The lonely one percent of Chicagoans who make local trips by bicycle should start to have some company by 2027, if the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation has its way. In a meeting this week, the Federation laid down its twenty-year plan to have fifty percent of local trips made by either bike, foot or mass transit and to decrease accidents by fifty percent. Citing global warming, rising fuel costs and out-of-control traffic congestion as major influences on the plan, CBF executive director Rob Sadowsky says people are already starting to get frustrated with owning an automobile. “When I started bicycling to work in 1999, I would be the only person bicycling down Milwaukee Avenue,” he says. “Now, I’ll come to an intersection and there’ll be a crowd of bicyclists waiting at an intersection. So we know we’re making a dent.” Sadowsky says Minneapolis currently has an eighteen percent rate of local trips made with a bicycle, and doesn’t see why Chicago can’t do the same, though it will need a certain government legislature down south to help jump-start the process. “There’s no way that we’re going to get anywhere close to our goals if we don’t get a long-term mass transit fix in Springfield,” he says.
