It's official: it's legal to ride outside of protected bike lanes

As the city considers building protected bicycle lanes on streets with plenty of existing bike traffic, like Milwaukee Avenue, it may become common for faster cyclists to opt to ride outside the PBLs in the main travel lanes. But at last week's Mayor's Bicycle Advisory Council meeting, two lawyers specializing in bike cases worried that an existing ordinance could be used against cyclists involved in a crash while riding outside PBLs. CDOT staff told them that the ordinance does not apply to protected lanes, and offered to put that in writing. That should offer some legal protection for those who choose to ride outside the lanes. Here's a transcript of the discussion:

http://chi.streetsblog.org/2013/03/15/its-official-its-legal-to-rid...

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Permalink Reply by Julie Aberman (Hochstadter) on March 18, 2013 at 4:08am

i read this at first as illegal!

Permalink Reply by Lisa Curcio on March 18, 2013 at 4:18am

As I said over on Streetsblog, they have to do more than "internal memos".  I hope they will work on amending the Municipal Code.  Those "internal memos" aren't worth much in court.

Permalink Reply by Mike Zumwalt on March 18, 2013 at 5:44am

And to make it illegal they'd have to change the rules of the road stating that bikes are not entitled to use public roadways.

Permalink Reply by John Greenfield on March 18, 2013 at 8:28am

Howard, that ordinance refers to bikeways *adjacent* to the roadway, not *in* the roadway. It was written specifically to make sure people rode on the Lakefront Trail by the South Shore Cultural Center, instead of on South Shore Drive, which, at that location, is a busy multi-lane road feeding into LSD.

They discussed this ordinance at the MBAC meeting. Read the transcript for deets:

http://chi.streetsblog.org/2013/03/15/its-official-its-legal-to-rid...

Permalink Reply by Sue Clark on March 18, 2013 at 9:00am
I can see the definition of the words "usable," "adjacent" and "path" each being a good source of hourly billing for an attorney.

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