University Park just made things a little easier for bicyclists.

The town added shared lane markings—known in urban planning circles as “sharrows”—to two routes leading through it.

The first route follows Queens Chapel Road from Baltimore Avenue to the intersection with East-West Highway at Adelphi Road. The second goes along Van Buren Street, crossing east-west from the signal at Baltimore Avenue along Wells Parkway to Adelphi.

The markings are typically intended to remind drivers that they share the road with bicycles and to make cyclists feel more welcome. They’re viewed as a low-cost alternative to adding full-fledged bike lanes, though they’ve faced some criticism.

In University Park’s case, however, they will also serve a much more important function of helping people find their way around.

The town is almost intentionally hard to navigate—even a thoroughfare-sounding road like Wells Parkway swerves and ends abruptly—so the markings should help some of the bicyclists passing through town keep from getting lost.

The bike markings, the forthcoming completion of the Riverdale Park section of the Trolley Trail and the expansion of bike sharing programs in College Park, University Park and Hyattsville are all helping make the area more bike-friendly.