Recent Streetsblog CHICAGO posts about protected bike lanes

Bollard Blues: This Winter Was Rough on Chicago’s Protected Bike Lanes

By John Greenfield | Apr 11, 2014 | 26 Comments

[This piece also runs on the Green Lane Project’s blog.] In the wake of this brutal winter, Chicago’s third snowiest on record, some sections of the Dearborn protected bike lanes resemble a gap-toothed grin. Several of the white, plastic posts that delineate the bi-directional bikeway are missing in action. Roughly half of the posts that […]

Chicago Building Four Miles of Protected Bike Lanes This Year

By Steven Vance | Apr 7, 2014 | 13 Comments

The City of Chicago announced a new slate of bikeway projects today, outlining about 15 miles of new buffered bike lanes and a little more than four miles of protected lanes to be built in 2014. Under the plan for this year, protected bikeway construction in Chicago would continue to outpace every other American city except […]

At Long Last, Stony Island May Get Protected Bike Lanes

By John Greenfield | Mar 27, 2014 | 15 Comments

Years ago, under Mayor Richard M. Daley, the Chicago Department of Transportation proposed piloting the city’s first protected bike lane on Stony Island between 69th and 77th. By February 2011 they’d received a $3.2 million federal grant to build it. However, construction wasn’t slated to begin until 2014. We all know what happened since that […]

Arena’s Foe Attacks Milwaukee Safety Overhaul, Advocates Fight Back

By John Greenfield | Jan 28, 2014 | 58 Comments

John Garrido, a Chicago cop and part-time lawyer, narrowly lost to 45th Ward Alderman John Arena in the 2011 election. Now Garrido has started an online petition against the city’s plan for a road diet and protected bike lanes on Milwaukee in the district, a project that Arena has endorsed. The Chicago Department of Transportation […]

Elston Businesses Want Easier Trucking at the Expense of Bike Safety

By John Greenfield | Dec 20, 2013 | 50 Comments

On Wednesday morning the North Branch Works industrial council hosted a meeting for business owners on the city’s proposal to upgrade barely visible conventional bike lanes on Elston between North and Webster to buffered lanes, focusing on the section south of Cortland. Joe Robinson, a member of Bike Walk Logan Square who teaches at a […]

Clybourn Ave and State St Could Get City’s First Curb-Separated Bikeways

By Steven Vance | Dec 12, 2013 | 21 Comments

At yesterday’s Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Council, Chicago Bicycle Program project manager Mike Amsden revealed a new detail about the missing piece of the Clybourn Avenue buffered bike lane. The Chicago Department of Transportation is working with the Illinois Department of Transportation to install a protected bike lane on Clybourn that may be separated by a […]

City Explains Gap in Snow Removal From Protected Bike Lanes This Week

By Steven Vance | Dec 12, 2013 | 65 Comments

Kinzie bike lane plowed & salted except for bridge & of course , bridge sidewalk @transitized pic.twitter.com/UvuFzScEGR — Ding Ding Let's Ride (@DingDingLR) December 9, 2013 Residual snow in bike lanes was a problem this week, putting cyclists in slippery situations. Twitter messages popped up about snow still in the Kinzie protected bike lane after […]

Bike Writer Elly Blue Discusses the Economics of Cycling

By John Greenfield | Nov 26, 2013 | 18 Comments

On Friday I had the pleasure of moderating a discussion of cycling and economics with bike writer Elly Blue, author of the new book “Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save The Economy,” at City Lit bookstore in Logan Square. Blue’s work has appeared in various biking, sustainability, and feminist publications, and she’s also the author of […]

Protected Bike Lanes Will Make State Street a Greater Street

By Kristen Maddox | Sep 27, 2013 | 12 Comments

If support from aldermen Patricia Dowell (3rd) and Will Burns (4th) expressed at a public meeting on Tuesday is any indication, it should be relatively easy for the Chicago Department of Transportation to install buffered and protected bike lanes along State Street from 18th to 26th streets. This eight-block stretch is .8 miles long, since […]

Quigley Hosts Roundtable on Sustainable Transportation in Chicago Region

By John Greenfield | Sep 6, 2013 | 2 Comments

Yesterday a number of heavy hitters in the local transportation scene showed up for a roundtable on sustainable transportation issues at the CTA headquarters hosted by U.S. Representative Mike Quigley (IL-05) and University of Illinois President Robert A. Easter. Quigley, whose district, formerly presided over by Rahm Emanuel, covers a large swath of Chicago’s North […]

An Update on CDOT’s Bikeway Construction

By John Greenfield | Aug 30, 2013 | 20 Comments

We’re currently in the midst of a bike lane building boom. Earlier this year the Chicago Department of Transportation completed groundbreaking protected lanes on Milwaukee from Kinzie to Elston, which involved removing about 50 percent of the parking spaces. Buffered lanes were striped on Wells from Chicago to North. Recently CDOT completed buffered lanes on […]

It’s Time for CDOT to Stop Calling Buffered Bike Lanes “Protected”

By Steven Vance | Aug 8, 2013 | 28 Comments

After Rahm Emanuel was elected mayor, he released a transition report that called for creating 100 miles of protected bike lanes by May 2015. It was an ambitious and admirable goal. The report defined protected lanes as “separated from traveling cars and sit[ting] between the sidewalk and a row of parked cars that shield cyclists […]

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