Wells Street

Frustratingly, a similar bike counter was slated to be installed years ago on Milwaukee Avenue, the city's busiest biking street, in Wicker Park, but that plan was reportedly cancelled due to city bureaucracy.

Here’s another clever new idea from the Chicago Department of Transportation. This week, they re-timed the stoplights along Wells Street between Huron Street and Wacker Drive in River North, so that southbound bicyclists who maintain a 12 mph pace get an unbroken series of greens.

The Chicago Department of Transportation has a rare clean-slate opportunity to design a Street of Dreams -- a street that incorporates many leading-edge safety features. That opportunity is phase three of their Wells-Wentworth Connector between Chinatown and the South Loop, a future southward extension of Wells Street that longtime South Loop resident Dennis McClendon calls "Riverside Boulevard."

This weekend might be the Chicago Department of Transportation’s last hurrah for building bike lanes before the construction season ends. The molten plastic striping doesn’t properly adhere to asphalt at temperatures under 50 degrees Fahrenheit, so the last several days of frigid weather put a halt to CDOT’s efforts to install 20.7 more miles of buffered and protected lanes before the deep-freeze sets in.