Chicago to Install More Protected Bike Lanes

Chicago Transportation Commissioner Gia Biagi says it's time to update the city's decade-old cycling plan to include improved safety measures such as raised curbs separating bike lanes from traffic. As Fran Spielman reports in the Chicago Sun Times, Biagi, in a virtual address to the Rotary Club of Chicago, said that "the city is exploring ways to 'embed into the infrastructure' bike lanes that keep cars out." According to Audrey Wennink, director of transportation for the Metropolitan Planning Council, "Chicago desperately needs more protected bike lanes of all types, whether they’re raised or separated by bollards, curbs, parked cars or other barriers."

To date, the city has installed around half of the 645 miles of bike lanes identified in the Streets for Cycling Plan 2020, which aimed to make Chicago "the best big city for bicycling in the United States." According to Wennink, "What the Metropolitan Planning Council really wants to see is the 'build-out of networks of bike lanes' to make cycling viable" and safe for people of all ages. "We see a lot of patchworks of installations that are often related to aldermanic priorities," Wennink said. 

The "burst of activity" that followed the installation of the city's first bike lane ten years ago has seen a "dramatic slowdown." Now, Biagi hopes to reinvigorate the bike lane program. "I’d rather have one mile of the best connections — of filling in the gaps in the network — than the big muscly statistics."