When I rolled up to yesterday's Portage Park Senior Center for the community meeting on the Chicago Department of Transportation's neighborhood bikeway network proposal, there was a long line of people snaking out the door. To be honest, due to the organized opposition we've seen recently to traffic safety projects on Archer Avenue in Brighton Park, and Grand Avenue in West Town, I was a little apprehensive.
I shouldn't have worried. Of the many folks I spoke with out of the 200+ attendees, there were a few skeptics. But most them said they showed up to learn more about what's proposed, because they're in favor of making the community a nicer place to bicycle, and generally improving traffic safety.
Granted, another dozen or so bike advocates showed up as a group via a ride organized by Chicago, Bike Grid Now!. It left from the Logan Square eagle pillar and stopped at Cosmic Bikes cycle shop on the way.
But it appeared that most people I buttonholed for interviews in the line and in the center hadn't biked there, and most of them said they live in the neighborhood. Before I share quotes from them, let's take a quick look at the nuts and bolts of the project.
What's proposed
The project area is basically bounded by Gunnison Street and Lawrence Avenue to the north; Milwaukee and Cicero avenues to the east; Addison Street to the south; and Narragansett and Nagle avenues to the west. This region includes parts of the 30th, 38th, and 45th wards, represented by alders Ruth Cruz, Anthony Sposato, and Jim Gardiner, respectively, and includes part of Jefferson Park as well as Portage Park.
It's a similar strategy as CDOT's Mid Northeast Neighborhood Bike Network project in lakefront neighborhoods, getting multiple alders to sign off on a consistent grid of bike-friendly routes. However, the Portage Park Neighborhood Bike Network would cover a more compact region, somewhere on the order of four square miles. "Our goal is to provide safe, family-friendly options for people to reach the neighborhood destinations most meaningful to their lives, including schools, parks, and local businesses," the Portage Park proposals website states.
The proposed bikeways include non-protected, striped-or-dashed, paint-only bike lanes on main streets, as well as Neighborhood Greenways, bike-and-pedestrian-priority side street routes. The latter typically include "contraflow" bike lanes, calming elements like speed humps, and lowered signed speed limits. The project doesn't include protected bike lanes, and no car-parking spaced would be converted. Here's what's being pitched.
Proposed Bike Lanes
- Central Avenue from Addison Street to Lawrence Avenue
- Laramie Avenue from Addison Street to Sunnyside Avenue
- Montrose Avenue from Narragansett Avenue to Central Avenue
Proposed Neighborhood Greenways
- Sunnyside Avenue from Narragansett to Milwaukee Avenue
- Berteau Avenue from Narragansett to Milwaukee Avenue
- Melvina Avenue from Addison Street to Gunnison Street
- Menard Avenue from Berteau Avenue to Lawrence Avenue
- Long Avenue from Irving Park to Lawrence Avenue
CDOT has put out a survey in English and Spanish. As of last night, over 500 people had responded.
What people at the meeting had to say
Here's who I talked to, in chronological order, starting from the very back of the serpentine line of people waiting for room in the event space. All photos are by yours truly.
Lori, featured in the photo at the top of this article, is an architect and lives on Manor and Berteau avenues in Portage Park. "I have young kids, we are a big biking family, and we bike up and down Berteau to get to summer camp, to get to school, so we're looking for Berteau to become a nice biking lane," she said. I asked what she thought of the massive crowd. "I am shocked and love it. I am last in line. I have no complaints, but hopefully there are more coming. this is amazing," she responded.
John Karnuth, a retiree, lives in nearby Irving Park. "I just wanted to check in on what's going on here, and make sure that we're getting the best bang for our buck here in terms of safe bike lanes and better navigation through the streets, safer streets," he said. "I'm not a very car-centric person, so I ride my bike a lot, and I'm hoping that there's something going on here that's going to benefit the community."
Garrett Barnes, an engineer, lives on Waveland and Long avenues in Portage Park. "I am here to support bike lanes in our community, as a person who drives to and from work [in the suburbs] every day, but also will bike occasionally around the city," he said. "I have been surprised by how much biking has improved my life and I think it's a fun way to get around. And I realize that I tailor my travel to where there are bike lanes, especially with the death of [bike rider Josh Anleu, 16, that happened on my block, it feels like this is something that I want to support. And I think that our alderwoman Ruth Cruz has been really good about helping to implement some of these things."
