Jane Healy, a high school science teacher, said motorists sometimes shout insults or give her the “hairy eyeball” when she bikes in the southern suburbs.
“People shout nasty things and I just smile and wave, ” said Healy, 53, a Blue Island resident who bike-commutes to her job at Dwight D. Eisenhower High School in the same town. She said the suburbs need better infrastructure to encourage both cycling and walking as well as more education for drivers to encourage them to share the road.
While Bicycling magazine in 2016 named Chicago the most bike-friendly U.S. city, the car-centric Chicago suburbs still have a ways to go to encourage both cycling and walking, according to advocates.
Though there are signs of progress, from the growth of a trail network to the arrival of protected bike lanes in some communities, it is still hard for many in the suburbs to bicycle comfortably, according to a new report from the Active Transportation Alliance, which promotes biking, walking and transit.
..Some areas have seen conflicts between bicyclists and motorists — Barrington Hills, for example, popular with cyclists and horseback riders for its scenery, was the site of a feud three years ago between residents who complained of unsafe riders, and cyclists who say residents had driven them off the road and even threw things at them.
Village President Martin McLaughlin said the village has a “small minority” of people who oppose biking of any kind. A couple of years ago, the village passed a resolution demanding that biking on village-owned, narrow, two-lane rural roads be single-file rather than in groups four or five bikes wide, McLaughlin said. The village also decided not to ask for road-widening funds to accommodate bicyclists, because of the effect on private property.
“We’d have to tear out a ton of heritage trees,” McLaughlin said. He said the village is not opposed to biking, and that non-village-owned roads like routes 62 and 68 may be better choices for widening.
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