Illinois' "Don't Bike" Map

IDOT’S Don’t Bicycle Map
by Mike Kruger
At the last evanston bike club meeting, I picked up a copy of IDOT’s official bicycle map for Northeastern Illinois. The 2006 edition is an update of earlier editions which I found useless and never used. Within this in mind, I thought I’d see if the new edition was an improvement, and see how it compares to the Chicagoland Bicycle Map, which covers roughly the same area.

Cost?
CBF: $7
IDOT: free
Advantage: IDOT

Online?
CBF: No
IDOT: yes, at http://wrc.dot.il.gov/bikemaps The maps didn’t seem to zoom in well the day I tried.
Advantage: IDOT

Logic of map
CBF: This map is based on street information, traffic count information, and local volunteers reviewing particular sections. The emphasis is on finding through routes from point A to point B.
IDOT: This map has all the hallmarks of a map made up quickly and sloppily using statistical formulas to evaluate relatively short stretches of road. There is no apparent attempt to create through routes at all. As a result, it’s hard to use this map to get anywhere.

Emphasis
CBF wants you to bike and shows trails, major bike lanes, through routes and some shortcuts. Most routes are on through routes, but some shortcuts through neighborhoods are shown when appropriate.
IDOT prints the off-road trails twice as wide as anything else. It only shows roads IDOT has information on, and so it doesn’t show any connections through neighborhoods. The vast majority of the roads shown are shown in “red” – not recommended for biking.

Curiosities
The IDOT map shows much of the popular Sheridan Road route as “not recommended for biking”. Ironically, this does not include the part of Sheridan north of Tower Rd. where Winnetka has banned bikes. That section is marked OK.
On the other hand, it shows Waukegan Rd through Glenview in the middle category “caution advised”. Given that practically nothing in Cook County is rated as “most suitable for biking”, this is close to an endorsement. But Waukegan is a terrible choice – in the bike/ped planning process currently under way in Glenview, not a single person has proposed Waukegan as a biking corridor now, or as a road which could be sufficiently improved to be a biking corridor.
Glenview Rd shows up as “white”. Taken literally, this would mean biking is. This is probably a typo.
The bike trails are not only indicated in a very wide line, but with the type of interrupted line that usually means “under construction”. As a result, it’s hard to see where the path actually connects with any precision. There’s a bike path shown beginning at the corner of Glenview Rd. and Milwaukee Avenue, heading southwest to Central. The map makes it appear this is parallel to Dearlove Rd. In reality, this path is a quarter mile farther north, on the other side of the railroad tracks, and is blocked off from Central Rd. by two large fences. The path just goes around some athletic fields.
Even the popular North Branch Trail is inaccurately shown running on the east side of Harms Rd, not the west side, and the “Y” intersection just south of Dundee Rd. is shown on the north side of Dundee Rd. At least two miles of the Skokie Valley Trail are shown on the wrong side of Skokie Highway. The Skokie Valley Trail is shown running all the way up to 176, when it ends a mile south at Laurel Avenue.
All streets in downtown Chicago are marked as “not recommended for bicycling”, even those with bike lanes such as Roosevelt, Clinton, Canal, and Wells.
The principal diagonals northwest from downtown – Elston and Milwaukee Avenues – are mostly marked as “not recommended for biking”, even though the map also correctly indicates that Elston has bike lanes along its entire length. The portions of Damen Avenue with bike lanes are similarly marked both as having a bike lane and as being “not recommended for biking”.
This listing of errors is not the result of painstaking research. I’m sure there are many more curiosities in the remainder of the map.
Overall, the impression given by this map is that there is almost no way to do any bicycling in the Chicago area.

Excusable?
When I made similar comments on the last edition, I found a few defenders who said that while the Chicago area map might have limitations, the maps were good for the other 8 regions in the state. Considering that two-thirds of the people in Illinois live in this region, that’s not much of an excuse.

