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Permalink Reply by Paul Lazzaro on July 9, 2017 at 11:35am

The suburbs are tough for cycling.  The Prairie Path is nice, if slow (and messy after a rain).  But riding for transportation outside of your little residential neighborhood is hard to do without ultra-detailed route planning.  I love transportation cycling.  I was miserable in the suburbs.

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Permalink Reply by Marcelo Marcos on July 9, 2017 at 1:18pm

I just got off the pace bus that takes me to the trails and back to the El Train. Can't complain too much. Although I have had my shares of hunks and yells out there. Cars get more comfty getting up close and personal. Brings me right back to my hometown. 

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Permalink Reply by Jim Reho on July 9, 2017 at 2:02pm

There are suburbs that don't even have sidewalks, much less bikeways.  And then there's exurbia, those cookie-cutter developments in the middle of nowhere in DuPage, Will and Kane counties, where you can't even think about doing anything or going anywhere without jumping in one of the family SUVs.  Places where people want to live because they can buy a bigger generic house, yet still clog the roads on their 75-mile-a-day commute to work somewhere far away.  

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Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on July 10, 2017 at 3:44am

I'm glad that Mary Wisniewski covered this. I've ridden with Jane and seen the kind of conditions she experiences. Parts of Blue Island are lovely for riding. Others are very challenging. 

Much of the housing stock in Blue Island is old, but there are many railroad lines through the town, as well as major truck routes and industrial areas. This presents a different set of challenges compared to a newer suburb with limited-access subdivisions. Blue Island and many other suburbs on rail lines have limited crossings over some of the rail lines, funneling traffic to those crossings, railroad crossings that may be hazardous for bikes, and lots of big trucks.

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Permalink Reply by Alex Z on July 10, 2017 at 5:48am

Good observations; never thought about these challenges to an otherwise "grid-like" network.

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Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on July 10, 2017 at 7:29am

Around the southern and western edges of the city, the impact of our freight infrastructure is HUGE with respect to bikeable routes. Highways and waterways have a similar impact.

For an extreme example, look at the nearly impenetrable barrier created by the parallel routes of I-55 (the much-hated Stevenson Expressway) and t.... For all that distance, there is no safe on-street route to allow cyclists to cross those 2 barriers. The only option there is to put your bike on a bus or ride along the side of the road, where there may or not be a sidewalk, and there's likely to be broken glass and garbage.

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Permalink Reply by Tony Adams on July 10, 2017 at 7:53am

and the canal? your link text got cut off...

And it get worse, look at the same map with the Bicycling option toggled on. It is profoundly lacking in safely ridable streets and nearly devoid of bike infrastructure.

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Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on July 10, 2017 at 9:18am

Sanitary and Ship Canal - yes.

Turning on the Bicycling option shows how the lack of bike infra really is in that area.

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Permalink Reply by Jared on July 10, 2017 at 4:17am

I think suburbs like Oak Park are much more pleasant to ride in than Chicago.  Side streets don't have nearly as many parked cars and the grid like system offers a lot of variety.

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Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on July 10, 2017 at 7:30am

The same is true for most of Evanston. Some of our inner-ring suburbs are quite pleasant, if they aren't loaded with freight infrastructure.

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Permalink Reply by Tony Adams on July 10, 2017 at 7:56am

Or forest preserves? Which I love of course, but they can make for some pretty miserable cycling if one is trying to ride from east to west or vice versa pretty much anywhere along the length of the Des Plaines river.

EDIT: If one has time and the mud/flooding permits, riding through rather than around the forests can be a lot of fun, but still one is usually funneled to the major streets to actually get across the river.

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Permalink Reply by Skip Montanaro 0mi on July 10, 2017 at 9:18am

As an Evanston resident, I have an opinion on that. :-) For the most part, traveling north/south in Evanston is fine. If you want to travel west, Church and Main are your only safe options, and Main isn't actually a good option until you reach McCormick. There are limited routes crossing the North Channel. I'm sure it's not nearly as bad as Anne's report about I55 & the Ship Canal.

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