Recent changes at some locations at the main Berkeley Lab site are helping make it safer for our bicycling employees. The Lab has its first official bike lane! In addition, “sharrows” (a bicycle with arrows pointing forward) have been painted on many downhill lanes across the site to alert motorists of locations where bicycles may share the roadway. These are great milestones that improve road safety and show a commitment to encouraging alternative means of commuting to work. In this case, human power!
The bike lane was added from the Blackberry Gate to Perlmutter Road as part of the repaving project for Chu Road at the end of a busy capital construction project period that has provided us with the Computation Research and Theory Facility (CRT), General Purpose Laboratory (GPL), and Solar Energy Research Center buildings (SERC). At a minimum width of 4 feet, this lane meets the standards for a Class II bike lane. As such, it is labeled with the familiar bicycle symbol. While the lane from Perlmutter Road to the Bevatron Circle is narrower than 4 feet wide, the restriping created a wider shoulder for bicyclists to use. As a result, this shoulder cannot be, and was not, labeled as an official bike lane. Future plans call for widening this stretch of road to create a standard bike lane.
Bicycles traveling in the downhill direction are often able to keep up with vehicle traffic, especially in stretches where the speed limit is 15 miles per hour. To accommodate this fact, and consistent with the California Motor Vehicle Code, sharrows or shared roadway bicycle markings have been painted on the roadway to assist bicyclists with positioning on a shared roadway. They also alert motorists of the location a bicyclist may occupy within the roadway. Complementing the sharrow markings, signs noting that a bicyclist may take the full lane were also installed, as both as shown in the photo below.
These changes result from the hard work of the Traffic and Pedestrian Safety Committee, Safety Concerns, and Safety Culture Work Group working collaboratively with Facilities and Environment, Health, and Safety Divisions to improve roadway safety conditions at the Lab.