Why?
Why would a cyclist want to carry this map? I have no idea. If you need a map, spend $7 on the CBF map.
As to why IDOT would prepare the map: there were some provisions in some of the federal funding requirements that initially led to the state bicycle maps. Some states (for example, Wisconsin) did an excellent job. Other states, such as Illinois, seem to have done it out of either obligation or a desire to convince cyclists that their only place is on bike paths through parks.

Natural Organic Pet Food, Economically Priced

From: Tove Momerathsson

Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny

Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2007 9:30 PM

Subject: A matter of taste

In response to the current problems with contaminated cat food,
Mother Nature, Inc., would like to remind you of her traditional
line of 100% all-natural cat foods. No pouches, no bags, no cans.
No mysterious "meat byproducts." No harmful chemicals. And they
may be bought at little or no cost. Each meal comes complete with
its own live-action play toy, guaranteed to amuse any cat for hours.
Available in three time-tested flavors: mouse, sparrow and cricket.

Complaints set to music

The blog "Your Daily Awesome" has a video of a choral piece in which common Finnish complaints are set to music. (Yes, there are subtitles!)

http://www.yourdailyawesome.com/2007/04/14/helsinki-complaints-choir/

It's amusing, if not quite up to "Gilbert and Sullivan" standards.
Warning: the last minute of the video is empty.

Commuting to Work

Here's my photoessay about my bicycle commute:

http://hometown.aol.com/mikekr/myhomepage/bike_commute_part1.htm

Floyd Landis: Brush with fame

Floyd Landis, the 2006 Tour de France winner (accused of using banned substances to help) sought me out for help the other night.

Out of curiosity, I went to an event to raise money for the Floyd Fairness Fund, which is raising money for his legal defense. While I was contemplating the snack table, Floyd touched me on the shoulder and said "Excuse me, can I squeeze by". I said "sure" and moved out of the way. Floyd said "Thanks". Floyd passed me like he passed all those domestiques going up the Alps, and headed off, probably to the washroom -- probably a result of having one of the Three Floyds beers that were available.

Not much of a brush with fame, but it's all I've got today.

Glenview Cyclists wanted: April 14th Village Ride

Glenview, Illinois, is now in the process of planning for pedestrian and bicycle facilities.

There's a bike ride April 14th to demonstrate conditions in the area. This would be a good opportunity to influence the long-term planning process, meet some neighbors, and possibly see a few things about the village you weren't aware of. Come on out!!

More information is at the village site:

http://www.glenview.il.us/departments/capital/index.shtml

U of Michigan Students Campaign for .. Butt Cleavage?

I hope this story is a hoax. Otherwise, I get to play grumpy alumnus and wonder what's going on at the old school.


http://codependentcollegian.blogspot.com/2006/12/student-leads-fight-for-butt-cleavage.html

Nutcracker suite on bike parts

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2006/11/28/nutcracker-suite-played-exclusively-on-bicycle-parts/

Who says I don't have any Christmas spirit?
(most everyone, actually)

Update: here's the video:
http://www.specialized.com/bc/microsite/holiday/index.html

A bicycle hearse is inevitable.

"there is something a bit sad about bikers being carried off in the back of an estate car."

With that attitude, "the Faster Pastor. Motorcycle-mad minister Paul Sinclair has built what he has hailed to be the world's fully enclosed sidecar hearse."

http://www.assistnews.net/ansarticle.asp?URL=Stories/s03010107.htm

Holy Rollers: the many sides of bicycling in New York

Ben McGrath in the New Yorker profiles Critical Mass a bit, some people who
are sick of bicyclists on the sidewalk, and more:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/061113fa_fact

There's this interesting choice point, albeit a bit dramatic:

"Bernardin used to ride a bike,... Then, about ten years ago, he was riding
north on Sixth Avenue, "doing everything legal," he says, when another biker
came tearing around the corner, "illegally," at Twenty-second Street and
clipped him; he spilled, and barely missed having his head crushed by a
passing car.

The incident could be a Rorschach for civic activists. To a cycling
advocate, what's salient is the fact that Bernardin was nearly killed by an
automobile. Bernardin, however, saw two agents obeying the traffic
laws-himself and the car driver-and a third who, by flouting them,
introduced the element of danger."

