Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Yasmeen on April 12, 2016 at 3:58am

Thanks for sharing Gene. Great news on both fronts - the bike lanes and the city pitching in for Bikes N' Roses. Both are good things. 

Ok, so my only pause about this is the "better bike lanes" - I hope this means bike lanes that are well thought-out and truly "better". I'm optimistic because there are some pretty great lanes that have been put in. On the other hand, to truly make bike lanes work, they need to be committed to i.e. enforced so that motorists don't park or drive in them. 

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Permalink Reply by Cheryl on April 12, 2016 at 8:40am

"On the other hand, to truly make bike lanes work, they need to be committed to i.e. enforced so that motorists don't park or drive in them." 

Agree 100%. When I made this comment on Facebook on the post from the mayor's office, one of his lackeys said "You see they are separated, right?" which I found both naive and condescending. The new separated lanes are 7' wide, large enough for a car, and cars are entering them at corners and driveways where there are openings. 

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Permalink Reply by djm on April 12, 2016 at 5:28am

...can we at lease move the painted bike lane to the curb and use the parked cars as a buffer? It takes no more room and is a lot safer with the parked cars used to separate the auto traffic from the bike lane

I find these curbside bike lanes (e.g.: Kinzie) very dangerous.  On numerous occasions Ive had pedestrians (and drivers after parking) step out between parked cars into the bike lane just in front of me.  Worse, cars making right turns at intersections dont see bicycle traffic because it is screened by the row of parked cars.

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Permalink Reply by Rich S on April 12, 2016 at 6:47am

Agree 100%. I stopped riding on Des Plaines because I was constantly looking out for drivers making right turns across the bike lane. 

I've never had problems on Clybourn until they installed the concrete separated lane. Now I have to dodge pedestrians that use it as a sidewalk extension or cross between their cars and the sidewalk without looking. And this past winter there were plenty of instances, especially in the morning, where the protected part of Clybourn was the most treacherous part of my commute due to ice and snow. 

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Permalink Reply by Maurice on April 12, 2016 at 6:17am

Strongly disagree that parking "protected" lanes are "a lot safer."  At this point, I believe that they're intended to SEEM safer to timid cyclists, while keeping as many metered parking spaces in place as possible.

 

As djm mentioned, there is a huge visibility issue.  Chicago too often designs them without buffer areas near conflict points between bikes and cars, so cars routinely plow straight through them without seeing the cyclists, and pedestrians treat them as sidewalks.  Active Trans types keep telling us that it's just an education issue, but by now they're clearly wrong about that.  We've had these sorts of lanes for years now, and they're still filled with pedestrians and cars.  Time to abandon that failed design.

 

Curb protected seems like a good compromise in an ideal world, but the city doesn't find it viable in areas with a lot of metered parking.  Under Daley's parking meter sale boondoggle, the city is not at liberty to simply remove metered spaces, and businesses have opposed the removal of street parking.

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Permalink Reply by Fran Kondorf on April 12, 2016 at 9:42am

I, too, am less than crazy about curbside lanes for all the reasons mentioned.

Plus all the broken glass, gravel, etc. that collects in them that we get the great privilege of riding through. No thanks.

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Permalink Reply by John Wirtz on April 15, 2016 at 6:10am

The thing is protected lanes do take more room.  Although more space is desired for buffers, a standard bike lane can be 5' or 6' wide between parked cars and moving cars.  A protected lane requires a minimum of a 6' wide bike lane and a 3' wide buffer (9' total), again with more space preferred.  There are two reasons for this.  One is so the bicyclists aren't trapped between a barrier curb and an opening car door with nowhere to go.  Two is so the lane is wide enough to be swept and plowed by the equipment available. 

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Permalink Reply by Mark on April 12, 2016 at 7:41am

Agreed.  Buffered Bike Lanes are much safer and better maintained than Protected Bike Lanes.

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Permalink Reply by Yasmeen on April 12, 2016 at 8:13am

An article on the same topics from Streetsblog. It sounds like the plan is to build better bike infrastructure so they are slowing the program down a bit. But as many of you are saying, there are some serious concerns with protected bike lanes e.g. visibility to motorists, pedestrians wandering into the bike lanes, being blocked by vehicles, dangerous weather conditions in winter, etc.

http://chi.streetsblog.org/2016/04/11/city-begins-work-on-next-50-m...

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Permalink Reply by haruspex on April 12, 2016 at 9:33am

Ah yes...the elusive "better bike lanes".

