moAsEc18Yy- Bike Lane Uprising® Many cities have been infrastructure upgrades to help make safer conditions for cyclistsĬhicago and many other cities have been making such infrastructure upgrades. It’s an improvement but folks are still running the light at full speed. We have conflicting feelings about these flex posts. Gerardo lost his life due to safety hazards known since 2018 - bollards were added today. Our hope is that infrastructure will be built BEFORE people die. In Chicago and other northern cities, snow plows often knock them down in the winter months.Īdvocates say concrete curbs or barriers can better separate and protect bike lanes from speeding car and trucks, even if that means eliminating a lane for traffic or on-street parking. "We believe that (for) all of our streets, there is an engineering solution to this," Nesper adds.Īt a minimum, experts suggest painting bike lanes green so they stand out more, and providing more separation by adding plastic bollards between car and bike lanes, although those bollards are easily run over by cars and trucks with little damage to the vehicle. "While there's been a lot of infrastructure that has been put in the past 20 years, like bike lanes, and protected bike lanes, more connected off-street trails, there still aren't safe places to ride in most communities, where people feel safe," says Bill Nesper of the League of American Bicyclists. Preliminary figures recently released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration indicate cycling fatalities rose another 5% in 2021. Violations are rarely, if ever, enforced. Volunteer members upload photos and videos of cars and trucks stopping, parking and driving in bike lanes, as they're often used by cars queuing up for car washes, e-commerce and food delivery vehicles, Uber and Lyft drivers picking up and dropping off riders, and even city Department of Transportation (DOT) and police vehicles. "It's not gonna prevent anyone from running me over."īike Lane Uprising documents bike lane violations on its website and maps problem areas around the city. "Paint is not protection," Whitehouse added. "Every minute I encountered a car parked in the lane, which meant it's not a safe bike lane for me to ride in, because the only way for me to go forward is to go into traffic," Rynell says. Rynell says she rode in that bike lane to get there. She's speaking from a spot on Chicago's busiest cycling street, Milwaukee Avenue, where two cyclists have been killed while riding in the bike lane, one of them earlier this month. Like many cities, Chicago has been adding bike lanes to its street grid, painting white stripes 4 to 6 feet apart feet on certain thoroughfares, giving cyclists their own lane.īut Rynell says drivers often don't respect them. Or Just Pants: The Things We Buy When Pining For Normal Times "The reason so many people are here is because we've all had our own close calls," Whitehouse told the crowd, with many nodding in agreement.Ĭoronavirus Updates A Bicycle. She and dozens of other cyclists joined the 41-year old's fiancée and family in placing a ghost bike, a bike spray painted white, at the intersection where he was killed by a driver who used a turn lane to bypass traffic stopped at red light. I hate everything about this," says Christina Whitehouse, founder of the group "Bike Lane Uprising," at a recent memorial event for Gerardo Marciales. In fact, they've been in a somber mood more often than not lately, because in recent weeks, three cyclists have been hit and killed by cars in incidents cycling advocates say could have been prevented with safer infrastructure and road design. The line drew applause at the civic group's luncheon but many of those who ride bikes in Chicago are not clapping. Free bikes! And a helmet and a bike lock!" And to encourage more Chicagoans to get out and ride, Biagi said "we're going to give away 5,000 bikes to Chicago residents. "We have never built bike infrastructure this quickly in our city's history," Biagi said. That's in addition to 125 miles of new bike lanes on city streets, with a goal of having a total of 500 miles of bikeways citywide in the next two to three years.
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