I'm not sure this is much of a Rorschach: can this be seen as anything other than an asshole cyclist almost getting another cyclist seriously injured?

The article is a worthwhile look at the attitudes of those we might not encounter on a day to day basis.

I've often thought of curb cuts as a generally bad thing, and spent some cycling time trying to think of other alternatives that would be useful for wheelchairs, baby strollers and the like but prevent 15 mph cyclists from acting like idiots with the right of way. (A good rule: little old ladies over 80 get the right of way no matter WHERE they are!)

Bicycle Logistics

There are some great pictures of bicycles being used to carry things at this link: http://aistigave.hit.bg/Logistics/



When my daughter and I were in Cambodia, we rented bikes for two days around Angor Wat, and saw similar creative uses of bicycles, although none quite some impressive as some of these.

WSJ: Urinalysis Test Faulty

The first statement of an athlete accused of doping is to claim innocence, which is often a lie. But the first impulse of the testers is to claim infallibility, and that’s often a lie as well. Here’s the saga of a urinalysis test for alcohol from the Wall Street Journal, October 5, 2006. This isn’t the test involved in the Floyd Landis case, but it’s instructive about the politics of drug testing.

The EtG test is widely used to screen for alcohol use, particularly among people with past histories of alcohol abuse who need to demonstrate that they haven’t been backsliding. But alcohol metabolizes quickly. The EtG test looks for ethyl glucuronide, “a unique metabolite of alcohol that stays in urine for up to 80 hours – four times as long as does alcohol itself. ... The wider window of detection made EtG an instant hit with drug courts, professional licensing boards and other agencies ...and an instant star of the urine-testing industry, which is performing tens of thousands of EtG tests per month in the U.S.”

However, the test can be set off by the use of hand sanitizers or alcohol-containing foods or medicines, or even “a carton of apple juice left too long in the refrigerator”, persuading “even the scientist who pioneered EtG screening in America that the test is prone to so-called false positives.”

Did the testing companies care? “Even after the evidence emerged that the EtG test could detect incidental exposure ... many urine-testing firms continued marketing the screen as definitive proof... Some continue to do so. ‘EtG is not detectable... unless an alcoholic beverage has been consumed,’ says the Web site of ...AccuDiagnostics... [which] attributes that claim to toxicologists at laboratories to which it outsources its samples.”

The US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has issued a warning saying that the EtG test isn’t perfect.

For a variety of information about the Floyd Landis case, try http://trustbut.blogspot.com/

So, just how drunk is this bicyclist?

I'm guessing he's riding a bike in the first place because his drivers' license was removed for drunk driving.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-dT4kGCNWI

Floyd Landis Does Rap Video

Not, of course, the real Floyd Landis.
It has a few good moments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJnYVm4iaqc

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Choosing to take this as a compliment

"... theoretical physics is the cheapest of endeavors. Its practitioners require no expensive equipment. All they need is legal pads and pencils and blackboards and chalk to ply their trade, plus room and board and health insurance and a place to park their bikes. "

(via Jim Holt in the New Yorker, this is a direct quote from Lee Smolin's book, “The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next” (Houghton Mifflin; $26)

http://www.newyorker.com/printables/critics/061002crat_atlarge

This is perhaps a homage to the famous picture of Einstein on a bicycle.

Accident Victim Back At NU - City

Accident Victim Back At NU - City: "The yellow Hummer knocked her down but didn't take her out. Weinberg senior Archana Sriram, the victim of a hit-and-run accident last February, is back on campus. "

So, the motorist who didn't stop and ran her down DID get away with assault with a deadly weapon. The article reports police have basically given up finding him.

Previous blog entries

This blog was moved from my earlier blog on AOL journals.
http://journals.aol.com/mikekr/ZbicyclistsZlog/

I'm moving it here because AOL seems to have created this capability in response to competition, but then just let it sit there. Images aren't handled very well, and no new features have been added since the initial roll.

I'm also separating this into two blogs: bicycling (this blog) and everything else, which is mostly comments on news, statistics, politics and the occasional joke. That's "Truncated Thoughts" at http://mikekr.blogspot.com/