route suggestions, Bucktown to Oak Park?

I'm planning to visit my friend in Oak Park (near East & Madison) on Tuesday evening and would ideally like to bike there and train back to Bucktown (near the Western Blue Line stop).  Only trick is, I almost never ride west of Kedzie, so I'm not really sure what the best route would be.

Google wants to send me west on the 606, then west on Armitage, south on N Laramie Ave, and west on Washington Blvd.  I'd just skip the 606 and do the whole stretch west on Armitage.  Despite the dotted green line on the google map, Laramie doesn't look much different than any other street on Street View; the city doesn't even appear to have put any pointless sharrows down.  So I have no idea if it is really busy or the pavement is any good, etc.

My eyeballs on the map say to go down Damen until Washington, then Washington all the way west.  That way I get non-PBL lanes for most of the route, plus I know the stretch south all the way on Damen.

Does anyone have any alternative suggestions?  I'll be biking there in the 5pm-6pm range.  I don't generally mind riding on streets without bike lanes, but I'd like to avoid accidentally putting myself on a Western-like stroad or other highway-ish mess full of high-speed traffic and angry drivers.  I also know very few of the neighborhoods between home and Oak Park, so I don't know if any of them are particularly dangerous for a cyclist on a nice bike during daylight hours.

Thanks!

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Permalink Reply by Kyle Mac on July 25, 2016 at 11:24am

I sometimes commute from Humboldt out through Oak Park in the summer, and I've always used Washington both directions.   

My route is Kedzie to Franklin to Central to get to that point on the way out, but Damen down to Washington probably works easier for you. 

A lot of people have a lot of different feelings about Strava, but way-finding on a new route like this I've found their user "heat maps" to be pretty useful.  http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#15/-87.72300/41.88651/blue/bike

Permalink Reply by Dave Goodell on July 26, 2016 at 4:00am

Cool Strava link :)  There's got to be some sampling bias there, but it's still useful info.

Permalink Reply by Dave Goodell on July 27, 2016 at 8:58am

Thanks for all the advice everyone.  I ended up taking Damen south to Washington, then west to Oak Park from there.  Other than a surprising number of other cyclists using the westbound lane to travel eastbound, the trip was uneventful and pretty low stress.

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