The Chainlink

It's official: it's legal to ride outside of protected bike lanes

As the city considers building protected bicycle lanes on streets with plenty of existing bike traffic, like Milwaukee Avenue, it may become common for faster cyclists to opt to ride outside the PBLs in the main travel lanes. But at last week's Mayor's Bicycle Advisory Council meeting, two lawyers specializing in bike cases worried that an existing ordinance could be used against cyclists involved in a crash while riding outside PBLs. CDOT staff told them that the ordinance does not apply to protected lanes, and offered to put that in writing. That should offer some legal protection for those who choose to ride outside the lanes. Here's a transcript of the discussion:

http://chi.streetsblog.org/2013/03/15/its-official-its-legal-to-rid...

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i read this at first as illegal!

As I said over on Streetsblog, they have to do more than "internal memos".  I hope they will work on amending the Municipal Code.  Those "internal memos" aren't worth much in court.

And to make it illegal they'd have to change the rules of the road stating that bikes are not entitled to use public roadways.

This is not accurate.

http://www.chicagobikes.org/bikelaws/?show=chicago

See 9-52-020 (d).

Clearly, unless this ordinance is changed, it could easily be construed as illegal to ride in the auto lane where a bike lane is present. Good luck whipping out your letter from the city.



Mike Zumwalt said:

And to make it illegal they'd have to change the rules of the road stating that bikes are not entitled to use public roadways.

Howard, that ordinance refers to bikeways *adjacent* to the roadway, not *in* the roadway. It was written specifically to make sure people rode on the Lakefront Trail by the South Shore Cultural Center, instead of on South Shore Drive, which, at that location, is a busy multi-lane road feeding into LSD.

They discussed this ordinance at the MBAC meeting. Read the transcript for deets:

http://chi.streetsblog.org/2013/03/15/its-official-its-legal-to-rid...

I can see the definition of the words "usable," "adjacent" and "path" each being a good source of hourly billing for an attorney.

OK, so per your transcript, there is general consensus that the wording is too vague and needs to be "cleaned up."  Not sure why you're talking down to me as if I'm way off here-- that was exactly my point.

Maybe Chainlink 2.0 should automatically drop "as I said on Streetsblog" into every post here to save some typing.


John Greenfield said:

Howard, that ordinance refers to bikeways *adjacent* to the roadway, not *in* the roadway. It was written specifically to make sure people rode on the Lakefront Trail by the South Shore Cultural Center, instead of on South Shore Drive, which, at that location, is a busy multi-lane road feeding into LSD.

They discussed this ordinance at the MBAC meeting. Read the transcript for deets:

http://chi.streetsblog.org/2013/03/15/its-official-its-legal-to-rid...

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