A construction project aimed at improving pedestrian safety is scheduled to start soon along California Avenue on the south side of the Davis campus, where California Avenue connects with the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science.

The project calls for an asphalt path alongside California Avenue and a crosswalk on Old Davis Road. The crosswalk will tie in with the breezeway between two RMI buildings along Old Davis Road.

Pedestrian activity in this area soared with the RMI’s opening last October, bringing the first academic and research buildings to the land between Old Davis Road and Interstate 80.

Today, students, staff and faculty are walking and bicycling between the RMI and the central campus. In between the campus and the RMI lies Old Davis Road, the campus’s south entry.

With so many cars and trucks using that road, the campus’s Transportation and Parking Work Group wants to provide a separate walkway for pedestrians.

‘Substantial detour’

Therefore, before construction even begins on the new pathway and crosswalk, the university will block off pedestrian access between California Avenue and the RMI. This will involve putting up a temporary fence, perhaps as early as May 26 — a fence that would stay in place for about four weeks.

With the fence in place, pedestrians will be forced to take a long detour: It will run along Arboretum Drive (otherwise known as “Old” Old Davis Road, on the south side of the arboretum waterway), between California Avenue and an existing sidewalk that borders the parking lot outside the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts administrative building.

This sidewalk connects with an existing crosswalk at Old Davis Road and Hilgard Lane (formerly Beau Vine Lane), which runs between the RMI and the south entry garage.

“We realize it is a substantial detour for pedestrians,” said Matt Dulcich, associate planner with the Office of Resource Management and Planning. “We hope that they will bear with us and accept the delay while we build a new path to and from the RMI.”