Questions for the next Mayor's Bicycle Advisory Council meeting?
Hello Chainlinkers,
The next MBAC meeting is Wednesday June 12. 2013 (3:00 pm, City Hall, Rm 1103 - public invited!).
I'm one of three community representatives on the council and have a chance to bring up topics of discussion or ask questions of the CDOT officials during the meeting.
Since you're a large part of the bicycling community and I'm your rep, I ask you: What questions would you like asked or topics discussed?
(Edited May 31 2013 to update date)
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Joe Guzzardo on
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Our mayor wants to make Chicago the bike friendliest city in America. NYC requires that parking garages set aside spaces for bikes but there is no such mandate here. Why not? Offering bicyclists sheltered parking in the downtown area would be a huge boost, not only for bicyclists but for the retail establishments in the area as well. There are very few places where one can park a bike under shelter in the loop and the Millennium Park bike station is too far away for many of us to be practical.
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Permalink Reply by Michelle S on
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Thank you to everyone for the additional suggestions.
Jim, when were the photos in your blog post taken? Also, do you know approximately when the bike lane was installed?
Jim Freeman said:Any chance we could do something about the ambiguous signage and cars parked in the Marshall Boulevard bicycle lanes? This is a chronic problem.
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Permalink Reply by Anika on
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My biggest questions regarding all the new bike lanes,routes, etc. is what is being done about education - for pedestrian, cyclist, motorist, and enforcing officers. New lanes don't do a bit of good if no one knows how to use them and motorists/law enforcement just scoff at them. So far I've seen nothing.
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Permalink Reply by Sarah D. on
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+1 Anika! I think infrastructure is great, but education and communication and agreeing on expectations about baseline behavior is just as important.
Anika said:My biggest questions regarding all the new bike lanes,routes, etc. is what is being done about education - for pedestrian, cyclist, motorist, and enforcing officers. New lanes don't do a bit of good if no one knows how to use them and motorists/law enforcement just scoff at them. So far I've seen nothing.
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Permalink Reply by Lisa Curcio on
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Let me third that. Probably the most important question to be asked and answered.
Sarah D. 1-3.3 said:+1 Anika! I think infrastructure is great, but education and communication and agreeing on expectations about baseline behavior is just as important.
Anika said:My biggest questions regarding all the new bike lanes,routes, etc. is what is being done about education - for pedestrian, cyclist, motorist, and enforcing officers. New lanes don't do a bit of good if no one knows how to use them and motorists/law enforcement just scoff at them. So far I've seen nothing.
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Permalink Reply by David Barish on
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+4, but...
...I think some of that falls on the cycling community. education is something that all of us, advocacy groups, clubs etc. working with official organs such as the MBAC, need to do. This is a good way for the cycling community to get on good paper with the powers that be and perhaps actually get something done. After all, who iwill do a better job educating? riders or interns? How this is to be done is a good question. Let the conversation start.
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Yes, I agree with Anika's suggestion and would throw in taxi drivers as another needed recipient of some outreach -- I had to ask two cab drivers parked squarely in the Dearborn PBL to "move along" yesterday. But what are some ideas for how this can/should be done? In the first week after Dearborn was opened, ATA staff handed out fliers to pedestrians (and possibly drivers?). The "Look" stencils for pedestrians were nice but are almost completely faded, less than two months after they were added. I know that CDOT personnel meet with CPD regularly and likely bring up issues, but how far that penetrates to the rank and file, who knows?
David Barish said:+4, but...
...I think some of that falls on the cycling community. education is something that all of us, advocacy groups, clubs etc. working with official organs such as the MBAC, need to do. This is a good way for the cycling community to get on good paper with the powers that be and perhaps actually get something done. After all, who iwill do a better job educating? riders or interns? How this is to be done is a good question. Let the conversation start.
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As a start, how about eye-level signs? Eye level for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists.
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Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on
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+5 When I encounter problems with someone who might not be aware that they're creating a problem, I often start the conversation with "did you know..." and work under the assumption that they might not. The other person might be a pedestrian standing in the Dearborn bike lane waiting for the light to change, a driver standing or parking in a bike lane, or a person sitting in a designated bike area on a Metra train when I need to put my bike there. Sometimes person-to-person grassroots education can be just the thing. It's not a guaranteed solution, but it often helps.
David Barish said:+4, but...
