First year University of Chicago student Elliot Sher was biking west on E. 59th Street on November 2nd on his way to class. This was his routine every Monday and Wednesday—he turns right as he exits the International House dorm towards campus, following the same route at the same time every day. Only this time, he ended up getting stitches at Student Health Services instead of attending his usual class.
I found out when our mother texted me asking if I’d spoken to my brother:
I called her, thinking from our text conversation that Elliot was hit by a bus. Instead, I found out that Elliot had biked into a parked van and hit his head, after a bus drove him off the road. He explained that the bus wanted to pass him, so the driver honked and got right behind him. When Elliot swerved out of the way to let the bus pass on his right, the driver sped up, forcing Elliot even further to the side. He didn’t have enough time to break, so he slammed into a parked van and hit his glasses into the side of his head, leaving him with a black eye and stitches on his right eyebrow.
It could have been worse. Despite being recognized as one of the best big cities for bicycling in the country, Chicago has excessively high reports of bicycle injuries and deaths. In 2016, the Chicago Active Transportation Alliance reported 2,816 bike crashes, with 2,635 injuries and 13 deaths. While incidents started to taper through 2020, they started increasing again, with 8 fatalities in 2020, 10 in 2021, and 8 through the first nine months of 2022. The data follows a troubling national trend: bicycle crashes have increased by 5% in the last year, and fatalities have increased nearly 40% over the last decade.
Protecting bikers from cars sounds like a straightforward goal; no one wants to hit a biker while driving, and no one wants to put themselves or their children in harm’s way while riding a bike. So, what’s standing in the way?
Chicago’s history of missed metrics
Despite over half a century of commitments to investing in better bike and pedestrian infrastructure, Chicago has a long history of struggling to keep up with its plans to do so. Throughout their combined four decades of service, Mayors Richard J. and Richard M. Daley were among the most influential mayors in the city’s history of bike infrastructure development. In the ’60s, the first Mayor Daley designated 14.5 out of 18.5 miles of Chicago’s public lakefront for bike paths—a significant and unprecedented move towards biking accessibility in public spaces. He additionally added 34 miles of on-street bike lanes, designated 250 miles of bike routes throughout the city, and introduced “rush-hour bike lanes” on Clark and Dearborn Streets, which only take into effect during rush hour to make biking in heavy traffic safer. Despite the strong start, the pace began to slow. The second Mayor Daley tried to follow suit in 1992 with his administration’s introduction of the Bike 2000 Plan, recommending that the city develop a minimum of 300 miles of bike lanes to make Chicago bike-friendly by 2000. However, in 2016, the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) had just built its 290th mile in the Chicago bikeway network—still shy of the goal set 24 years prior.
Despite not yet reaching the Bike 2000 Plan’s goals set several decades before his administration, Mayor Rahm Emanuel released his own plan in 2012 for developing a 645-mile bike lane network by 2020. He set a more short-term goal of installing 100 miles of protected bike lanes by 2015. As of July 2022, there were just over 400 miles in the network and only 35.9 miles of protected bike lanes—woefully short of Emanuel’s administration’s goals. Current Mayor Lori Lightfoot and her Department of Transportation’s Commissioner Gia Biagi set their sights on a new set of goals that sounded more in line with recent developments in their Chicago Works infrastructure investment program. The 5-year, $37 million plan aims to add 100 miles of new bike lanes over two years and upgrade 28 miles of protected bike lanes with concrete curbs through 2023.
Mayor Lightfoot has been largely successful by her plan’s standards, adding 75 miles of new bike lanes and upgrading 25 miles of protected bike lanes in the first two years of her administration. However, it’s worth examining the specific types of lanes included in the existing 400-mile network, as not all lanes are equal. First, the network includes just over 30 miles of neighborhood greenways, which refer to smaller residential streets with bike demarcation where cars naturally move slower—quite safe for bikers. Second, it also includes 36 miles of protected bike lanes, which describe physical barriers of either concrete or flexible delineators (reflective posts, though, per the new Chicago Works plan, these will soon entirely be replaced by concrete) that protect the lane from divers on any type of road. Third, there are over 55 miles of off-street trails, which include the lakefront path and some trails along the woods in Forest Glen. These are of course the safest, as they are completely removed from traffic, though they are difficult to expand on given the need to use roads to travel across Chicago. Fourth, there are nearly 117 miles of standard bike lanes, which have no barrier protections and are instead marked with “bike-only” paint. Fifth, there are about 114 miles of buffered bike lanes, which add a foot of hashed paint lines that act as a buffer to separate bikers from traffic. Even though it is illegal for cars to drive in buffered and standard bike lanes, there is no physical barrier preventing them from doing so, leaving bikers at risk. Lastly, there are 52 miles of shared lanes, which are nearly completely useless, with just a painted arrow on a normal street to indicate to drivers that there might be bikers on the road—these performative “lanes” account for more than 12% of the 400 miles of bike lanes throughout the city.
