Post-mortem: why CDOT removed many of the flexible posts along the Kinzie lanes

It was a little mysterious when the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT)
recently removed more than half of the flexible posts (AKA bollards) that separate
the Kinzie protected bike lanes from parked cars and moving traffic. So I called
CDOT bikeways planner Mike Amsden, to get the skinny. He explained the motivations
for taking out the posts, and also pointed out a few recent upgrades to the street
I hadn’t noticed before:
http://gridchicago.com/2012/a-post-about-posts-why-cdot-took-out-bollards-along-the-kinzie-lanes/

Keep moving forward,

John Greenfield

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Juan 2-8 mi. on May 18, 2012 at 12:42pm

Thanks for the post on the posts.

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Permalink Reply by John Greenfield on May 18, 2012 at 2:49pm

You're welcome!

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Permalink Reply by James BlackHeron on May 18, 2012 at 3:13pm

Technically this is a post about his earlier offsite post about the posts...

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Permalink Reply by John Greenfield on May 18, 2012 at 3:27pm

Wow, that's very post-modern. If they do wind up putting in permanent posts, hopefully they'll be made out of *meta*.

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Permalink Reply by James BlackHeron on May 18, 2012 at 3:49pm

If the city is putting them in it will probably be made of kleptonite.

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Permalink Reply by Daniel G on May 21, 2012 at 7:53pm

I want to know who billed the city 4,500 dollars to send a guy out to put down two cones, yank half the posts, toss them in a truck, and drive away. This doesn't piss me off because I'm some sort of Tea Partier, it irks me because the potential for inflated construction costs is the most-used cudgel that those people use to attack alternative transport projects. God knows bike lanes would be built by volunteers if they'd let us.
Maybe they had to rip up the pavement? Or something?

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Permalink Reply by James BlackHeron on May 21, 2012 at 7:56pm

You know that all the beat-up used bollards they took out all got thrown in the trash. Count on it. it's not like they were going to put them in someplace else...

They call these "Incremental" changes.

i call them excremental -as in horse apples!

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Permalink Reply by Adam Herstein (5.5 mi) on May 21, 2012 at 9:01pm

Removing the posts nullifies the "protected" in "protected bike lane". If anything, we need more protection, i.e. concrete barriers. Past experience has shown that we can't count on the police to monitor the bike lanes, especially as more are being added. Cars will undoubtedly abuse the lack of protection by driving/parking in the bike lane. This is a huge mistake.

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Permalink Reply by blair_ on May 22, 2012 at 11:59am

As if enough cars weren't squeezing into the bike lane...

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Permalink Reply by h' 1.0 on May 22, 2012 at 12:33pm

I missed that the first time around. That's disgusting.

Daniel G said:

I want to know who billed the city 4,500 dollars to send a guy out to put down two cones, yank half the posts, toss them in a truck, and drive away. This doesn't piss me off because I'm some sort of Tea Partier, it irks me because the potential for inflated construction costs is the most-used cudgel that those people use to attack alternative transport projects. God knows bike lanes would be built by volunteers if they'd let us.
Maybe they had to rip up the pavement? Or something?

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Permalink Reply by James BlackHeron on May 22, 2012 at 12:44pm

Maybe we could persuade Chicago Parks District to plop a 6-million dollar boathouse in the way? That's the classic check-mate move when trying to block things...