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Permalink Reply by ketoguychicago on February 8, 2022 at 2:47pm

I hear you,

This pic really highlights the issue with this design, now a week out from when the plows were working the area.  It's about a foot deep in the bike lane itself, and the plow has to stay left of the plastic else it takes them out, which meant the busses couldn't pass each other unless they cooperate with the little turn-out areas. (which they couldn't do for a few days especially when snow was coming down)  Alas, CDOT's design that sounds good in theory isn't so good in practice simply because they can't keep up with it in practice. 

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Permalink Reply by Kelly Reaves on February 8, 2022 at 5:27pm

Exactly. They just finished adding beefy cement buffered curbs to the left side of the bike lane on Lake St at Kedzie and the only reason I’ve been able to even ride through there since all this snow is by following the car tire tread marks from them squeezing through the buffered bike area. Sigh. 

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Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on February 10, 2022 at 11:39am

Sorry to hear it.

I am SO ready for spring, or at least for most of the snow and ice to melt so that lanes are relatively clear again.

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Permalink Reply by David Barish on March 1, 2022 at 5:23am

Hey guys, I like the discussion off bike lanes and am interested in both  sides of that  discussion,  but  agree with  Curtis's original  comment about the thread.  I will  not call it  a  hijack  but a side track.  I  think there  is rich  ground for a new thread about this but frankly recall that others exist.  Please feel  to keep  up the discussion there.  This one is a  resource for  people  looking for streets to  avoid.

One  point  that  is worth  mentioning  is that in the  winter weather  the  thinking gets inverted.  Normally,  we  love side streets where there is lower impact  cycling.  However, in the city,  the side  streets are  the  last ones that  get  cleaned and the  safer choice is often  the boulevard  you  see in this thread as it  is  at  least  freer of snow, ice and  everything else. Now that  we are  in meteorological  spring we can  revert the  inverted and return  to the thread. :-)

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Permalink Reply by ketoguychicago on March 4, 2022 at 1:36am

I think that's almost the point, and there's an extent to which the street design is like the dreaded Kinzie Street https://chi.streetsblog.org/2013/12/12/city-explains-gap-in-snow-re... may come from inverted thinking.  

Other unfriendly streets come about such as Milwaukee Ave. when anti-car people use inverted thinking and focus on not wanting cars, and we get unplowed areas behind barriers (including the dreaded stretch of Clybourn Ave) and instead of actually separating cars and bikes, we get cars and bikes even closer together there and on the dreaded Elston Ave. too. 

So reverting as suggested, instead of anti-car people focusing on what they don't want, people can focus on what they do want, which is enjoyable safer cycling like on the lake front path.  

Halsted Street has the reverting going on with the whole bike lane removal idea. 

So if people avoid the inverted thinking of not wanting cars, and instead focus on what we want (better cycling) we can get better cycling.

Another bike-unfriendly street lately was Harrison around the UIC campus where the only way to ride was to ride with car and truck traffic from some construction there, all while the bike lane behind the plastic thingies went unplowed.  It's melted for now which is nice, but no street sweeping yet, same problem. 

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