I recently turned and headed west on Grand Avenue at Western. The city has installed protected bike lanes beginning at Western and ending at Chicago Avenue. The trucks traveling that stretch of Grand could be going to the salt depot, the big railyard, or to some of the few factory buildings that still line that stretch.
No one is requiring the bicyclists to prove that they know the rules of the road. All they have to do is just get a bicycle and ride. Therein lies the problem. Inexperienced cyclists traveling with dangerous traffic. Sadly those riders ignore traffic signals as well as the basic road rules. Those bike lanes give a cyclist the illusion of safety. And I wonder why are bike lane and truck routes being put together? That is a recipe for disaster.
I still recall the incident up north, where the mother was biking with her toddler. The right lane was blocked by a utility truck and a semi was in the other lane. The mother rode in between the utility truck and semi. When the light turned green, she attempted to pull off. She lost her balance, the bike went down, and the child was killed.
For the life of me, I could never understand why she would attempt to ride next to a semi and a utility truck. Bike versus any motorized vehicle, bike loses. I wonder, since bicyclists can pretty much go down any side street, why one would choose to ride with such dangerous traffic. Right now the city is hell-bent on putting bike lanes everywhere, even if they aren’t being used.
I understand Milwaukee Avenue has had a number of deadly incidents with traffic and bicycles. Rather than continue to force the traffic to crawl along at one mile per hour, perhaps it would be smarter to remove the bike lanes. And for those riders biking into the central business district, which I would define as Ashland on the west, Fullerton on the north, Cermak on the south, those individuals need to be licensed. To ride on the streets in those areas, the license would need to be displayed on an arm band. The licensing fee could help offset the money the city is spending on those bike lanes. Plus those who are biking would be assured to have the proper rules of the road training.
Speaking of a lack of common sense, the recent battery charges against those two young people who were part of a group that jumped a couple returning from dinner in Streeterville need to have those charges upgraded to felonies. Young people share information that they won’t get charged if they do certain things. The same sort of message needs to go around that they can be charged heavily for criminal activity. Their parents also need to face some charges.
We are becoming a lawless society and the wilder it gets, the more it cannot easily be contained with rules that don’t have consequences.