Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on September 7, 2012 at 4:37am

+1

I totally agree that this section of Milwaukee can be pretty brutal -especially on a heavier/slower city bike as traffic heats up.   I feel this section is much more manageable at a faster pace on a faster bike when I can feel comfortable taking a lane in an instant whenever I need to and can keep up with and even out-ride the auto traffic.  

On my city bike I either really need to hammer on the pedals to keep up with this pace or need to slow WAY down and take my chances in spots that I just can't get out of when traffic is too tight to move over into since it is going so much faster.  Sometimes here the auto drivers are pretty much pushing all the way over in the door zone too at times, so  you have to as well or just get off and walk on the sidewalk to avoid riding  in it.

This section of Milwaukee is like the Dooring OK Corral.  I see way too many folks being loaded onto ambulances here.  Last Friday on the way home from Critical Mass I saw two!  

Ash's solution is nearly as fast as poking down Milwaukee and much less stressful.  I daresay it is also much more safe. 

Ash L. said:

I don't ride Milwaukee through Wicker Park at all. Too many dooring risks and idiots not paying attention; drivers, cyclists and peds alike. You should try taking Wood to Augusta to Noble to Hubbard a few times before the sloppy winter stuff starts. Wood has lights at every intersection but you don't want to take it all the way to Hubbard because Hubbard doesn't have any intersection control at Ashland. You can avoid the congestion of crossing Halsted at Hubbard by making a right onto Green and then connecting to Kinzie from there or whichever thoroughfare into the loop you plan to use. 

Lisa Curcio said:

I look forward to riding most of the winter, but snow and ice in the bike lanes will keep me out of them.  In the winter, that means I need to find a route that I am comfortable with other than Milwaukee to Kinzie from Wicker Park to the loop.  There has been much lamentation about the condition of the protected lanes.  Is there anything we can DO?

Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on September 7, 2012 at 5:04am

+1

What they have done so far is barely dipping a toe in the water.

That it looks like huge progress only belies the fact that almost nothing was done at all before that.   It's a  huge improvement over nothing -but still a long way from any organized, concerted effort to build real bicycle infrastructure.  It's still at the pathetic stage -very much an after-thought compared to other mainstream big-budget transportation infrastructure being planned and implemented. 

Cameron Puetz said:

I'm not an active opponent yet either, but I'm skeptical of what we've seen so far. With the tidbits that have been released about the Dearborn project I'm cautiously optimistic, that CDOT is learning for the problems of the existing lanes and making design improvements, but I'm withholding further judgement until I see the finished project or at least construction plans.

Kevin C said:

I am not a fan of protected bike lanes, but I'm not yet an active opponent.

Brian said:

Has anyone heard a plan for sweeping the protected bike lanes, other than they have one or two donated sweepers for the whole city? I ride Elson every day, and I'm having serious doubts about the protected bike lane initiative. Lots of glass, debris and flat tires. No action on sweeping...on what was a great street to ride on. Used to be you'd see the street sweeper every morning...and I never had a flat before on that stretch. I'm curious if they can space the pylons way farther apart so they can swoop in to sweep most of it at least? Does anyone else want the city to put the brakes on protected lanes? I'm having a hard time envisioning how they'll sweep the snow to the side during the winter too. 

Permalink Reply by Lisa Curcio on September 7, 2012 at 5:30am

Thanks, everyone, for the suggestions.  Will be back to Wicker Park in October (from the lakefront), so will have a chance to try those suggestions before the weather gets too sloppy.  Easy for me to get from my house to Wood, but I never would have thought of it.  On Milwaukee, I do the slowpoke mode since I don't think my bike could go fast even if I could! :-)

Permalink Reply by Mike Weez on September 7, 2012 at 5:39am

Why the negativity?  It's once a year don't be a baby.  Share the road goes both ways.  Also, Rahm wants biking because that brings in creative young workers to entice big companies looking to hire them therefore bringing in more $$. 
 
James BlackHeron said:

If the mayor and his minions were serious about bicycle infrastructure they'd close the road to CARS and leave the bike lane OPEN.

But, as we all know, he's not.

This only drives home the point of exactly where their priorities lie. 

Permalink Reply by Kevin C Dormant on September 7, 2012 at 5:50am

I'm in Wicker Park as well.  I rarely take Milwaukee inbound (AM) between May & October, though I take it often outbound (PM). I usually alternate between Damen, Wood, Paulina, Noble and sometimes Leavitt for the southbound leg of my commute, and usually go west on Erie or Ohio until just after Ogden. Racine or May southbound to Hubbard followed by Green to Kinzie. Wide streets, much less traffic, way lower dooring risk. 

