The Chainlink

Warning/question about the North Channel trail

We rode the NCT to Evanston yesterday and found it (though generally a great ride with very few people around) under construction along McCormick in a couple of places, and it was really poorly marked. Does anyone know where info on this work and its timeline can be found? 

I also laughed about the detour signage referring only to pedestrians - what up? Are cyclists - primary users of this route - chopped liver? Apparently so.

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Permalink Reply by Charlie Short 2.9 on July 9, 2012 at 3:31pm

To be super technical, this part of the trail, while marked as a shared use trail, was not very bike friendly to start with. If you've ridden on it in the last 10 years, you'll know what I'm taking about. Every other part of the trail is well maintained except for this. The repave from a few years back was a temporary fix, and a lot of the old sidewalk/concrete trail was still there/underneath it all.

If I was going to guess as to who was in charge of the trail in that section, I would guess Lincolnwood. It's been ripped up for a while (at least a month,) so let us know if you find anything out. I will do the same.

Permalink Reply by Duppie on July 9, 2012 at 3:57pm

Noticed that about 3 weeks ago. No upfront warning at all. Luckily we came from the north side, so we veered east on Touhy and south on Kedzie.

On the other hand, going to Lowes next to the Lincolnwood mall is not that bad at all. They recently put a pedestrian crossing light in at Northeast Parkway and McCormick Blvd. And the parkway itself is a lightly travelled road with a bikelane

Cameron Puetz said:

That detour is amazingly terrible, even by the low standards of bike detours. There is no mode of travel where going through the Lincolnwood Town Center isn't a terrible experience.

Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on July 9, 2012 at 4:17pm

The Kedzie detour isn't all that bad.  In fact it's a way I sometimes go anyhow, construction or not, due to the dumb retrograde back-track route when crossing at Lincoln.   The Kedzie chunk works quite well and you can make good time.

The only issue is going Norhbound when it is sometimes hard to determine how far to continue on Kedzie to completely clear the construction.  It's been a couple of weeks since I rode it so things might have changed a bit.   Where is the construction stopping and starting these days?

Permalink Reply by Liz on July 9, 2012 at 4:28pm

This is the problem I had, knowing when to get over to Kedzie when going north, wish that was marked at a detour.  Basically if you stay on Kedzie when the trail crosses over the river at Lincoln, until Toughy or Howard and then cross the river you're totally clear of this mess.  

Its been frustrating how slowly this work is going. 


James BlackHeron said:

The Kedzie detour isn't all that bad.  In fact it's a way I sometimes go anyhow, construction or not, due to the dumb retrograde back-track route when crossing at Lincoln.   The Kedzie chunk works quite well and you can make good time.

The only issue is going Norhbound when it is sometimes hard to determine how far to continue on Kedzie to completely clear the construction.  It's been a couple of weeks since I rode it so things might have changed a bit.   Where is the construction stopping and starting these days?

Permalink Reply by Liz on July 9, 2012 at 5:00pm

They went from having the annoying concrete passable section of the path, to blocking the whole thing off sometime in mid-may. 

Serge Lubomudrov said:

I think we (that is, Will, Alex and me) saw the beginning of these repairs on our way to Wisconsin border on May 13th. The trail was still passable then, didn't slow us down much.

Permalink Reply by Sarah D. on July 9, 2012 at 5:02pm

I've written to the village of Lincolnwood to try to get an update or someone to let me know what's up. The area is somewhere between Pratt and Touhy - it's cut up twice (d'oh tried to re-enter too early only to  hit another unannounced roadblock). I guess to be safe I'd stay on Kedzie all the way to Touhy? Lame, but...

Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on July 9, 2012 at 5:03pm

Up until a few weeks ago (3 or 4 maybe?) you could get around the construction areas by taking one of the other paths closer to the river.   Some of them had some fairly soft recently-added gravel sections though.  I suppose if you were running skinny tires some of those sections would have really sucked.

The first time I couldn't pass through at all (without crossing the road and taking the sidewalk detour) was 2 weeks ago coming back from the Monday night training ride going Southbound.   I simply jogged over to Kedzie and got by the whole mes on the other side of the channel. After Lincoln I just re-joined the trail on the East side of the river.

