Brendan Kevenides

Not only do these flimsy installations fail to provide physical protection, they leave taxpayers on the hook for injury lawsuits against the city government when cyclists wipe out on the broken bollards.

"Let's keep making noise," said fallen cyclist Kevin Clark's cousin. "I know that at a certain point they'll listen to us, and we will get this done."

Ortiz was struck and killed by an Uber Driver in West Town as he was biking to work last June.

The 30-year-old female cyclist is able to walk, but suffered multiple injuries and has a long road to recovery, according to her attorney.

At a hearing in the Circuit Court of Cook County last week, a judge denied a motion by the city of Chicago’s law department to dismiss a lawsuit by a female bicyclist who was seriously injured after she struck a hole in one of the Damen bike lanes. The law department argued that the bike lane is “recreational property” and, as such, the city should have limited liability. The plaintiff’s attorney, Brendan Kevenides from FK Law (a Streetsblog Chicago sponsor) argues that if the judge had accepted this reasoning, it would have set a dangerous precedent for local cyclists.

This February, Steven Vance reported that the Illinois Department of Transportation has been prohibiting the installation of protected bike lanes on state jurisdiction roads in Chicago at least until the Chicago Department of Transportation collects three years of “safety data” on existing Chicago protected lanes. That means the earliest the ban would be lifted would be July 2014, three years after Chicago’s first protected lanes opened on Kinzie. IDOT is not blocking installation of buffered lanes.

The Law Office of Brendan H. Kevenides and the Law Offices of James M. Freeman, both sponsors of Streetsblog Chicago, are merging to create Freeman Kevenides Law Firm. Both firms originally focused on cases involving people who were struck while biking, while Freeman also took on pedestrian crash cases. The new firm will continue the advocacy they're known for, but with greater strength and frequency, Freeman and Kevenides say.

A recent decision by Illinois's 1st District Court of Appeals could make it harder to hold city governments and individual drivers accountable for pedestrian safety.

Last Thursday at around 4:30 p.m., a driver crashed into a bicyclist returning from a quick trip to The Bike Lane, a bike shop on Milwaukee Avenue across from the Congress Theater. The driver fled the scene and remains at large, while the cyclist – Michael Leete, visiting from Brooklyn, New York – was left on the ground with bleeding around his brain. The driver may have been exiting or entering a parallel parking space near 2207 N Milwaukee Avenue.