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The Student Newspaper of DePaul University

The DePaulia

The Student Newspaper of DePaul University

The DePaulia

The Student Newspaper of DePaul University

The DePaulia

Chicago bicyclists find it tough to share the road

Chicago is not the friendliest place for citizens who rely on their bikes as their primary mode of transportation. It is no secret that drivers of parked cars often and carelessly swing open their doors into the path of bicyclists, causing multiple bicycle-car related injuries that are all too plentiful in Chicago.

On the morning of Oct. 5, 32-year-old attorney and avid bicyclist Neill Townsend, rode his bike south on Wells Street in front of Walter Payton High School, just north of Oak Street, when the driver of a Nissan Altima swung open the door, police said.

According to the Chicago Tribune, Townsend swerved from the bike lane to avoid being “doored” by a driver exiting a parked car. He then fell underneath the wheels of a passing semi truck that was hauling a flat-bed trailer, police said. The man who opened the door was cited for a traffic violation, according to Chicago Police Department News Affairs Officer Robert Perez.

According to Grid Chicago, a local a blog about sustainable transportation matters, projects and culture, Townsend was the fifth cyclist killed in Chicago this year.

Townsend, a native of Lexington, Ky., moved to Chicago to attend DePaul University College of Law, said his mother, Jane V. Townsend. He graduated from DePaul University’s law school in 2008 and joined the Illinois State Bar Association Feb. 3, 2009.
Townsend’s death has drawn attention to the city’s complex relationship with bicyclists and bicycle safety, pushing Chicago to make more efforts to prevent these accidents in the future.

“I’ve been riding my bike off and on, 20 years – actively three years,” said bicyclist Oboi Reed. “It took me a long time to get comfortable riding on the street. I would not ride on the street because I didn’t want to mix in with traffic.”

Reed said he has never been in a traffic accident riding his bike; however, it is easy to see just how difficult it is for bike riders to safely navigate Chicago’s streets.

“I ride through all parts of the city,” said bicyclist Max Youngquist. “The bike safety part of it is all fine, but some roads are obviously better for riding than others because of bike lanes.”

Dooring incidents seem rather easy to prevent – all drivers have to do is use their eyes and vehicles’ side view mirrors to scope the scene before they exit their vehicles. While it seems easy to solve, bike accidents related to doorings continue to occur. However, bike-related accidents are not always the fault of the city’s drivers.

Kristy Jackson, a South Loop resident, said she does not ride a bike, but she shares the road with bicyclists every day. Some of them she likes, and some of them she does not.

“I’m annoyed by (bicyclists) who don’t use hand signals. It feels like they turn haphazardly, and I have to anticipate where they’re going and what they’re going to do, especially if there is no designated bike lane,” said Jackson.

Even when a bike lane is present, there are other factors that affect a biker’s access, including people who use bike lanes as personal temporary parking spots.

“The bike lanes have made things better. However, in places like downtown, people just tend to pull over and park there, like delivery trucks, so bikers are always in the driving lanes,” Jackson said.

Sometimes it is neither the drivers nor the bikers at fault – Chicago’s road infrastructure is not the most bike-friendly.
Too many of the bike lanes in Chicago are too narrow for anyone to navigate through safely. The lane where Townsend died was like many in the city: a simple thin striped lane, barely visible to a driver, squashed in the middle of a lane of traffic and a lane of parked cars.

“Some are too narrow. I’m happy to have the bike lanes. I’d rather have them than not have them,” said Reed. “Some are decently wide and give space for people to open their doors, and a bike can pass by without going into the other lane of traffic.”

Chicago radio station WBEZ mapped out dooring crash data obtained by the Illinois Department of Transportation between Sept. 2009 and Sept. 7, 2012, showing that 577 doorings have been reported during that time period.

The data also showed that most of the doorings occurred on diagonal streets like Milwaukee, Lincoln and Clark Streets, and although all three streets are major thoroughfares for commuters, they’re particularly narrow.

Chicago has heard the outcry from bikers and drivers alike, creating new bicycle lanes called “protected” or “buffered” lanes positioned to the right of parked cars with a buffer zone to the cyclist’s left that allows room for a car door to open outside the path of a passing rider. The bike lanes on Kinzie, Elston and 18th Street are examples of these, and that data showed that less incidents occur at these intersections than others.

“Wider or protected bike lanes would definitely help,” said Jackson. “It’d give us all more room.”

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