Good news: The Chicago Department of Transportation has proposed extending the Graceland Greenway protected bike lanes on Clark Street further north into Uptown to the Andersonville retail district.
Bad news: The windshield crowd, starting with the usual suspects at Inside Publications' Not In My Backyard newspapers, is already opposing the project because it would involve converting some car parking spots.
More good news: The grassroots advocacy group Chicago, Bike Grid Now! is leading a Tour de Grid bicycle ride to support the proposal, this Saturday, March 22.
All right, now let's get down to the nitty-gritty of these developments.
CDOT's proposal
In late 2023, the transportation department installed concrete curb-protected bike lanes on the 0.5 mile stretch of Clark Street, a northwest southeast diagonal, between Irving Park Road (4000 N.) and Montrose Avenue (4400 N.) This segment is on the border of the Lakeview and Uptown community areas, next to historic Graceland Cemetery, which is how it got its nickname.
CDOT recently suggested installing new protected bike lanes on Clark north of Montrose to Winnemac Avenue (5030 N.), at the southern end of the Andersonville strip. Regular Streetsblog readers already understand why PBLs are a good thing. In a nutshell, they help protect sustainable transportation device users from reckless, intoxicated, and distracted drivers. But they also shorten crossing distances for pedestrians, and calm motorized traffic, helping to prevent all kinds of traffic crashes. So they really make roads safer for all users.
Another great thing about putting in this new stretch of PBLs is that it would be the latest in a growing number of protected lane projects on Clark. From downtown north, there's the "Brat Lane" (long story, but this nickname is actually complimentary) between Grand Avenue (530 N.) and Oak Street (1000 N.) on the Near North Side. Then there's the Graceland Greenway, and its proposed extension. At the north end of Andersonville, there are PBLs on Clark basically between Rosehill Avenue (5830 N.) and Devon Street (6400 N.) in Edgewater.
Once you take Clark across the Howard Street (7600 N.) border into Evanston, protected lanes are proposed, and likely will be approved, on Chicago Avenue (the equivalent of Clark in that suburb) to Davis Street, 1.9 miles. And at Davis, there is a popular existing protected two-way bike lane that runs 1.6 miles on Chicago Avenue and Sheridan Road to the Wilmette border. So if the Uptown and Evanston proposals happen, there will be protected lanes on roughly half of the bike route between the Loop and the home of the lovely Baháʼí House of Worship.
But I digress. Here are some more details about the new proposal, which I'll refer to as the "Uptown Extension," from its CDOT info page. The transportation department notes that more than two out of five households within the community area don't own cars. During the recent Clark Street Crossroads study of the corridor between Montrose and Foster (5200 N.) avenues, there was "strong feedback" from an online survey that residents wanted to make this stretch more bike-friendly. The department points out that this study included two online workshops and an in-person open house with almost 480 attendees, and the survey had nearly 2,000 respondents.
CDOT notes that almost 60 percent of people injured in traffic crashes on this stretch of Clark were biking or walking. In one day, the department clocked 700 drivers breaking the 30 mph speed limit on Clark, with one driver zooming at a terrifying 66 mph.
After CDOT installed the Graceland Greenway on Clark south of Montrose, the department found speeding decreased by 75 percent. Similarly, in the year after the City put in PBLs on diagonal Milwaukee Avenue between Western (2400 W.) and California avenues in Logan Square, injury crashes dropped by half, and there were zero pedestrian collisions.
The department studied parking use on the Montrose-to-Winnemac stretch of Clark and found that on an average weekday, under 30 percent of curbside car parking spaces are in use. So consolidating parking spots to one side of the street, to make room to provide right-of-way for the protected lanes, would have minimal impact on drivers who want to park near destinations on the corridor.
CDOT notes that the proposed physically separated bikeway in Uptown would help bike riders connect to Neighborhood Greenway bike-priority streets on Leland (4700 N.) and Glenwood (1400 W.) avenues, plus an upcoming one on Winnemac. The Uptown extension would also connect with non-protected bike lanes on Lawrence Avenue.
So the Uptown Extension would make Clark safer for everybody, and have little effect on people in cars accessing destinations, while making it easier and more pleasant for people on foot and bikes to get there. Who could have any problem with that?
Inside Publications' NIMBY response
Ronald Roenigk, editor of the Inside Publications neighborhood newspaper network, that's who. That organization is basically the anti-Streetsblog, dead-set against most neighborhood improvements, from making streets safer (if it might cause driving to become slightly less convenient), to equitable, transit-oriented development.
Roenigk's front-page screed against the Uptown Extension, with the not-at-all-alarmist headlines "Privileged bike paths to spread further on Clark St., Montrose to Ravenswood the next victim," is just what you'd expect. Actually, there's no author listed on the piece (and the editor has been known to use fake bylines in the past), but the language choices makes it obvious he wrote it.
For example, while protected bike lanes and Neighborhood Greenways save lives, Roenigk loves to use pathological language to describe them. He previously wrote that CDOT wanted to "to allow a new greenway to metastasize," grow like cancer, on Granville. Now he's arguing that the Uptown Extension will "spread" PBLs to a "victim," like a measles outbreak.
He's also called protected bikeways "privileged bike lanes" before. Here he defines that as, "portions of the public way that are cordoned off for the exclusive use of one privileged class of transportation, in this case bikes."
That's a ridiculous statement for a couple of reasons. City ordinance dictates that all of our city's bikeways, including protected ones, may be used by people on e-scooters and skateboards, as well as bikes, and it's also common to see pedestrians and wheelchair users in them. And since it's not legal to ride bicycles on expressways, does that mean that the Kennedy consists of "privileged car lanes"?
Roenigk's already gotten a lot of airtime on Streetsblog, so I don't want to get too far in the weeds with dissecting yet another of his goofy anti-sustainable transportation rants. But I'll just point out that he once again calls PBLs "taxpayer-funded man-made barriers." I've asked CDOT about the potential funding source for the Uptown Extension and will update this post if I hear back from them.
But this reminds me of the time Roenigk wrote that the Dickens Avenue Neighborhood Greenway (2100 N.) in Lincoln Park was funded by "Chicago taxpayer funds." In reality, it wasn't financed by everyday Chicagoans, but rather by folks who bought passes and memberships for the Divvy bike-share system. When I called him up and politely suggested that he run a correction, he replied "We're standing by our [factually incorrect] story," and hung up.
Ride the route with CBGN!
But never mind the naysayers, when you can go on a fun ride on the Clark route this Saturday, gathering at 10 a.m. at St. Boniface Cemetery, 4901 N. Clark St.
"We're rolling on the 22nd!" Chicago, Bike Grid Now! posted. "Come out on Saturday, March 22nd, as we ride around Ravenswood to support the extension of the Clark Street PBLs to Winnemac. See why connecting communities is so important. We need a bike grid now!"
Indeed, which is why it's crucial to voice support for projects like the Uptown Extension when motorheads start complaining about them.
Read CDOT's explanation of the "Clark Street: "Montrose to Winnemac" project here.
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