Highlights from this week’s Mayor’s Bike Advisory Council meeting

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CDOT staff front row, l-r: Share the Road Coordinator Carlin Thomas, Deputy Commissioner Luann Hamilton, Bike Coordinator Ben Gomberg, Commissioner Gabe Klein.

Wednesday Steven and I attended the quarterly Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Council meeting at City Hall, a great opportunity for citizens to get updates on Chicago’s bike projects and network with planners and advocates. Currently the meetings are geared towards “stakeholders,” staff from various city departments, the park district, CTA, the Active Transportation Alliance and other nonprofits, but the general public is welcome to attend and ask questions at the end of the meeting. To get on the mailing list for MBAC meeting announcements contact Carlin Thomas at carlin.thomas[at]activetrans.org, or sign up on this webpage. Here are a few news items from the meeting.

Bike Share

Although the bike sharing program failed to launch this year, Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) bike coordinator Ben Gomberg said things are on track for a spring 2013 debut. The project was awarded a total of $22 million in federal funding, which will pay for a system with 4,000 bikes and 400 rental kiosks (in two implementation phases). Gomberg said the current challenge is to find the required twenty percent local match of $5.5 million. CDOT has secured enough funding from Tax Increment Financing dollars and aldermanic menu money to cover the local match for the first year of operations. Gomberg joked that if anyone at meeting had a friend with a few extra million to donate, the city would gladly name the bike share system after the benefactor.

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Bike share in Berlin.

Asked exactly when the system will launch next year, CDOT commissioner Gabe Klein said, “As soon as possible, as soon as the sun is shining and it’s 55, 60 degrees.” Gomberg added, “Let’s just say there’s an optimist and a pessimist in this room.” A potential speed bump is that Bike Chicago (a Grid Chicago sponsor) is contesting the contract, claiming that Alta Bike Share was given an unfair advantage in the bidding process. The case is currently under investigation by the city’s Office of Inspector General.

In October the city will hold three public meetings across the city to introduce the program and ask for suggestions for the kiosk locations. Initially the boundaries of the service area will be Montrose Avenue, Damen Avenue, 43rd Street and Lake Michigan; in time the borders will expand, and hopefully most of the city will someday get bike share. CDOT has already identified about 150 locations for kiosks, mostly at CTA and Metra stations, but the city will also be creating a “crowdsourcing” website to solicit suggestions for locations, Gomberg said. When New York City did this they received over 8,000 recommendations.

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT)

The CTA’s Chris Ziemann and Joe Iaccobucci gave an update on local efforts to create bus-priority corridors, including the impact on cycling. They compared the project to their agency’s work to eliminate slow zones on the ‘L’, suggesting that BRT routes on wide streets with high bus ridership will function like efficient rail lines. Construction of new bus facilities along Jeffrey Boulevard started last month and operations may start by the end of the year. Ziemann and Iaccobucci acknowledged that Jeffrey will “by no means” be true BRT, since its bus-only lanes will only exist on a portion of the route and only during rush hours. But they said the dedicated lanes plus other firsts like bus-priority traffic signals and a queue jump, will pave the way for more ambitious BRT projects.

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CTA rendering of a potential BRT lane configuration on Ashland.

The CTA is currently studying 21-mile corridors on Western and Ashland Avenues as potential locations for more robust bus-priority routes. And the agency plans to complete design work for the Central Loop BRT from Union Station to Navy Pier by 2013, with construction happening in 2014. The project would include dedicated bus lanes, a new off-street bus terminal near the railroad station, level bus loading platforms, and protected bike lanes on Washington and Randolph streets.

Download the CTA’s BRT slideshow.

Protected bike lane maintenance

CDOT bikeways project manager Mike Amsden said the department is aware that removal of debris and snow from protected lanes will be a growing issue as the network expands. He showed a slide of broken glass in the new lanes on Elston Avenue. “We are working our tails off to figure out how to do this the best we can,” he said. Amsden added the city is looking into the possibility of purchasing a compact street cleaner especially for use on the bike lanes. Some of the amusingly named models they’re considering include the Madvac CN100, the Green Machine, the Elgin Broom Badger and the Nitehawk 200 Osprey, which sounds like a vehicle David Hasselhoff might drive. The city is also considering applying – no joke – a mixture of salt and beet juice to the protected lanes prior to snowfall to prevent accumulation. I assume this technique was pioneered in Denmark, where they eat beets with everything.

