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.