Protected Bike Lanes

The Active Transportation Alliance kindly asked Streetsblog Chicago to talk about what we saw last month during our Bike Lane Fest 2024 excursions.

As it stands today, Chicago’s United Center — the home of the Chicago Bulls and Blackhawks professional sports franchises — is surrounded by a sea of parking lots with thousands of parking spaces. 

Why did the department rip out the curb protection from the Logan Boulevard bike lanes next to the bowling alley, and will the heralded Diversey PBLs ever be installed?

This post was written by John Greenfield, and features research by Sharon Hoyer.

See the City of Evanston's webpage for this project, including Tuesday's meeting presentation and display boards, here.

Yesterday I discussed the brouhaha over a proposal to extend the two-way protected bike lane on Evanston's Chicago Avenue south about two miles to the city of Chicago border. A total of 62 merchants and "avid cyclists" signed two different letters opposing the new bikeway because it would involve converting 66 of the corridor's 250 car parking spaces – only about a quarter of them. However, more than 250 business people and residents have signed another letter from the Evanston Transit Alliance in favor of the initiative.

While an article in the Evanston RoundTable suggests that most residents are opposed to the project, hundreds of people signed a letter to support it.

As in 2023, the Chicago Department of Transportation has been busy installing new bikeways across the city this year. As of this writing, the city’s website that tracks the installations lists 42 completed segments this year so far, with 20 more underway. Two of them are part of my return commute from a workplace in Englewood to my home Logan Square, and they're a welcome bit of infrastructure on a ride that includes the some of the best and worst aspects of biking in our city.

It's not a legitimate subject for investigation, any more-so than the news item, "Merchants say Bigfoot exists."