Who are lanes for?
Most of the activism from safe transportation advocates in Chicago boils down to that glaring characteristic of many bike lanes throughout the city: current infrastructure doesn’t allow cars, bikes, and pedestrians to share the road safely. Patrick Miner, a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, is one such advocate, who studies ways to reduce car use and improve the quality of urban life in cities like Chicago. He splits his time between Edinburgh and Chicago, where he has been a constant advocate for improving the safety of biking, walking, and transit infrastructure. He’s worked with organizations like Bike Lane Uprising, which crowdsources bike lane obstructions, and Active Transportation Alliance, a coalition that helps produce reports, briefs, and legislation for environmentally friendly and safe transportation. Patrick explained to me that in order to truly be safe, bike infrastructure needs to either be segregated from cars or not on the street: “Cycling isn’t dangerous on its own, it’s only dangerous when you introduce motor vehicles to the equation.” He did acknowledge that cyclists additionally have the natural risk of falling and getting some scrapes, bruises, or a broken bone–but that kind of safety should be bikers’ only concern.
According to Patrick, Chicago’s infrastructure is “completely inadequate.” In fact, with the standard of safety of bike lanes being measured by segregation from cars, fewer than 100 miles of bike lanes in Chicago would be classified as safe bike infrastructure. As for the remaining miles of buffered bike lanes, standard bike lanes, and shared lanes, sure, it’s technically illegal to park or drive in the lanes. But that usually doesn’t stop drivers from doing so anyways. For example, this November, Mayor Lightfoot and her security detail (two large SUVs) parked in the bike lane on North Avenue for ten minutes as they went inside Roeser’s Bakery for donuts.
Patrick described Bike Lane Uprising, a program started in 2017 and managed by Christina Whitehouse, which exists for the key purpose of identifying those bike lane obstructions. Anyone who finds a car or object blocking a bike lane can take a picture and upload it to Bike Lane Uprising’s database for them to analyze and report to the city. From 2018 to 2021, the program received more than 25,000 bike lane obstruction reports in Chicago. Each obstruction is supposed to receive a $150 ticket (though in some places in the city closer to the city center, the fine is $300), which, aggregated, would have raised $5 million that the city could have allocated towards bike lane infrastructure safety improvements. The database allows researchers and activists to illustrate the lack of safety without protected bike lanes. Specifically, Patrick explained that he and Bike Lane Uprising can use the data to communicate the seriousness of the issue to entities like CDOT, or even to the Department of Streets and Sanitation and Chicago Police Departments who are often themselves bike lane obstructors.
Bike lanes aren’t planned equally
The hyperlocal nature of the Bike Lane Uprising database also lets any user interact with a map of the obstructions by ward, which identifies troubling trends beyond the danger of biking in the city, including the inequality in safe bike lane construction in different areas throughout Chicago. Anyone can see just by scrolling through the list of wards that there are significantly fewer miles of bike lanes on the south and west sides than there are on the north side. Patrick pointed me towards a stark example. Ward 5–the South Shore area–has bike lanes on just 7.1% of its 75.4 miles of roads, whereas Ward 47–the Lincoln Square area–has bike lanes on 17% of its 68 miles of roads. Five wards on the south side don’t even have reports of bike lane obstructions because all (with the exception of Ward 9) have two or fewer miles of roads with bike lanes. The lack of bike lanes on the south side creates unsafe biking conditions for all bikers. Jesus Barajas, Assistant Professor of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of California, Davis, conducted a study on inequality in biking in Chicago from 2017 to 2019 that reaffirms Bike Lane Uprising’s data: On average, there are 50% more bike lanes in white neighborhoods than in Black neighborhoods.
