Ever pulled up to a destination on your bicycle, unable to find a rack in sight? Been nudged off the road by an intrusive car? Had your bike ride halted in its tracks by a cul-de-sac?
Cyclists will get a chance to voice their concerns at 7 p.m. on Aug. 8, at the Oak Park Public Library. The Chicagoland Bicycle Federation is hosting the community meeting, which will allow locals to voice any ideas on how Oak Park can become more bike-friendly as part of its biking master plan.
Attendees will gather around tables in groups and receive maps of the village to mark up with routes and destinations they ride or would like to ride in Oak Park.
“People who live in Oak Park are really the experts,” said Pamela Brookstein, West Suburban Coordinator for the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation, who will help moderate the meeting. “They know the best way to get from place to place.”
Infrastructure (routes, racks, and lockers), safety, and marketing will be some of the issues addressed at the meeting according to Public Works Director John Wielebnicki. Another public meeting will be scheduled for sometime next year and a plan will “hopefully” be completed by spring of 2008.
“This is a big step forward in going to the next level, and we’re really looking forward to getting the input from the community and putting the plan together so that we can continue to promote bicycling in Oak Park,” Wielebnicki said.
Village trustees unanimously agreed to pay the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation $34,948 at the June 4 board meeting to create a village-wide bicycle plan for Oak Park.
Improvements needed
Paul Aeschleman-member of the Transportation Commission and avid cyclist-said the cycling community has advocated a village plan for nearly a decade.
He feels Oak Park has made marginal strides towards bike-friendliness: The Home Avenue bridge was renovated to allow bike travel, and directional signs, street markings and “share the road signs” were installed on Augusta. But Aeschleman would like to see more designated biking routes throughout the village.
Gail Moran, a member of both the Oak Park Cycle Club and the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation
Board, is also pressing for defined bike pathways.
“There needs to be some attention given to striping bike lanes,” she said. “I think without bike lanes, it’s less safe. Bike lanes demonstrate that cyclists have a right to a piece of the road.”
Michael Stewart, also a member of the Oak Park Cycle Club, said specific bike lanes affecting parking spaces don’t have to be created necessarily. He’d be fine with just a narrow space between traffic and parked cars, without legal markings.
“In terms of bike-friendliness, Oak Park is well behind the times,” Stewart said.
Aeschleman also thinks it’s important to add “cut-throughs” to all the cul-de-sacs in Oak Park, so cyclists riding in the street could simply ride through a path in the middle of a cul-de-sac, rather than veering off onto a sidewalk to the left or right. Some cut-throughs already exist on Scoville just north of Washington and on Kenilworth, he noted.
One of the biggest concerns Aeschleman has heard from the local cycling community is feeling unsafe. More drivers and cyclists need to be educated on the principle that the roads need to be shared and both parties have a right to use the streets.
“I think the entire [village] attitude needs to change towards cyclists,” Stewart said, also lobbying for bicycle schooling.
Education will be a large part of the plan, Brookstein said. “Encouragement” will also be included: both encouraging Oak Parkers to consider biking as alternative transportation, as well as encouraging motorists to embrace cyclists.
“We would never put a 16-year-old behind the wheel of a car without making them go through some pretty intensive training,” she said. “Really, we do that with bicycles; we just put them on and expect them to know how to navigate through traffic.”
Oak Park streets are in poor shape for cycling, Aeschleman said. Potholes and cracks most motorists hardly notice make biking increasingly difficult.
He wishes the businesses that “push back” against the cycling movement in Oak Park would be a little more welcoming. Some establishments don’t want bike racks and lanes right in front of their stores for whatever reason, Aeschleman alleged.
“The business community is going to demand parking over bicycle lanes,” he said. “They’re still stuck in that car-centric model: You’ve got to have a car to have anything be successful… . From my perspective, the argument doesn’t fit. They prefer not to have bicycles [parked outside] because they see them getting in the way of cars.”
Stewart also sees a need for more racks in Oak Park. His children frequently bike to Rehm Pool and Barrie Park, where the little amount of rack space goes fast. He also wondered why the high school keeps racks in the back, rather than “proudly placing them right out in front.”
Aeschleman is pleased with the progress made by the different committees in Oak Park in terms of bike-friendliness, but he wishes the village would step up its efforts and follow the lead of Chicago, a cyclist’s haven, which is one of only two communities in Illinois that has been declared “bicycle friendly” by the League of American Bicyclists.
Brookstein said a key component of the plan will be creating an intricate network of signs, similar to Chicago, to help guide bikers throughout the village.
Going green through biking
One of the reasons Aeschleman cares so much about Oak Park’s bike plan is the impacts heavy traffic can have on his surroundings.
If just a small portion of Oak Park, maybe 10 percent, made an effort to decrease their car usage, the environment would benefit greatly, Aeschleman said. If every household eliminated just one car ride a week, Oak Park would see 20,000 fewer car trips, he noted.
“The avoidance of any car trip goes a long, long way towards a greater lifestyle, he said.