Recent Streetsblog CHICAGO posts about protected bike lanes

Four Reasons Pedestrian Injuries Have Plummeted Along Protected Bike Lanes

By Michael Andersen | Nov 14, 2014 | No Comments

Michael Andersen blogs for The Green Lane Project, a PeopleForBikes program that helps U.S. cities build better bike lanes to create low-stress streets. Protected bike lanes are good at making it safer to bike. But they are great at making it safer to walk. As dozens of thought leaders on street safety gather in New […]

Evanston City Council Advances Key Projects From Bike Plan

By Justin Haugens | Oct 1, 2014 | 4 Comments

On Monday night, Evanston’s City Council held a special meeting solely to address four bike infrastructure or policy measures, all of which will implement pieces of the city’s recently adopted Bike Plan. The council advanced new protected bike lanes along Sheridan Road and along Dodge Avenue, in spite of considerable opposition over the latter, while deferring […]

Pullman Pouter: Konkol Gripes That His Neighborhood Is a Transit Desert

By John Greenfield | Sep 19, 2014 | 17 Comments

It’s always a chuckle to read DNAinfo.com columnist Mark Konkol’s misguided musings on transportation issues. When the city installed protected bike lanes on Kinzie, in front of the Sun-Times office where Konkol worked at the time, he wrote a series of articles blasting the PBLs as “bunk” that caused gridlock for drivers. “They’re a giant […]

Does Chicago Deserve to Be Ranked the Nation’s Second Best Bike City?

By John Greenfield | Sep 5, 2014 | 8 Comments

When I heard that Bicycling Magazine gave Chicago second place in its “America’s Best Bike Cities” ratings, just behind New York and two slots above Portland, I was puzzled. However, I’m starting to warm up to the idea that our city and NYC deserve credit for taking bold action to improve cycling. Few people would […]

PBLs Off the Table in Jeff Park, But Milwaukee Still Needs a Road Diet

By John Greenfield | Aug 22, 2014 | 10 Comments

The Chicago Department of Transportation has proposed three possible street reconfigurations for Milwaukee from Lawrence to Elston. Unfortunately, the one that CDOT originally said would have had the greatest safety benefit for pedestrians, bicyclists, and drivers is now off the table. The scenario where the current five-lane speedway would have been converted to two travel […]

CDOT Proposes Chicago’s First Curb-Separated Bike Lane On Clybourn

By Steven Vance | Jul 25, 2014 | 35 Comments

The Chicago Department of Transportation presented a proposal last night to build curb-separated bike lanes on each side of Clybourn, from Halsted to Division Streets, and to reconfigure the oversized intersection where Clybourn meets Division, Sedgwick, and Orleans in front of Seward Park. CDOT bikeways engineer and project manager Nate Roseberry explained that Clybourn is […]

Eyes on the Street: Handy New Protected Bike Lanes on Harrison

By John Greenfield | Jul 11, 2014 | 18 Comments

The Chicago Department of Transportation is almost finished building the city’s latest protected bike lanes, on Harrison between Desplaines and Wabash, and they’re useful ones. The new PBLs serve as a handy connection between protected lanes on Desplaines, Canal, and Dearborn, as well as conventional and buffered lanes on Clinton, Franklin, and Wabash, and they’re […]

CDOT Will Add Bike Lanes to Harrison, Improve Jog at State

By Steven Vance | Jun 20, 2014 | 5 Comments

Harrison Street is often used by many bicyclists as a stealth route, particularly since it has one of the rare bridges without open metal grates, sees surprisingly light car traffic, and is the only east-west route that connects the South Loop and UIC. Harrison is marked as a “crosstown bike route” from Loomis Avenue (1400 […]

Mia Birk Praised Chicago’s Bike Gains at Yesterday’s Meet-and-Greet

By John Greenfield | Jun 18, 2014 | No Comments

It was great hanging with Streetsblog Chicago readers at yesterday’s meet-and-greet with noted bike and pedestrian planner Mia Birk, co-hosted by her planning firm, Alta Planning + Design at Vinyl in River North. Birk also heads Alta Bicycle Share, which runs the Divvy program for the city of Chicago. She served as Bicycle Program Manager […]

Construction Cycle: CDOT Has a Lot on Its Plate This Summer

By John Greenfield | Jun 11, 2014 | 2 Comments

[This piece also ran in Checkerboard City, John’s column in Newcity magazine, which hits the streets on Wednesday evenings.] If 2013 was Chicago’s Long, Hot Summer of Transportation, then 2014 is the Summer of the Big Projects. Last year featured well-publicized game changers like the South Red Line rehab and the Divvy bike-share launch, but […]

Eyes on the Street: Augusta Buffered Lanes and Repaved Milwaukee PBLs

By John Greenfield | May 29, 2014 | 27 Comments

Due to the cold spring, the Chicago Department of Transportation’s bikeways construction season got off to a late start. Thermoplastic pavement markings don’t adhere properly to asphalt at temperatures below 50 Fahrenheit, as evidenced by bike lanes and crosswalks in various parts of town that were striped too late in the season in 2013 and […]

Scheinfeld Talks About Divvy, PBLs, Traffic Cams, and Long Term Goals

By John Greenfield | May 23, 2014 | 2 Comments

In this final installment of my interview with Chicago Department of Transportation Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld, we talked about the Divvy expansion, traffic cameras, protected bike lanes, and her overall goals as CDOT chief. Read the first and second parts of the interview here and here. John Greenfield: We’re slated to get 175 more Divvy stations […]

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