Choosing the low-stress routes when riding a bike

by Michelle Stenzel

When you drive a car from one place to another on the north side of Chicago, you usually take the most direct route. This mostly involves major arterial streets like North Avenue or Halsted Street, which may have too many stoplights for your liking, but when traffic is light, you can drive fast and get to where you’re going in minimal time.

When you ride a bike from one place to another, you could also take the most direct route and use major arterials if you’d like, the same as if you were driving. However,  the advantages to a major street for a driver – fast speed of motor vehicle traffic – is a huge detriment to a person on a bicycle. Unless you’re in a bike lane that is separated from motor vehicle traffic with a physical barrier, fast-moving cars, buses and SUVs whizzing by you on the street are nerve-wracking, to say the least.

This part of Lincoln Avenue has a full-width bike lane, but in other sections, there are only "sharrow" markings, and it makes the street feel too stressful for many bike riders. (Photo: Bike Walk Lincoln Park)

To make your bike trip more pleasant and relaxing, you’d be better off choosing quieter streets with fewer vehicles that are moving at slower speeds. These might be secondary streets like Sedgwick and Webster, or better yet, very quiet neighborhood streets like Cleveland or Dickens. The route that you patch together to avoid main arterials may mean that you’ll have to cover a slightly longer distance than you would on the more direct route, but you’ll arrive in a happier, more relaxed state.

Bicyclists riding on Altgeld Street, a calm east-west route through Lincoln Park. (Photo: Bike Walk Lincoln Park)

The best route to take on a bicycle may be very different from the one you’d choose if you were driving. This seems like a very basic idea, but honestly, it took many years for it to occur to me, so I’m writing about it now in hopes of encouraging others to consider the concept, and perhaps inspiring you to plan a low-stress route yourself.

What we noticed at Halsted and Wrightwood

by Michelle Stenzel

We undertook our third Bike Walk Lincoln Park intersection evaluation last weekend, this time tackling  areas on Halsted in the northwest section of our ward, starting with the crossing at Wrightwood. I was joined by Robert Wallace and Karl Anderson of Alderman Michele Smith's staff, as well as Ryan Wallace (no relationship to Robert), a transportation engineer and observer of our city's streets. Ryan kindly provided many of the statistics and measurements that I include in the post below.

The intersection of Wrightwood and Halsted, looking southwest on Halsted.

HALSTED AND WRIGHTWOOD

Halsted is an arterial street with around 14,000 motor vehicles passing through at this intersection daily. The #8 Halsted bus stops at Wrightwood Avenue and around 500 people board or alight daily here.

Join our next intersection evaluation "party"!

We are planning to hold our next intersection evaluation "party" on Saturday morning at 9:30 am, April 20, 2013,  and we'd love to have you join! We will meet at Halsted and Wrightwood to tackle that intersection and hopefully others in the near vicinity.

Complete Your Street: Envisioning a better neighborhood, one street and one intersection at a time.
(Photo: Bike Walk Lincoln Park)

At these events, we meet at a designated intersection in the 43rd ward to observe its current state, document any problem issues in terms of the comfort and safety of street users, and then make suggestions for improvements. We've done two so far, at Armitage and Halsted, and at Clark and Fullerton. Alderman Michele Smith and her staff have told us that the resulting input is very helpful and will be carefully considered during the process of allocating the ward's menu funds.

If you've noticed problems with this particular intersection or if you just want to help improve our neighborhood one intersection at a time, now's your chance to join in and speak up. This is open to anyone and everyone. If you're reading this, you're invited! They're not technically parties in that there are no hors d'ouevres or music, but we do try to have fun.

Please e-mail us (Michelle Stenzel and Michael Reynolds, co-leaders of Bike Walk Lincoln Park) at bikewalklincolnpark at gmail dot com to let us know to expect you, so we can notify you if weather forces a cancellation. 

Hope to see you there!

Follow us on Twitter @BikeWalkLP

WHAT:     Bike Walk Lincoln Park Intersection Evaluation

WHERE:  Meet at Wrightwood and Halsted

WHEN:     Saturday, April 20, 2013 at 9:30 am

OTHER:   E-mail to bikewalklincolnpark at gmail dot com is appreciated

Complete Streets guidelines: Designing streets for people

by Michelle Stenzel

“When we say ‘complete streets,’ we mean designing streets for people...for all users and all modes.”  

