The quarterly Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Council meeting is usually a tightly scheduled show-and-tell, with staff from the Chicago Department of Transportation and other city agencies giving presentations on what they’re doing to improve cycling.
Shaken by the events, Kristen Green of Ghost Bikes Chicago reached out to ask CDOT for time at the MBAC meeting to discuss the hazards for cyclists that she views as a public health crisis. Ghost Bikes installs white-painted bicycles at crash sites to honor fallen cyclists, and Green has known more than her fair share of people killed in bike crashes.
Donnelly added that another factor in Park’s death was that the Madison/Halsted intersection where she was struck was bottlenecked by barriers for a construction site at the southeast corner, which meant that there was no safe place on the street for cyclists. She argued that in areas like the West Loop and 18th Street, where Thomas Ferrer was struck, bike routes are frequently disrupted by the many construction projects, so the city should better regulate development—or at least better enforce the rules.
Commissioner Scheinfeld seemed to agree. She thanked the cyclists for their “really valuable” input into Vision Zero, the city’s current effort to eliminate all serious and fatal crashes by 2026.
