By Sophia Calvo and Raymond Cave
@redlineproject
Chicago has seen the largest increase in cyclists in 2024, with a total increase of 119 percent over the past four years. But with the recent rise in yearly cyclist deaths, cyclists are calling for the city to make it more safe for them to ride.
With most cyclist accidents and deaths happening due to dangerous encounters with motor vehicles, Chicago has seen an improvement in cycling infrastructure and policies in recent years.
Avid commuter cyclists, such as social media content creator Henry Taala, have been leading the charge in demanding change in Chicago’s cycling infrastructure.
“I think it is a driver problem,” said Taala, referring to the issues and dangers he faces when biking on the road. “Ever since the pandemic, people have become a lot more impatient when it comes to driving. They become desensitized to pedestrians and people around [them] … like, these are real people.”
Data supports Taala’s point. The City of Chicago reported an average of six cyclist deaths a year between 2010 and 2019. That increased to a yearly average of nine cyclist deaths a year between 2020 and 2023.
With the rise in accidents and fatalities within the Chicago cycling community, using a bike alongside cars can prove to be physically and emotionally difficult for many.
“I’ve learned to ignore it, but sometimes it’s discouraging when it does happen,” said Taala, talking about his negative encounters with drivers. “Earlier this year, there was a car that swerved into the bike lane and I had no way out, so I gouged the whole passenger side of the Mini Cooper, and I felt bad but I was like ‘Man, you should’ve checked your mirrors.’”
City planners are working with the Chicago Department of Transportation to create infrastructures that will provide safety for cyclists on city streets.
“Providing solid, safe, and low-stress environments for people is very important,” said Erik Huang, an engineer of the Urban Mobility Team at the Chicago Jacobs engineering firm. “Biking has gotten a lot safer for the city in the past few years, and will continue to get safer.”
The Jacobs Engineering Firm‘s goal is to produce a safer bike system for the City of Chicago and to further connect its surrounding neighborhoods. The Urban Mobility Team at Jacobs “mainly focuses on bike and pedestrian safety projects, which mostly has to do with projects in Chicago, making changes to infrastructure in streets to improve walkability and creating safer bike networks,” Huang said.
Huang hopes that they can provide a system that is accessible for both cyclists and non-cyclists.
“In Chicago, there must be dedicated or protected bike lanes for people to feel safe and [that] needs to cater to all people, not just those confident bikers,” he said.
“A lot of this can be feasibly achieved when we re-examine the actual cross-section of a street,” he said. “We tend to look at ‘how wide are the travel lanes for cars? Is there room to reduce the size?’ Because this can help provide extra space for pedestrian or bicycle safety improvements.”
Huang said he hopes for “more space for concrete curb barriers to protect bike lanes or just more separation in general. This could help reduce speed by creating narrowing of the street. This can in turn create a safer environment for bicyclists.”
Huang also called for an equal amount of cycling infrastructure across all of the Chicagoland area.
He said the North Side has historically received more investment in infrastructure such as bike and safety improvements. They plan to invest a larger proportion in the South and West Side, where cycling infrastructure needs more improvement.
“There is no reason why we can’t have transportation as good as Tokyo and cycling infrastructure as good as Amsterdam,” said Sarah Duby FioRito, the City of Evanston Transportation and Mobility Coordinator.
Working at the City of Evanston, FioRito creates and improves programs and policies through serving as a liaison between the City of Evanston and transit partners including Metra, Divvy, Pace and the CTA, and municipal partners including Village of Skokie, Village of Wilmette, CDOT, and other Cook County and Illinois government organizations.
FioRito and her team have been developing cycling infrastructure based on the needs and requests of the community.
“Every couple of years, the city engineering team and capital planning team works in collaboration with [the Transportation and Mobility Coordinator] to pick out some things year by year based on community interest, what is possible, some things that can get funded out of the capital plan on an annual basis,” she said.
FioRito and her team directly work through community interest such as the changes presented by Taala previously. This, unfortunately, presents the most challenges as cyclists and non-cyclists tend to have opposing views.
“If you’re creating dedicated space for cycling, you have to potentially take dedicated space away from something else, whether that is parking for cars, street trees, a travel lane for cars,” FioRito said.
To solve the problem, she said that “communicating to people that we are trying to give people a plethora of high quality, safe, low stress, enjoyable options, and inviting people into that.”
However, this seems to be only one of their problems as the time and money needed to implement their plans only seems to multiply.
“There is not endless money, so you have to pick what projects will come and get that big investment,” she said. “All in all, a big takeaway from this is that from concept to construction and completion, a substantial street redesign can easily take a minimum five to 10 years.”
Despite the setbacks and obstacles in creating cycling infrastructure, along with the dangers of being a cyclist alongside cars, cyclists find biking in the city to be rewarding.
“I have met so many great people while biking,” Taala said. “I have great interactions every day with other cyclists like talking with them about the weather or [saying] ‘Nice bike!’, like you can compliment them rather than being in a car where you are just in your own little box and can’t really interact with the world around you.”
In order to accommodate drivers, cyclists, pedestrians and public transportation vehicles on the road, engineers are looking for ways to create collaborative systems through all forms of transportation.
“The biggest thing is how do we get everybody to start moving towards thinking of all of ourselves as multimodal, that we are all using different modes,” said FioRito, talking about taking new approaches to transportation design.
“I think the vision is to create a transportation system that provides people with enjoyable, affordable, extremely efficient, great options to get around, where people feel free.”