Fifth and Final Day of SBC’s Bike Lane Week: Near Northwest Side, Far West Side, Near West Side, Near North Side

Check out Day One: Mid-South Side here.

Check out Day Two: Far Southwest Side here.

Check out Day Three: Near Southwest and Near South Side here.

Check out Day Four: Mid-North Side here.

I'm a cowboy
On a steel horse I ride...
I've been everywhere, still I'm standing tall (OK, about 5'8")
I've seen a million bikeways, and I've biked them all

With apologies to Jon Bon Jovi, I have ridden a heck of a lot of bike lanes, and had the pleasure of visiting many of our city's diverse neighborhoods, for Streetsblog Chicago's Bike Lane Week, which wrapped up this evening. Below is SBC's map of 2023 finished and underway projects.

My goal was to stop by every bikeway the Chicago Department of Transportation has built in 2023, or is currently constructing, that SBC hasn't really covered yet. (If you don't see a project you're curious about below or on one of the four other Bike Lane Week posts, Streetsblog probably previously wrote about it, so do a Google search or write me at jgreenfield[at]streetsblog[dot]org and I'll send you a link to the story.) I didn't ride the entire length of every route, but I think I got a decent sense of what shape they are in.

I covered a lot of territory today, so I'll keep things concise. However Streetsblog may do some deeper dives into some of these projects in the future. Here's an interactive map of the 37.6-mile route I took from Uptown and back today. Feel free to use this map to visit some of these bikeways yourself. But keep in mind that a few of the non-bikeway streets are not particularly bike-friendly, and therefore only suitable for so-called "strong and fearless" riders. (I worked as a bike messenger in Chicago for years, so heavy/fast motor vehicle traffic doesn't faze me much, although perhaps it should.)

Here are a few quick takeaways I have from this week's experience:

• CDOT bike and pedestrian project staffers, especially Complete Streets program manager David Smith deserve a tip of the helmet for the massive amount of bike lane mileage they created or improved this year. (I'm working on getting the exact numbers.) Do these people even sleep? Hopefully they've all got some kind of warm-weather vacation planned for late January or early February, when it's generally impossible to install bikeways in Chicago.

• That said, there's a bit of a quality-over-quantity issue at play. If we're going to invest in protected bike lanes, they need to be safe, pleasant to use, and difficult for motorists to misuse. We also need the routes to run for several miles between important and popular destinations, without safety gaps. As the old saying goes, "A chain is only as strong as its weakest link." When someone asks me for non-dangerous, lower-stress biking directions, I want to be able to give them something as simple as a Chicago driving route, not a complex stair-step of half-mile bikeway segments.

• CDOT should hire people who care about good bike lane maintenance, perhaps graduates of local youth bicycle ed programs, to remove trash, broken glass, snow, etc. from the many miles of protected lanes, ideally using bike-powered gear. For example, I've noticed recently fallen leaves sometimes gather in the new curb-protected lanes, which discourages use and makes it less safe.

Note that not all 2023 projects seem to be be fully completed yet. So let's have a little patience with CDOT if these bikeways are not currently perfect when we check them out. But not too much patience – if any of them are still only half-finished by next summer, let's make a fuss.

Without further ado, here's what I visited today. I shot all these photos and videos.

Non-protected bike lanes (NPBLs) on California in Logan Square

NPBLs on Armitage in Logan Square

NPBLs on Central Park in Logan Square

(Partially completed) protected bike lanes on Wrightwood in Hermosa

PBLs on Laramie in Belmont Cragin (heading south)

Neighborhood Greenway (NG) on Lavergne in Austin

Upgraded PBLs on Lake in Austin.

Neighborhood Greenway on Menard Avenue in Austin

New concrete protection on Homan PBL in Garfield Park

PBLc at the Garfield Park Conservatory

PBLS on Independence and Douglas boulevards in North Lawndale

Upgraded PBLs on Lake in Garfield Park

New PBLS on Grand in West Town

New PBLs on Polk in the Illinois Medical District

New non-PBLs on Loomis on the Near West Side

New PBLs on Blue Island on the Near West Side

Concrete PBL upgrade on Jackson in the West Loop

New PBL on Dearborn in River North

NPBL on Dearborn in Old Town

NG under construction on Dickens in Lincoln Park

PBLs on a block of Racine in Lincoln Park

Thanks for participating in Streetsblog Chicago's 2023 Chicago Bike Week by reading this, and be sure to check out some of these new routes yourself. Have you ridden any of them already? Let us know what you think in the comments section.

Check out Day One: Mid-South Side here.

Check out Day Two: Far Southwest Side here.

Check out Day Three: Near Southwest and Near South Side here.

Check out Day Four: Mid-North Side here.

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