Construction is underway for the city of Charleston's long-awaited bicycle lanes along a stretch of Kanawha Boulevard.
Crews were working on the city's West Side last week and will continue early this week to remove and pave the grassy medians along Kanawha Boulevard West between Patrick Street and Magic Island, according to assistant city engineer Aaron Morris.
Crews from West Virginia Paving were working Friday afternoon to repave where the medians once stood.
Once the median work is complete, Morris said crews are expected to begin constructing crosswalks on the north side of the boulevard, the side farthest from the Kanawha River.
Crosswalk construction is expected to begin sometime this week and could take up to three months to complete, depending on the weather, he said.
Kanawha Boulevard West will remain open to traffic throughout the process. Work crews plan to "shift traffic to where the medians were to keep it two-way," Morris said.
The 1.3-mile bicycle lanes will run from Patrick Street to Magic Island on Charleston's West Side.
The bike lanes will be separated from vehicle traffic with a grassy buffer, according to renderings of the planned bike lanes.
All four vehicle lanes of Kanawha Boulevard are expected to remain where the bicycle lanes are planned; however, each lane will be narrowed to 10.5 feet in width, according to a previous Gazette-Mail report. The bike lane project received $2.66 million in federal funding, the report said.
Reach Carlee Lammers at carlee.lammers@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1230 or follow @CarleeLammers on Twitter.