In recent years, a stretch of Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago's Irving Park neighborhood has been particularly deadly for people riding bikes. Thankfully the Chicago Department of Transportation recently installed protected bike lanes on this segment.
Milwaukee is the busiest biking street in our city. Tragically, drivers have struck and killed at least six people on the road within the last 20 years.
On this segment of Milwaukee in Irving Park, the street passes below Metra's Milwaukee District North tracks next to Grayland Station, 3729 N. Kilbourn Ave.
The two intersection of Kilbourn Avenue and Milwaukee, which meet at sharp angles just northwest and southeast of the Metra bridge, has been particularly hazardous. On November 6, 2019, a southeast-bound dump truck driver on Milwaukee failed to yield while turning right onto Kilbourn, fatally striking school guidance counselor Carla Aiello, 37, as she bicycled southeast in a non-protected bike lane.
And on May 4, 2022, a northwest-bound car driver on Milwaukee struck and killed barista Nick Parlingayan, 22, as he was biking in the same direction, just northwest of the bridge viaduct. The bridge was under construction at the time, and a lack of bike and pedestrian accommodations forced cyclists and motorists to share a lane, making conditions more dangerous.
The 2024 Chicago Ride of Silence, part of a global movement to honor injured and fallen cyclists and raise awareness of the need for safer streets, ended on Milwaukee just west of Kilbourn. At that location, there are "ghost bike" shrines for Aiello and Parlingayan, and the riders stopped to remember the fallen cyclists.
In late July, following many construction delays with the $38 million bridge rehab project, the stretch of Milwaukee Avenue under the Metra viaduct finally reopened to traffic. There are now curb-and/or-parking-protected bike lanes on Milwaukee on both sides of the street, on the 0.8-mile stretch between Irving Park Road and Addison Street.
Hopefully the new PBLs will transform this deadly corridor into a safer route for travelers on two wheels. Most of the concrete curbs along the route are pre-cast and bolted to the pavement. However, the curbs beneath the Metra viaduct are wider and were poured in place. That's a more time-consuming solution, but one that provides superior protection for bike lane users from passing drivers.
South of Addison, the Milwaukee bike lanes are designated only by painted, dashed lines. Currently, protected lanes don't pick up until California Avenue in the Logan Square neighborhood. But as Streetsblog discussed yesterday, later this year the Chicago Department of Transportation will install PBLs on a 0.6-mile stretch of Milwaukee between California and the Logan Square traffic circle.
In 2021, Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th) declined to have CDOT incorporate protected lanes into a streetscape project on Milwaukee between the traffic circle and Belmont Avenue. But since then he has overseen other successful PBL projects in his district, so perhaps he will allow protected lanes on that stretch of Milwaukee in the near future. Since the diagonal avenue is the most popular biking street in our city, but also one of the deadliest, it needs protected lanes for its entire length within Chicago.
"We’re glad to see this stretch of Milwaukee Avenue [in Irving Park] reopened with a protected bike lane," said Active Transportation Alliance spokesperson Ted Villaire. "Yet today, there are still long stretches of Milwaukee Avenue that contain only faded paint that do absolutely nothing to protect people biking. The hazardous biking conditions on Milwaukee Avenue illustrate a much larger problem: the lack of an overall safe bike network. Even on key bike routes, there’s often nothing but paint or crushed plastic [flexible posts] to protect you.”
The Irving Park segment of Milwaukee is represented by alderpersons Ruth Cruz (30th) and James Gardiner (45th). Often, protected bike lanes come with complaints from a few drivers about the conversion of some car parking spaces for the redesign. But according to Justin Heath, policy and zoning director for the 30th Ward, residents have been supportive of the new Milwaukee PBLs in Irving Park.
"We have so many families in the area, it’s such a young neighborhood, and it’s full of bicyclists," Heath said. "I don’t think we had one single person come out against bike lanes. Some of it is due to incredible community outreach, but some of it is because this is a great corner of the city."
Heath said additional lower-stress bikeways are on the way in this part of town. This includes green-painted bike lanes, sidewalk extensions, and speed humps on a quarter-mile stretch of Long Avenue between Irving Park and Grace Street in Portage Park. On that segment, drivers killed bike rider Josh Anleu, 16, on October 4, 2023, and critically injured cyclist Ernesto Vargas, 18, on February 23, 2024.
Heath said, weather permitting, the current phase of Long Avenue work will start by Friday and last about a week, providing a safer north-south route to the Portage Park green space. “Long Avenue runs the full stretch from Fullerton to Irving Park and is the kind of route bicyclists look for." CDOT plans to eventually extend the greenway all the way south to Fullerton.
Heath said Ald. Cruz, who took office last year, contributed $150,000 of the ward's $1.5 million in annual discretionary for the Long Greenway project. Hopefully all of Chicago's City Council members will start prioritizing traffic safety by chipping in on Complete Streets project like this.
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