Long in development, Oak Park’s village board was set to review its comprehensive bike plan at a meeting June 3. And while it has many components and aligns with any number of other Oak Park initiatives, the first point of on-the-ground friction may come on Harvard Street.
The plan calls for making this east-west street in south Oak Park a primary focus of the bike plan. The rub for some residents along the street and nearby is that the plan calls for eliminating all street parking in favor of striped bike lanes in each direction.
The virtue of that idea, planners say, is that Harvard already has stop lights at intersections with Oak Park Avenue and Ridgeland Avenue and it connects with many of south Oak Park’s key public spaces. Those include Maple Park, Carroll Center and Park, Abraham Lincoln Elementary School, Washington Irving Elementary School and Barrie Park. Additionally, proponents argue there are a limited number of homes which face onto Harvard Street.
But some neighbors will object to the elimination of parking on their street.
“This isn’t about opposing bike lanes,” nearby resident Sara Cano-Gerringer told Wednesday Journal. “It’s about ensuring that any infrastructure plan is supported by data, driven by actual need, guided by a thoughtful cost-benefit analysis and shaped by meaningful community input.”
In advance of the June 3 board meeting, Trustees Cory Wesley and Jim Taglia have met with a group of frustrated residents concerned about the potential loss of parking near their homes and accessibility concerns.
While the report was produced with support of several community engagement efforts by village staff, Taglia called for more engagement with south Oak Park residents at a May 20 board meeting.
“I know staff has met with residents and I appreciate that and it has been very helpful and I know there has been a lot of outreach, but still, there is a lack of information that is concerning to me and obvious,” he said. “In my opinion, this resident group needs to have a meeting of the minds and if this can be scheduled and between the June 3 presentation and the July vote, then it should not delay the process.”
In an interview with Wednesday Journal, Wesley said the bike plan is of huge importance to Oak Park, and the village must find a way to adequately listen to its residents while staying committed to the board’s broader infrastructure and sustainability goals.
“No matter where we put those protected bike lanes, there’s going to be a group of neighbors who are going to be upset,” Wesley said. “When we consider what we’re going to do with the collective infrastructure as a board, the way that I look at it as a trustee is that I have to consider everyone in the village. I have to consider the best collective use of that infrastructure versus the desired use of small groups or individuals. I think about it from that perspective.”
“You can’t govern by community consensus,” he said.
Implementing bike lanes on Harvard is included as a short-term goal of the bike plan with a long-term vision for building protected bike lanes along the street.
The broad bike plan, now more than 15 years in development, looks to make Oak Park more friendly for bicycle travel by updating village infrastructure with various types of protected bike lanes, increasing bike share and e-bike share access in the village and enacting traffic calming measures in proposed “neighborhood greenways.” In addition to its own goals, the bike plan supports village goals contained in the carbon emissions-cutting “Climate Ready Oak Park Plan,” the village’s “Vision Zero” plan aimed at eliminating all traffic deaths and Cook County’s 2023 bike plan, which recommended hundreds of miles in new on-street and off-street bike paths throughout the region.
“The Oak Park Bike Plan Update builds on the village’s foundational work over the past two decades in creating a safer and more accessible community to bike,” the staff report said. “By bringing together perspectives across the Oak Park community, this plan defines the village’s objectives for growing and maintaining a bicycle network today and into the future. This Bike Plan Update is the next generation plan for the village. Oak Park is ready to start taking on more ambitious infrastructure to support a continually growing bicycle culture.”
The board is expected to vote on the updated plan next month.
The report includes short-term, medium-term and long-term recommendations on how to develop bike access in Oak Park, suggesting phased changes to bike lanes across the community.
“These projects represent ambitious ideas that are key to creating a comprehensive all ages and abilities bike network but require larger conversations about the broader transportation network, further detailed analysis, more substantial reconstruction, and potentially a reallocation of existing high-demand vehicle parking,” the report read. “Some of these projects raise complex questions that we do not have all the answers to yet, but it is important to capture more ambitious ideas — otherwise they will never happen. Planning for these ambitious projects should start in the short-term, but implementation is likely to take several years of analysis and coordination.”