What Chicago police officers lack in diligence in penalizing bike lane obstructions they make up for in aggression in ticketing bikers who ride on sidewalks. Indeed, 90% of tickets issued from 2017 to 2019 for all incidents involving bikes (including incidents that involved automobile interference with bikers) were for riding on the sidewalk, which is illegal for all riders over the age of twelve per Municipal Code section 9-52-020b. Lack of safe on-road biking infrastructure oftentimes forces riders in Black neighborhoods onto sidewalks, so they are ticketed at significantly disproportionately higher rates than riders in white neighborhoods. That’s why from 2008 to 2016, the top 10 neighborhoods for tickets issued for biking were all predominantly Black or Latino, and why Black neighborhoods had two times as many tickets issued than majority Latino or white neighborhoods. With fines of up to $250 per offense, trying to ride safely poses a significant burden. Community Policing Director Glen Brooks seemed to view the inequality more as a feature than a flaw, arguing in 2018 that Chicago police officers were using bike enforcement as a means of cracking down on violent crime: “When we have communities experiencing [high] levels of violence, we do increase traffic enforcement . . . This isn’t a matter of targeting bicycles, it’s a matter of targeting violence.”
When I discussed bike infrastructure inequality with Patrick, he pointed to racist policies that fail to take the full picture into account and grasp the seriousness of the lack of safety. He used an anecdote, articulating that too many people think that the biking issue is just about a wealthy person living in Wicker Park wanting to ride their bike to their job in West Loop. “That is not the full picture of people who use bicycles for transportation rather than leisure.” Patrick explained that of the 35 people killed in Chicago so far this year while walking or cycling, many were people of color. Many were commuting to work. Six were children. Bikers depend on cycling to access their work, healthcare, grocery stores, education, etc. In fact, data from the US Census Bureau shows that in Chicago, bike commuters are over-represented among individuals who make under $25,000 annually (over 40% of bikers). “The inadequacy of Chicago’s cycling infrastructure . . . is a social justice issue.” Researchers and activists like Patrick have taken on the responsibility of showing politicians, elected officials, and appointed officials the true extent of the harms of lack of safe biking infrastructure.
It does seem like CDOT officials have taken notice of the disparities in existing bike lane infrastructure. The official CDOT website underlines the fact that three-quarters of all bike lane expansion since 2019 has occurred on the south and west sides. Additionally, Complete Streets Chicago, the safe biking, walking, and transit infrastructure entity within CDOT, highlights several specific projects, like the improvement of five intersections on Chicago Avenue and five on Madison Street to make it easier and safer for students on the West Side to bike to school.
Places, not streets
Complete Streets Chicago is appropriately named to signal the city’s alignment with the National Complete Streets Coalition. The nationwide coalition was launched in 2004 by Smart Growth America to advocate for a paradigm shift in transportation policy and design. Its ultimate goal is to implement practices that allow all people regardless of age or ability to access all destinations in cities and towns by foot, transit, automobile, or bicycle.
Chicago adopted its first Complete Streets policy over a decade ago in 2006, so in theory the city should have made significantly more progress in providing safe transportation infrastructure. CDOT went even further in 2013, creating the Complete Streets Chicago government entity through a set of guidelines that offer a robust framework for street policies in Chicago. For example, it established a modal hierarchy to inform future road design and improvements: Decisions generally should be made per the hierarchy of Pedestrian > Transit > Bicycle > Automobile. Per the guidelines, policymakers have the responsibility to observe how roads are used and always work to improve them.
Today, Dave Smith runs Complete Streets Chicago, overseeing all on-street bike infrastructure development in Chicago through the Complete Streets paradigm. Dave is the “in-house expert on bike lanes” at CDOT and has worked as a transportation planner with the city for more than a decade. Even before working for CDOT directly, he was an independent consultant who managed the entirety of CDOT’s Bicycle Program, including buffered bike lanes, protected bike lanes, and neighborhood greenways. If a bike lane is more recent than 2011, there’s a more than likely chance that Dave had something to do with it.
I had the chance to ask Dave how he plans bike lane development and how his department decides where bike lanes go. Before answering my question, Dave explained the flaws in the historical model of bike lane infrastructure development. Prior plans have been opportunity-based, where planners have only incorporated them into pre-existing projects based on whether a street can fit a bike lane as is. Having 400 miles of bike lanes sounds like an accomplishment, but Chicago is massive and diverse, so that kind of street-by-street development leaves stretches of disconnected bike lane development.