That’s how Chicago Department of Transportation Commissioner Gabe Klein summarizes the concept in the new “Complete Streets Chicago - Design Guidelines” that were released last week. It’s a pretty simple idea: We need to make sure that a street is safe, efficient and comfortable for all people, whether they’re on foot, on bikes, in buses or trains. 

A view down Michigan Avenue at Randolph Street. (Photo: Bike Walk Lincoln Park)

This way of thinking has been discussed to an extent in Chicago for a number of years, but this new 134-page document spells out the details, and more importantly, lays out how the transportation department is going to define a complete street, and the process of managing projects to get the end result that’s desired.

Observations on the way to Chicago's SoNo district

by Michelle Stenzel

I decided to walk to the SoNo area today to pick up some items at Whole Foods. What? You've never heard of the SoNo neighborhood? Well, it's that "no name" area that's SOuth of NOrth Avenue, and west of Halsted. You know, where the giant Whole Foods is. When I first saw a billboard years ago for a developer trying to tout that new moniker, I wondered whether they had thought through the negative connotations of the phrase "So No". The name doesn't seem to have caught on, as the Whole Foods itself claims to be in Lincoln Park, when the border of Lincoln Park is actually more than a block away.

In any case, I walked mostly along North Avenue starting at Sedgwick, snapping pictures along the way, and thought that I'd share my observations about the state of walking, bicycling and generally the  feel of the area. There's not much to celebrate.

North Avenue is a state route that was designed for high-speed, noisy motorized vehicle traffic.

To begin with, North Avenue west of Sedgwick is a wide, car-oriented highway with a design that encourages high speeds. Drivers regularly exceed the 30 mph speed limit, induced by the wide open lanes and long distances between signallized intersections. There are no bike lanes of any kind. There are sidewalks, but not much to look at but the sides of townhouse developments and mini-mall parking lots. (More -->)

Clark and Fullerton: Busy, crowded, and in need of TLC

by Michelle Stenzel

On a recent cold and overcast Saturday morning, Michael, Andrew, John and I converged at the intersection of Clark and Fullerton to observe, document and make recommendations for improvements. We evaluated that intersection as well as nearby Fullerton and Lakeview. Although our focus was on making the intersections better for pedestrians, in the spirit of applying a "Complete Streets" philosophy, we kept in mind all all users, including bicyclists, transit riders, and drivers.

The crosswalks at Clark and Fullerton in Lincoln Park are always busy.  (Photo: Bike Walk Lincoln Park)

We began with noting that this is a very busy intersection for all modes of transport. The housing stock is dense, with many high rise condos close by along both streets. To the north and south on Clark, there are dozens of commercial establishments. Two well-used bus lines, the 22 Clark and 36 Broadway, go through the intersection on Clark. (There is no Fullerton bus line here because the service ends at Halsted.) Clark Street is also a very popular bicycling route, and is in fact a designated Spoke Route on the Streets for Cycling 2020 Plan. Fullerton is a main access route to get to DePaul university and other points to the west, as well as the Lincoln Park Zoo, the Lakefront Trail and other points to the east.

We evaluated the intersections of Clark and Fullerton, and Lakeview and Fullerton.

EXISTING POSITIVES

All of this "busyness" is a positive for the intersection: We noticed that all users seemed to be aware that this is a place where it's necessary to be alert and careful. Vehicle speeds did not seem to be excessive, and this may be partly due to the presence of the red light cameras here, but the sheer number of vehicles and people in the space itself keeps speeds down, and that's good.

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I'm walking here! Improving the Halsted and Armitage intersection

by Michelle Stenzel

One of our goals this year for Bike Walk Lincoln Park is to continue to encourage Alderman Michele Smith to use a portion of our ward's $1.2 million in annual menu funds to improve conditions for people walking, and we decided the best way to do that is to evaluate one important intersection or stretch of street at a time. The plan for each location is to observe and document current conditions, and produce written recommendations for Alderman Smith to use when planning infrastructure upgrades for the year. The changes we'll be suggesting are all tools included in Chicago's Pedestrian Plan (download the plan from the official website here).

We evaluated the sidewalks and crosswalks at the intersection of Armitage and Halsted.
(Photo: Bike Walk Lincoln Park)

In gray and damp weather this past weekend, BWLP Co-Chair Michael Reynolds and I tackled the first intersection: Halsted and Armitage. This is an important intersection for pedestrians at all times of day, on weekday and weekends, largely due to the CTA Brown line stop three blocks to the west, two active bus lines, nearby shopping and dining destinations, density of residences in the area, and the location of Lincoln Park High School two blocks to the east. 

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