Rohan Uppalapati, a high school senior at Walter Payton College Prep, is driven by a deep interest in computer engineering and urban planning.
This passion extends to creating safer, more inclusive biking infrastructure that would encourage more people to take up cycling for transportation.
For an independent school project, Rohan has taken on the ambitious task of analyzing Chicago’s streets. By calculating the ratio of crashes and injuries for people biking to the total distance traveled on specific road sections, he aims to uncover critical insights into the safety challenges faced by cyclists.
He recently answered some questions about his project and offered some thoughts on ways to get more people biking.
How did you become interested in the goal of making biking safer in Chicago?
For me, it was the freedom of cycling. My favorite thing about cycling is that it lets me get around the city quickly and independently. I became interested in the goal of making biking safer in Chicago after learning about the work that urbanists before me had done to increase transportation freedom and fight car dependency.
Why do you choose to bike and what are your typical biking habits?
I mostly cycle to run errands near my house, like picking up a book from the library or getting groceries, and I take the CTA for longer trips. I think my biggest “wish list” item as a cyclist would be a more secure place to put my bike at the train station.
Why is it important that biking is safe and welcoming?
I think encouraging biking is possibly the most politically feasible thing we can do to improve our cities. Cyclists are much more likely to stop during their commute and support a small business, and it improves people’s health while saving them money. Additionally, cycling helps us build the dense, walkable neighborhoods that people love. By making cycling safe and welcoming, we can expand personal freedom while also reaping immense social benefits with minimal government investment.
Please tell us about your project and its goals. 
I want to figure out what street infrastructure is most effective for keeping cyclists safe. Then, I want to put that infrastructure where most people will be biking. To figure out what infrastructure is most effective, I’ve measured how dangerous Chicago’s streets are to bikers. I divide the total distance people travel on a section of road by the number of people who got injured on that section.
For my next steps in the project, I want to see if certain types of city streets are more dangerous than other types, to inform new infrastructure decisions. I plan to investigate if aspects of the infrastructure like street width, average speed, and turning movements affect how dangerous a street is. Using these findings, I want to create a navigation tool that can help cyclists find the safest route.
Longer term, I want to improve the integration between bikes and the train. Biking to the train can consistently beat Chicago traffic, and by estimating whose commutes would be faster on a bike I think I can build a good model of which streets are the best candidates for new infrastructure.
In addition to providing high-quality routes for people biking, what else can a city do to ensure that people are safe while biking?
Beyond expanding bike infrastructure, maintaining existing bike lanes better would make biking safer. They should be plowed and salted along with the roads in the winter, because many people enjoy and depend on winter cycling. Ideally, driver’s education classes should also teach drivers how to cycle safely, to encourage them to try cycling and to teach them how to be safe around cyclists. The city should also enforce existing laws on speeding and on blocking bike lanes.
What are some ways to get more young people biking?
Making it easy. There’s a lot of things competing for the younger generation’s attention, but I think that if it’s really easy for people to cycle, many will start riding and won’t stop. Locking your bike at a train station or renting a Divvy ideally would be as easy as tapping your Ventra card. Not needing to wear a helmet would also make cycling a lot more convenient for teens, so we should strive to design infrastructure safe enough for helmetless riding.
Finally, if bike infrastructure is scenic, people of all ages will use it. Case in point: The 606 is very scenic and very popular. Bike infrastructure along the river and on tree-lined roads would be a great way to entice new cyclists.
Photos of Rohan Uppalapati are courtesy of him.