Belmont Avenue

One of the coolest new things on the on-street route is the treatment of Belmont near and over the Chicago River, by the southern trailhead of the north-south path.

The driver was charged with one felony count of aggravated DUI involving a crash with bodily harm and cited for driving without a valid license.

City officials should be asking, "What can we do to *make* the stretch of Belmont between Clark and the lakefront safe and pleasant to ride on?"

At the first meeting of the new Chicago Mobility Collaborative on June 30, the Chicago Department of Transportation briefly presented a new plan for the Belmont and Kedzie intersection.  This is a complicated intersection, involving both grid and diagonal streets, an expressway exit and support columns, plus existing and new bike lanes.

Several other sustainable transportation and public space projects are on the horizon in the 35th Ward.

It's not clear exactly why this area is a problem spot, but it appears that better guard rail protection is needed.

The recently announced 312 RiverRun trail will be a nice north-south route, but CTA resistance helps explain why this area lacks east-west bike lanes.

The five-way intersection of Belmont, Western, and Clybourn, as well as the stretch of Western between the Chicago River and Lane Tech High, is friendlier to pedestrians and a lot less gloomy thanks to the just-completed project to remove the nearly 60-year-old Riverview flyover. However, the street makeover missed some opportunities to make the corridor safer and more accessible to all road users, maintaining the overwhelmingly car-centric nature of the corridor.

Soon after I heard that Lisa Kuivenen had tragically died while riding their bike after a truck driver tried to merge across the Milwaukee Avenue bike lane I got a little furious. I was upset that her fatal crash was continuing a pattern of cyclist deaths – Blaine Klingenberg and Virginia Murray died after commercial vehicle drivers made turns at intersections and ran them over. I was also upset that there aren't enough protections on the streets to protect cyclists from drivers who aren't paying attention.