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The Nitehawk 200 Osprey: a lone crusader in a dangerous world of bike lane debris.

Bike Parking

Chris Gagnon, my successor as the city’s bike parking manager, is moving on after five years in the position and almost a decade at the bike program. Gagnon’s productive tour of duty saw the installation of some 3,000 bike racks and the city’s first on-street parking corrals. He reported that new corrals recently debuted in Andersonville next to the existing “People Spot” parklet, 5228 N. Clark Street, and in front of the Hopleaf bar, 5148 N. Clark. There will be a “Party in the People Spot” celebration of the new green space and racks this Friday from 5:30 – 7 p.m. at the parklet. Gagnon added that the city’s first year-round on-street parking corral is coming to Café Jumping Bean in Pilsen at 1439 W. 18th Street.

One community member asked if CDOT could create a document or brochure that he could give to businesses that are interested in installing a bike rack they purchase. Commissioner Klein mentioned how in Washington, D.C., there was a program called Bike Brand Your Biz and said that the department will have a guide done by December on how a developer can get a bike rack.

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New on-street bike corral by the Andersonville People Spot. Photo courtesy of the Andersonville Development Corporation.

Aldermanic Bike Camps

Charlie Short, manager of Chicago’s Bicycling Ambassador program, reported on the four bike-safety camps inspired by visits by aldermen Ameya Pawar (47th), Pat Dowell (3rd), Harry Osterman (48th) and Danny Solis (25th) to bike-friendly European countries. Bikes Belong, a national advocacy group, donated Schwinn BMX bikes to the eighty campers. “My hands were like claws for days after building those eighty bikes on the Friday before the camps started,” Short joked. Many of the campers had never spent much time out of their own neighborhoods but after receiving training in proper riding and maintenance techniques, they took pedal-powered field trips to destinations like major parks and a tour of Wrigley Field. “Now the kids are like, ‘Wow, bikes are freedom, they’re transportation,” said Klein. “We want to have maybe 500 kids in the program next year.”

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Pat Dowell and 3rd Ward bike campers.

MBAC community representatives

Gresham resident Demond Drummer, Mike Tomas from Garfield Park and Lincoln Park resident Michelle Stenzel are serving as stakeholder representatives for the South, West and North sides of the city, respectively. They said there’s a need for more outreach to educate the public about what the new protected and buffered bike lanes are and how to use them. “I live off of Halsted and 79th,” Drummer said. “When I woke up one morning and there was a new buffered lane on Halsted, I knew what it was. But other people see it as, ‘Oh, I’ve got a narrower lane to drive in, with a lot of paint on the side.”

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Front row: Drummer, Stenzel and Tomas.

Klein said the city will be using a number of strategies to get the word out about the incoming bike network. The Streets for Cycling 2020 Plan for 645 miles of bikeways is currently under review and which should be officially released next month. CDOT also has about $1 million set aside to create a “transportation demand management” (TDM) program this spring, which will help Chicagoans in up to three different communities find alternatives to single-occupancy vehicle trips, including cycling, possibly launching in the spring. In addition, the agency is creating a new website and blog to promote sustainable transportation options, similar to Washington, D.C.’s colorful goDCgo.com. “By December we’ll have something nice to present to you,” Klein promised.

Updated September 20 to add information about bike parking for businesses and the CTA’s BRT slideshow. 

Published by

John Greenfield

John has lived in Chicago since 1989 and has worked a number of bicycle jobs, from messenger to mechanic to managing the Chicago Department of Transportation's bicycle parking program, arranging the installation of over 3,700 bike racks. He writes regularly for Time Out Chicago, Newcity, Momentum and Urban Velo magazines and works at Boulevard Bikes in Logan Square.

