Bikes and Peds Vs. Cars - Data from New York

The New York Times just ran a story this morning about a study of traffic related injuries done at NYU Langone Medical Center, Vulnerable roadway users struck by motor vehicles at the center of the safest, large US city, Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery: April 2013 - Volume 74 - Issue 4 - p 1138–1145. 

NYT article link: Study Details Injuries To Pedestrians And Cyclists In New York City  

Though it is behind the NYT paywall, the whole article is worth a look, as is the photo of a taxi picking up a passenger in the painted bike lane while a cyclist has to circle out into busy traffic to avoid it. That happens all the time.

They found that 40 percent of cyclists injured between December 2008 and June 2011 were hit by taxis, and over 80% of those injured were riding with traffic flow properly. The times of day when food delivery bicycles are underway were the most dangerous for cyclists. In our experience, the food delivery electric moped bikes in New York often ride haphazardly, they are frequently poorly lit, and they are everywhere — but not only traffic scofflaws were injured.

Most pedestrians injured on the street were crossing correctly at a crosswalk with their signal, and 6% were actually on the sidewalk! 

New York's transportation planners are apparently working to incorporate the findings of the new study into future traffic designs, including pedestrian plazas, bicycle lanes and traffic calming measures. Infrastructure there will be designed to separate and protect more vulnerable road users. 

There is no similar study we are aware of in Chicago, but taxi drivers here don't seem to be any more careful than their counterparts in the Big Apple, and traffic related injuries remain common here, too.

We also read this week that schoolchildren did a 'Bikeability Assessment' in Springfield MA which will be used to help design better traffic infrastructure there. 

Are there similar efforts underway in Chicago? What information could help designers make Chicago's streets safer?

Teaching Children About Dooring

New York street sign

Street riding with younger riders either on, in, or alongside a bike has many complications in Chicago. One of the most unpredictable yet frequent hazards is dooring. This is what happens when you or your child are riding along minding your own business and suddenly a car door flies open right in front of you, illegally opened by someone who didn't look first. The bike hits the door, you can sail over, and a lot of unnecessary damage is done.

Though it seems easy to stay out of the "door zone" to single riders, it's harder when you are responsible for a group of people of different sizes. Often the streets in Chicago are pockmarked with potholes, ruts, and work being done at the edges. These obstacles force us all as cyclists to move much closer to parked cars than we wish to ride. Also, staying far from where a door might hit you can be tricky when cars, or buses in particular, crowd riders into the edges of the lane and right into the door zone. Most safety guides recommend riding on the traffic side of a bike lane because of this.

Specifically teaching young street riders about dooring is essential to safe riding and the development of lifelong cycling skills in any American city right now. We teach our kids and kids on our bike trains about dooring from two perspectives: awareness of the mechanics of being doored, and the good riding skills that can lower chances of being doored.

Awareness of dooring

The Bear's Bicycle by Emilie Warren McLeod, Little, Brown, NY 1975

Our beloved book The Bear's Bicycle is our first step. When our kids were small we read the book and paid close attention to the page where the bear plows himself into an open car door. Sounds silly and the picture is funny but it is a great first step for balance bikers to begin thinking about doors. The bear is actually in the awful position, squashed by the door toward the traffic lane, that most riders are in when a door impacts a bike. Good to know. We look at it with our older kids too. Get a copy for yourself. 

The second step is to take the kids out on their bikes on our street during the quietest time of the day and open our own parked car doors to measure how far away from a car its doors will typically swing out. Two-door models are worst since the doors are longer. Truck doors are up high. Kids notice right away that the door zone is coincidentally just in the usual place where they ride to avoid traffic.

Showing children that they are less visible can reinforce to them that they need to be proactive with their own skills to ride as safely as possible on the street. We invite the kids to get in the car and try to see their brother "riding" behind them in the rear or side mirror. 

Now that they understand what the hazards actually are, we move on to ways to avoid them.

Skills to enhance safety from dooring, for kids and grownups who carry them

We practice riding a few feet out into the street, far enough not to be hit by opening doors. This is further into the main travel lane and closer to the moving traffic, which might be uncomfortable, but it's probably safer. 

We try to keep kids on their own bikes just in front of a grownup and a little to the right, so we can keep up the safe riding patter: "hey, that red car just pulled in, do you think the driver is going to get out?" "Ease on back to your left, OK? - you're in the door zone..."

Riding in the campus. Practice makes permanent.

We practice getting on our bikes on our own very quiet street and nearby university campuses and parks to test out ways to stay out of the door zone. Single file, traffic side of lane, etc.

Next, especially on our early morning rides and bike trains, we remind the kids that morning is a time when many people are sitting in their cars listening to the radio or drinking coffee. It's amazing how many people are just sitting in their cars. These people often open their doors without thinking. We practice looking ahead while riding to anticipate opening doors. We try to notice if a car has its lights on or just shut them off, if it has exhaust coming out, if the windows are steamed up or open at all, if a reflection of the driver's face is visible in the side mirror, or if it is a time of day when people sit in cars on our usual routes. These cars have people in them and their door might open soon.

