main additional work pending is new decorative crosswalks.
Project photos below were taken last weekend.
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