Streets Blog Chicago: "Belmont Cragin and Hermosa celebrate new Divvy stations, bikeway network"

Several dozen Belmont Cragin and Hermosa residents showed up to the ribbon cutting for the Northwest Side neighborhood’s first Divvy bike-share station this evening at Cragin Park. As an extra incentive, Divvy offered attendees free two-year memberships.

The Chicago Department of Transportation, which oversees the Divvy program, and local community leaders are taking a saturation approach to help make biking a safe, convenient, and appealing transportation and recreation in these blue-collar, largely Latino communities, which aren’t served by the ‘L’ system. In addition to 25-to-30 Divvy “E-stations” (suitable for parking the newer black electric-assist cycles), CDOT is striping a dense grid of new bikeways, adding up to 17 miles. This network will include several Neighborhood Greenway treatments on side streets with contraflow (“wrong-way”) bike lanes that legalize biking in both directions on one-way streets.