The Chainlink

Most Bike Un-Friendly Streets

Here are my personal unfavorites for street riding. Please share your most disliked streets and routes for new/existing riders.

-Addison between clark and damen (hellacious potholes, little scary tiny rocks)
-Western (self-explanatory)
-Wrigleyville before/during/after a cubs game
-Division (between elston and ashland, ghost bike installed there for a reason)
-Irving Park Rd (I got pushed so far into the parked cars by traffic I took out a sideview mirror with my fist riding a CRUISER)

Anyone else?
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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jody on April 21, 2009 at 11:41pm
ten points for Ashland!

Dawn said:
—Ashland is hellacious to ride on, especially up north. I've had people yell at me to get off the road.
—There's a segment of Ridge crossing Clark up north that's tough to navigate. Generally, it's hard to get to the Target on Peterson from my location in Edgewater. If anyone has a good route, I'm all for it!
Permalink Reply by joe on April 22, 2009 at 10:39am
western can eat it..
ashland can eat it for the most part
a short section on halsted just south of chicago ave is horrible if your your goin north and hauling ass then hit like 700 pot holes in a 300' strip of rim and tube death
im sure i have more hate but cant think of any. just woke up. :)
Permalink Reply by Tank-Ridin' Ryan on April 22, 2009 at 1:03pm
I've actually taken Clark/Ashland from Devon all the way down to North Ave for WPCM. I just take the right lane so I don't crash into a car if I need to swerve suddenly.

Surprisingly no one has yelled at me when trucking down Ashland. I guess I signal well.

Jody said:
ten points for Ashland!

Dawn said:
—Ashland is hellacious to ride on, especially up north. I've had people yell at me to get off the road.
—There's a segment of Ridge crossing Clark up north that's tough to navigate. Generally, it's hard to get to the Target on Peterson from my location in Edgewater. If anyone has a good route, I'm all for it!
Permalink Reply by Barbra Mann on April 22, 2009 at 1:24pm
I vote Ashland and Western as two of the worst...but I am a skater and right now skating is pretty bad on most streets because of all the winter wear...potholes, rocks, and so on! None the less I will see yall for CM Friday...can't wait!
Permalink Reply by Lee Diamond on April 22, 2009 at 1:40pm
This one sticks in my craw.....the bike right of way in between the turn and straight lanes on Irving Park by the Kennedy on ramps in either direction have gigantic grooves running parallel with the street exactly in the center of the bike right of way. This is the designated spots for bikes heading straight east or west on Irving Park to help them carve out a space where the cars turn right to enter the highway. This thing is an absolute death-trap and is going to kill some biker one day. People do not respect that lane as it is, and to have to avoid the center of it and travel closer to either side of traffic is ridiculous. I have called 311 about it 4 times and have never seen a single crew out there fixing it, though they have twice fixed the potholes in the car turn lanes in the same time.

As an aside, what is with all of the painted over bike lane designations? I mean specifically where the black paint covers the exact area where the white bike lane designation was....Lawrence, Elston, Damen and others all have examples of this......seems pretty hostile!
Permalink Reply by Weir's beard on April 22, 2009 at 4:09pm
Suburban entry:

Quentin Road between Lake-Cook and Dundee.

Abso-f*&$ing-lutely horrible.
Permalink Reply by Tank-Ridin' Ryan on April 22, 2009 at 6:57pm
Sounds like someone out there needs to be made to drink a can of that black paint. I haven't seen any of these, but I take your word Lee. Did someone just completely paint over the bike lane marker line?

Lee Diamond said:
As an aside, what is with all of the painted over bike lane designations? I mean specifically where the black paint covers the exact area where the white bike lane designation was....Lawrence, Elston, Damen and others all have examples of this......seems pretty hostile!
Permalink Reply by Lee Diamond on April 22, 2009 at 7:15pm
No...right over the image of the bike that they paint in the bike lanes. In some cases, the black paint ONLY covers the image....super specifically.

Tank-Ridin' Ryan said:
Sounds like someone out there needs to be made to drink a can of that black paint. I haven't seen any of these, but I take your word Lee. Did someone just completely paint over the bike lane marker line?

Lee Diamond said:
As an aside, what is with all of the painted over bike lane designations? I mean specifically where the black paint covers the exact area where the white bike lane designation was....Lawrence, Elston, Damen and others all have examples of this......seems pretty hostile!
Permalink Reply by Tank-Ridin' Ryan on April 22, 2009 at 7:19pm
Oh, I've seen those. In some places that bike logo is pretty worn, so I would suspect that it's the city doing that to repaint them later.

Lee Diamond said:
No...right over the image of the bike that they paint in the bike lanes. In some cases, the black paint ONLY covers the image....super specifically.

Tank-Ridin' Ryan said:
Sounds like someone out there needs to be made to drink a can of that black paint. I haven't seen any of these, but I take your word Lee. Did someone just completely paint over the bike lane marker line?

Lee Diamond said:
As an aside, what is with all of the painted over bike lane designations? I mean specifically where the black paint covers the exact area where the white bike lane designation was....Lawrence, Elston, Damen and others all have examples of this......seems pretty hostile!
Permalink Reply by aLex on April 22, 2009 at 9:45pm
Grand between Des Plaines and Halsted. I keep waiting to trash a rim on this section.
Permalink Reply by Brett Ratner on April 22, 2009 at 11:06pm
I'm surprised by all the "Wilson West of Western" comments. I had a friend who lived near Lawrence and Pulaski, and I took Wilson the whole way a ton of times (I live off of Clark and Wilson). I actually enjoy riding that section.

But the two blocks of Wilson just East of Clark? That really sucks during rush hour. There isn't much room between the parked cars and the car lane, and traffic moves pretty fast through there. It eases up past Beacon, though.

But my LEAST favorite section of all? Pretty much everything North of Bryn Mawr. It's like the city just stopped caring about bike access past Andersonville.

Let's say you wanna go to Evanston... well Damen dead ends into a cemetery at Bryn Mawr. Ravenswood dead ends at Ridge so you have to do this crazy jog, and then it becomes a one-way. Sheridan sucks for bikes because the traffic is going 35-40mph. Clark sucks for bikes because it's super congested with parked cars and aggressive car traffic. Ridge is okay (when it's not rush hour), but you have to do that crazy jog to get to it. The lakefront path terminates at Hollywood, forcing you on Sheridan. There really isn't a bike friendly way to get to Evanston.

Also, the closest recycling dropoff to me is located near Ravenswood and Devon. Even though it's only a mile or two from where I work (near Damen and Foster), I hate riding to it because it's a huge pain to get to. I'd almost rather ride all the way to the dropoff on Goose Island.

And the un-bike-friendly attitude north of Bryn Mawr carries over to the people who drive their cars in that part of town.
Permalink Reply by Reddog (Cliff) on April 23, 2009 at 9:12am
Western is pretty bad as others have noted and I concur. North Avenue east of the Highway is also Thunderdome without Tina Turner in the chainmail bra.

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