Turn north onto La Crescenta Avenue from Verdugo Road and the fenced channel of Verdugo Wash runs along your left. For the first stretch there are hardly any side streets and no driveways on that side. Above Roselawn Avenue the road keeps climbing, bends toward due north, and becomes a street lined with homes, crosswalks and a school day's foot traffic. The City of Glendale's rehabilitation project, which wrapped up on August 3, 2026, did not lay one design over all of that. It built several, and each one fits the piece of road it sits on.
That is the useful way to read the finished corridor between Verdugo Road and Montrose Avenue. The bike lane changes type and the crossings appear in particular places, and each change follows something the street was already doing before construction began.
The Wash Side Was the Fastest Part of the Street
The lower part of La Crescenta Avenue has the channelized Verdugo Wash along its west side. Streetsblog Los Angeles pointed out in its July 7, 2026 field report that this leaves downhill drivers with few intersections and no driveways, so almost nothing slows them. The posted limit there is 40 mph, and the report says drivers commonly go faster than 50.
The rebuild removed one travel lane in each direction and added a continuous center two-way left-turn lane. On the wash side, the center lane separates opposing traffic and gives faster drivers room to pass someone waiting to turn, according to Streetsblog's account. The downhill bike lane along the wash is now protected by plastic bollards. The uphill lane on the east side is protected by parked cars.
Speed is still an issue on part of this stretch. Streetsblog's photos show drivers going over the limit on the straight downhill section below Roselawn Avenue.
Where the Bike Lane Changes Type, the Street Width Changed First
People who drive this corridor every day have probably noticed that the green paint does not look the same from end to end. The reason is the width of the roadway. Streetsblog notes that La Crescenta Avenue gets wider and narrower along its length, so the type of bike lane that fits changes too. Its rough breakdown for the 1.5-mile corridor is about 0.8 mile of protected lanes, a half mile of standard unprotected lanes, and a quarter mile of buffered lanes. The City counts it differently. Its fact page lists 1.7 miles of resurfacing and 17,000 linear feet of protected and standard bike lanes.
The buffered section sits roughly in the middle of the corridor. The plain lanes start north of Shirlyjean Street, where La Crescenta gets steeper and runs straight north-south. Parking had to give up some room for these lanes. The City estimated that curbside parking would drop by 18 percent to improve sight distance, a point raised in the council debate the Glendale News-Press covered.
The project had its critics all along. Residents spoke on both sides at council meetings in 2024 and 2025. The supporters pointed to speeding and to safety near Fremont Elementary. Others raised traffic congestion, cut-through traffic on side streets, emergency access and lost parking. No one has published a traffic study of the finished street yet, so how those concerns play out is still an open question.
The Crossings Sit Where People Were Already Crossing
The new signals and crosswalks are clustered at the spots where side streets, a school and a trailhead meet the avenue. Here is where each change landed:
| Location | What's there now |
|---|---|
| Between Arlington and Las Palmas avenues, beside Fremont Elementary | A mid-block signalized bicycle crossing with its own bike signal |
| Oakmont View Drive | A new traffic signal and a decorative crosswalk |
| Piedmont Avenue | A new pedestrian hybrid beacon at a crosswalk that had no signal before, plus a decorative crosswalk |
| Shirlyjean Street and Roselawn Avenue | Decorative crosswalks |
| Sycamore Avenue and other side streets | Intersections realigned to meet the avenue at a straighter angle |
Drivers should know one detail about the Fremont crossing. Streetsblog notes that people walking and biking can still cross at the regular intersections nearby, but traffic on La Crescenta does not stop there. The signalized crossing is the place where it does.
Some of the work is harder to see. The City's fact page counts six intersection realignments, 59 ADA curb ramps, 21 new street trees and 44,500 square feet of upgraded sidewalk, driveway and alley apron. Underneath the street, the project increased sewer capacity, added bioretention planters to catch stormwater, and ran fiber optic lines so the corridor's signals can be timed together.
North of Shirlyjean, the Avenue Turns Into a Neighborhood Street
On the upper stretch there is no wash, there are homes on both sides, and the main job is getting people safely across. Streetsblog describes this part as steeper, with plain painted bike lanes and the new flashing-beacon crossing at Piedmont Avenue. The same report expects that even with the work finished, this hilly, car-oriented edge of Glendale won't draw large numbers of cyclists. It argues that if the City was resurfacing the road anyway, adding the safety and stormwater features at the same time made sense.
The Oakmont View Drive signal matters for more than the homes on that street. The Verdugo Mountains Open Space Preserve has hiking access on Oakmont View Drive, so morning hikers heading up from the avenue now turn at a signal.
Getting the work done took longer than planned. The contractor mobilized on March 31, 2025, and the early schedule aimed to finish by December 2025. By October 2025, Crescenta Valley Weekly was reporting a new target of March 2026 and blamed conflicts with underground utilities and long lead times for traffic signal equipment. Paving ran from April 13 to May 1, 2026. Striping followed in May, and the decorative crosswalks went in after that. The finish date of August 3 came about sixteen months after mobilization.
The North End Is a Few Blocks From Honolulu Avenue
The corridor stops at Montrose Avenue, just past where it crosses Honolulu Avenue. That puts the north end within easy reach of the Montrose Shopping Park on the 2200 to 2400 blocks of Honolulu. The research did not turn up a protected bike connection running through the shopping park itself. The rest of the fall calendar there is set:
- Montrose Harvest Market: Sundays, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., rain or shine, with certified California farmers, flowers and baked goods.
- Halloween Spooktacular: Saturday, October 31, with merchants handing out candy from 5 to 7 p.m.
- Holiday Wine Walk: Saturday, November 14.
- Tree lighting: November 27 at 6:15 p.m., with carolers starting at 5:30.
- Montrose-Glendale Christmas Parade: Saturday, December 5, at 6:10 p.m.
For coffee before the market, there's The Black Cow Cafe at 2219 Honolulu Avenue, which opens at 8 a.m. every day. Toasted Cafe at 2420 Honolulu serves all-day breakfast and stays open until 8 p.m. Friday through Sunday.
Honolulu Avenue is due for the same kind of treatment, but not for years. The City's Honolulu Avenue Improvements Project plans new bike facilities, decorative crosswalks, pedestrian safety features, street trees, a modified signal at Ocean View Boulevard and a new rectangular rapid flashing beacon. The project is still in pre-design, and construction is tentatively set to start in summer 2030. Mayor Ardy Kassakhian said in the City's completion announcement that each project is a chance to learn from residents' feedback and make the next one better. Honolulu Avenue is the next corridor where that applies.
Wednesday Morning at Sparr Heights
The City's August 20 press release listed a September 3 ceremony at CV Church. That date has been replaced. The current project page sets the ribbon cutting for Wednesday, October 7, 2026, at 8:30 a.m. at Sparr Heights Community Center, 1613 Glencoe Way. It comes right after Glendale Unified's Walk to School Day. Families and Fremont Elementary staff will gather at Montrose Community Park, 3529 Clifton Place, at 7:40 a.m. and walk to the school, and the ceremony takes place across the street. The event is open to all residents, and light refreshments will be served.
If you live near the corridor and you're wondering how the new street layout, the reduced parking or the new crossings might affect your property, Victoria Ascarrunz and the AVRE Group team are glad to talk it through with you calmly and in detail. Work With Us.
