The Chainlink

I don't use the lakepath for my commute, but I'm sure plenty on here do.

Curious to hear how your commutes were affected on Day 1 of the closure. Post here!

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I rode it this am and it's not in effect yet. I believe they are closing it sometime this afternoon. I, honestly, am planning an entire new route because I think it's going to be kinda horrible.

My plan is to ride through downtown on surface streets and rejoin the path ~North Avenue (I think this'll miss most of the construction). Gonna miss those tailwinds propelling me back north along the lakefront after a long day...

I took the detour today even thought they hadn't blocked it off yet. Its not bad at all.

Coming from the north, I exited through the Barry underpass and took both paved and gravel paths to North Ave. The paved path south of the Fullerton underpass is rough with many cracks so I switched to the gravel path closer to the lagoon.

Just before the end of the lagoon, use the path that crosses the parking lot there and take the path around the Lincoln Park South Baseball Fields to the tunnel under LaSalle and then take the path to the North Ave Beach tunnel. I made the mistake of riding through the end of the parking lot and ended up on Cannon Dr where LSD exits to LaSalle.

The gravel paths might be messy on rainy days and the NAB tunnel might have more pedestrians and bikes during the day or evening commute, but its not a bad detour.

the detour includes gravel paths?

Crushed limestone I think. Easy to ride on, even with thin tires. YMMV in the rain though

It seems to me that most local media coverage of this LFT construction on now has the (tv or radio) reporter talking to a pedestrian or a runner, who are painting us cyclists in these on the spot interviews as the 'worst' violators of all users of the trail. I haven't seen many (and i watch a lot of news) reporters stop and talk to enough cyclists about this and hear our stories of other trail users. So if any of you see one of those news media types out there interviewing the trail users, stop your bike and let them hear from us.

Barricades were up this morning. At the Diversey bridge (btw, exiting at Barry is much better) and at the North Ave Beach tunnel. Looks like they want people to use the tunnel at NAB, rather than the sidewalk alongside LaSalle. They had a barricade on the path at the NAB parking lot entrance.

The detour is pretty well marked surprisingly enough.

The mornings tend to be a lot lighter traffic, but there were less people on the detour than I normally see on the LFT.  We'll see how it is in the afternoon.  

Glad the detour is marked well; that was one of my worries.

I attached my favorite scenic (slower) route from Barry to North Ave.
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You cross Cannon Drive at 2700 North?  Seems very dangerous with no stop signs and speeding cars.

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