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Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on February 3, 2013 at 5:03am

When going North on the trail I turn off to the left one block before Green Bay, I forget the name of the road.  There is a big crosswalk across McCormick that hooks up with the gravel path which makes it easy to cross.  The crosswalk has a big "cars must stop for peds" sign so don't be surprised if cars will stop for a bike too. 

I go one long block and turn right at the next road past the large school campus that sits in this block nuzzled up into the corner of Green Bay and McCmk.  Whatever road that is crosses Green Bay with a light and then goes under the Metra tracks.   Take the first left onto the service road parking-lot thingie along the tracks and follow that all the way up to where the trail officially starts.  There is one spot where there is a kiddie-park that really is not good to ride through during the day as there are kids and moms on the tight walkways.  It is easily skirted around if one takes the alley-type road past the garages that goes around this park.

I keep on the parking lots even when the GB trail starts as those narrow sidewalks are ridiculously weavy and often filled with mindless zombie peds and dog-walkers.  Past the fire station I take the driveway too as the sidewalk/trail goes by that chain strung on bollards which would be very painful to fall onto. I was nearly bumped into it by another bike passing me from behind as I slowed down for a couple of peds as they obviously didn't want to slow and figured bumping me was a better option.  Since that day I don't go that way.  Past that point it turns into a nicer trail and goes all the way to Highland Park.  If one doesn't like to grovel in the gravel, the road can be jumped on around Ravinia and it it's not very busy.  That goes all the way to Highland Park.

This is my regular ride because it is fairly easy to navigate.  From my place in LS to HP and back it's about 42 miles.  I usually do it in just under 3 hours.  It could be ridden a bit faster but there are quite a few stoplights along McCormick that take a while to change, and there are spots on both trails where riding at 18-20MPH is just plain rude if not totally unsafe for peds and other trail users.   Sometimes if I am in a more adventurous mode I'll keep on going past Highland Park and do a loop around Ft. Sheridan.  That adds an additional 8 miles for a full half-century.

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Permalink Reply by Duppie on February 3, 2013 at 8:30am

There is even more good news to report for the North Shore Channel trail!

In the same federal grant announcement there was a $580,000 grant to the City of Evanston to improve the path from Emerson to Green Bay road: http://www.cityofevanston.org/news/2013/01/evanston-receives-580000...

While the trail will remain non-paved, it will get better drainage and widened to 8' where possible. It is described in the Ladd Arboretum master plan on page 23: http://www.cityofevanston.org/parks-recreation/ladd-master-plan.pdf

Currently the path is rutted, and often floods after rain. This improvement should make it easier to get to Bridge St., which is where I usually exit the path to ride north to Lincoln Ave and take Lincoln Ave east under the UP-N tracks.

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Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on February 3, 2013 at 9:05am

Thanks for the links Duppie.  There is some great reading there.

I really like the park the way this park is set up now other than the paths getting really run down and needing more care with fencing along the channel and other basic infrastructure crumbling.  I am glad they are not going to disturb or redesign it too much or destroy any of the existing older trees and shrubbery trying to make it different or "new & fresh."   The international garden and rotaries are treasures that should not be removed or altered IMHO.

Unfortunately the flow of the paths through the international gardens and the rotaries are not very well suited to bike travel -at least not when increasing it with much more traffic than is already coming through there.  Officially linking it to the Green Bay trail eventually would bring a lot more bike traffic and ruin the gardens for pedestrians and nature lovers.

I feel that instead of building up the gravel paths bike lanes should be installed on McCormick past the park.  A protected lane running on the current road would be easy to implement as the road is very wide and there is a 10-foot unused center no-mans-land in the center that could be used.  There is a ton of space to work with here on the current roadway.   Pushing the auto traffic together without open space would slow down and calm traffic.  Keeping a buffer space between oncoming lanes like it is only encourages faster driving anyhow.  

I think that a nice wide 2-way protected bike lane along the roadway next to the park is what they should do and encourage bicyclists to use it rather than travel the crushed limestone paths in the park itself.   Leave those to the pedestrians and move bike traffic to a protected lane onto the paved street along side of it.  This also buffers the park itself from fast-moving auto traffic that is currently moving along a traffic lane abutted to the curb. 

Or if that would cost too much then just install painted lanes on both sides of the road and move the driving lanes to the center.  This would involve no more added infrastructure than repainting the roadway in the section past the park. It wouldn't reduce traffic flow because it is only 1 lane each way now. 

I often will take McCormick anyhow rather than go through the park at that point  But because of the nature of the lanes being "un-calmed" traffic tends to blast through there quite a bit faster than the posted limit, and many folks would rather buzz you on your bike at 18-inches than pull towards the middle of the road and go into the yellow painted center area.   This is just silly if you ask me.  Push the car lanes together which will calm them to drive slower and within posted limits, and give bikes a place to survive at the same time -a win/win situation if I ever saw one. 

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Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on February 4, 2013 at 7:00am

A PBL with a small raised curb could carve out 6-7 feet from the East edge of the roadway on McCormick and allow the existing bike trail to the South to simply peal off of the channel trail at the point where this park is located, completely bypassing it and proceeding alongside it until Green Bay.

The other alternative would be to pave 6-feet of the grass along the curb but because of the way the park is built and laid-out  this would destroy many of the smaller trees and bushes that are up against the road.  Even right up against the road it would mess with the symmetry of the rotaries and the paths in the International Garden and be a general eyesore IMHO in a garden-like setting.  

Using 6-7 feet of the existing road (which is more than wide enough to give up that amount of room without effecting the traffic lanes one bit) is the best solution IMHO.

But I doubt that the folks up there (This is in Evanston right?) are forward-thinking enough to implement such an idea.  I doubt it will ever happen.  But cutting through this garden-park with ever-increasing bike traffic is going to eventually become a larger problem in the long run. 

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Permalink Reply by DanGer 8.2mi on February 4, 2013 at 7:52am

Ald. Stone's wiki picture shows him asleep at his desk. How fitting is that? 

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