SBC Bike Lane Fest 2025-26: Far Northwest Side, including Albany Park, Forest Glen, and North Park
Howdy, Streetsblog Chicago readers. I realize it’s been a few weeks since our last SBC Bike Lane Fest 2025-26 post, but the weather in our city has been fabulous lately, so it’s time for me to hunker down and get serious about completing this recon mission.
As such, I went out for a few hours this afternoon and checked out new bikeways on the Far Northwest Side. I ended my day by exploring one facility that’s been on my to-do list for a while: the controversial Bryn Mawr Avenue protected bike lanes in the North Park community.
This website’s Map of 2025-26 CDOT Bikeway Installations, shown below, is based on the Chicago Department of Transportation’s Bikeways Installations Tracker spreadsheet. That document has not been refreshed since July 17, 2026, but I’m generally trying to stop by the sites of projects that are listed as “Upcoming Construction” or “In Construction,” as well as ones that have been “Installed,” to check on their current status.
In addition, you can take a look at CDOT Existing Bike Network Map, to get a sense of how the new facilities fit into the network. However, that map shows all bikeways that have been installed in modern history, while SBC’s map just shows the newer ones.
Here’s the region I covered on Tuesday, essentially bounded by Peterson Avenue, the North Shore Channel / Chicago River, Lawrence Avenue, and Laramie Avenue. Non-protected bike lanes are red, new off-street paths are pink, Neighborhood Greenways are blue, and protected bike lanes are green. To give you a sense of how the new bikeways fit in with existing off-street trails, I’ve drawn the relevant longtime paths here in purple.
Without further ado, let’s discuss the stuff I looked at on Tuesday.
The Albany Park / North Park river network
This collection of Neighborhood Greenway segments is is an effort to connect the North Branch Trail (the northwest-southeast purple line to the left) with the North Shore Channel Trail (the north-south purple lines at the right). There are also a couple of purple trail snippets connecting them. To simplify things, I’ll just present photos in the order that I visited the locations. See my comments in the captions. All images in this post are by yours truly.
Update 10/23/26, 6:00 PM: Longtime bike advocate and Northwest Side resident Bob Kastigar provided the following intel about the inaccessible span. “This bridge closure was announced earlier, in the 39th Ward Newsletter,” he told me. “The work bring done is on the support structure under the bridge, and not on the top surface.”
“There are signs posted for the detour, specifically for pedestrians and cyclists south, over the river, then west to Monticello,” Kastigar added. “Unfortunately, it isn’t an easy-to-use route and would be difficult to use for those who don’t ride a bike on a regular basis.”
“My choice is to go north on Central Park Avenue, cross Foster, and ride on the sidewalk west,” Kastigar concluded. “There is very little pedestrian traffic as this is along the cemetery. There is a stoplight pedestrian crossing at Avers Avers to cross back to the south side of Foster, and the end of Eugene Field Park.”
Forest Glen Avenue route
Over in the Forest Glen community, you can head north from Elston Avenue to Metra’s Forest Glen Station, intersect with the North Branch Trail, and then make your way south again to Bryn Mawr Avenue.
At the end of this video, east of Kedzie Avenue, construction narrows the road to one narrow eastbound lane, forcing motorists to drive over the paint-only bike lane in this stretch of Bryn Mawr. The bike rider who passed me understandably detoured to the (little-used) sidewalk for safety.
Here are some previous Bike Lane Fest 2025-26 posts:
• “It’s time for Streetsblog Chicago’s Bike Lane Fest 2025-26“
• “Take a virtual walk on the Winnslie Parkway Expansion, and ride on the Ravenswood Avenue Greenway“
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