Ashland selected for BRT

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Permalink Reply by h' Zerocats on April 22, 2013 at 2:25pm

You probably know this as well as I, but we were repeatedly told flat out during the "public input process" for determining where bike lanes should go that Western and Ashland were completely off the table because of BRT.

However- I don't know how well it worked, but when I was in Quito, Ecuador, where they seemed to have a well-developed BRT system, I noticed that riding a bike in the protected bus lanes seemed to be sanctioned.

Tony Adams 6.6 mi said:

These are all great ideas Howard.

I think it is more important to keep an eye on all this as it is now pretty clear that the BRT, at least as it has been conceived for Ashland pretty much rules out using the street on a bicycle. As I've said since the ill-conceived mission creep of the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation into ActiveTrans, there are going to be times when the needs of bikes will conflict with the needs of transit. Here we have a clear example*. I pretty much never ride on Ashland so in this case it is no great loss, but if the same thing were to happen to Western we'd be totally screwed.

* I could be missing something of course, but I don't see any accommodation for riding bikes included in the BRT plans for Ashland.

h' 1.0 said:

I personally don't see the value in having one or few designated north-south or east-west corridor(s) intended for bicycles. Are there really that many of us that need to make a 10+ mile trip from one end of town to another?

The biggest challenges facing bike commuters in Chicago are the barriers created by rivers, expressways, and railroads that effectively leave us few good choices for getting from one part of town to another (see Tony's post above-- Damen becomes too scary for even experienced commuters at several points, for example.)

Here are my modest desires for Western Ave:

1) A sanctioned off-street (i.e. sidewalk) bike path for the section between Ogden and 18th street, if not an on-street lane.

2) A striped/buffered lane through the industrial/tech college corridor between Blue Island (26th) and the river, and a protected lane across the river.

3) You nord' siderss can worry 'bout your own selves, but there are few options to divert from Western on a north-south trip between Bloomingdale and Diversey or so, so some bit of on-street lane through that section

wouldn't be unwelcome.

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