Chicago bicycle plan

[Paul Turner]

There was a story in today's Chicago Tribune about the city's plans for
encouraging cycling. Most of it has to do with physical infrastructure, but
there is an educational component too. I think Chicago has a comparitively
good record of following through on this kind of thing, so I expect some of
this to happen. The subhead is misleading; the plan isn't for 500 miles of
paths, fortunately. I've just copied the first few paragraphs and a URL for
the rest.

CHICAGO'S MASTER PLAN
DON'T DRIVE. JUST BIKE.

City peddling new proposal for 500-mile network of paths to be finished by
2015

By Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah and James Janega
Tribune staff reporters

June 11, 2006

Chicago is set to unveil new plans for becoming a bicyclist's haven. And
this time, it means business.

The new Bike 2015 Plan wastes little time on breezy rides in the park.
Instead, the city's Department of Transportation is bent on getting people
to bike to work, to school, to stores and to mass transit stops, cobbling
together a 500-mile network of designated routes.

Understanding that bicyclists' greatest enemies--aside from sloth--are car
doors, right-lane passers and other street perils, planners looked around
the world for new safety ideas.

From Geneva, Switzerland, they got the idea of raised bike lanes, a layer of
pavement above street level and below the curb that would help dissuade
motorists from veering into cycling territory. By 2010, the city hopes to
experiment with raised lanes in a few locations.

In Copenhagen, Cambridge and other places, planners saw bicycle lanes
colored a startling shade of teal green, thermoplastic markings they hope to
duplicate at some Chicago intersections to try to warn right-turning cars to
watch for bikes.

Like its predecessor in 1992, the new strategic plan lays out the city's
vision to make bicycling an integral part of Chicagoans' daily lives.

It offers few details and specifies no costs, though it does point to
federal grants and private funding.

The plan does not say where the new miles of bike lanes and improvements
would be located.

But, with a strong track record of delivering for cyclists, the city is
thinking big: a bike route within a half-mile of every resident; a 50-mile
circuit of bike trails, with some off-road paths to be announced later this
year; 185 miles of new bikeways altogether.

By 2015, planners hope, 5 percent of all trips shorter than 5 miles long
will be made by bike.

http://tinyurl.com/gvsjw

--
Paul Turner

 

[Rich Clark]

"Paul Turner" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> There was a story in today's Chicago Tribune about the city's plans for
> encouraging cycling. Most of it has to do with physical infrastructure,
> but there is an educational component too. I think Chicago has a
> comparitively good record of following through on this kind of thing, so I
> expect some of this to happen.

Chicago is a leader in many areas of forward-looking urban planning, and it
comes from visionary leadership. I know many Chicagoans who are too close to
see just how far ahead the city is when compared with places like, say,
Philadelphia, where the cycling infrastructure is mostly some poorly located
lines on the streets and where the plumbers union won't allow waterless
toilets in new high-rise buildings.

Chicago is *already* one of the great cycling cities in North America -- and
not coincidentally, a world leader in "green" urban planning. I hope the
Chicago cycling community is generous with its praise and support of the
leadership that's made it that way.

RichC

 

[landotter]

Rich Clark wrote:

> Chicago is *already* one of the great cycling cities in North America -- and
> not coincidentally, a world leader in "green" urban planning. I hope the
> Chicago cycling community is generous with its praise and support of the
> leadership that's made it that way.


Yep. I lived there for several years as of four years ago, and it was
perfect for cycling. Smartest thing they ever did was put in those bike
racks. It legitimizes bikes so that they're not an afterthought, and
make securing your ride much more confidence inspired than locking to a
meter.

 

[Jeremy Parker]

[snip]

> CHICAGO'S MASTER PLAN
> DON'T DRIVE. JUST BIKE.

[snip]
>
> From Geneva, Switzerland, they got the idea of raised bike lanes, a
layer of
> pavement above street level and below the curb that would help
dissuade
> motorists from veering into cycling territory. By 2010, the city
hopes to
> experiment with raised lanes in a few locations.

[snip]

Here in Britain those are known as "cycle tracks", and are the
classic bike facility from about 1930 onwards

We have a number of them here in London, although many vanished,
unmourned, with the road widening that began in the 1960s. They
were, and still are, the classic facility in the Netherlands and
Denmark, although those countries did begin to import new thinking
from the USA and Britain in the late 1970s. It's nearly sixty years
since I saw my first ones, in Copenhagen in 1948.

They used to be classic in the USA, too. Robert Moses - see Caro's
book "The Power Broker" for more about him - built many miles in New
York City in the 1930s. Read the old New York Times issues on
microfilm for details. You can still see much of their remains.

In Britain, at least, they quickly developed a bad reputation. Cars
hit bikes where their paths cross, and that is at intersections. At
intersections cycle tracks make cycling more dangerous, not less,
yes, even in the Denmark and the Netherlands.

By 1958 Britain's Professor Sir Colin Buchannan was writing in his
book "Mixed Blessing, The Motor in Britain"
"The meagre efforts to separate cyclists from motor traffic have
failed, tracks are inadequate, the problem of treating them at
junctions and intersections is completely unsolved, and the attitude
of cyclists themselves to these admittedly unsatisfactory tracks has
not been as helpful as it might have been."



Jeremy Parker