Are protected bike lanes going in the right places?

By On September 29, 2011 · 9 Comments

My contribution to a discussion on The Chainlink, Are protected bike lanes going in the right places?

Kelvin, Milwaukee/Ogden/Chicago is the intersection along Milwaukee Avenue with the highest number of bicycle crashes. I created this table and map to show them, using data from 2007-2009.

Array

The blue rings on the map are called, in GIS parlance, “buffers” and are circles used to select things (in this case, bike crashes) within a certain distance of the circle center. In this map I used 50 feet radius buffers (100 feet diameter). While this distance encompasses the intersection from center to all four curbs, it doesn’t encompass the crashes that happened just outside the buffer that were still most likely influenced by the intersection (like drivers’ turning movements).

I am working on a project with three friends to create a better map and “crash browser”. I mentioned it in the last story on Grid Chicago in this post. For this project, we are using 200 feet radius (400 feet diameter) buffers to ensure we encompass the entire intersection and the area in which it still has an effect. This also grabs the bike lane “pinch points”, places where a bike lane doesn’t start until 100-200 feet beyond the intersection.

I am also concerned with the strategy and approach CDOT is using to choose locations. It’s not transparent; at MBAC, CDOT said they were choosing locations “without controversy and that could be implemented quickly”.

Read more about Kinzie Street, Chicago’s first protected bike lane, and my other thoughts on protected bike lanes. 

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  • John Wirtz

    I think a lot of the locations are just places where they are doing street resurfacing.  The bike program has always tried to coordinate with the street resurfacing program to implement changes at a cost effective time in a roadway’s life cycle.

    • http://www.stevevance.net/planning Steven Vance

      Was Kinzie part of resurfacing?
      18th was resurfaced last year. 

  • BlueFairlane

    It’s a month old, I know, but I just read this and had a thought. I think there’s a reason that has little to do with a lack of protected bike lane that this particular intersection is so dangerous for bicyclists. I think it has more to do with bicyclist behavior and the traffic light scheme. Here’s what happens. A bicyclist moving east comes to the light at Chicago on a red. (I’m going to ignore those who run it because they run everything.) Many weait until they see the light on eastbound Chicago at turn red, then grow impatient as they wait for their light to turn green. What many don’t realize and don’t look for is that the west-bound light on Chicago is still green, and it stays that way for a good ten seconds (I’ve never timed it.) So a lot of bicyclists think it’s safe to go on before it really is. I can’t tell you how many bicyclists I see roll through that intersection because they think it’s on some sort of weird delay, not realizing that traffic approaching from the east isn’t going to stop. Fix that delay, and you’d do a lot to fix the intersection. 

    • http://www.stevevance.net/planning Steven Vance

      Ah ha! I’m not the only person aware of this situation. The situation occurs at any intersection where you see “oncoming traffic has longer green”. 

      I’ve been wanting to document this better and visualize it somehow, but it’s difficult. I wanted to take a video that shows both lights, but I would need a fisheye camera (believe, I stood on the median at Ogden/Milwaukee and filmed it). I would also need some drivers to turn left into SB Ogden when SB Milwaukee is still green. (A driver turned left into SB Ogden when I was bicycling SB on Milwaukee and that’s when I realized the problem inherent at this intersection.)

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