Knowing the area is a big help.  I feel sorry for someone coming up to that and not knowing how to bypass it easily.  The "detour" signage looked like a last-minute afterthought to me.  They spent little or no time actually thinking about and marking a bicycle-friendly route around the construction -unlike when an auto route is detoured and they lay it out with multiple orange signs so nobody with a >room temperature IQ could get lost.  I suppose it worked marginally well for peds.  For bikes it looked like hell.  So I bailed Eastward to Kedzie.

Permalink Reply by Sarah D. on July 9, 2012 at 5:50pm

So true Cameron! Hilarious.

James BH, agreed - that's what was so baffling...like oops, we forgot about the main users of this path! Oh well. I'll have to try Kedzie next time. Wish someone (ATA?) would take the whole route under their wing and make sure it's clear where to go at each break in the paths, and make sure all construction actually moves along and is thoughtfully executed. 

James BlackHeron said:

The "detour" signage looked like a last-minute afterthought to me.  They spent little or no time actually thinking about and marking a bicycle-friendly route around the construction

 

Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on July 9, 2012 at 5:58pm

Kedzie past Touhy continuing to Howard is a good detour.

Liz said:

This is the problem I had, knowing when to get over to Kedzie when going north, wish that was marked at a detour.  Basically if you stay on Kedzie when the trail crosses over the river at Lincoln, until Toughy or Howard and then cross the river you're totally clear of this mess.  

Its been frustrating how slowly this work is going. 


James BlackHeron said:

The Kedzie detour isn't all that bad.  In fact it's a way I sometimes go anyhow, construction or not, due to the dumb retrograde back-track route when crossing at Lincoln.   The Kedzie chunk works quite well and you can make good time.

The only issue is going Norhbound when it is sometimes hard to determine how far to continue on Kedzie to completely clear the construction.  It's been a couple of weeks since I rode it so things might have changed a bit.   Where is the construction stopping and starting these days?

Permalink Reply by Charlie Short 2.9 on July 9, 2012 at 11:41pm

I would go Kedzie to Touhy, especially if you aren't familiar with the area, Howard and Kedzie can be a disaster. When they repaved that section the trail in 2005-2006, I remember it taking about 3 months.

I heard that the alderman is looking to finally build the bridge at Peterson. All of the engineering is done, so the effort to just build the thing wouldn't be that hard.

Permalink Reply by Steven Vance on July 10, 2012 at 12:05am

You have all graduated transportation planning and engineering school. Not really, though! Recognizing the problems that create barriers to human powered transportation is just the half of it! The second half is figuring out how to fix it. 

I look forward to hearing a response I hope Sarah receives from the Village of Lincolnwood. 


Cameron Puetz said:

Even for pedestrians that detour is a disaster. The sidewalk ends when you get to the mall property so you have to walk in the parking lot. Also there are several poorly designed intersections with lots of oblivious turning traffic.

 

Where should I go now?

http://goo.gl/maps/X5LJ 

Do you think any drivers are looking for a pedestrian here?

http://goo.gl/maps/lxaQ 

No walk signals and all traffic from the mall turning, which phase of the light cycle would be a safe time to cross back to the trail?

http://goo.gl/maps/FalX

At least the sidewalk comes back if you decide to try the next light to cross McCormick.

http://goo.gl/maps/nQgj

Once again all cross traffic is turning, and there is no walk cycle.

http://goo.gl/maps/EqKM

 

Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on July 10, 2012 at 7:01am

It seems to me that a bridge was at one time planned at the section just north of Lincoln to cross the channel.  Perhaps I am mistaken, but I can't see the reason for the strange loop-de-loop backtracking of the path North of Lincoln on the East bank.   It even seems that the path on the West bank was designed to meet up to the other side of the bridge here -and instead seems to just dead-end at the water after ramping down to it.  It's not really a park or anything special down there -just a path down to the rive without a purpose.

Or is this part of the park North of Lincoln still called "Peterson Park" even though Peterson the street is  a couple of blocks south of there?



Charlie Short said:

I heard that the alderman is looking to finally build the bridge at Peterson. All of the engineering is done, so the effort to just build the thing wouldn't be that hard.

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