Lisa Curcio said:

Thanks, everyone, for the suggestions.  Will be back to Wicker Park in October (from the lakefront), so will have a chance to try those suggestions before the weather gets too sloppy.  Easy for me to get from my house to Wood, but I never would have thought of it.  On Milwaukee, I do the slowpoke mode since I don't think my bike could go fast even if I could! :-)

Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on September 7, 2012 at 9:53am

I don't see what all this big deal with glass & flat tires is.   Even with regards to the protected lanes it's seriously not that big of a deal.  I ride nearly every day -in all sorts of roads, bike lanes ("protected" and the non-protected types)  sharrows, roads without bike lanes both busy and residential, lots of alleys, paths, parking lots, along RR tracks, abandoned lots -everywhere.   I almost never get flats.  Like less than once a year never. 

Buy yourself some non-crap tires and/or tuffy liners.   If you are getting flats all the time you need to change your skins to something more suitable for city riding and maybe open up your damn eyes and pay attention to where you are putting your front & back wheels.  Glass capable of slicing tires isn't exactly invisible  It's really not that difficult of a concept.  I've got horrible vision and yet I don't have a problem seeing and avoiding it.

There is glass freaking EVERYWHERE in this city -not just in the protected lanes.  This freaking out over it being in some of the protected lanes is over-blown.   It's a simple problem -get some sweepers out there capable of picking it up.   

The snow-removal and glass/debris removal issues are small potatoes -merely minor teething issues that will eventually get ironed out.    

Personally I think the glass problem would be fixed simply if the folks who threw it out onto the road in the first place had it forcefully shoved back up their asses after picking it up.  But I guess the city will never get that tough on litter-bugs.  It would stop the littering -or kill the litterers in a bloody-painful way.  Either way I don't care. 

Permalink Reply by Bill Savage on September 8, 2012 at 6:30am

Clint: You've articulated my instinctive rejection of these half-@ssed pseudo-protected lanes better than I could have.  The design of the roads from bedrock up has to accommodate cycling or it will create these secondary problems (snow plowing, debris) that make the lanes unusable. I'd rather see the city spend money planking over steel grate bridges (which case numberless flats!), and painting more of these extra-wide bike lanes and/or share-rows.  The city could never afford to do these protected lanes properly, so let's go with the less-than-Scandanavian-ideal and create a system that acknowledges reality, while improving things as much as practicable.

Clint H said:

The thing with the 8-to-80 argument is that while this group may need better protection from traffic, building this protection in a way that makes a route unusable doesn't really help. And that's the problem with the protected lanes, in that unless you want to completely rebuild a street from the storm sewers up, there's no way to build them that they won't eventually become unusable. Roads need to be convex so they will drain. This convex shape will result in debris being washed to the far outside section. This is an inevitable part of road design, and it was always this way on Elston. This debris isn't new, but nobody noticed because nobody ever traveled on that part of the roadway. You could conceivably rebuild a road so that you had three convex segments with gutters running to sewer drains in between, but considering it took the city 10 months to slap some paint on Elston, I wouldn't hold out hope.

 

So while the inexperienced or less confident riders might be encouraged to ride with the protected lanes, they'll quickly grow frustrated by the constant flat tires, and will give it up or find other routes. In the end, you'll have the same people riding you had before. The only difference is that they'll be spending a lot more money on tubes. These lanes are not the way to go.

Permalink Reply by Bill Savage on September 8, 2012 at 6:34am

The irony of protected bike lanes ending up with more debris than regular roads is the point of all of this, not just How To Avoid Flats in general.  Even good tires can get flats if the glass one happens upon is sharp and abundant enough. I get very few flats, buy new heavy-duty hybrid tires annually at least.  And to say there's glass everywhere is not accurate: there's more or less glass more or less everywhere (along with nails, metal shards, bricks, roadkilled rats, used condoms and other unpleasant things) but there are roads and routes that have less of them.  And wise cyclists pick those routes, even if they're not the routes the city builds just for cyclists.

James BlackHeron said:

I don't see what all this big deal with glass & flat tires is.   Even with regards to the protected lanes it's seriously not that big of a deal.  I ride nearly every day -in all sorts of roads, bike lanes ("protected" and the non-protected types)  sharrows, roads without bike lanes both busy and residential, lots of alleys, paths, parking lots, along RR tracks, abandoned lots -everywhere.   I almost never get flats.  Like less than once a year never. 

Buy yourself some non-crap tires and/or tuffy liners.   If you are getting flats all the time you need to change your skins to something more suitable for city riding and maybe open up your damn eyes and pay attention to where you are putting your front & back wheels.  Glass capable of slicing tires isn't exactly invisible  It's really not that difficult of a concept.  I've got horrible vision and yet I don't have a problem seeing and avoiding it.

There is glass freaking EVERYWHERE in this city -not just in the protected lanes.  This freaking out over it being in some of the protected lanes is over-blown.   It's a simple problem -get some sweepers out there capable of picking it up.   

The snow-removal and glass/debris removal issues are small potatoes -merely minor teething issues that will eventually get ironed out.    

Personally I think the glass problem would be fixed simply if the folks who threw it out onto the road in the first place had it forcefully shoved back up their asses after picking it up.  But I guess the city will never get that tough on litter-bugs.  It would stop the littering -or kill the litterers in a bloody-painful way.  Either way I don't care. 

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