CHICAGO — Anne Alt, a member of Chicago Cycling Club, has been riding in the city for over 30 years. Alt has had multiple experiences being doored in the city. Dooring is when a cyclist is struck by an open car door while riding.
She was riding home from work, heading from the loop to Rogers Park.
She started on Clark street, made a right turn with the light on Halsted and came around the corner to see a Jeep parked across the crosswalk.
“One second I’m going straight forward on Halsted street,” she said. “The next second the door of the Jeep swings into me and then I’m flying sideways off of my bike in the middle of Halsted street during evening rush hour,”
Alt said buffered bike lanes can reduce the number of doorings that occur.
“I find that just having the extra space of a striped buffer area really reduces the number of potential doorings,” she said.
Alt said that Chicago’s bike infrastructure has been lagging.
“The number of people riding bikes has steadily increased and we’re not seeing enough improvement in infrastructure so more people are getting hurt,” said Alt
The Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) announced on June 29 that it will update all its delineator protected bike lanes (the poles between the bike lane and street) to concrete by the end of 2023.
In Chicago, there are fully protected bike lanes that usually have a barrier of some sort, like plastic bollards or concrete curbs. There are buffered bike lanes, which are similar to the standard bike lanes except that they have space between the car travel lane and the bike lane itself. And there are marked shared bike lanes, which are bike lanes that are built into the street that offer no protection for the cyclist.
Out of the 200-plus miles of bike lanes in the city of Chicago, there are only 18.5 miles of fully protected bike lanes.
As for updating the fully protected bike lanes to concrete, Alt said it’s a start.
“It’s nowhere near enough, but it’s a start,” she said.
DePaul University professor Joe Schwieterman said Chicago’s grid system makes it easier to add bike infrastructure to the city. The grid system allows for protected lanes to be built without complex engineering.
“Sometimes protection is as simple as a small curb between the road and the bike lane,” he said.
Hugo Coronado, an associate for the Metropolitan Planning Council in Chicago, said that advocacy groups are pushing for better infrastructure for the safety of cyclists. The biggest concern for cyclists, Coronado said, is not having barriers to protect them from drivers.
The fully protected bike lanes with concrete are a huge win, he said.
The Active Transportation Alliance, a non-profit organization that advocates for improving conditions for transportation such as biking, is advocating for fully protected bike lanes as well. It wants the fully protected bike lanes to be connected.
“We kind of just have a patchwork of protected bike lanes at the moment,” said Ted Villaire, communications director for the Active Transportation Alliance in Chicago.
“Our goal is to have more of a complete network of protected bike lanes that will take people where they need to go. … Right now protected bike lanes do not do that.
As for protection from drivers, both groups, as well as the Chicago Cycling Club said that the plastic bollards have some problems.
During winter, some of the bollards are removed during snow removal and never replaced.
As far as protection, they do not offer much. He said it is a visual barrier more than anything else.
“If drivers hit those plastic posts, the car crushes them,” he said.
Villaire said the city has acknowledged that the plastic posts need to be replaced and now they are doing that with the addition of the concrete curbs.
David Simmons, executive director for Ride Illinois, agrees with the lack of protection from the plastic bollards.
“Plastic bollards might be a good visual cue to a motorist, but if that motorist is distracted and ends up veering out of their lane, the bollard is simply not going to provide any protection,” said Simmons.
Schwieterman said one of the other problems with bike infrastructure has been bike lanes next to parking, which could cause a cyclist to be doored.
“Protected bike lanes are going to get more people to bike,” Villaire said.
In the future, separated infrastructure like protected bike lanes has to be the goal for CDOT for infrastructure projects, said Simmons.
“A plastic bollard is not a protected bike lane in 2022,” he said.