We try to choose routes with less car parking and quieter traffic. For us this includes using Fulton and Hubbard streets - the packing district - as there are few cars parked on these routes when we use them to commute from school in the afternoons. The truck drivers there can typically see our kids better than the usual SUV or minivan driver on residential routes.

We try to ride a little slower ourselves, too, so if something surprising happens we have more reaction time to avoid it or brake. We try not to let cars "pace" us - hovering just behind and not passing. That would be the car that would hit you if you fell, and they distract you from the car door just ahead. Stop and let them by. We keep our brakes maintained well (especially the front ones that do nearly all the work). Sometimes we even move back onto the sidewalk with our kids, especially when a lane doesn't leave enough room to safely pass parked cars and avoid moving traffic at the same time. The kids' bikes have bright lights and we make sure they keep them on whenever they are riding, day or night, to improve their visibility. 

Streets with lots of car lurkers demand extra awareness. For example, Wood is fairly quiet and is a direct route for us, but it has lots of people hanging in their cars in the morning.  The kids try to glance ahead to scan for passengers in their cars to anticipate, ring their bells and move out of the door zone.

Could be doored by a cab on the left
or a parked lurker on the right...
Well designed bike lanes could make this safer.
(so could the kid keeping his lights on!)

Bike Lanes
Lastly we teach that bike lanes — even those with colors or extra striping — do not encourage drivers to behave differently, and that kids must use their skills and smarts to ride as defensively as possible. Even the newest Chicago lanes don't adequately address the problem. Car doors next to the new Dearborn lane easily extend into the bike path, for example. There's no substitute for teaching kids to use their skills and protect themselves. It enhances their ability to take good care of themselves on their own bikes.

The bicycle lanes that are now being installed in Chicago don't completely ignore the issue, though. Several are located on the left of the one-way roads, like many in New York, because while every car contains a driver who sooner or later opens a door, not as many contain passengers. Bicyclists are therefore less likely to be doored while riding on the left. 

Here is an interesting curbed lane we found
in a small business/residential part of Toronto

And many new Chicago lanes have a small painted buffer between them and traffic or parked cars that can give you a little extra space if anybody sees them. The lanes built between the curb and parked cars also address this to some extent because if someone opened a door into the bike traffic lane the rider would be deflected onto the sidewalk, not into traffic. However, cars basically ignore paint and we teach our kids to ride with this in mind. Car permeable protected lanes - the only kind here in Chicago - are only partially protected.  We teach our kids to stay aware of this on these lanes too.

Future lanes could be designed to support safety from dooring for children and all other riders. The two types of vehicle should be well separated, with different paths and signal systems, with impenetrable barriers like concrete or steel to keep cars out of bike space. This has been the only workable solution for pedestrians for years - they get at least a curb. Although even curbs and traffic signals don't always keep cars off the sidewalks, they are a minimum place to start. Bikes should have the same safety as pedestrians. As an added benefit, separated lane systems give car drivers one fewer thing to worry about, too.

We are lucky in Chicago to have a support system for riders who get doored or are involved in a collision. There is an extremely helpful crash hotline run by Active Transportation Alliance at 312-869-HELP (4357), and several law offices in town specialize in bicycle related issues - call the hotline, or look on the Chainlink links page for some of them.

Women Bike (Your City Here)

Yesterday we held our first Women Bike Chicago women's bike conference. Our conference yesterday was plenty of work but well worth it. It was also incredibly fun, building fellowship and encouraging new women riders.  Find great pictures of the day on our Women Bike Chicago group blog.

My last post about getting the summit up and organized had helpful information to get started. I hope that post and this one can be a useful springboard for you to create your own women's bike gathering of any size in your own community.  If women riders are the key to creating more riders we need each other to turn the wheels. The best place to start them turning is together in our own backyards.

The genesis of our day was the community we already have as women transportation cyclists here in our city.  Chicago has an online cycling forum called the Chainlink that connects cyclists across the city. There are over nine thousand members. Also, we have robust Kidical Mass, Critical Mass and Critical Lass rides going monthly. We also benefit from a strong community of long term tenacious women cycling advocates ready to help out with younger women riders eager to make change.

You may have less of this going on in your corner so you would rearrange your women's event to encourage what you see missing for women around you.  Your community will probably be very different from ours and your organizers will find their own purposes and develop the special things that will drive your presentations and activites. We started small but mighty and the Women Bike Chicago conference took on a life of its own.  If we can do it so can you!

Feel free to steal what might work from our day below as you build your own.  For more inspiration, our organization has also found a wealth of information from the Washington Area Bicycle Association's Women and Bikes initiatives.



Activities and Presentations to take away from Women Bike Chicago


The Bike Testing/Woman Mechanic/ Skills Corral

We did not want our day to be only about visiting with women that know and see each other all the time and who are strong riders already. We wanted to use the power of our fellowship to help other Chicago women ride.  Our location this year seemed small enough to reach each of our attendees personally and allowed us to have a safe calm outdoor space for women to try out bikes we all brought to let other women try out. Attendees could check them all out and see what felt comfortable to ride. We called it the bike corral. Each of us brought one or two different kinds of bikes — step throughs, cruisers, old Schwinns, kid carrying set-ups etc.  Like a bike test potluck.

