Grand Rapids may put advisory bike lanes on a stretch of Jefferson Avenue SE, where motor vehicles would share a center lane.

GRAND RAPIDS, MI - Advisory bike lanes are being planned for a stretch of Jefferson Avenue SE that's slated for roadwork this summer. In order to fit bike lanes on each side of the road and still have room for on-street parking, two-way motor traffic would share a single center lane. It would be the first such setup in the city, said Chris Zull, the city's traffic safety manager.

"This is the way we experience most of our residential streets. This is just putting it on the pavement (with lane markings)," he said. "Instead of just a sharrow (marking), this is that next level of awareness."

With money from a voter-approved streets tax, Grand Rapids plans to rebuild Jefferson between Burton and Cottage Grove streets and repave it between Cottage Grove and Hall Avenue. Roadwork will include new water and gas lines, tree plantings and sidewalk ramps that comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Pavement markings would delineate two lanes of on-street parking, two bike lanes and one 14- to 16-foot center lane for motor traffic. When cars headed in opposite directions approach each other, "they would move into the bike lanes, after checking for bikes, of course, and then move back into the center lane," after they pass, Zull said.

Traffic volume on Jefferson at Hall was 2,324 vehicles per day last year, according to the Grand Valley Metropolitan Council

The roadwork on Jefferson likely will take place over the next two construction seasons, with the bike lanes striped in summer 2016, said Jeff McCaul, assistant city engineer.

Grand Rapids is deploying a variety of street configurations around the city to accommodate bicycles and motor vehicles in the same space:

Grand Rapids by the end of the current fiscal year in June will have more than 70 miles of bike lanes and is budgeting $75,000 for more bike lanes in the coming year. As more streets get rebuilt or repaved with money from the new streets tax, the city will try to increase connections between existing bike lanes, administrators said.

"We're on the verge of constructing an integrated bicycle network and we'll be doing it with Vital Streets money," Deputy City Manager Eric DeLong said.

Matt Vande Bunte covers government for MLive/Grand Rapids Press. Email him at mvandebu@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter and Facebook.