Protected Bike Lanes

The department needs to promptly plow bikeways after blizzards, or else face arguments that riders were better off with old-style, paint-only bike lanes.

This piece features reporting by Austin Busch, with additional background info and commentary by John Greenfield.

Last December, the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board blamed the diagonal Milwaukee Avenue bikeway for traffic jams created by car commuters fleeing Kennedy Expressway construction. "[On] many of the former alternate routes, such as... Milwaukee [the Chicago Department of Transportation has] reduced... vehicular capacity by adding bike lanes," they stated. "Those roads don’t offer any meaningful relief from a clogged expressway anymore."

By Craig Stern

On Friday, I responded to a recent People for Bikes article alleging that Chicago is the milk carton kid among large U.S. cities who should be creating high-quality, low-stress cycling networks: missing in action.

•Delays hit Metra Union Pacific-North trains (Sun-Times)

Streetsblog Chicago has fact-checked anti-bikeway articles from the local "Not In My Back Yard" neighborhood newspaper chain Inside Publications many, many times. Their publisher / editor Ronald Roenigk should make a donation to us for all the free publicity he's gotten.

The Chicago Department of Transportation suggested converting a lane of car parking to make room for the shielded bikeways, shorten crossing distances, and calm traffic.

Based on nameless op-eds in neighborhood news outlets, you might assume Uptown residents are dead-set against the Chicago Department of Transportation's proposal to extend the Clark Street protected bike lanes north into Uptown. I've nicknamed the project the "Uptown Extension."