McHenry County Bicycle Advocates works on filling trail gaps, raising awareness

CRYSTAL LAKE – Eberhard Veit caught up to Todd Nelson as he was riding his bike from his home in Cary to his job in Barrington one summer six years ago.

He had a petition he wanted Nelson to sign.

Veit, the president of McHenry County Bicycle Advocates, had been campaigning to get Rakow Road re-striped with bike lanes.

The advocacy group tries to get involved whenever road projects get planned and pushes for the project to meet Complete Streets guidelines, a movement started by the National Complete Streets Coalition in 2004 that pushes for streets to be designed with all its users in mind.

That means pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists and public transit users.

“We’re advocating for a bicycle-friendly network throughout the county,” Veit said. “We’d like to see more people using bicycles for transportation as well as recreation. We want a functioning network of solutions that provide a functioning network for non-motorized transportation.”

Right now his focus is targeting gaps in the network and trying to get different government agencies to split the cost.

Veit was the guy that pushed to close the gap connecting the new bike paths along Route 14 with the city of Woodstock's network.

The city of Woodstock ultimately agreed to do the engineering with the McHenry County and Illinois departments of transportation covering the construction, and the McHenry County Conservation District maintaining it.

He also helped spur the ongoing negotiations between the city of Crystal Lake and the conservation district to connect the Ridgefield Trace trail from where its pavement ends in a cul-de-sac west of North Oak Street to the section that heads east toward Veteran Acres Park.

The group’s work has grown beyond just advocating the Complete Streets concept.

Nelson, who ultimately ended up joining the advocacy group and eventually becoming its vice president, is trying to get the education and awareness side of things going, he said.

The cities of Crystal Lake and McHenry passed Bike Safety Week proclamations this spring in addition to the regular events it helps host or promote, such as the Night Owl Ride.

Nelson sees the proclamations as a step in the right direction, one he’d like to see followed by a promotion of the Cycling Savvy program. He became an instructor for the program in spring 2012.

A traffic cycling education program, the system promotes bicyclists controlling the lane by being in the center of the lane when there is not enough room for a vehicle to safely pass, Nelson said.

He’d like to see police departments adopt that mentality when it does its own educational outreach, he said.

McHenry Deputy Police Chief John Birk said he would be open to the ideas if there’s justifiable safety reasoning behind it, but he would be concerned about bicyclists trying to control the lane on roads with speed limits such as 45 mph.

Crystal Lake Police Chief James Black had concerns of his own, particularly with road rage and incidents of impatience.

“I am an avid cyclist myself, so I certainly appreciate the safety issue, and I understand what bicyclists are trying to do, but as a police officer and the chief, I see an issue with traffic safety,” Black said. “People don’t see motorcycles right now, let alone bicycles.”