Women mechanics from both West Town Bikes and the Cal Sag youth bike club shared basic maintenance advice at the corral too. Alta Bike Share brought one of the prototype bikes for Chicago's soon-to-be bike share and let us all ride it around.

Lastly we had certified cycling instructors on hand to help teach basic bicycling and city specific riding skills. Most women stuck to the testing and mechanics though.

Ride Buddies and Quieter Route Maps
Indoors, we had a registration table, coffee, two presentation rooms and a kids' area. In our hall between the registration table and the coffee, Julie hung maps of the city and brought colored dots coded to each area to stick onto attendee name tags. The colors let any woman know which other attendees ride in her area and facilitated an ersatz ride buddy meet-up at the conference. The dots got snapped up immediately and plenty of women found potential ride buddies.  Some women dotted their tags with a mix of colors since so many of us ride throughout the city.

The maps were also marked with less trafficked alternate routes to busy streets. This way attendees could find a quieter commute if they wanted one. Attendees wrote on the map where they wanted a less car trafficked ride and others highlighted their favorite quieter streets on the map.

Our Unique Presentations
The three national women's bike forums we researched had their own unique presentations. As we wanted to reach out beyond the existing cycling community, our forum reflected the idea that many of those coming to our day might need a fresh look at what the rest of us are used to doing every day already. We organized seating so questions were easy to ask, since we imagined they would be a big part of how the presentations worked.


Here is a list of our presentations:

Getting Back Out on the Bike at Any Age

Our keynote was given by Lisa — an amazing Chcago rider who spoke about her own experience returning to riding last year after decades off her bike. She made clear that every women in the room could too, if she could!  Our attendance really reflected Lisa's experience. The majority of our attendees were women from age 55 to 80 who wanted to get back out and ride for transportation. 

Practical Advice for Using Your Bike To Commute In Chicago

This presentation included using the bike not only on the streets but as a multi-modal tool with trains and buses. Given by Anne, a total expert who is also funny and compassionate.

Dressing for Comfort and Work Realities
Nuts and bolts advice for dressing for the work commute with comfort and work practicality from Julie and Cynthia, who are professional women well-versed in riding to work in all kinds of unfriendly weather and serious traffic.

Women Owned Bike Shop Owners Demystify the Bike Shop Visit for Women
Shop owner Justyna answered questions and gave advice for getting the most out of a bike shop visit including clues to knowing if a shop is friendly to women.

A Family Biking Sit Down
A roundtable with bike moms visiting with other wanting-to-bike moms to answer practical questions. Kids climbing all over were included.


Good luck creating your own Women's Bike gathering in your own town or city.  Reach out to me here at Chicargobike or to us all at Women Bike Chicago if you think we might be able to provide any encouragement or information from our own experience. Happy planning!

Latest bike hazard statistics available

The latest Insurance Institute for Highway Safety statistics about bikes are available: http://www.iihs.org/research/fatality.aspx?topicName=Bicycles&year=2011. 

(edit 3/2014: now all these fatality fact sheets are under http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/pedestrians-and-bicyclists/fatalityfacts/bicycles) 

Riskiest riding seems to involve men over 20 years of age, riding at dusk, urban areas, being drunk, or riding without a helmet. So the impression you get of who is a dangerous rider when you're out on Milwaukee Ave seems to be accurate. Notice that although the demographics of riders have changed a lot over time, the absolute overall fatalities have remained relatively constant. Are there more riders total now than in the 1970s and 1980s? Was there a group of especially unsafe boys growing up in the mid-1970s who are still getting into accidents? Interesting statistics.  

Mayors Make It Happen

I was reading the Guardian Bike Blog today about London Mayor Boris Johnson's huge plans to create everyday cyclists- to create "delycrafication"  through the creation of new cycling superhighways and enhanced quiet cycling routes through smaller friendly streets.

Click the picture to get to the Guardian blog article

In addition to the announcement by the mayor himself the Guardian has a great column by Bella Bathhurst about being a  brave London city cyclist or wanting to be one in London.  The column here carries a link to Boris Johnson's announcement.   I especially liked a comment she makes near the end of her piece that despite changes in London's infrastructure what potential riders need is a good mentor who already rides to help learn to navigate her city's streets. This rang true to me as well, as I feel the same in Chicago.

Two other things struck me — that our own mayor speaks out so often of the same de-lycra-fied riders and has the same drive to create better spaces and draw out everyday riders — and that he is also a Mayor.  I could not help but think also of Mayor Bloomberg and his commissioner Sadik-Khan.  It's the Mayors - they seem to be the ones making new lanes happen and growing ridership!  Why is it the Mayors who have the courage and the insight into how transportation needs to evolve to include cyclists in their cities?

