Eyes on the Street

The Chicago Department of Transportation is almost finished building the city’s latest protected bike lanes, on Harrison between Desplaines and Wabash, and they’re useful ones. The new PBLs serve as a handy connection between protected lanes on Desplaines, Canal, and Dearborn, as well as conventional and buffered lanes on Clinton, Franklin, and Wabash, and they’re mitigating a couple of problem spots on Harrison.

On Thursday, Steven Vance and I got the news that the city was forcing a developer to fix a dangerous bottleneck on Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago’s busiest bike street, in Wicker Park. However, when I dropped by around 4:30 p.m. yesterday to check out the new street configuration, I found that the situation was as dysfunctional as ever.

On a recent bicycle trip, I came across a Dutch-style woonerf or "living street,” in the western suburb of Batavia, where Streetsblog Chicago reporter Steven Vance attended high school. The street layout blurs the line between pedestrian and vehicle space, encouraging drivers to proceed with caution, creating a more pleasant environment for walking, biking, shopping, and relaxing at sidewalk cafes. It’s a good preview of the proposed layout for "shared streets" in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood.

Yesterday, Steven and I got a sneak peek at construction on the Bloomingdale Trail on a walking tour led by Jamie Simone from the Trust for Public Land, which is managing the elevated trail and linear park project for the city and the park district.

[This piece also runs in Checkerboard City, John's column in Newcity magazine, which hits the streets on Wednesday evenings.]

Chicago has long blocked cut-through car traffic on lightly traveled residential streets with hundreds of cul-de-sacs sprinkled throughout the city. The same traffic diversion tactics could also improve safety for bicyclists at dangerous intersections by simplifying movements and removing potential conflict points.

Due to the cold spring, the Chicago Department of Transportation's bikeways construction season got off to a late start. Thermoplastic pavement markings don’t adhere properly to asphalt at temperatures below 50 Fahrenheit, as evidenced by bike lanes and crosswalks in various parts of town that were striped too late in the season in 2013 and have quickly deteriorated. Therefore, it was wise to wait for warmer weather this year.

Crews were out installing lane markings and bike symbols for a Wood Street bike route, running through Wicker Park, on Wednesday. They installed a contraflow bike lane on Wicker Park Avenue, which runs one-way westbound. The lane will allow for eastbound bicyclists to continue along Wood via a short diagonal jog via Wolcott Avenue and Wicker Park, and then back to Wood.

Two readers have contacted Streetsblog to report that many Chicago Transit Authority bus operators and other Chicagoans are driving in Halsted Street's buffered bike lane, between Division and North. Drivers appear to be taking to the bike lane to avoid queues on northbound Halsted as it approaches the busy three-way intersection at Clybourn and North Avenues.