Update 5/20/24, 1:30 PM: The Chicago Department of Transportation has posted a "Belmont Avenue: Milwaukee to Kimball" project page with a pdf of Thursday's Belmont Avenue presentation. (Scroll down to Events, then click on Community Meeting: May 16, 2024, then Meeting Presentation.) We've added some renderings to this post.
On Thursday, the Chicago Department of Transportation, Ald. Ruth Cruz (30th), and Ald. Carlos Rosa (35th) hosted an online discussion of planned walk/bike/transit upgrades on Belmont Avenue (3200 N.) in Avondale.
Last year CDOT installed concrete protected bike lanes and other amenities on Belmont for 1.25 miles between the eponymous Blue Line station at Kimball Avenue (3400 W.) and Western Avenue (2400 W.) The current plan, dubbed the Belmont Avenue Arterial Resurfacing and Complete Streets Project, is to expand the improvements 0.6 miles further west from Kimball to Milwaukee Avenue (3840 W.)
"As you all have seen, the surge in ridership across Chicago has been increasing, especially among young people," Cruz said at the beginning of the online meeting. According to a recent CDOT analysis, bicycling rose by 119 percent from autumn 2019 and spring 2023, the greatest increase of any of the ten largest U.S. cities.
"And as ridership grows, we need to continue to prioritize safety," Cruz added. "Alderman Carlos Rosa and I encourage and support this trend. It is a responsibility we take very seriously."
The need for safer conditions for cycing was made more obvious in Cruz's ward last October, when a driver fatally struck Joshua Anleu Buendia, 16 while he was biking at Waveland (3700 N.) and Long (5400 W.) avenues. The alder spoke at the ceremony for the installation of his white-panted "ghost bike" memorial.
CDOT Complete Streets Director David Smith was there to walk attendees through the project, which is slated to begin early this summer. A number of safety measures are planned.
This stretch currently has rush hour parking bans, which allows drivers to use the curb lane as a de-facto travel lane, encouraging speeding. Under the new street design, curbside parking will be permitted at all times, and the travel lanes will become narrower, which will help calm traffic.
There will be new crosswalks at Hamlin (3800 W.), Ridgeway (3730 W.), and St. Louis (3500 W.) avenues, with curb ramps for wheelchair users. This stretch of Belmont will also get sidewalk extensions to shorten pedestrian crossing distances.
The existing protected bike lanes on Belmont will be extended from Kimball to Milwaukee.
Smith said bus travel will be improved as well. As with Belmont east of Kimball, there will be island bus stops, which allow bus operators to pick up passengers without pulling out of the travel lane, shortening transit travel times.
"What we’ve seen [on Belmont] east of Kimball is that it’s working. It’s making the street safer," Smith said. "It’s making the street more accessible."
However, Smith noted that on Belmont west of Kimball, it's currently a different story. "From a traffic safety data standpoint, it’s very clear that we need to do something." Kimball-to-Milwaukee is a high crash corridor, he noted, with 423 crashes over the past five years. That’s a 72 percent higher crash rate than Belmont's citywide average. People walking and biking on Belmont between Milwaukee and Kimball are involved in only 8 percent of all crashes here, but 38 percent of all injury crashes, and a troubling 57 percent of all serious injury collision. In addition, CDOT counted 590 speeding drivers on this stretch of Belmont in a single day.
"The reason we’re really intensely focused on this is because speeding is such a critical issue when it comes to the safety of our families and our friends," Smith noted. "For an individual outside of a vehicle who’s hit at 20 mph, you have a 90 percent chance of survival, whereas if you're hit at 40 mph, you have about an 80 percent chance of being killed."
Smith said the project is aligned with the Avondale Neighborhood Plan, a collaboration between the Avondale Neighborhood Association, the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, and the Chicago Department of Planning. One of his slides described the initiative as “A vision for Avondale to become a more livable, walkable, and resilient community."
"Everything we’re talking about here is really reflective of the traffic safety issues that we see out there, that we hear, that you experience every day," Smith said. “It’s reflective of the recommendations from the Avondale Neighborhood Plan. It’s really focused on addressing dangerous speeding and making sure that the street is more organized and predictable for everybody, trough the prioritization of those that are most vulnerable: people walking, people biking, people getting into transit. Children, families, senior citizens, people with disabilities. So, this really embodies what we are talking about when we say 'Complete Streets.'"
"We really thank CDOT for all of their work on this,” said Ald. Rosa at the end of the meeting. "And we really thank all of tonight’s attendees. You care about our city, you care about the community, and it’s active residents that are at the heart of all of the wonderful things that we’re able to accomplish together."
View the "Belmont Avenue: Milwaukee to Kimball" project page here.
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