New Year on the New Dearborn Bike Lane

We have been ringing in the New Year playing with our exciting new present from CDOT and Mayor Emanuel, the newly opened two-way Dearborn protected bike lane.  Considering the huge heralding the lane received we wanted to take our time and ride the lane a number of times under mixed conditions with the kids, collecting experience with it before writing this post.  If you missed the fanfare, the lane is located right in the central business district of the Loop, two-way between Dearborn Station in Printers Row and across the river to Kinzie St, then it continues in its old form unprotected and northerly-only above that. Dearborn car traffic is one way going north for most of the route.

Two of us happened to be at the opening and it's possible our small guy was the first kid to roll down the lane after his mom high fived the Mayor himself.  It was either touching or irksome to listen to Mayor Emanuel speak at the dedication ceremony about wanting children to have the freedom to ride to school in Chicago. If we are going to hype kids riding to school we need to actually make lanes they can use. So let's cut to the chase. How does this exciting addition to the Loop work for kids and families? Remember, we are not reviewing the lane for strong, experienced, grown-up city riders, as there are plenty of those reviews out already.

Applying our trusty new yardstick for family friendly bike lanes, is the new Dearborn two-way lane...

Protected enough?      

Likely to leave you hanging?      

Connected to useful destinations?

Protected enough?

Safe bike lanes have to be protected enough for an 8 year old to ride them safely.

The Dearborn Lane's somewhat blocked to car traffic, but it's still pretty easy for cars to enter, unfortunately. And to park on, which they do.  It's protected by plastic bollards, not by concrete, or tree planters, or other car-impermeable barriers, and there is no central post at the ends of the blocks to keep drivers out. Look around the Federal Buildings or Daley Plaza to see how this might be done differently.
The more permeable nature of the plastic bollard style lane requires parents to be watchful as they ride the lane with kids on their bike or accompany children on their own bikes.  It 's wise to remind kids that though the barriers give a far far more protected feeling -- especially to children accustomed to city riding -- they need to be watchful as well.

For example, on our ride a couple of days ago, a taxi was waiting in the bike lane for a fare and some other guy had simply left his car there. He came out just after this picture was taken and drove off in the bike lane. The taxi guy moved too after we explained the bike lane concept - he was nice but the lane was confusing him. Will this improve as drivers get more familiar with the lanes? Whether this improves or is just a small permanent wrinkle in using the lane, children need to be aware they need to deploy plenty of caution when pulling around any parked cars to continue on the lane. Other cars possibly moving on or out of the lane cannot see smaller young riders negotiating parked cars.  

Riders can still be 'doored' while riding the new lane. While we were on it last week a woman opened her car door into it  -- it's protected a bit by the buffer strip, but her door would have hit a rider going northbound.  Being mindful of these issues makes for a much safer family ride, especially traveling northbound.

The bike traffic lights are a huge benefit for young riders, pacing them and helping teach traffic rules, especially if all traffic follows the signals. And the bidirectional lane design is great.  It should always be clear on a good lane how to get back, and this one makes it obvious. One of New York's best lanes, on Broadway, has this problem since it's one-way. We have been wondering why every lane is not bidirectional like this new one on Dearborn.

     Summary: Protected-ish.

No infrastructure installed
yet over the Dearborn Bridge.

Likely to leave you hanging?
Safe bike lanes link safely to other good bike routes without spitting young riders or their families out into car traffic when the protected area ends.

The Dearborn Lane isn't completely an island. It does connect a lot of downtown.  We rate it right now as more of an archipelago, though, a series of loosely connected islands, hard to reach for less city experienced family riders.

Though the lane makes a huge part of the Loop itself accessible, we have had to carefully mix sidewalk and off-main-route traveling to get to the actual lane. The other bike lanes that cross Dearborn all along its route are just painted, unprotected lanes in the midst of intense city traffic. We use them sometimes with our kids on our bikes when we have to, but we don't at all recommend them to other family riders or to kids on their own bikes.

At the north end of the new lane riders can't get to or from the existing protected bike lane on Kinzie without riding through nearly 3 blocks of no-bike-lane, sharrows only, downtown traffic. At the south end there isn't much infrastructure waiting for them either.

Importantly, the bridge over the Chicago river is not bollarded or plated at all yet.  (Riding an unplated bridge with children, whether on your bike or their own, is totally unwise. Kathy Schubert probably doesn't do it with Suzy Schnauzer on her bike either.)  We understand the plates are coming, but they don't exist yet. Currently we move right off of the street onto the sidewalk at the intersection of Wacker and Dearborn before crossing at the light moving northbound, continuing on the sidewalk of the bridge.

Our usual routes to the lane have involved the sidewalk from Harrison and UIC to the south section in Printers Row,  a sidewalk mix from the River Walk at Wacker, or the Kinzie lane to the Merchandise Mart, walking the bikes on the sidewalk 3 blocks to Dearborn, then after riding a block or two getting off again and walking over the unplated Dearborn bridge before continuing south riding the lane.

