PROVIDENCE — Commuters are expected to forgo their cars this morning and take to two wheels instead as part of the 52nd annual Bike to Work Day — cycling around a city that is about to become much more bicycle-friendly over the next few months.

Starting in the next few weeks, Providence will install more than 1,000 signs aimed exclusively at cyclists. The signs will be placed at major intersections and on major city thoroughfares and will direct bikers to major city landmarks, to dedicated bike paths and bike lanes, to the downtown and to nearby cities and towns.

“We want people to know that Providence is a bicycle-friendly city,” said City Engineer William C. Bombard. “There’s in excess of 1,000 signs. And they get more pronounced as you enter the downtown area. It’s quite significant.”

The signs are meant to make up for the lack of bike paths through the city, by ensuring that cyclists can find their way even if they aren’t familiar with the city’s winding streets.

“We don’t have a lot of dedicated bike paths through the city. It’s not like we’re in the East Bay or in Cranston, and have all these old rail lines,” Bombard said.

They should all be posted by the early summer, he said.

A dedicated bike lane will be striped on Blackstone Boulevard, which will leave one lane of traffic in each direction. The six-foot-wide bike lane will lie between the motorist lane and the parking lane.

“We’re going to reduce it to a parking lane, a bike lane and a travel lane,” said John Nickelson, director of public works.

When the idea was proposed several years ago, there was some resistance from area residents and the city held a public meeting on the bike lane in March. “There had been some [resistance] in the past, but they seem to be in favor of it now,” Nickelson said.

The lane is expected to help decrease the speed of motorists on the boulevard.

“The people on the East Side also see this as a way to slow the traffic down. Right now, it’s wide open and people tend to exceed the speed limit,” Bombard said.

In the long term, Providence plans to connect the Blackstone Bike Path with the East Bay Bike Path by routing riders along River Road by the Seekonk River and building a dedicated path from Richmond Square to India Point Park and the East Bay Bike Path, Bombard said. But that plan is years away.

Together, the striping and the signs will cost $130,436. The Providence Foundation and the Rhode Island Department of Transportation have recently installed more than 100 bicycle hitches downtown.

Bicyclists can learn more about the signing and striping program at today’s Bike to Work festivities, which will be based at Kennedy Plaza downtown.

Today’s events kick off around 7 a.m. Teams from city government and from the DOT will join other riders in biking to the Bank of America Skating Center, where breakfast will be served from 7 to 10 a.m.

Mayor David N. Cicilline will bike to work from his Elmgrove Avenue home, starting at 7:10 for a 7:30 a.m. news conference.

At 3 p.m., bicycle-related vendors will offer safety tips and demonstrations and the Rhode Island Chapter of the Sierra Club is using the day to raise awareness of cycling as a viable transportation alternative in a time of skyrocketing gasoline prices.

“Riding a bicycle or RIPTA bus to work every day represents one of the strongest actions a commuter can take to reduce global warming pollution and our dependence on oil,” said Chris Wilhite, Sierra Club Rhode Island chapter director.

The activities are organized by the Providence Bicycle Coalition, an advocacy group that promotes cycling-as-transportation locally.

dbarbari@projo.com