South Shore

New Bikeways Week pedals ahead as we look at new and upgraded bike lanes all over the city. Yesterday I visited the Lakeside development in South Chicago to get a tour in anticipation of the grand opening of what's known as the South Lake Shore Drive extension. After that, I checked out 1.25 miles of upgraded bike lanes on a recently repaved section of South Shore Drive, a northwest-southeast diagonal road, between 71st and 79th streets.

Editor’s note: Last November the J14 Jeffery Jump bus launched as the CTA’s first attempt at creating an express bus service with some of the elements of bus rapid transit. While the 15 Jeffery Local makes 37 stops between 103rd Street and Lake Shore Drive, the Jump only makes 19 stops. Between 83rd and 67th streets, inbound buses travel in a dedicated lane during the morning rush hour and vice versa for the evening rush. This year the city will install a “queue jump” at 83rd Street, allowing buses to cut to the front of the line of stopped cars, and the stretch from 83rd to 73rd streets will get bus-priority stoplights, expediting transit trips.

Nine days ago Streetsblog forwarded South Shore resident Deborah Harrington's photo of a pavement cave-in in the bike lane at 7300 S South Shore Drive to the Department of Transportation. Today Deborah excitedly emailed me some photos she took of the site, where Department of Water Management crews are now diligently working in 10°F weather to repair it properly. She writes:

A Metra Electric train crosses Yates Boulevard out of the South Shore station. Photo by Jeff Zoline.