...I think some of that falls on the cycling community. education is something that all of us, advocacy groups, clubs etc. working with official organs such as the MBAC, need to do. This is a good way for the cycling community to get on good paper with the powers that be and perhaps actually get something done. After all, who iwill do a better job educating? riders or interns? How this is to be done is a good question. Let the conversation start.
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First issue:
I'd like them to further look at the work they did on Halsted between Clybourn and Division. This is a stretch where the bike lanes and "safety spot for left turns" have actually just made it more dangerous. Southbound, cars use the bike lane from whatever that street is that joins Kingsbury (by the carwash) to Halsted as a car lane. This is because no one can figure out where to be going southbound. At Division it becomes two lanes, one for right turns/going straight. One for left turns/going straight but there's too much traffic to not have separate lanes for each action - Left, Straight, and Right. On the northbound side of the street, north of Division, the bike lane is essentially the gutter and if a bus is stopped at the division stop, the cyclist is completely blocked with no options. Cars and bikes both use the parking lot as a cut through to avoid division/halsted right there. They need to take the space from the road to the parking lot and use it to widen the street to accommodate the three lanes needed for southbound, the lane and bike and bus for northbound right there.
Also at this area going northbound more often than south, vehicles use the bike lane to drive in. The most notorious of drivers doing this are the buses! Drivers will go from the Division stop on Halsted and drive up the bike lane the whole way to Clybourn if there are no cars parked. We desperately need some enforcement in this area.
Second issue:
I'd like to see a bike lane put in on Lincoln going north from Ainslie/Western north to say Peterson or so. This street is extra wide and perfect for a bike lane. Currently the suggested bike route is to take California but it's too narrow and too busy for 2 way car traffic up in this area let alone adding bikes. It's also not conducive to commuting downtown. Cars on Lincoln currently illegally try to force this stretch of Lincoln into being a 4 lane road. It's not wide enough for that. But if we put bike lanes in, we'd be able to help slow down traffic (I hope) and give cyclists a better way to get from the north side of Lincoln Square down to the main path of Lincoln Ave and thus to downtown. I've mapped the area I'm talking about here for you
https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=212798332594360866115.0004d76d...
It'd be great if it could go further north but even this would help the many cyclists I see who live in the area.
Last topic I'd love them to consider is an bike lane awareness/enforcement program. I see something organized the last week of April/first week of May. Cops enforce some of the major known violated bike lanes during the morning and evening commutes. 1 week of real enforcement as cyclist numbers increase will make drivers wake up and be aware that they can not drive in bike lanes. Follow up with an end of summer one as well at the end of August/beginning of September. You don't need to enforce them all every day, even if it was a couple of days, one direction each. Have them pull people over and issue tickets.
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Permalink Reply by Charlie Short 2.9 on
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Siouxzi-
This is something we do every summer, all summer long. We'll be doing about 100 enforcement events like this from April through September. Last year we did 91 events and the year before we did about 50. We (actually Chicago cops) hand out tickets to motorists for all sorts of offences, including parking/driving in the bike lane, driving too close to bikes, and talking on cell phones.
Siouxzi Donnelly said:Last topic I'd love them to consider is an bike lane awareness/enforcement program. I see something organized the last week of April/first week of May. Cops enforce some of the major known violated bike lanes during the morning and evening commutes. 1 week of real enforcement as cyclist numbers increase will make drivers wake up and be aware that they can not drive in bike lanes. Follow up with an end of summer one as well at the end of August/beginning of September. You don't need to enforce them all every day, even if it was a couple of days, one direction each. Have them pull people over and issue tickets.
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That's great to hear, but I can honestly say, in the 10 years I've been riding I've only once witnessed a full-fledged, multiple-cops-out, stopping-every-offender, enforcement engagement and that was only in this last year when they officially passed the pedestrian right-of-way-in-crosswalk law and the city had started putting up the yellow in-street stop for peds signs. It was great to see and did a lot for slowing cars down and making them aware that this is a law. The only other enforcement I've seen is of bikes at Halsted/Clark a couple years ago where cyclists were warned on breaking laws and strongly encouraged to wear helmets.
If I can encourage you to do this at Halsted between Willow and Division I'd greatly appreciate it. It would help if you ticketed bus drivers for doing it too. When cars see buses driving in the bike lane it just tells them they can too.
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