Have you ridden the new Madison Street bike lane?

I was thrilled when I heard CDOT was striping the city's first bike lane in the central Loop, breaking a longstanding taboo against lanes in the area south of the river, north of Congress and east of Michigan. But after riding the new lane on Madison Street I've got mixed emotions.

On one hand it's awesome that the city is finally striping bikeways in an area that desparately needs them.

On the other hand, the Madision lane places cyclists between two lanes of moving traffic, which feels less safe to me than the old configuration.

On the other hand, the lane continues through intersections as dashed lines, which is really cool.

On the other hand...

Read our full analysis on Grid Chicago.

Have you ridden the new Madison lane yet? If so, how do you feel about it?

Keep moving forward,

John Greenfield

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Permalink Reply by Tony Adams 6.6 mi on June 12, 2012 at 11:25am

The Draft 2020 Network plan shows DesPlaines and Jefferson replacing the neglected bike lanes currently on Canal and Clinton. Those streets, while a couple blocks further from the loop make way more sense for bikes than trying to deal with the train stations and all the shuttle buses on Clinton and Canal.