Green Pavement Markings

Purposegpm1.png

Green-colored pavement markings increase the visibility of a bike facility, identify potential areas of bike-vehicle conflict, and reinforce a bicyclist’s path of travel.

Description

Green pavement markings are typically used as a spot treatment in specific locations such as a bike box, intersection crossing, or conflict area. The color green is used because it is not easily confused with other standard traffic control roadway markings.

Safety Benefits

  • Increase the visibility of cyclists.
  • Alerts bicyclists of potential conflict areas.
  • Increase driver yield behaviors.
  • Provides guidance to bicyclists of the recommended path of travel.

Street Types and Context

Applicable Street Types

  • Anywhere within bike lanes or cycle tracks where additional visibility is desired.
  • Across turning conflict areas such as driveways or intersections.
  • Across intersections, particularly large or complex ones where the bicyclist’s path may be unclear.

Other Location Guidance 

  • May not be applicable in locations where bicycles are expected to yield right of way.
  • Should not be used where bicyclists are sharing the space with pedestrians, such as at multi-use trail crossings. Green should also not be used in conjunction with sharrows. 
  • When there are bus stops along a bike lane, red colored pavement markings may be used to distinguish between the transit lane and bike lane areas

Primary User Groups

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Key Implementation Considerations

  • Green pavement markings are more costly to maintain. Depending on the material used, requires varying levels of maintenance.
  • Cannot be applied to areas where the pavement is deteriorating.

     

Expected Crash Reduction

Application of green pavement markings has led to a 10% decrease in crashes at signalized intersections with one colored marked bike crossing (Fehr & Peers, 2018).

Average annual total crashes also decreased by 12% for all applications of green pavement, but this also includes vehicle-only crashes (Fehr & Peers, 2018).

Cost

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Typically, moderate cost but it varies based on treatment material used.

Timeline

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Less than one year to three or more years, depending on complexity.

Application in Arlington

Visit Vision Zero Program Dashboard: Green Markings to see where these tools has been implemented.

Vision Zero Dashboard

References

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