19 thoughts on “Highlights from this week’s Mayor’s Bike Advisory Council meeting”

      1. Hopefully CDOT will coordinate with IDOT and get the Kinzie extension and Dearborn cycle tracks in before construction on the Wells St. bridge starts. I and many others use Wells to commute into the Loop from the north side, and Dearborn would be a welcome alternative during construction.

  1. I’m curious to know how other bike riders deal with people on motorized scooters and mopeds and even motorcycles driving in protected (or any, really) bike lanes. There’s one specific a-hole who does it quite often on Elston. When we stop at red lights, I explain to him that bicycle lanes are for bicycles only, and by him riding in them, he’s endangering the lives of bike riders AND himself. He then acts like an even bigger oblivious, obnoxious douche EVERY TIME. Your thoughts?

    1. In Amsterdam there are lots of scooters in the separated bike lanes. I believe it’s legal and people on bikes and scooters seem used to dealing with each other, but that and the many streetcar tracks there are reasons why Copenhagen is a much more relaxing town to bike in. Not that biking in Amsterdam isn’t a blast anyway.

  2. Great original reporting. Thanks for continuing to attend these kind of meetings and report in detail on what is happening in the city.

  3. Why can’t the city sweep the bike lanes with the little green street-sweepers they use on downtown sidewalks all summer? They look kind of like ride-on mowers with street-sweeper brushes underneath, I think they say GREEN MACHINE on the hood.

  4. The first year of implementing the Los Angeles new Bicycle Plan started July 1st, in 2011, and Rahm Emanuel became mayor of Chicago shortly before that. So, I’m curious to see how the plan of emphasizing putting in the quality of protected bike lanes in Chicago will compare to the Los Angeles plan of focusing on the quantity approach of standardard unprotected bike lane design.
    Will this result in a much higher bicycling rate in Chicago compared to Los Angeles in the next few years? The annual Census Bureau community surveys on modal share should give an indication of how much of an advantage a quality approach gives in terms of bicycle modal share. Chicago was at 1.3% for the 2010 survey results and LA came in at .9% bicycle modal share. LA may get move closer to Chicago in the 2011 results due to the biannual CicLAvia.
    The fiscal year that ended June 30th of this year, Los Angeles was able to put in 51 miles of unprotected bike lanes and Chicago was able to produce about 7 miles of protected bike lanes. Los Angeles is starting to put in bike lanes in the downtown area, which is a first for the city. Both Los Angeles and Chicago have gotten off to a slow start in July-August with neither city producing much bike lanes.
    Los Angeles will hold their quarterly bike plan implementation team (BPIT) meeting October 2nd with traffic engineers, a city planner and city council reps, plus someone from the mayors office. This has been conducted a little different in previous meetings than Chicago, with bicycle advocates fully engaged with suggestions and questions. The e-mail I have received about the upcoming meeting emphsizes that the purpose is for city staff and stake holders.to discuss and develop implementation strategies and not as a reporting function. In other words, the bicycle advocates are taking up a lot of precious time.

    1. The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey will likely not have any change based on the cicLAvia event as that is not about commuting to work. The ACS question posed to those who receive the survey asks about the typical mode taken to work for the longest distance in the prior week.
      The only public meetings in Chicago for bike lanes/bike plan is the quarterly Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Council (MBAC); it is mostly about reporting. There is some discussion (including with members of the general public) but it’s hardly sufficient to resolve or progress on matters of implementation.

      1. I meant to infer that holding a CicLAvia–with each event attracting upwards of 100 thousand cyclists–could help move the rate of commuting modal share upwards in Los Angeles. The downtown area of a large city usually has the most potential for the greatest modal share for cycling and CicLAvia is giving the opportunity for people to see how fast it can be to travel by bike to and from the downtown area of LA.

        I have seen the results of three different studies on the average rate of cycling increase in cities as a result of the amount of bicycle infrastructure installed, Due to the 51 miles of unprotected bicycle lanes installed in the last fiscal year, I would expect Los Angeles to have at least a tenth of one percent increase in the rate of commuting by bicycle in the 2012 ACS survey compared to the results in 2011.

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