Desplaines boss, Desplaines! A new protected lane in the west Loop

CDOT is building so many protected and buffered lanes right now in their race to reach 30 miles by snowfall, it's hard for me to wrap my head around all of them. Here's a virtual tour of the latest one, Desplaines Street from Kinzie to Harrison Streets. http://gridchicago.com/2012/desplaines-boss-desplaines-a-new-protec...


Keep moving forward,

John Greenfield

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Permalink Reply by Lisa Curcio on December 1, 2012 at 10:07am

Rode Des Plaines from Kinzie to Roosevelt today.  There were cars parked in the protected bike lane ALL THE WAY!  Now, it does not appear that the markings for the parking are complete, and there are no signs, but the lane is marked with the painted bike and arrows all the way.  There are no plastic bollards anywhere, either.  Fortunately, no one uses Des Plaines on Saturday, so it did not matter that the cars were parked in the bike lane ;-).

Maybe they are moving from south to north. At Roosevelt they were putting down the green paint and doing some serious striping.

And Duppie it IS NOT a protected lane in front of Old St. Pat's.  The entire block is a buffered lane. 

Permalink Reply by globalguy on December 1, 2012 at 10:34am

Seems to be the biggest result of creating "protected (parking) lanes". Why hasn't CDOT developed a strategy to prevent this by now?

Lisa Curcio said:

Rode Des Plaines from Kinzie to Roosevelt today.  There were cars parked in the protected bike lane ALL THE WAY!

Permalink Reply by John Greenfield on December 1, 2012 at 12:10pm

Posts and signs haven't been installed yet on Desplaines and the police haven't started ticketing, so there's point in complaining about cars parked in the bike lane until the lane is complete.

Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on December 1, 2012 at 2:21pm

The delay in making signage changes and adding bike symbols has caused headaches with so many protected bike lane installations.  I like the fact that they're painting PARKING in the parking lane on Dearborn (as shown in installation photos posted today).  Why not do that in other locations, too?

Permalink Reply by Lisa Curcio on December 1, 2012 at 2:47pm

Maybe they will be painting "parking" on Des Plaines.  It is clearly not finished, but in what is intended to be the parking areas they have painted the word "parking" with regular spray paint   BTW, one of the fellows working at Des Plaines and Roosevelt waved at me as I rode by, so I waved back and said "Thank you".  Kind of nice--he smiled and said "you're welcome".

Anne Alt said:

The delay in making signage changes and adding bike symbols has caused headaches with so many protected bike lane installations.  I like the fact that they're painting PARKING in the parking lane on Dearborn (as shown in installation photos posted today).  Why not do that in other locations, too?

Permalink Reply by Lisa Curcio on December 1, 2012 at 2:54pm

That is so exciting!  I love the little yellow line.  For me, Dearborn is the height of infrastructure improvement.

And how was the party?


Chi Lowe said:

Lisa - I had exactly the same experience coming back from TCL Halloween 2.0 party last night on Des Plaines.  Cars the whole way.  But what to my wondering eyes should appear at Polk and Dearborn?

This:

Note: it wasn't open, the paint was wet, and crews were out striping at midnight.  So I *carefully* rode on it, just to be the first person I know to do so :).

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