With your children along, you need to figure out a safe way to it and away from it, whether to the museums or just to the small streets toward your neighborhood, and these options are not yet in place.  We will be very excited to update this post in the future as these hoped-for protected networks emerge.

     Summary: Archipelago of loosely linked islands

Christkindlmarkt at Daley Plaza this year

Connecting useful destinations?
Good bike lanes go somewhere useful, connecting destinations that families want to get to.

How can families in the Loop best use this lane? Well, it gives a good north-south corridor through the main part of the Loop, it's only two blocks to the Art Institute, it's close to the quiet streets that lead to South Loop, and it's near Daley Plaza. It goes by Jones College Prep, right by the Chagall wall and the Calder sculpture, and connects the Post Office, Library, bookstores, and some of our favorite cafes, including the Intelligentsia at the Monadnock building. It gives us a second route, much better that our old one, connecting Harrison Street to the center of the city.  Though it does not go near the other attractions in town like the Museum Campus, it misses the Mag Mile, the Lake Front Path, and offers only a fair connection to Union Station, its connections are awesome. 

With a larger number of protected connecting routes it would be even more useful to inexperienced family riders.

     Summary: Jackpot!

Fazit:
If the safety and connection issues develop into cleaner connections the Dearborn lane is close to a veritable feast of good destinations and could become a really usable route for families as the larger network grows in Chicago.

Our rating:

Protected-ish safety level 

Archipelago but not a total island 

rich with great destinations, Jackpot!

We'll be on the new lane a lot. And as more miles are added to the Chicago bike lane network, with improved lanes to link residential neighborhoods, the lake and the museum campus, this new Dearborn lane will become a bigger and bigger asset for family riders.  The increased visibility of family and independent child riders in the heart of Chicago on the Dearborn lane would be a powerful message of how good bike lanes can empower riders and instigate change. We hope that the Dearborn lane heralds the hope of a new beginning.

The challenges of a relatively car permeable protected lane like this one are not hard for our family to overcome, but less experienced family riders, especially those with children on their own bikes, may find their first few rides to and from the lane itself too intimidating to continue trying.  Which bring us back to our usual mantra. The challenge for our city is not funding or political will -- from our perspective, the main hurdle to more families riding in Chicago is lane design.

Our Mayor, or the Commissioner of Transportation, or CDOT's designers seem taken by the plastic bollard style infrastructure. This model leaves lanes too open, though, so cars can infringe on riders. Traffic is the main barrier that prevents kids and non-bike-enthusiast adults from riding happily. If our Mayor is as competitive as he believes he is, he needs to take a ride on a concrete protected lane in New York or Minneapolis and see what else is out there.

Other North American cities are incorporating concrete into their lane designs, which makes riding safer and feel more comfortable. Their ridership is rising more rapidly. We hope the City's designers look again at alternatives to the plastic bollards. Chicago put planters in the middle of the main streets before, so why not now?  We are lucky to have funding and political will -- Mr. Mayor, thank you for this new lane, now bring on the concrete trucks!

What makes a bike lane good?

After news of a handful of heartbreaking cycling accidents here in Chicago, a little pneumonia (but still plenty of riding), we have been thinking a lot about what is it to be a family rider here in Chicago.  The city now promises huge changes and brings a new rush of lanes and plenty of boasting about how many miles they are building.

Family riders, the older and the not bold have a different need for what makes a bike lane safe and usable than a hypothetical 22-38 year old male strong rider. Attracting this huge segment of bike traveler - people like us - is the constant mantra of the major cycling organizations in the country— including in Chicago. It follows that lanes which comfortably accommodate the largest swath of potential riders are the best long term investment for our city.  Good lanes speak for themselves. They get used without fanfare all over the United States.

In honor of the debut of the Dearborn Lane tomorrow here is our own yardstick from a family rider perspective for measuring the new lanes erupting in Chicago. It just so happens that we really do have riders in the family from 8-80!

Is the new lane...
     Protected enough?
     Likely to leave you hanging?
     Connecting useful destinations?

Protected?
A protected lane should be so protected from other traffic (and car doors) that your 8 year old nephew can ride it with you and tell you all about Star Wars without making you nervous. In other American cities (except e.g. Washington DC) and in other countries, this usually involves concrete. A concrete wall, car-proof barrier, or at least a curb keeps the teenage texting driver away from your kid, and vice versa. This is much better than a little plastic bat or simple paint as generally used in Chicago. Trees or planters or steel barriers are also strong enough to protect lanes.
Here in Chicago the gold standard protected lane is the Lakefront Path, which is separated by an entire park from traffic along much of its length.
A truly protected lane is also durable enough to last for years without much upkeep. If the bike lane is divided from the other traffic with concrete Jersey highway barriers it'll last a lot longer, be safer and be cheaper than one divided by paint or plastic bats, even without upkeep. You can't see paint under dust and snow or after it's worn away. You can see concrete.
Summary: Lanes get full marks if drivers can't drive into the lane; plastic bats and bollards are, um, protected-ish? Paint is just, well, paint.