Here's a question...if we're unhappy with certain bike lanes, are we obligated to use them? Does this make us ungrateful, or somehow undeserving of smarter bike infrastructure?

The designs of many bike lanes around the city are decidedly ill-conceived. If they don't "work" for us, are we still allowed to use primary lanes of traffic? In some instances, this is obviously a necessity; if there are surface hazards or obstructions in the bike lane, we have no choice but to merge to the left until the lane is free again. But if we object to certain bike lanes for, say, safety reasons, can we opt not to use them? I'm especially wary of many of the new bike lanes downtown, which, in spite of all the markings, pedestrians continue to treat as extensions of the sidewalk. I've seen one nasty pedestrian-cyclist collision and a great many more close calls on these lanes to completely regard them as safe.

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Permalink Reply by Kevin C Dormant on April 13, 2016 at 5:50am

What are the chances the same people who gave us crappy Protected Bike Lane designs 4-5 years ago will do any better on the redesign?

Permalink Reply by Kevin C Dormant on December 20, 2013 at 11:35pm

As a concept, I’m fine with them. As implemented to date in the City of Chicago, I don’t like them. I think the constrained infrastructure that exists in the City of Chicago is going to make it extremely difficult to come up with a design that delivers on the often cited goal of growing the number of cyclists AND making them safer.

My experience with PBLs in Chicago is principally with Kinzie and Milwaukee and to a lesser degree Elston, 18^th Street, and Dearborn. 

In general, Chicago’s PBLs put cyclists on the worst part of the road surface. The streets in the City of Chicago are crowned, and the bicycle travel lanes in PBLs, for the most part, are placed in the portion of the road where debris collects. Without automobile tires traveling over that area of the road, sweeping or picking up the debris, it stays in the bike lane. When it rains, this part of the road collects puddles. When it’s cold, puddles freeze. When it snows, snow and salt collects in the lane and without the aforementioned auto tire traffic, salt is less effective and snow doesn’t dissipate. Snow that used to get shoveled off sidewalks under parked cars now gets shoveled into the PBL.

In an August 22nd guest post in Streetsblog,  Kristen Maddox “counted 107 manhole covers along the two-way protected bike lanes on Dearborn Street between Polk Street and Kinzie.” On northbound Milwaukee, I counted 140+ manhole and utility service box covers in the bike lane. Our PBLs traverse too many alleys and other curb cuts. Our PBLs lack uniformity of design. Milwaukee has at least five different configurations in its 0.85 mile length-sometimes you’re on the right side of parked cars, sometimes on the left, sometimes lanes are buffered, sometimes protected. And there’s a Bus Stop IN the S/B Milwaukee bike lane. Most auto-bike collisions occur at intersections and the separation of cars and bikes with parked cars impairs sightlines and I think make conflicts at intersections more likely. The accident statistics will be interesting.

The historic data pretty consistently shows the “safety in numbers” effect; i.e. more bike riders make everyone safer. It is currently argued that PBLs will attract those “curious but timid” riders who would otherwise never take up riding, at least not on the streets for errands, commuting, etc., and while that may be true, I’m not sure to what degree Chicago PBLs make them “safer.” And I’m not sure to what degree new riders separated from automobile traffic by PBLs will affect the “safety in numbers” phenomenon.

I have been riding in the City of Chicago for a long time-since before there were bike lanes. The new advocates categorize me as “a strong and fearless” rider. I don’t think that’s a particularly accurate description, in large part because I strongly believe that a certain amount of fear is a necessary component of safe riding. I don’t want to get hit by a car, and while I wouldn’t characterize myself as timid, I am pretty comfortable riding in traffic.  Oh, and I have never been hit by a car.

To my eye, and my 30 or so years of experience riding a bike in Chicago traffic, Kinzie was always a great street to ride on. The addition of the PBL hasn’t made it worse or better, with the exception of the sightlines at intersections which I think have made it worse. Milwaukee has been made worse by the Balkanized PBL design. Elston, not much difference. 18^th Street, love the PBL over the bridge. Dearborn is worse.

I posted the articles about the curb-protected PBLs because I think that design addition would be a step in the right direction, and if they’re going to spend tax increment financing, state and federal transportation dollars, and CDOT’s own general obligation funds on PBLs, they should do a better job with design.

Duppie said:

out of curiosity, what does OP think about protected bike lanes?

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