It’s time for Streetsblog Chicago’s Bike Lane Fest 2025-26
Howdy, Streetsblog Chicago readers. I know it’s been a long time since I rapped at ya at length about our city’s expanding bikeway network, courtesy of the Chicago Department of Transportation.
The last time I concluded SBC’s Bike Lane Fest, it was New Year’s Day of 2025 and I covered the Far South Side. It was chilly and gusty, at 31F with a 16F “Real Feel.” While, after many decades of all-season cycling in Chicago, I knew how to dress for the weather, that was a character-building day.
In addition, while a surprisingly high number of Chicagoans ride bicycles during the entire year, you’re not going to see a typical amount of bike and e-scooter riders in new bikeways during the dead of winter. (Although I did see a few that January 1.)
As such I decided that I should do my assessment of new Chicago bikeways closer to peak cycling season in the warmer months, to get a better idea of how people are using the recently-installed facilities. Apologies that I didn’t get around to doing the 2025 batch before the giant pierogi dropped in Whiting, IN that year.
But this week I’m going to start inspecting all bike lanes that were put in in 2025, and so far this year, or at least until 7/17/26, when CDOT last updated its Bikeways Installations Tracker spreadsheet. I recently asked the department if they feel like doing another spreadsheet update soon. If so, that will make it easier for me to tell which projects are still “Under Construction” and which are completely “Installed.”
You can expand the map to full size by clicking the rectangle at the upper right. From there, in the sidebar, you can select the map for ward boundaries, “Installed 2025,” “Installed 2026,” “Under Construction 2026,” and “Upcoming 2026” to view various aspects of the map. You can also find the color code in the sidebar.
In addition it’s an option to take a gander at CDOT’s official Existing Bike Network Map here, but it doesn’t tell you which bikeways were / are being installed recently.
Looking at Streetsblog’s new map with all the layers on, you’ll notice that most of the the 2025-26 installed, under construction, or upcoming facilities are on the North and West Side. On the other hand, on the South Side, there have been some major protected bike lane projects (green lines) on streets like Kedzie and Archer avenues; Wabash Avenue and 18th Street; Indiana Avenue, and 71st Street.
As I’ve written before, a City official told me the Grace Street Neighborhood Greenway, bike-and-pedestrian-priority corridor, shown in the first photo in this post, was partly influenced by a 2020 Streetsblog post floating the idea.
Likewise, I suggested routes for bicycling between the North Branch Trail and the North Shore Channel Trail in my the Mellow Chicago Bike Map I did for the Chicago Reader in 2020. I’d like to think that this helped inspire the very similar marked, signed Neighborhood Greenway routes CDOT is currently working on in this part of town.
As I have in previous years, in September I’ll be cycling and/or riding trains all over Chicago to look at all the facilities that this publication hasn’t previously documented. These next few weeks will also be busy for our site since the Northern Illinois Transit Authority remix kicks in tomorrow, and we’ll try to keep track of what’s going on. Still, I hope not to take more than a month to get the bikeway project done. If I don’t meet that deadlines, as the rock band Green Day would say, please “Wake Me Up When September Ends.”
Until then, you’re welcome to check out Streetsblog Chicago’s past Bike Lane Fest excursions:
2023
Check out Day One: Mid-South Side here.
Check out Day Two: Far Southwest Side here.
Check out Day Three: Near Southwest and Near South Side here.
Check out Day Four: Mid-North Side here.
Check out Day Five: Near Northwest Side, Far West Side, Near West Side, Near North Side here.
2024
Check out Part 1: Uptown, Lincoln Square, West Ridge, Rogers Park, Edgewater here
Check out Part 2: Lincoln Square, Irving Park, and Albany Park here.
Check out Part 4: West Side here.
Check out Part 5: Far South Side here.
Did you appreciate this post? Streetsblog Chicago is currently fundraising to help cover our 2025-26 budget. If you appreciate our reporting and advocacy on local sustainable transportation issues, please consider making a tax-deductible donation here. Thank you!
Read More:
Streetsblog has migrated to a new comment system. New commenters can register directly in the comments section of any article. Returning commenters: your previous comments and display name have been preserved, but you'll need to reclaim your account by clicking "Forgot your password?" on the sign-in form, entering your email, and following the verification link to set a new password — this is required because passwords could not be carried over during the migration. For questions, contact tips@streetsblog.org.
