New Separated Bike Lanes on California Between Touhy and Dempster

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Permalink Reply by Skip Montanaro 0mi on August 3, 2016 at 9:54am

After having ridden those lanes a few times and read the reports, I've come to the following conclusion: the city tried to squeeze too many functions out of too little space. On the surface, it might seem to be an improvement, but in reality, they took what might have been a simple upgrade - adding a small door zone which can be shared as needed - and instead put that door zone where it can't really be shared by anybody. As I showed in my Flickr album it's not really a door zone. It's more parking for cars. Initially, I was irritated by that because the new bike lane is narrower than the old one, but after reading reports of complaints from residents, I can understand why they are encroaching. They got pushed out closer to the traffic. An article in the Evanston Review quoted some parents who seem ecstatic about the new configuration, because it will allow their tween son to ride to soccer practice. I don't think they've fully considered how the new setup isn't really any safer than the old.

So, what can be done to improve things? I see four possibilities:

• Remove car parking from one side of the street and apportion the newly freed up space to the other elements which are now too narrow.
• Make Dodge a one-way street and divide up the now unused space.
• Widen Dodge a bit to create more space.
• Return to the old configuration.

In reality, I doubt they will do anything, as that would admit they goofed, and wasted $120k of the city's money (that's just Evanston's share of the cost - total cost was $600k, with the rest coming from a federal grant). I was just listening to the TED Radio Hour last night. The topic was failure. In many situations, people can't or won't admit that they were wrong and go back to the drawing board. I fear this is one instance of that phenomenon.

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Permalink Reply by Skip Montanaro 0mi on August 3, 2016 at 11:45am

I do think Dodge is a bit different than the Church and Davis PBLs, primarily because they were trying to squeeze water from a stone. There was simply not enough space to include all the required features. On Church and Davis, the the streets are one-way, and there is plenty of space for traffic, parking, and the bike lane. While you do get salmon (I think the fingerlings must hatch over by the library!), the lanes are wider, and almost nobody parks with their cars in the door zone. In contrast, if you ride the Dodge PBL, you quickly realize that probably half the cars are parked in the door zone. Last week, as I rolled by, a woman parallel parked her SUV right into one of those plastic bollards.

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Permalink Reply by David P. on August 3, 2016 at 2:10pm

I first noticed these when they were finishing the installation. I rode them this morning from Howard to Lake. I find them pretty nice, but I agree that they restrict your options when you're in the lane - previously, I could move out into the lane as needed, but now there is nowhere to go. However, if this makes less-confident riders more comfortable and more willing to ride, I'm happy to take the result even if it is arguably non-ideal for someone like me. It does tend to force box turns if you're turning left, but I don't think this is terrible.

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Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on August 3, 2016 at 2:22pm

Having to make box turns isn't the end of the world.  Just my $0.02...

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