While Chicago still has a long way to go before it has a citywide, connected network of protected bike lakes (PBLs), it’s certainly making progress.
In the past year, Chicago streets have benefited from a surge in the number of protected bike lanes.
This not only boosts safety for everyone on the road, but also gets us closer to a future where biking becomes an inviting, stress-free experience for everyone, irrespective of age or ability.
We’re pleased to see that Chicago’s new Climate Action Plan features ambitious goals to reduce driving and get more people walking and biking by redesigning the city’s most dangerous streets.
Now we need to make sure city officials follow through with this plan by investing available federal, state, and local transportation funds into building a protected and connected bike network throughout the city.
People who bike deserve to be protected from dangerous car traffic no matter where they begin or end their trip.
After two years of pilot programs, Chicago is well-positioned to create a long-term e-scooter sharing program that is focused on neighborhoods lacking transportation options.
The four-month long second e-scooter pilot program ended in mid-December. Bird, Lime, and Spin were the vendors, with a limit of 3,333 scooters per vendor. This was four times the number of scooters deployed in the 2019 pilot.
The Covid-19 pandemic led to lower ridership levels in 2020.
When COVID-19 cases and deaths were rising in Chicago in March and April, the pandemic hit communities of color on the South and West Sides of Chicago at disproportionate rates.
People in communities of color were already facing disparities in income, employment, health, traffic safety, and economic disinvestment before the COVID-19 outbreak. When the pandemic hit, Black people started dying at 2-3 times the rate of the city’s White residents.
In order to gain a better understanding of the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Black and Brown communities in Chicago,