Won't leave you hanging?
If Grandma and Junior are headed off to school on the bike lane and it only goes halfway before stopping and spilling them out into car traffic, like (among many examples) Kinzie at Wells, the lane doesn't make riding easier; it increases their chance of scaring them off their bikes. Lanes have to go the whole way somewhere without stranding riders in the middle of nowhere. A lane that is hard to get on and hard to get off is not helpful.
Summary: No good lane is an island.

Connecting useful destinations?
If a lane doesn't go near where normal casual family riders need to ride, it isn't that useful. A lane on Elston is nice but few families can use it to go anywhere efficiently. Why not put car traffic back on Elston and block off half of Milwaukee for bikes instead? Schools and shopping and train stations and so on should all be linked by the bike path network, not just factories and empty lots.
Summary: Simple routes to popular places.


All we wanted for the holidays was a nice bike lane in the Loop. We can't wait to try out Dearborn tomorrow and see what is in the box!

Making it Count for CDOT

Saturday my son and I spent two lovely hours together on the Monroe Street Bridge counting east- and westgoing bikes for the quarterly CDOT bike count. CDOT counts bikes at various intersections each season in an effort to study where riders are right now, where ridership might be grown with better infrastructure, where cyclists are crowded, and where sparse. You know what huge fans of honestly good all-ages bike infrastructure we are. It was high time for our family to get counting to help keep those good lanes coming. 

So my medium boy and I ran out of the house a little behind, after our computer printer refused to print out our charts. We grabbed extra paper, a few pencils and some snacks and hurried through the almost deserted Saturday streets through the outer loop to our assigned spot. We took a few minutes to find the best place to enjoy watching the shimmery sun on the river and see bikes coming from both directions. Then we cobbled together a chart from my memory of counting Tuesday morning. 

Counts happen in fifteen minute increments. We were counting both east- and westgoing riders. Men and women riders are noted separately. (My guy was wondering when they might start counting kids? Or old ladies? Hmmm..) Saturdays on Monroe Bridge are pretty quiet right now. Other counters were out on more buzzy bike thoroughfares.

Just when it started getting a little ho hum we noticed the bridges north of us were swarmed with men in orange vests. City kids love orange vests.  We traded off keeping our eye on the bikes and guessing about the swarm. Of course. The bridges were all opening to let the boats through from the lake. This was perfect, watched from our little perch from which we could see each bridge north. Open, close. Open, close. It was the most exciting when they moved us off our bridge and opened it right above us. He liked that we didn’t have to worry about missing any bikes while we watched.

After the bridges closed we played word games, got caught up together on everything happening everywhere and counted the bikes. It occurred to us that other kids might like counting bikes for CDOT as well. 

Counting bikes on a sunny Saturday morning might sound a little dull maybe but we were busy working with our clock to keep in the right quarter hour on the chart and remembering which compass direction the riders were coming from. My son loved being in charge of the pencil, clock and direction remembering. We also got a little silly noticing all of the different kinds of riders.

We both considered, perhaps, that this would be a fun non-ride weekend event for other Kidicalmassers and families that want to help the city grow into a better place for us all to get around. Family Math activity junkies obviously note oodles of math mania built right into our morning... A little team of kids and parents could take a busier place and trade off counting and playing to pass a very quick two hours. The next quarterly count will be in January. Maybe it'd be even better in winter with some snowballs and a big thermos of hot chocolate.
 
I’m sure you can see where this is going. If it sounds good to you check out the CDOT bike program page here and contact the project head to join the team working the quarterly counts.  Finishing up we traded tales with the other counters when we all met afterwards at the Picasso to turn in our data. The cyclist who counted alone on the hugely crowded lakefront trail was especially funny. Hint. Hint.

See you out there in January? 

Streets for (Family) Cycling Take Two

You can guess we both write this blog, my better half and I.

Readers can usually tell which of us has written what, though our writing is blended in many posts. To follow the post yesterday about what he doesn’t see in the Streets for Cycling Plan, and noting the excellent comments from our anonymous commenter, I get to throw in my two cents today. This post is all my work, yesterday’s was his.

From the Inside Out

I worked as part of the team of local riders who worked through this winter into spring to get input from around the city to shape the Streets for Cycling Network. This was a once-in-a-lifetime chance and I am more than grateful for having had the opportunity.

My volunteer work for CDOT and Active Transportation Alliance was eye-opening in many ways. Changing our streets is a complicated process but the team steering the project has a strong desire to make sure that the plan is devised by Chicagoans themselves. This is a new idea in street planning in Chicago: simplify the process by using as much public input as possible, in order to zero in on what will be used. Our team was given the power to organize as many meetings as possible to reach out into the city for public input from every kind of rider and non-rider.  

Now that the draft plan is out I have heard plenty of flak on the Chainlink, at home and around my neighborhood. I have also heard just as much about how community members from our meetings are excited by clearly seeing their input in the draft network. The network is under public review right now and anything you might want to share about it is on the table. 

Our city engineers are at these meetings and able to field technical questions you might have or note ideas not included. “Blah blah,” you’re thinking, “I can read this on the web page”... and you should, because my writing is not any kind of official take on the plan and you need to go see and comment for yourself.

