Just as his wife did, Bob Ward enjoys bicycling. Just as she did, he prefers to fix a problem. When a problem claimed her life on a bicycle, the impetus to do something would not let him go.

So the dedication Thursday of new green bicycle lanes at Alpine Road and Highway 280 wasn’t just a good cause. It was a deeply heartfelt one, a recompense for what cannot be restored.

Nearly three years ago, on Nov. 4, 2010, 47-year-old Lauren Ward was killed by a big-rig truck as she was bicycling west on Alpine near the southbound on-ramp to 280.

The precise circumstances were sharply contested, although the Ward family lawyer says the insurance company for the big-rig company agreed to pay $5 million to settle the case. In 2007, the same truck driver had been involved in a bike fatality in Santa Cruz.

What set the Los Altos Hills woman’s death apart, however, was the determination of Bob Ward, with a cadre of patrol officers, politicians and bicyclists, to make the road safer.

If you drive on Alpine now near 280, you’ll see bright green bicycle lanes, set off by diagonal hash marks. Where cars and bicyclists should go is beyond guesswork.

I’ve attended many groundbreakings — they are beloved by politicians — but none of them were as personal as the one I saw Thursday.

A personal cause

The cause was personal for CHP Capt. Mike Maskarich, who arrived on the scene just after Lauren was hit and who played a role in getting identifiable green lanes.

It was personal for Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian, who as a legislator in 2002 adopted Lauren’s idea for a law in his first “There ought to be a law” competition.

It was personal for the leaders of the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition, which helped coordinate the effort for the new lanes and then led folks on a bike ride along the critical portion of Alpine.

And it was beyond personal for Bob Ward, a fit, sandy-haired man garbed in a yellow-and-black bicyclist’s outfit. “It’s a great piece of work,” Ward said of the lane-marking. “It will help save lives.”

All that, more than the paint on the road, reflected who Lauren Ward was — very sweet, very wholesome and very determined.

When the Wards’ terrier puppy, Angus, died from lapping antifreeze some dozen years ago, Lauren pushed Simitian to introduce a bill requiring a bittering agent to be added to the liquid.

Understanding

She brought the same find-a-solution attitude to longtime wars between bicyclists and drivers. In a letter to the Los Altos Town Crier in 2009, she pleaded for understanding in words of chilly prescience.

“Remember what it may be like to ride a bike alongside cars,” she wrote to motorists. “Most people are not out there to ruin your day by getting in your way. A bicyclist is very vulnerable, like a pedestrian, to any sort of accident.”

The new lanes on Alpine are meant to reduce that vulnerability just a bit. “It’s the kind of thing that Lauren would want to see happen anyway,” Ward told me. “She had the kind of personality that said, ‘This isn’t right, let’s fix it.’ ”

Contact Scott Herhold at 408-275-0917 or sherhold@mercurynews.com. Twitter.com/scottherhold.