Improving safety and accessibility so adults and children can safely move about their community by bike is one of Ride Illinois top priorities. Side paths, paved shoulders, bike lanes, intersection improvements, and recreational trails are examples of infrastructure that bike-friendly communities have invested in. Our advocacy efforts have successfully guided the design of bike-friendly infrastructure in urban, suburban, and rural areas around Illinois.
Ride Illinois advocates for funding and infrastructure improvements, most often at the state and federal level. Encouraging agencies and municipalities to develop a Complete Streets policy and multi-modal plan impacts biking in communities of all sizes. Our work can also influence infrastructure design at the project level. Infrastructure projects take years to design, fun, and implement. Share feedback early and often with the agency overseeing the project.
What areas in your community should be more bike-friendly? Send us an email with details. We’re happy to offer suggestions to improve safety and accessibility!
“Complete Streets” is a design principle by which all roadway users – motorists, bike riders, walkers, etc. – can safely move along and across a street. With road design policies like Complete Streets, bike-friendly roads are built routinely whenever roadwork occurs. Ride Illinois advocates for Complete Streets policies at all road-building levels of government:
When we advise towns or develop municipal bike plans, we recommend these Complete Streets Guidelines for bicycle and pedestrian accommodation.
We also investigate county and municipal policies and completed roadwork to identify areas for improvement and determine best practice statewide. Some examples include:
More information about Ride Illinois’ Complete Streets design standards and scoring methodology can be found on our Bike Planning Resources page.
Ride Illinois has focused extensively on collaborating with the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT), due to the importance of state-maintained roads and the state’s approval authority of local road designs. Since its first bike policy in the 1990’s, Ride Illinois has worked closely with IDOT staff and leadership to identify issues and improve policy specifics. Our major collaborations include:
Ride Illinois uses our knowledge of bike planning and standards to send road agencies detailed input on improving a road design for bikes. These suggestions might cover on-road or off-road bikeways, intersections, and so on. Our Providing Bike Planning Resources page can help you learn what is possible, too.
Bike improvements that are incorporated into larger road projects are usually cheaper than separate projects, so that is our main focus. Asking for design changes must be done early in the planning process – it is too late when the bulldozers arrive. One can find out what resurfacing, reconstruction, expansion, or spot improvement projects are in the pipeline:
It might be that a bike improvement is needed to a street that is not scheduled for roadwork anytime in the foreseeable future. Letters are also submitted to road agencies requesting separate retrofit projects, if needed.
Whether a road improvement you have in mind would be a separate retrofit or part of other roadwork, let us know about it! If it would make your biking better, it would for others, too.