What does it really take to influence the planning and get your voice heard? Why haven’t family cyclists been heard if they haven’t?

These are important questions if you agree with my husband’s post. 

My answer — whether I agree or not — from my own experience would be that the threshold for hearing from family riders in Chicago is pretty high.  Though we held three to four meetings a month in our region from December to March, very few to absolutely none of the riders who came to our meetings were used to riding with kids in mind, much less carrying their family along for the ride.

Advocates for children or families who are not currently comfortable riding were a more active part of our region’s input.  And others of our city regions were organized by teams that included a family rider, so family riders were represented, but our job in the CAGs was not to give only our own insight. Luring other people to the meetings to get their information was the point. There are not that many of us to lure who already actively ride comfortably in Chicago with our kids, and we tend to clump in a few neighborhoods in the city. 

For many reasons, no one in your family might have been able to get to meetings for Streets for Cycling or give input. It’s just hard for parents to get to meetings — especially on winter school nights.  It’s key to making the plan for an 8-80 network to hear from families, but if the input from families is extremely low the planners are not going to know what we need and we will realize less change from this plan.

In my experience, the engineers and planners working on this project are deeply interested in all of the information they can get about how to create good lanes for the city. In a process built on input, the perspectives that are not shared with the planners can’t necessarily become a huge part of the planning. 

The bottom line is that family riders— or anyone else— feeling left out of the draft plan need to share their thoughts about their own regions and other parts of the city at the public meetings, by email or by webinar. 

I heartily suggest participating in one of the two public meetings, that are left, as they are good forums for getting interesting questions answered in a give and take atmosphere. It’s not too late yet! And it’s just the beginning.

On to making good family riding infrastructure into reality...

The chance to influence how this plan is actually realized means giving input now and then many more meetings and much more input, and direct work with your Alderman and other city and state representatives over time as the plan is made a reality.  That means all of us need to keep coming to meetings, probably for the next few years.

The Bikeways Campaign Coordinator at Active Transportation Alliance is laying the difficult ground work for each Ward to grow a pedestrian/bike/transit committee which will get movement going on the Streets for Cycling plans once they are done. This means that you need to reach out to Active Trans and your own Alderman, and find out how far along your own Ward organization is. 

Equitably establishing these committees throughout the entire city is a difficult but  important task for Active Trans to undertake. 

Helping your community take this step is essential. The funding to create the bulk of real safe lanes for the youngest to oldest riders in Chicago eventually rests in your Alderman’s budget. Check out the web sites for Bike Uptown and Walk Bike Lincoln Park, two committees that are up and running now.

  

Chicago’s “Streets for Cycling” Bicycle Plan Is Not Streets For Families (Yet)

The Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) has been working hard for months on a new bicycle network system for the city named Streets for Cycling. There were public meetings we listed here. One of us has been working on the project, but the other of us — me —  hasn’t. After months of wondering what was being cooked up, I finally saw the public unveiling of the draft network plan last week. The short summary: despite a lot of good talk and useful extension of existing commuter lanes into the South and West, this draft version is unfortunately not a network that families can use much. It must be improved. With YOUR family's input. 

The CDOT Streets for Cycling Meeting
Many more photos of specific network maps and a general review at OneLessMinivan

An “8 to 80 network” was the main stated goal— a grid of cycling lanes so obviously safe that everyone from 8 to 80 years old feels comfortable on them — while increasing bicycling share to 5% of trips under 5 miles. Both these goals call for a safe network because only about 8% of the population now feels safe enough to use the current system according to CDOT's data. Unfortunately, the draft CDOT unveiled last week won’t achieve these goals. Here’s why:

If The Network Doesn’t Feel Safe New Cyclists Won't Come.

When evaluating a new bike lane, put yourself in the position of a parent about to take 3 kids down it, or an aging or less-than-fit person about to go shopping on it. A strong 25 year old with a fast bike and nothing to carry can happily ride anywhere. This is how I'm looking at the draft network plan. As designed so far, it won’t feel safe for everyone, because the kinds of lanes they chose aren't designed to be safe for everyone:

Protected Lanes:  The Safest Solution But Only 1/6 Of The Network

Protected Lanes elsewhere fully separate car and bike traffic, so cars can’t hit you even if they try. These lanes feel safe because they are safe. They use concrete barriers, overpasses, signals for different types of vehicle, and bike paths through spaces such as parks (like Chicago’s Lakefront Path). They keep children, parents and grandparents safe on their rides to school, playdates, work or shopping, and keep late night cyclists from weaving into car traffic. Because these main bikeways in places like Copenhagen or Amsterdam are safe, people there ride bikes often. They feel safe. In cities with less protection, there are fewer riders.

New York has put in some good lanes though it's not like Amsterdam:

Broadway NYC protected lane. Parked cars, lots of space

3rd Ave NYC protected lane. Concrete, cars.

