protected bike lanes

The following conversation from Wednesday’s Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Council meeting is a great example of what can be accomplished when you get some of Chicago’s key transportation planners and advocates in a room together. Many people in the local bike community have been wondering about the legality of cycling outside of a protected bike lane when one is provided. As the Chicago Department of Transportation installs more protected lanes on streets with high ridership, such as Milwaukee Avenue, it’s likely that many faster cyclists will opt to use the main roadway instead.

The Chicago Department of Transportation is proposing to build a protected bike lane on Milwaukee Avenue in River West, connecting the protected bike lane on Elston Avenue with the protected bike lane on Kinzie Avenue. This project could help many more Chicagoans feel safe enough to bike on city streets, but as we reported earlier this week, the local alderman and some businesses on Milwaukee are uneasy about trading parking spaces for a fully protected bikeway, and CDOT is considering alternating between protected and buffered bike lanes. The businesses shouldn't worry about the redesign: With better parking management and a fully-protected bike lane, Milwaukee will be accessible to more people and customers than it is today.

The Chicago Department of Transportation has added many miles of protected and buffered bike lanes across the city, but it can be challenging to find space for protected lanes on the streets where they are needed the most. CDOT has implemented “road diets” on several streets, replacing excess car lanes with protected lanes, which has the added benefit of reducing speeding and shortening pedestrian crossing distances. The Dearborn two-way protected bike lane, through the heart of the Loop, is the most notable example of this tactic.

Last month we noted that the Illinois Department of Transportation prevented the installation of a protected bike lane planned for Jackson Boulevard, allowing only a buffered bike lane on the segment of the street it controls. Now we know why: IDOT will not allow protected bike lanes to be installed on Chicago streets under its jurisdiction until mid-2014, at the earliest, because the agency wants to see three years of data (presumably crash data) before signing off on this type of street redesign.