Seven cyclists died in bike-automobile collisions on Chicago roads last year, up from three in 2013, according to data provided by the city’s Department of Transportation.
An eighth cyclist died in Chicago after a collision with a CTA Brown Line train, according to CDOT spokesman Pete Scales.
City transportation officials wouldn’t comment on the statistics Thursday. But at the September meeting of the Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Council, Department of Transportation Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld called the 2014 uptick in fatalities “significant.”
The city recorded eight bicyclist fatalities in 2012, seven in 2011 and five in 2010.
The U.S. census tracks those who commute to work by bike, and in Chicago that number has grown steadily over the past 15 years, according to a 2012 analysis of city data published by the Department of Transportation. In 2000, the city recorded about 6,000 people who regularly commuted by bike to work in Chicago, and by 2010 that number had grown to more than 14,000, according to census data.
The city didn’t have the final 2014 statistics showing the total number of cyclists injured in crashes with vehicles. But the numbers have increased in the past three years, from little more than 1,300 in 2011 to more than 1,500 in 2013, according to data provided by the city.
Jim Merrell, an advocacy campaign director for the Active Transportation Alliance, said the recent fatality numbers and the crash data show the need for more protected bike lanes in the city.
“We believe the only acceptable number of fatalities is zero,” he said. “Whether it’s three or it’s seven, each and every one of those is a tragedy and unacceptable, and 100 percent preventable.”
Merrell pointed to the Dearborn Street bike lane and the Milwaukee Avenue bike lane, where in some places bike commuters and motorists are separated by white plastic poles called “bollards,” as examples of streets in Chicago where the installation of protected bike lanes has been shown by some studies to make commuters feel safer and reduce collisions.
“There’s an ever-expanding body of evidence that improving the safety of the streets this way for all users reduces crashes,” he said.
Number of cyclists killed in bike-vehicle crashes in Chicago for the past 5 years
2014: 7
2013: 3
2012: 8
2011: 7
2010: 5
Number of cyclists injured in bike-vehicle crashes in Chicago in for the past 5 years
2014: Not available
2013: 1,567
2012: 1,479
2011: 1,297
2010: 1,566
2009: 1,388
Twitter: @rachelcromidas
![“Let the music do the talking,” sang Phish vocalist-guitarist Trey Anastasio at the outset of the band’s concert Saturday at the Sphere in Las Vegas. Normally, hearing that advice from a well-disciplined virtuoso who seemingly never tires of the stage and worships the groove would pass without a hint of potential irony. However, given the group was not even one minute into the third of its sold-out four-night stand at the $2.3 billion dome — expressly devised to push sensory boundaries to previously uncharted limits — one couldn’t help wonder how seriously Phish would take its own instruction. Turns out […]](https://www.chicagotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/CTC-L-ENT-PHISH-04-e1713888536637.jpg?w=620 "“Let the music do the talking,” sang Phish vocalist-guitarist Trey Anastasio at the outset of the band’s concert Saturday at the Sphere in Las Vegas. Normally, hearing that advice from a well-disciplined virtuoso who seemingly never tires of the stage and worships the groove would pass without a hint of potential irony. However, given the group was not even one minute into the third of its sold-out four-night stand at the $2.3 billion dome — expressly devised to push sensory boundaries to previously uncharted limits — one couldn’t help wonder how seriously Phish would take its own instruction. Turns out […]")