Neighborhood Greenways

Among the 20 new miles of bikeways the Chicago Department of Transportation has planned for 2018, one of the most useful new routes will be the Rogers Park Greenway. It will extend the popular Glenwood Greenway in Uptown and Edgewater by a couple of miles miles and create a low-stress way to visit Evanston, our neighbor to the north.

The list includes several miles of neighborhood greenways

After several years of delay and significant design changes, CDOT has finally started work on the Uptown bikeway.

These streets are already nice places to ride, but street markings, wayfinding signs, and traffic calming will make them even better.

It’s prime time for laying thermoplastic pavement markings, so the Chicago Department of Transportation has been hustling to install new bike lanes and Neighborhood Greenways.

The Chicago Department of Transportation's proposal for a neighborhood greenway on Manor Avenue is endorsed by 33rd Ward alder Deb Mell and the ward's Transportation Action Committee (I am a member of the TAC). But the initiative is facing fierce opposition from some Ravenswood Manor neighbors who object to plans for traffic diverters at Manor and Wilson Avenue that would eliminate cut-through traffic on Manor.

The 33rd Ward is holding the monthly meeting of its Transportation Action Committee on Thursday to discuss the Manor Greenway, a proposal from the Chicago Department of Transportation to connect two multi-use park paths via an on-street route on Manor Greenway. Jeff Sobczyk, assistant to Alder Deb Mell, said in the meeting announcement that the time would be used to improve understanding of the project's goals. Neighborhood greenways are intended to make it safer and more convenient to cycle on Chicago's side streets.

Last week, the Chicago Department of Transportation revealed its proposal to connect riverfront paths, reduce cut through traffic, and make it safer to walk and bike along streets in the Ravenswood Manor neighborhood. CDOT developed the plan for a "neighborhood greenway" between Horner Park and Ronan Park along the north branch of the Chicago River over the past two years, at the request of 33rd Ward Alder Deb Mell, and the Transportation Action Committee she started.

Over the past few years the city has built a handful of "neighborhood greenways," projects that involve small changes to side streets that can have a big impact in making them more bikeable, while connecting residential areas to the wider network of bike lanes. If the Chicago Department of Transportation picks up the pace on building these bikeways, it could actually create the kind of "8 to 80" bike network that the department says is its goal, and the Active Transportation Alliance and other advocates have been pushing for.