Inside, CDOT Interim Director of Complete Streets Brad Huff was doing outreach. I asked what he thought of the massive turnout. "It's terrific," he replied. "That was really the goal. We want to get as many people as possible from the neighborhood to come and give their thoughts, their opinions, and let us know their opinions and how they use their streets. We've had a ton of survey responses already, we've had thousands of views to our website, thousands of views to our video, that's awesome... [Opinions about the project are] pretty mixed, which is to be expected, some people for, some people a little unsure because they haven't see this kind of infrastructure in their neighborhood before. So that's what we're here for, to explain what we're proposing."
Linda, a retiree, lives on Monitor Avenue in Portage Park, and said she is not a fan of what's pitched. "This is a ridiculous proposal for impeding traffic on streets in my area," she said. She's particularly concerned about Berteau. "They're talking about painting arrows on the street, speed bumps have been mentioned, curb bump-outs have been mentioned, and more of those ridiculous European [traffic] circles have been mentioned." Asked what she thinks of the giant crowd, she replied, "I don't think it's big enough."
Linda's partner walked up to us. "It seems like there are a lot of people here who do not live in this area," he said. "This is not representative of the immediate area." That didn't correlate with where the people I interviewed said they lived. The couple declined to be photographed.
Ivan, who works for the Illinois Department of Human Services, lives in the 38th Ward, near the Portage Park green space. "My roommate told me about how they're having this exhibition on increasing the bike lanes, and that's something that I think is very lacking in this neighborhood. So I just thought I'd come out to give my support and see more of what's being proposed." He said he was surprised by how many people showed up. "So I'm really hopeful that this will get approved."
Charlie Swain, who's studying to be a therapist, and Illinois Environmental Law & Policy Center Communications and Policy Advocate Lena Guerrero Reynolds (attending as a citizen) live in nearby Jefferson Park. "We take Long pretty frequently to get to the Farmers Market here in Portage Park and the yarn shop across the street," Guerrero Reynolds said. "So that route in particular we're excited to see improvements on. I know there's been people hurt on that street [south of Irving Park Road, where a greenway was recently installed.] If infrastructure can save people, then that's really important.
Ald. Sposato said about 80 percent of this project is in his district. "I support whatever the community supports," he said. "I think it's a good plan, but if the community doesn't like it, I don't like it. We have to calm traffic down around here. They're out of control. I have two really bad streets, Sunnyside and Berteau, and we have to start to do something with traffic. If you go look at Sunnyside, it's a brutal, dangerous street. So we're basically just painting the street to calm things down. People can still park in front of their house. The streets will still get swept. So we're here to get input and see what people think about this. And, as you can see, I did a pretty damn good job of getting the word out."
Emi Baustista, who is on a leave of absence from work for health reasons, lives near Wilson and Central avenues in Jefferson Park. "I am concerned about traffic and all the changes that they are going to approve, and I want better ways of thinking and doing this stuff. People my age, who have difficulty walking, sometimes driving, sometimes it's so hard to deal with traffic. With some of the modifications that they're going to do, I think it's going to be harder. So I want to see the proposals and learn a little bit."
Tahra Workman-Mandell lives at Cullom and Long avenues in Portage Park. "We were interested in what the proposal was for Long [north of Irving Park.] They were saying that they're not going to do dedicated bike lanes, but they're going to make it a greenway, and I was interested in what that meant, and how that would affect travel on Long. And specifically because my daughter goes to Beaubien Elementary [5025 N. Laramie Ave.] North of Montrose, everything kind of gets compacted because you've got Milwaukee, you've got the trains, and so there's really only three streets that go north into Jefferson Park, and Long is one of them, so I want to find out if they're going to make it a one-way street, or what things they're proposing... But I think that everybody is very interested."
Watch a video about the project from CDOT below.
Take the survey in English here.
Realice la encuesta en español aquí
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