Kristen Green

The quarterly Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Council meeting is usually a tightly scheduled show-and-tell, with staff from the Chicago Department of Transportation and other city agencies giving presentations on what they’re doing to improve cycling. But after a particularly bad week for biking in the Chicago area, last Wednesday CDOT threw out the script and opened the floor for cyclists to voice their anxieties and anger over recent traffic violence, and brainstorm ways to prevent more tragedies.

Kristen Green from Ghost Bikes Chicago installs memorials to fallen cyclists. But after she experienced traffic violence herself, she faced a moral predicament.

The episode focused on the question of whether Chicago actually deserved to be ranked the best city for biking in the U.S. this year by Bicycling Magazine.

Recently, for the second time, someone took away the flowers, candles, messages, drawings, and white-painted bike wheel that were placed at Oak and Michigan as a tribute to bike courier Blaine Klingenberg, who was fatally struck by a bus driver at the intersection on June 15. His friends and members of the cycling community say they want to install a permanent memorial nearby that won’t be at risk of being removed again.

Safe streets advocates are inviting the public to the installation of a white-painted “ghost bike” memorial as a tribute to Virginia Murray, who was fatally struck by a truck driver while cycling last Friday. The installation will take place this Sunday, July 10, at 7 p.m. at the crash site at Belmont venue and Sacramento Avenue.