Randolph Street

Golf courses are open, but beaches aren't. Since summer street festivals and concerns are canceled, Chicagoans need more outdoor entertainment alternatives.

Randolph Street was bustling at 7:30 p.m. on a Saturday night, while at 9:30 p.m. on Taylor Street relatively few restaurants had tables out.

These buffered lanes with bollards offer a new option for commuters.

Street redesigns from Oakland, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, San Francisco, Rochester and Chicago are competing for the title.

An important new downtown bikeway recently became rideable. The Randolph protected bike lane runs from Michigan to Clinton, making an already-popular westbound route out of the Loop safer.

Downtown alderman Brendan Reilly is known as the man who tried to get the Kinzie protected bike lanes removed, but he recently racked up some bike lane karma. Shaun Jacobsen, the urban planner behind the transportation blog Transitized, wrote to Reilly to about poor pavement conditions on the Dearborn two-way protected bike lane. The alderman promptly reached out to the appropriate city departments to try to solve these problems.

The Loop Link bus rapid transit corridor on Washington Street includes a concrete-protected bike lane between the island bus stations and the curb. But the construction of the raised, curbside bus platforms and dedicated bus lanes on Madison Street involved the removal an existing bike lane.

As the old saying goes, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Chicago Department of Transportation crews are continuing their work this summer, building new bikeways and upgrading existing ones. Yesterday, I took a spin around the Loop and the South Side to check out the latest improvements on Randolph, Harrison, California, 33rd, and King.