“It’s hard to talk about the benefits of cycling in the city, which are vast and include things like supporting local businesses, sustainability, public health, engagement with young people, mobility empowerment, etc. . . . when you’re talking about just one street at a time. It’s much easier to talk about, and for people to picture and imagine those benefits, when you’re talking about it in the context of an entire network within the community.”
So, Dave took a new approach to create a connected network of bike lanes throughout Chicago by directly involving local communities. Chicago is a city of neighborhoods, and Dave sought to use that as a feature of—not a barrier to—bike lane development. His department set up community task forces made up of trusted and important stakeholders within neighborhoods that have been traditionally underserved by non-personal-auto transportation, including local leaders, teachers, and high schoolers. They articulated how they move around, when they move around, and where they’re going, thereby allowing CDOT to plan, design, and build safe and connected routes to where people want and need to go. Dave found that people wanted to prioritize short, neighborhood trips, such as to the park, school, a friend’s house, local businesses, public transit, etc. He made infrastructure about places, not streets.
Dave also explained some of the biggest successes from when the program, Neighborhood Bike Networks, first started in 2021. Belmont Cragin, Austin, and North Lawndale on the west side were their first targets. The CDOT website explains that the community-based approach led to the creation of 45 miles of new connected bike lanes in these neighborhoods. They take up most of Wards 24 and 29 on the west side—which previously only had a combined 12.4 miles of bike lanes across their 174.6 miles of road—a dramatic improvement for previously neglected bikers. Dave was particularly impressed with their success in Belmont Cragin: “That’s a community that had virtually no bike infrastructure. I think we just about quadrupled the miles of bicycle infrastructure in the community, which we did in partnership every step of the way with the community.” The program is continuing with the same models in neighborhoods like Brighton Park, Gage Park, Little Village, and South Lawndale, changing their priorities each time to stay in-tune with each neighborhood’s needs.
But what about connecting the city as a whole? While the neighborhood network process is incredibly important, Dave makes sure to balance it with the need to build out an entire city-wide network. He has been targeting streets like Milwaukee Avenue, S. Halsted Road, and S. Damen Avenue, building both larger and longer corridors to connect people between neighborhoods and manage the massive size of the city. “It’s [about] really balancing those two different scales of the importance of going block to block within a neighborhood and building trust . . . as well as balancing that against the goal of building a connected network across a very big city.”
To improve infrastructure throughout Chicago, Dave’s team utilizes both policy and design. For the former, they’ve been lowering the speed limit to 20 miles per hour for both residential streets and some commercial streets along new bike routes to create “low-stress” bike paths. With regards to the latter, they’ve been adding protected bike lanes to commercial and arterial streets—especially near busy intersections—to ensure that bikers can be safe regardless of reckless driving.
True to the name of the Complete Streets department, Dave explained that they’re also focusing on the relationship between bus stops and bike lanes. They’re installing bus boarding islands (50 as of the most recent update) that allow buses to stop in a travel lane and board passengers without pulling over to the curb and risk hitting a biker. This will give bikers more room on streets like Clark and 87th, allowing them to avoid conflicts with buses, and give pedestrians more space to wait for their buses.
Dave is optimistic that his team’s plans have significantly expanded the demographic of bikers over the last several years, especially in the targeted communities. “These are communities where there’s interest at a grassroots level for mobility and transportation. These are communities where the bike share system was expanding too, and also [ones] where there has not been a lot of bicycle infrastructure on the ground.”
Shared bikes
Of course, when Dave referenced the “bike share system,” he was referring to Divvy bikes. CDOT Commissioner Biagi reported that the Divvy bikeshare system has been seeing record-high use throughout the city’s bike network, with over 7 million rides from 2020 to 2021. July and August 2021 each set records, with over 800,000 rides each month. CDOT attributes the rise in part to the pandemic’s inspiration for the desire for Covid-safe and sustainable forms of transportation and recreation. As a result, CDOT added an additional 3,500 electric pedal-assisted bikes in 2021—on top of the 3,500 added in 2020—while committing to further expanding service throughout the city. Their goal is to increase Divvy bike accessibility in the same areas where they expand bike networks, like Wards 24 and 29, to both promote and protect biking.
