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I would fully support a 10 mph speed limit for bikes when near pedestrians or during daytime hours.
I rode the path home from work Friday afternoon. It was busy but not too crowded so I took it easy and cruised. While it was busy most people were quite courteous and conscious of where they were on the path and their surroundings. Only two people out of several hundred were being stupid. One was a cyclist who was in the left lane talking on his phone. The other was a guy running on the blue strip while his dog ran in the center of the path with the leash stretched out between them. All others with dogs kept them curbside on short leashes.
That being said this really needs to be treated as a path through a park and not a trail. I understand some people were sold the idea of this being a potential commuter highway but the reality is it's too busy for that. Even if you're upset that this is not as useful for commuting as hoped for, you still have to admit it's better that this exists and is being used vs. just leaving the abandoned tracks as they were.
At $25 MILLION/mile I'd put my vote in the "better left as it was" column.
Typical Chicago crony-capitalism. It's only money...
Geez. I think we heard you the first 5 times.
I still think it's great even if it's not really an appropriate place for bicycles. Although my foamer friends think it would be an even greater place to put a train....
you still have to admit it's better that this exists and is being used vs. just leaving the abandoned tracks as they were
All other things being equal, yes. They're not equal. Leaving the tracks as they were cost $0; building this thing cost $95 million, $50 million of which came out of a pot that was supposed to be for commuting projects, which will now suffer because that money was spent on a park with little or no commuting value instead.
I was under the impression that the federal grant portion of funding was provided specifically to build the trail. That we wouldn't have had the money if not for Bloomingdale project. Not a case of here's $50 million for commuting projects and it's up to you how to spend it. However nothing I found in 10 minutes of google searching indicated one way or the other.
I based my comment on a paragraph from this DNAinfo article:
Taking the Bloomingdale Trail as an alternative to walking or biking along east-west thoroughfares North and Armitage avenues is an apt use, considering the majority of the $95 million needed to build the trail came in the form of $50 million worth of federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality grants, which are earmarked for commuting projects.
I rode it yesterday for the first time. I went from about Ashland to Albany and must have seen a couple thousand people riding, walking, skating, hanging out, pushing prams and leading dogs. It is a great place to take a walk. A decent place to take a run and an ok place to ride a bike. Still, it was very cool to be on this path sharing it with such a large variety of people of every age and every color. I doubt I would use if for a regular commute and I would hesitate to bring a kid there on a bike. Still, just seeing how many people were enjoying the path clearly answers the questions about it's usefulness. For now the path seems to draw the city together and get people outside moving their bodies. I had a very positive reaction to being on the 606 even if my short time on it dramatically reduced my average speed for the day's ride.
My second weekend using the trail was great.
In awe of how most of the pedestrians ( with the exception of a few who intentionally felt the need to not share ) stayed towards the side of the path to let me cruise easily through.
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