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Chicago Bike Infrastructure & Safety Resources

Report unsafe conditions
  • Call 911 to report a vehicle blocking a bike lane – that's not a typo. Call 911 (because that's how you contact the police about a current problem), tell the dispatcher the location, and they'll take care of whether or not it's a priority; you can say that it's causing a dangerous condition for bicyclists.
  • Call 311 to report construction in the bike lane. Then email us a photo and address of the situation. Unfortunately you cannot report this on either of the city's online 311 interfaces, or any apps.
  • Additionally, email Chicago Department of Transportation a description and photo of the problem at the following addresses:
    • Bike Program: cdotbikes@cityofchicago.org
    • Media (Mike Claffey, Susan Hofer): cdotnews@cityofchicago.org
  • Your alderman needs to hear about these problems, too. Find the alderman for any location, and their email address, on Chicago Councilmatic.
Report unsafe taxi, Lyft, and Uber drivers
  • Call 911 to report to the police about a dangerous driver that's being a danger currently
  • Call 311 to create a followup report about a taxi driver (this should always be done, whether or not you call 911). The Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection will mail you an affidavit to describe the situation. This may be used as a witness report to add demerits to the taxi driver's record, which has an annual limit on the number of demerits they can receive that can prevent them renewing their chauffeur's license.
  • For Lyft, call 855-865-9553. Press option 1 if you were a passenger, press option 3 if you were not a passenger to report an "urgent safety issue".
  • For Uber, we are still investigating how to report one of their drivers behaving dangerously (10/19/16).
Find crash and fatalities data Social media
  • #enforce940060 - Twitter; use this hashtag on photos of vehicles blocking the bike lane. Chicago Municipal Code 9-40-060 makes it illegal to park, stand, or load vehicles in a bike lane or lane with sharrows.
  • #ClearTheWay - Active Transportation Alliance is using this hashtag to track vehicles and objects blocking bike and pedestrian ways (bike lanes and sidewalks)
  • #bikeCHI - The catch-all hashtag for conversations about bicycling in Chicago.
  • #ChiVZ - Discuss the city's progress on Vision Zero, the goal to eliminate traffic fatalities by 2026
  • The Chicago Department of Transportation doesn't respond to mentions of their Twitter account @ChicagoDOT, but they say they sometimes monitor social media.