CDOT has been operating Divvy with the goal of increasing bike use throughout the city since they first launched the program in 2012. It started with 750 standard bikes and 75 stations and now includes 16,500 total bikes, 7,000 electric bikes, and more than 800 stations. The massive expansion came from a 9-year contract with Lyft in 2019, costing Lyft an initial $50 million investment and $6 million annually for the distribution of bikes and scooters. In return, the city pays Lyft back $1.5 million annually and $20 million from the total revenue of the Divvy program at the end of the contract, seemingly a net gain for the city and for Chicagoans who now have increased mobility access. Dave explained that the implementation of new stations was done intentionally in accordance with neighborhood network projects to ensure that it would complement the development of new bike routes.
But the massive investment still begs the question: Why spend millions on Divvy expansion when the funds could have been used to improve bike infrastructure that is still lacking in both quantity and quality? The Divvy stations on Michigan Avenue are a clear example; while there are seven in the Central Business District (bound by E. Randolph Street and W. Roosevelt Road), biking or scootering on Michigan Avenue is terrifying (a mistake I made once and will not make again) and doing so on the sidewalk is both illegal and dangerous with the high volume of foot traffic.
While speaking with Patrick, who also consulted for Divvy several years ago, I asked if Lyft would lobby for more and safer bike lane infrastructure for their bikes and scooters. “No.” It’s a funny predicament for Lyft, because even though the company operates the Divvy network and has invested tens of millions of dollars into it, their primary source of revenue is, of course, from ride sharing. They sponsor the Divvy program to boost their own name, not because they see it as a way to phase out reliance on ride share revenue. As a result, they have no interest in removing cars from roads to improve conditions for bikers. The paradox with Lyft’s choice of investments highlights one of the most substantial barriers to accelerating the rate of improvement of bike infrastructure: cars are too ingrained into society.
Mindsets, money, and politics
I also had the chance to ask Courtney Cobbs, co-founder of the safe and equitable biking and pedestrian infrastructure advocacy non-profit called Better Streets Chicago, about some of the impediments to improving non-automobile infrastructure. Their diagnosis? People fail to grasp that the real issue is that drivers are actively antagonistic and have no regard for the safety of those who aren’t also in a car. Courtney wrote an article in StreetsBlog about an interview with the organizers of biking communities in Lakeview East and Roscoe Village, who described the idea that “safety is within the car.” They elaborated further to me: “I think a lot of people are not aware that subconsciously their use of a car within the city is sort of like putting on armor. I sometimes use the phrase ‘people wearing a car’ because 50% of all car trips within the city are under 3 miles.”
Courtney was referencing a 2019 study by INRIX Research, a global transportation analytics company. The study of more than 50 million car trips found that 48% of them in US metro areas are less than three miles, on average. Chicago is worse than the national average with 51%, ranked as the city with the fourth highest percentage of car trips under 3 miles in the country. In fact, 22% of them are under one mile, further emphasizing Courtney’s point. The fact is, people are too attached to cars. That makes it difficult for aldermen (councilmembers) and other city officials to persuade their constituents of the benefits of expanding bike infrastructure, let alone to get elected in the first place by advocating for the decrease in car usage.
Chicago City Council’s layout compounds the issue of political hesitations. There are two “layers” in implementing policy in Chicago. First, aldermen must vote to pass the mayor’s proposed budget for CDOT funding. Then, once passed, individual aldermen can determine where—or if—new infrastructure is developed in their wards. They have what has been known for decades as “aldermanic privilege:” the unwritten tradition of the city allowing aldermen to gatekeep projects. For example, 5th Ward alderwoman Leslie Hairston exercised her aldermanic privilege when she refused CDOT’s proposal to convert a lane or two of Stony Island Avenue to bike lanes in 2016. There were two biker fatalities in 2015 and another in 2018 on that stretch of road alone. On top of its deadly consequences, Courtney explained that this leads to “patchwork-y” infrastructure, based only on whether individual aldermen are on board with development plans, thereby contributing to the dramatic inequities in bike lanes across wards.
Sometimes the plans don’t even make it past City Council approval. As with most issues in American politics, it comes down to funding distribution. Because of the status quo’s flawed mindsets and over-reliance on cars, “it’s a zero-sum game,” Patrick argued. “If we’re spending money on bike lanes, we’re maybe not spending that money on resurfacing a road . . . or adding another lane to a road because someone decided that it needs more capacity for motor vehicles.” Regardless, it is not that the city doesn’t have money for bike lane infrastructure improvements; from 1996 to 2015, CDOT added 1,000 miles of new expressways and arterial lanes. Active Transportation Alliance estimates that expansions to and reconstruction of the I-294, I-290, and I-55 cost an estimated $7.4 billion. Worse, the billions spent on expansions haven’t saved Chicagoans time or money on transportation: hours lost in congestion have increased from 31 to 73 per commuter per year. And, gallons of fuel wasted per vehicle increased from 10 to 30 from 1982 to 2017. With progressively higher fatalities in accidents involving a motor vehicle, infrastructure priorities need re-focusing.
