Category: Bicycling

Wicker Park-Bucktown SSA moving ahead with bike rack installations

The Wicker Park-Bucktown (WPB) Special Service Area (SSA), a business improvement district, has purchased 20 specially-designed and orange-colored bike racks from Dero to be installed within the district (see a map on their website).

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A beautiful work in progress. The u-rack is nearly identical to the latest model CDOT has used with the addition of a center piece showing the sustainable transportation modes residents and shoppers in Wicker Park and Bucktown use to get around. Photo courtesy of Dero. 
Continue reading Wicker Park-Bucktown SSA moving ahead with bike rack installations

Rack concerts: Tour de Fat and Pitchfork highlight the need for good bike parking at festivals

[flickr]photo:5952876061[/flickr]Chicago Reader Biker Village at Pitchfork

Last weekend there were at least two fabulously bike-friendly festivals in Chicago. New Belgium Brewery’s Tour de Fat celebrated craft beer, bicycles, bands and other forms of “sustainable folly,” raising thousands of dollars for West Town Bikes community bike shop. Meanwhile the Pitchfork Music Festival included the Chicago Reader Biker Village with an attended bike parking area that docked over 1,000 bikes at a time – and it still wasn’t nearly enough capacity. More on that later.

Continue reading Rack concerts: Tour de Fat and Pitchfork highlight the need for good bike parking at festivals

Postal service making a mockery of Kinzie protected bike lane

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Photo by Seth Anderson.

This is an embarrassment. This protected bike lane was developed to provide people bicycling to and from downtown a safe passage, in which no vehicle should ever enter. The physical separation is apparently of no concern to postal workers, who don’t believe that the public will mind them putting cyclists in danger by forcing them to unnecessarily merge in and out of moving vehicular traffic. Continue reading Postal service making a mockery of Kinzie protected bike lane

A run-in with a neo-Nazi on the Lakefront Trail

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Many years ago I was riding my bicycle on Chicago’s Lakefront Trail, rolling south past Oak Street Beach, near the Hancock Tower. It was a beautiful summer day and the path was really crowded with people walking, jogging and cycling. I was working as a bike messenger at the time.

As I was riding I saw this guy heading towards me. He was this tall, brawny skinhead on Rollerblades, skating north. He was wearing wraparound sunglasses and a t-shirt that said “WHITE POWER” with a big swastika on it. I myself had a shaved head and I was wearing wraparound shades at the time, but I’m a short, skinny Jew.

Continue reading A run-in with a neo-Nazi on the Lakefront Trail

Update on CDOT’s bikeway busyness

Last week Grid told you about some new and refreshed bikeways in Chicago. The Chicago Bicycle Program, part of the Department of Transportation (CDOT), has been more active than the article let on.

CDOT published a custom map on Tuesday and we’ve published a table from CDOT of the locations, distances, and funding sources of these new and refreshed bike lanes.

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Photo shows a new marked shared lane on California Avenue from North Avenue to Milwaukee Avenue.  Continue reading Update on CDOT’s bikeway busyness

Advantages of paid area bike parking at transit stations

John and I met on Monday at the Harold Washington Library winter garden to talk about the Grid website design after our live radio interview on Vocalo. You’ll see some design changes in the coming weeks and months.

We then got to discussing bike parking. John and I essentially performed the same work at the Chicago Department of Transportation, arranging for the installation of bike racks, but several years apart.

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Photo of bike racks at the Logan Square Blue Line subway station by Brian Vargas. 

I told him that I was never convinced that there existed a conclusive advantage over whether to install bike racks inside the paid area of Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) train stations, or in the unpaid area. He was adamant that the paid area was better, but I disagreed.  Continue reading Advantages of paid area bike parking at transit stations