The brand new pedestrian crossing of Lawrence Expressway at Mitty Way was celebrated at a ribbon cutting ceremony hosted by County Roads May 30. County Roads, which oversees the county expressway system, sought and received a Safe Routes to School grant to provide a shorter, safer, more pleasant route to school for many students.

The Mitty Way intersection had been strictly for motor vehicles turning on and off of Lawrence. The opportunity for this new pedestrian crossing was created a few years ago when Cupertino built a short stretch of trail between Saratoga Creek and Lawrence Expressway heading north from Bollinger Road to a new footbridge across the creek at the end of Barnhart Avenue in Cupertino, stopping just short of the Mitty Way/Lawrence intersection.

Queen of Apostles School and Mitty High School are right there on Mitty Way in San Jose, so obviously students living in Cupertino can use this new crosswalk to reach those schools. Not obvious is the fact that the attendance areas of Hyde Middle School and Cupertino High School (both west of Lawrence in Cupertino) reach across Lawrence into West San Jose. Many of those San Jose students already walked and biked to school, following a less than pleasant route along Bollinger to Hyde and a truly perilous although legal route along the east side of Lawrence under 280, dealing with high speed merging freeway traffic coming around blind curves, to get to Stevens Creek Blvd. to get under Lawrence and on to Cupertino High School. Now they can cross Lawrence at the new crosswalk, cross the creek on the new footbridge, and proceed to their schools along quiet Cupertino side streets. Here’s hoping their numbers will increase.

The new crosswalk also extends a mellow east/west bike route through Cupertino on into San Jose, and provides direct access to the north end of the trail for San Jose residents. The trail now continues south of Bollinger Road along the creek into West San Jose.

Thanks to County Roads for new crosswalk, and to Jim Stallman for the photos at his photo gallery. County Supervisor Ken Yeager, who attended the ceremony, also covered it in his Ken Bikes blog.

Santa Clara’s Team Bike Challenge Team, Bicycling on Roads and Trails are the Winners for all of the Bay Area!! Congratulations to Jeff Hole, Dan Dizon, Christian Suder, Jocelyn Lau, and Lennie Garcia of Bicycling on Roads and Trails. Santa Clara County’s own Grand Prize winners finished off the competition with 333 points and tied with Team Psyche from Marin County. The team receives a bike rack from Peak Racks to be installed in their respective county at the public site of their choice. Each team member also wins a fabulous Timbuk2 messenger bag.