There’s a bigger issue at play, too, that is compounded by the over-reliance on cars. Beyond driving too much, drivers are reckless. In 2018, there were 118,304 accidents involving a motor vehicle in Chicago, with 123 resulting in at least one fatality, 21,881 resulting in at least one injury. CDOT reported a 14% increase in speeding on Chicago roads in 2020 and 174 traffic-related deaths in 2021 on Chicago streets. If any other mode of transportation like trains or airplanes had these kinds of statistics, there would be a swift and decisive implementation of new safety protocols. But there hasn’t been, because of the hesitation to interfere with driving. So, with rampant speeding, drunk driving, and distracted driving, bike lane improvement isn’t the only concern. Low-stress bike network development that focuses on increasing driver safety by lowering speed limits and adding impediments to driving (such as traffic circles, curb extensions, and raised crosswalks) is crucial.
Flipping the script
Activists and researchers will need to figure out how to overcome the uphill battle of decades of car-centric thinking to change the mind of Chicago residents and powerholders while also figuring out how to make driving a safer activity. I asked Courtney how they can change the perception that safety is in the car, and we spoke about ways to “flip the script.” We have to ask the question: “What would it take for [you] to feel safe [biking]?” And what about understanding that driving isn’t the safest activity, either? That starts with pointing out that traffic crashes are common within Chicago and that SUVs, the most common vehicle type on the road today, actually make streets more dangerous for people both inside and outside the car. Courtney suggested simple ad campaigns that show drivers how much carbon dioxide their vehicle emits for every mile they drive or for every hour spent in their car. Or maybe ads that show how many people are killed both from reckless driving and from lack of access to safe non-automobile infrastructure. “I think people aren’t even aware of what cars are taking away from them.”
Showing those statistics and flipping the script should better equip Chicagoans to get the right officials elected and appointed, people who are suitably aware of the lack of safety and who won’t prioritize driving, which Patrick argued is critical. For Courtney, though, once better politicians are elected, personal preferences shouldn’t matter anymore: “I don’t think our bike infrastructure should be something that’s left up to public approval, especially when most of the public drives.” Of course, Courtney recognizes that Chicagoans who cannot see how they personally benefit from bike infrastructure improvement will be vocally upset about it and against construction. “But that’s not the way we implemented roads, it’s not the way we implemented sidewalks. We didn’t go around and say, ‘hey, are you ok with this sidewalk in front of your building?’” This top-down approach, the same ones cities use for sewer work, electricity provision, trash pickup, education, etc., is one which potentially clashes with Dave’s Complete Streets approach of community-focused development. If CDOT is actively listening to community requests and strategically mapping bike lane networks based on neighborhood convenience, would they need to rule with an iron fist and implement lanes irrespective of public approval?
Ultimately, CDOT may not have to. Dave explained that over the last 10 years—and since the start of the pandemic in particular—the attitude towards biking has changed dramatically. “The types of people and the variety of people who are riding a bike has grown immensely. It’s not just one demographic or one age group or one trip purpose, it really is part of our mainstream transportation system.” The statistics back him up. While there isn’t data for Chicago specifically, Eco-Counter—an engineering company that tracks pedestrian traffic—found that there was a 21% increase in urban bike riders in the US between 2019 and 2020. Bike sales increased by 65% over the same period across the country. And in Chicago, shared bike use from Divvy increased by 30% from the summer of 2020 to the summer of 2021.
People have expanded their perceptions of public spaces and what they want out of them, opening the door for a more widespread understanding that bike lanes promote safety, sustainability, and public health.
Dave is optimistic about the future of cycling in Chicago, as he plans to roll out expanded protected bike lanes and neighborhood greenways in 2023 and beyond. As a frequent user of Chicago’s bike infrastructure, it’s certainly exciting to see the emphasis on low-stress bike networks. Yet, car fatalities and accidents are still on the rise, and we have a long way to go in changing driver mentalities, capabilities, and perceptions of safety.