Wrightwood Avenue (2600 N.) is one of the most popular east-west bicycle routes on the Northwest Side. It passes through through Belmont Cragin, Hermosa, and Logan Square, where it meets up with Logan Boulevard at the traffic circle. It's designated as a bike-pedestrian-priority Neighborhood Greenway east of Narragansett Avenue (6400), and there are a few blocks of protected bike lanes west of Pulaski Road (4000 W.), with non-protected lanes east of that.
But, sadly, Wrightwood has recently seen at least two serious or fatal bike crashes at intersections with arterial streets. In June 2023, a car driver fatally struck fitness instructor Ron Mendoza, 43, at Wrightwood and Pulaski Road (4000 W.) in northwest Logan Square. Read more about that case here. The Chicago Department of Transportation installed the protected bike lanes west of the intersection after Mendoza's death.
Yesterday morning, less than two years later, and only a mile west of Mendoza's crash, another car driver seriously injured a 16-year-old boy on a bike at Wrightwood and Cicero Avenue (4800 W.) in Belmont Cragin. Cicero is a five lane "stroad," which encourages speeding.
Streetsblog learned about the case from a video posted by the Facebook page Belmont Cragin United, which was shared on Twitter by bike advocates. The person filming, riding in a car on Cicero, passes by a damaged green single-speed road bike lying on the painted median of the arterial. "Oh my God, look at that guy," they say sympathetically, referring to the victim. He can be seen in the video, on the west side of Cicero behind a parked car, lying on the street next to the curb with one hand against his head. Four men stand nearby.
The initial Chicago Police Department statement on the case said the collision took place on Thursday, May 15, at about 11:35 a.m. The teen was biking west when a 30-year-old woman driving south in a Toyota Camry struck him.
According to CPD, the victim "sustained unspecified injuries and was transported to Lurie Children's Hospital." The motorist was ticketed for failure to reduce speed to avoid a crash.
The Illinois Traffic Crash Report, completed by responding officers, provides more information about what reportedly happened. It does not appear to state whether the westbound bike rider or the southbound driver had the right of way.
However, the report says the motorist told the police that she "did not see the bicyclist until he hit her front windshield." That obviously raises the question of whether she was paying attention to the road in front of her.
The crash report states that the victim's condition at Lurie was "Level 2 Trauma," defined as an emergency that could become life-threatening. Let's hope the youth makes a full and fast recovery.
"This is entirely because the protected intersection that advocates pushed for was not installed at this crossing," architect and cycling advocate Jacob E. Peters posted on Bluesky in response to the news. "Westbound cyclists are asked to get between the two portions of Wrightwood with only sharrows [another name for bike-and-chevron "shared lane markings"] and a [green-striped bike lane and] bus pickup lane. Eastbound is no better and often blocked by illegal parking."
Bluesky user babski put it more succinctly, calling the crash, "the result of the s---ty infrastructure at this intersection."
This afternoon, Peters provided Streetsblog with more info about the push for a safer layout for crossing Cicero. "We didn't propose anything specific, other than advocating for a more protected solution," he said. "Cicero being a State route is why CDOT only was able to do as much as they did." The Illinois Department of Transportation has historically tended to block street redesigns on its roads that would improve safety for vulnerable road users, if there's any chance the changes might make driving slightly less convenient.
Peters provided Streetsblog with this "rough and dirty" sketch of what the intersection could look like with safety improvements. He said years ago when he was on the Mayor's Bicycle Advisory Council, later replaced by the Chicago Mobility Collaborative, he pitched something similar to CDOT, but that proposal went nowhere.
This "road diet" would calm motor vehicle traffic, and minimize the amount of time bike riders have to share the road with multi-ton vehicles on Cicero. And all that bright green paint would certainly make it more likely drivers would notice people on bikes in the road before they struck them. So, yes, the protected intersection that the authorities rejected certainly would have helped prevent this latest disaster.
Update, Monday 5/19/25, 1:15 PM: After this article was published, Jacob E. Peters posted a comment on Bluesky. "To be clear, I think the best way to have prevented Thursday’s crash would have been a protected crossing for westbound cyclists at Drummond [Place, 2630 N.], rather than the contraflow on Wrightwood, but what I sketched [in the map posted at the end of the above Streetsblog article] would calm traffic and make crossing less dangerous without changing a traffic patterns again."
I wrote Peters to ask for clarification. "I understand that Drummond would require less biking on Cicero (which wouldn’t be a problem if there were raised lanes), but otherwise, what’s the advantage?" I said. "It would make the route slightly longer and less intuitive."
Peters graciously explained his reasoning and provided a sketch of what he was talking about. "Drummond would mean that you would not be crossing Cicero at a location where a lefthand turn [bay] prevents a refuge island from being installed," said. "That means that cyclists would just need to cross two sets of 20-foot segments. Meanwhile, turning left [southbound] from Wrightwood onto Cicero inherently means a 70-foot crossing of the intersection before any protection."
He said his Drummond proposal "would create a pair of almost mirror protected intersections that would look like this":
"This also means that there would only be one lane shift as you approach the intersection, and one shift as you exit the intersection, rather than shifts within the intersection," Peterson said. "I thought CDOT, IDOT, and the alderman [currently Ald. Felix Cardona (31)] would prefer it because it would result in less parking being lost."
"I think at this intersection a contraflow lane [on Wrightwood] is already counterintuitive and in this case requires a crossing of multiple vehicular turning movements all at once," Peterson added. "So I would rather have a slightly longer route with fewer chances for error than a more direct route with more opportunities for driver negligence to endanger cyclists."
"Drummond also was shown in the Streets For Cycling Plan 2020," Peterson concluded. "While I thought it made more sense to start the Wrightwood contraflow before Laramie in order to take advantage of existing signals, I always liked how [having westbound bike traffic use Drummond Stree] allowed for a safer crossing."
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