Chicago Peddles 500-Mile Bike Path Proposal

"Chicago is set to unveil new plans for becoming a bicyclist's haven. And this time, it means business.

The new Bike 2015 Plan wastes little time on breezy rides in the park. Instead, the city's Department of Transportation is bent on getting people to bike to work, to school, to stores and to mass transit stops, cobbling together a 500-mile network of designated routes.

Understanding that bicyclists' greatest enemies--aside from sloth--are car doors, right-lane passers and other street perils, planners looked around the world for new safety ideas."

"Like its predecessor in 1992, the new strategic plan lays out the city's vision to make bicycling an integral part of Chicagoans' daily lives.

It offers few details and specifies no costs, though it does point to federal grants and private funding.

The plan does not say where the new miles of bike lanes and improvements would be located.

But, with a strong track record of delivering for cyclists, the city is thinking big: a bike route within a half-mile of every resident; a 50-mile circuit of bike trails, with some off-road paths to be announced later this year; 185 miles of new bikeways altogether."