Roscoe Street gets buffered bike lanes

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On my way from Logan Square to Lincoln Square yesterday I stumbled upon a crew striping a new buffered bike lane on Roscoe Street (3400 N.), between Western Avenue (2400 W.) and Damen Avenue (2000 W.) on the Roscoe village business strip. Along with a snippet of buffered lane coming on Campbell Avenue (2500 W.) between Belmont Avenue (3200 N.) and Roscoe, this might make a useful route for cyclists coming from Logan to parts northeast, and vice versa. Here’s a map of the route via Active Transportation Alliance. Roscoe could use repaving, and in places there are some serious ruts right in the bike lane, so hopefully these will be patched with asphalt soon.

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One crew member stripes dashed lines across an intersection with thermoplastic, a molten plastic material, while the other sprinkles reflective beads in the markings.

The Campbell – Roscoe route appears on the city’s list of Year One Proposed Bikeway Projects (PDF), so I guess this means the 2012 bike lane construction season has officially started, which is exciting news. Keep an eye peeled for new buffered and protected bike lanes popping up soon, and please send us photos if possible.

Follow the neighborhood discussion about this on EveryBlock.

Updated May 6 to change map link. 

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.

20 thoughts on “Roscoe Street gets buffered bike lanes”

  1. Why not something on Roscoe between Campbell and Western?  It’s only a block, it’s pretty wide and there’s a ton of turning traffic into the Jewel and Mariano’s

    1. It might be there. I was biking home from Lakeview on Belmont last night and saw a new door zone-style bike lane on Cambbell going north past the police station and DeVry.

      1.  I was over there last night and there is indeed striping on Roscoe between Campbell and Western (ie no break).  It’s buffered except right at Western.  There’s no parking on that block, so it just narrowed the street from a really wide/almost two lanes each direction to a normal width single lane.  Will hopefully help with people driving stupidly getting into those parking lots as well.

        1.  Thanks for checking that out – that’s good news. I’m glad to hear that enough thought was given to cyclists’ safety that a mini road diet was performed. It’s nice to know that, with apologies to the drugstore, at Roscoe you can count on people who care.

    1.  Thanks Lee. ATA’s map shows Roscoe as striped between Western and Campbell, even though the city project list did not indicate this. I’ll just have to run up there soon and confirm the whole route has been striped.

    1. I checked on it last night. Since October my biking in Elston has decreased a lot.
      Here’s a marker: there are 2 miles of protected bike lanes installed and 10 more days in Rahm’s first year.

  2. now if the bikers would just obey the stop signs and other rules of the road we’ll be all set.

    1. Absolutely, and if car drivers would stop speeding, talking on their cell phones while driving, parking in the bike lanes, and show some courtesy on the road, we’d be living in an almost perfect world.

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