Amazing Grace: Take a virtual ride from the 312 RiverRun to the Lakefront Trail on the new Grace Street Neighborhood Greenway

I’ve been looking forward to riding the new, almost completed Grace Street Neighborhood Greenway. (Check out the Chicago Department of Transportation’s July 2026 presentation on the project here.)

Granted, I’m a little biased, because Streetsblog Chicago played a role in coming up with the the idea for the roughly three-mile route between the Chicago River and Lake Michigan. In October 2020 I wrote a post entitled “Creating the Grace [Street Neighborhood] Greenway from the 312 RiverRun to the Lakefront Trail would be easy.” That article was inspired by CDOT installing a contraflow bike lane on the one-block, eastbound segment of Grace (3800 N.) between Lincoln (1900 W.) and Damen (2000 W.) avenues in the 47th Ward.

Grace was already a great eastbound route from Campbell Avenue (2500 W.) in North Center. “From there you can take Grace, a very chill side street, as far east as Broadway and Halsted Street (800 W.), with stoplights or four-way stop signs facilitating safe crossing of all the major street crossing,” I noted at the time. “And if the city really wanted to go for the gold, they could add a couple more short stretches of contraflow lane” to complete the low-stress eastbound bikeway.

That corridor includes parts of the 44th, 46th, and 47th wards. After Graceland Greenway plan was announced in summer 2025, then-47th Ward Chief of Staff Josh Mark told me, “I can’t speak for CDOT, but I certainly first thought of it through your article, and related constituent emails” when considering the idea.

So perhaps I took it slightly personally when I saw some pushback to the nearly-finished project. Unsurprisingly, a letter to the “Not In My Backyard” newspaper chain (read it on Bluesky or Twitter) had some dubious grievances about the routing, and called the green paint “quite foul and toxic-smelling.” I’m not an expert on environmental and labor issues, but a recent CDOT info video on the subject doesn’t give me the impression anything egregious is going on here. And certainly, encouraging more people to bike or e-scoot as an alternative to driving is generally good for safety and the environment.

But I also read a critique of the Grace project that argued the new contraflow bike lanes don’t meet National Association of City Transportation Officials recommendations for these kind of bikeways. For example, the NACTO guide, which calls them “constrained bike lanes,” argues that the lanes should be at least five feet wide, and the posted speed limit should be no more than 20 mph.

The good news is, CDOT spokeperson Erica Schroeder told me today that the Grace Greenway actually is or will be meeting those recommendations. “The Grace Street Neighborhood Greenway is substantially complete, with some punch list items remaining along the corridor, including precast curbs that will be added to the intersection of Grace/Southport,” she said via email. “The entire corridor will be signed at 20 mph and the vast majority of the three new segments of contraflow lanes were all designed at six feet wide.”

“I’ll note there is one short (125′ long) segment of five-foot contraflow just west of Grace/Southport, before it widens to six feet,” Schroeder added. “There was also one existing block of contraflow (on Grace between Damen and Lincoln) that was installed in 2020 which is also five feet wide. But any way you slice it, the entire project is at or above the five feet recommended width for contraflow lanes.”

When I started riding the greenway last night around 6 p.m., a Cubs home game evening, the weather was terrific, and the bikeway was getting excellent use. I think it’s a very handy new route, but I do have a few notes of my own:

The west end of the signed and marked route is at Campbell Avenue (2500 W.) and Irving Park Road (4000 N.), an unsignalized intersection with a high-speed four-lane “stroad,” that is an unsafe location for crossing. I’ve asked CDOT if there are plans to make safety improvement here, and I’ll update this post if I hear back.

But in the meantime, riders going to or coming from the 312 RiverRun north of Grace are better off riding the following route incorporating the multi-use path through Revere Park and crossing Irving Park at Rockwell Avenue (2600 W.), which has a stoplight. From there, walk or cautiously ride your bike on the short stretch of sidewalk over the river to Horner Park, where you can pick up a path to the 312 RiverRun. You’ll get a better idea what I’m talking about if you watch the beginning of the video below, which shows the southeast-bound route from the park to Grace/Cambell.

And here’s how to get to or from the 312 RiverRun south of Grace, a route that includes a safe stoplight crossing of Addison Street (3600 N.).

Screenshot of my Mellow Chicago Bike Map showing the route between Grace and the 312 RiverRun south of Addison. (The riverside bike trail passes under Addison, and then over the river.) A smidgen of walking or sidewalk riding is required between Grace and Bradley Place.

I’d also point out that a fair amount of pavement on Grace, particularly west of Southport Avenue (1400 W.) is less-than-great, but I assume it will be repaved in the foreseeable future.

One more note I have is that once you get from Waveland Avenue (3700 N.) to Inner Lake Shore Drive, you’re directed to use a curb cut and take the sidewalk on the east side of the road for about half a block south to access the DLSD underpass to the Lakefront Trail. That’s a tricky situation during busy times, so you might want to walk your bike here.

All right, without further ado, here’s my handlebar video of biking the entire route from the 312 RiverRun east to the Lakefront Trail.

I don’t expect you to sit through the entire 29 minutes-plus clip, so feel free to toggle between different parts of the route that particularly interest you. While it still has some rough spots, overall, I’d call the Grace Street Neighborhood Greenway a win for making cycling a more convenient and enjoyable option in our city.

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