The first I heard about the planned new Harvard Avenue bike lane was in a social media firestorm. The village sent residents who lived on Harvard a letter suggesting they show up at the Transportation Commission to protest the potential loss of parking. They first vented their spleens online, and then obligingly showed up in force at Transportation Commission meetings, voicing strong objections to both the Harvard and LeMoyne bike routes.
I live a block away from Harvard on Euclid. I have two children who use Harvard to bike to school. Did I get a letter from the village suggesting I show up in support of a bike lane that would make my kids safer? No.
The short‑term blueprint for Harvard removes parking from Maple to Humphrey and stripes interim lanes. The longer-term plan is an upgrade to raised or fully protected lanes. The route connects two schools and three parks, has stoplights at the key intersections of Oak Park and Ridgeland avenues, very little parking demand, and very few homes that face the street. This is the perfect test bed for a low stress, all‑ages, all‑abilities network.
Yet the project has stalled under the same headwinds that greet every bike proposal: fear of losing “my” curb space. Letters to Wednesday Journal warn of hardship if visitors can’t park directly in front of their homes.
That resistance is understandable — change is always difficult, and parking is the third rail of Oak Park politics. But if village trustees cannot defend a protected lane on a street with only dozens of directly affected households, what hope is there for the major north-south bike routes that are also in the plan?
Oak Park, Ridgeland, and Home avenues are slotted for consideration in the upcoming years. Those north‑south corridors have hundreds if not thousands of homes whose street parking could be impacted.
Harvard is the easy one. Low traffic speeds, minimal curbside demand, and multiple key neighborhood destinations. Delivering it would notch an early Bike Plan win while giving residents a tangible example of what “protected” really feels like.
Surrendering here telegraphs that even the smallest pushback can sink a bike lane. That message won’t be lost on homeowners when their block is studied, nor on any grant reviewer wondering whether the village can deliver on our plans.
Good governance means piloting reforms where the risk is low and the payoff is visible and high. Harvard Avenue is exactly that proving ground. Approve it, build it soon, and collect the data.
If the sky does not fall, we will have earned the credibility to tackle the hard corridors. Bow to the same tired parking arguments, and we may as well recycle the Bike Plan now.
Harvard is our litmus test. Let’s pass it and keep the promise of a bike‑friendly Oak Park alive.
Josh is a passionate urbanist and entrepreneur who’s lived in Chicagoland over 30 years and has called Oak Park home for over a decade.