 

Here in Chicago, CDOT will build some Protected Lanes with parked cars or tree planters between car lanes and bikes (or might they consider steel, concrete, or stone bollards, or Jersey barriers?). I’m looking forward to riding on these. But CDOT also calls lanes “protected” that are just divided from traffic by plastic posts, which (as on Kinzie or 18th St) are easily destroyed or removed by CDOT. Unfortunately, Streets for Cycling includes a lot more of these lanes. And they don't plan to fully protect the main routes, even with plastic. New riders won’t feel safe and they’ll stay away. The new Protected Lanes need to offer real permanent protection, with separation by concrete, steel, parked cars, or trees.  

They took out most of the plastic sticks in May.
Will concrete barriers be coming?

The Kinzie lane had lots of posts when it went in.
Protected by parked cars, this is OK.

Buffered Lanes: they sound better than they are

These are on-street bike paths like the existing ones in Chicago, but with a wider painted “buffer:” a double white line, a foot or two wide, with stripes inside. What’s keeping the driving, texting teenager away from the woman biking her grandson to the park? Only paint. Paint wears off and you can’t see it under snow. It’s not enough.  

If CDOT can put the same painted lines between parked cars and the curb, though, the lane can become truly protected. I don't buy CDOT's argument that there isn't room. If there's no room they should use a different street.

from the CDOT site. Would your friends who are afraid to ride take their 8 year old on this? 

Painted Bike Lanes: They Don't Keep Families Safe

There are many of these already in Chicago, the ones with a single white line. This class of lanes also apparently includes “sharrows”, regular car streets with occasional bike symbols painted on them. CDOT is planning hundreds of miles of these because it makes the network look big cheaply and achieves their goal to get a lane within 1/2 mile of everywhere. 

But seriously, would you like to take your 8 year old on a “Bike Lane” like this? It’s a lot like taking her out on a regular street without a “Bike Lane.” How will that increase ridership? Save the paint, CDOT, and build me another mile of real protected lane with a solid barrier. 

In Summary, The Plan Lacks The Needed Safety

The planned bike lanes, except for solidly protected ones, are not safe enough to convince new riders to start taking bikes. It is clear that the stated goals, accessibility for every rider from 8 to 80, and increasing to 5% of trips under 5 miles, are not even offhandedly addressed with the current draft of the Streets for Cycling plan. 

Other Quibbles

Though the network does extend commuting routes into new areas, which is great, again it favors young healthy fearless riders by using simple unprotected lanes like the current ones. CDOT spent a great deal of time at the meeting discussing branding to make this more appealing. “Bicycle Superhighways”?  “Four Star Routes”?  “Spoke Routes”? — they will have banners and decorated posts, but not much protection.  This branding isn’t a good use of resources. If the lanes are safe, well-designed travel spaces, they won’t need catchy names; they’ll just get used by everyone all the time. The ones that feel safe to a grandparent going shopping or a mom with three kids headed to the park will be a success; the others will be a waste of funds and public goodwill, with or without banners.

A lot of people have put a lot into this plan...

It’s inspiring that public input has identified the streets that people want in the network. Many people have put time, energy and money into bringing the draft network as far as they have. There is a lot of input there, but maybe not enough from families yet to make something that will bring parents and kids out to use bikes as transportation for those trips 5 miles and under that CDOT is aiming for. 

It’s disappointing that the most important riders for building bicycle usage — women who are afraid to ride now — have to be heard more. The design looks like it was made by people who haven't regularly transported kids, or ridden with aging parents, or run errands on a properly designed bike network — though the engineers are doing good work translating people's input into infrastructure, they still haven't heard about these things enough to build us a network we can all use. 

As a result, the draft doesn’t meet its own goals. The Streets for Cycling plan was intended to get everyone — not just enthusiasts — out on bikes, but it simply won’t unless we change it fast.

So what can I do about it?

Bring your friends to the upcoming meetings, write to CDOT on their website, talk to your alderman and talk to other people you know, bicyclists or not. The non-bicyclists might be more important to the success of this project than the cyclists. The network must be made safe enough for everyone to want to use it. Make CDOT fix this now.

Upcoming CDOT meetings to review Streets for Cycling 2020 Draft Network plans:

(here is the PDF of the slide show)

(maps from the CDOT site at this link: http://www.chicagobikes.org/public/SFC.php )

Gary Comer Youth Center - Exhibition Hall, 3rd floor
7200 S. Ingleside Ave.
Thursday, May 31st, 2012
4 – 8 p.m., presentation with Q&A at 4:30 & 6:30p.m.

Douglas Park Cultural and Community Center - Ballroom
1401 S. Sacramento Dr.
Wednesday, June 6th, 2012
4 – 8 p.m., presentation with Q&A at 4:30 & 6:30p.m.

Open House
77 S. Dearborn – Building Lobby
Saturday, June 9th, 2012
10 a.m. – 4 p.m.

Webinar #1
June 11th
12 – 1 p.m.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at: http://goo.gl/6JRQc

Webinar #2
June 13th
6 – 7 p.m.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at: http://goo.gl/CQSS9