So the wife and I are starting to bike more, and I'm contemplating commuting, so I'd like to tap the collective wisdom for bike friendly streets. Also which streets should be avoided.
yay! Bike to Work Week starts today, actually. Where do you live? Where do you and the wife work?
Commuting by bike is the absolute greatest way to go, other than perhaps walking (tbrizzle had the best commute back in the bucktown days). You get to work bright-eyed and alert instead of in a CTA-induced coma. It's what I miss most about having a job. ;-)
i like taking armitage between the lake and bucktown. it has a bike lane all the way across. you have to jog at courtland to go under the highway but courtland has a bike lane too.
north south i like taking damen or halsted. both have bike lanes.
the path is nice but man now that the weather is nice there are tons of people. it gets a little scary for me actually. im always afraid im going to take out someone jogging.
Damen's also nice, except for that crazy intersection at Clybourn + Fullerton. I hate that thing. I take Damen from my house to my parents house in Edgewater (it ends at Bryn Mawr and the cemetary). Ravenswood is a quiet north-south street. You can actually take it almost as far north as Diversey (Wellington); it turns into a smaller, more residential road at Addison + Lincoln.
Supposedly the Chicagoland Biking Federation's maps are great: http://www.biketraffic.org/.
i'd go so far as to say that between the months of may and september, the lake front path is more dangerous than 90% of the streets in chicago. people are dumb, oblivious, and selfish; and that leads to problems for cyclists. some cyclists are are also part of the problem - the lance armstrong wannabe spandex-wearing morons who think it's a great idea to go 25mph past north ave beach at 1pm on a sunny saturday.
bike lanes are great and all, but they do tend to be on more heavily trafficed roads; which means there are more idiots who don't check their side mirror before making a sharp right to snag a parking space. for the most leisurely, stress-free routes, i'd recommend sticking to quiet side streets. sure, you'll have stop signs every block, and sure you'll probably have to jog a street or two over once whatever side street you're on hits an end; but if you're not in a hurry, who cares. plus, you'll likely see parts of neighborhoods you'd otherwise never see, and that can be fun.
from your place to bucktown, i think i'd do this: Lakeview - Bucktown the stretch down halsted will have a bit of traffic, so you could replace that with a meandering side street approach. the rest is pretty calm.
re: taking out joggers on the LFP. i feel like as long as i am moving along at a reasonable yet safe speed (8 - 12mph probably), the only way i'm taking anyone out is if they do something stupid - like step out right in front of me. which in reality, happens a lot.
joggers are retarded. running along with their ipods cranked up so they can't hear a damn thing, running down the middle of the lane when there's plenty of space to their right, not looking when they decide that water fountain on the other side of the path looks tasty. and with the ipod cranked, they can't hear if a bike is coming up, and they sure as shit don't check their 6 ever to figure out if someone might be coming up on them. would you suddenly cross a street w/o looking at all? of course not. but somehow this is acceptable on the LFP - which is a street for non-motorized traffic.
now, if i could take out stupid joggers w/o fear of damaging myself or my bike, i would do it all day long with no remorse. the world is far too kind to idiots these days. but that's not the case. plus, there's the added social perception that, no matter what really happened, the cyclist was the one being an idiot and it's 100% their fault. i hate people.
and don't even get me started on moms with strollers/battering rams.
Running the other day I hear a crash behind me. A quick glance back shows a biker down, a runner pulling headphones out of his ears turning back from his left turn off the path. My guess? The runner decided to turn left without glancing over his shoulder, biker swerves to prevent running over runner, crashing.
Nope. Not yet. Soon. Would like to get something besides a backpack to bring clothes to work. Also, it's been wicked hot. And I don't have a shower at work. But soon. I'll try heading straight up and down Halsted to and from work to start with, and see where I go from there.
halsted sucks between division and lake. the road is all chewed up; lots o' potholes. and has two of the biggest "hills" (read: overpasses) in chicago. but there is a bike lane.
that's a good route; i took that to work for 2+ years. wells is nice in the summer. old town = eye candy. but watch out for valets on the post work ride home.
Did a test run over the weekend. Did my first commute in this morning. I'll probably be taking Dearborn back up (bike lanes again), except I don't know when to get back over to Wells. Bike riding is neat.
which suburb? i ran into an older guy once who said he commutes 50 miles (roundtrip) by bike every day from the western suburbs. i suppose where there's a will there's a way.