I attended a public meeting in Wilmette last night regarding planned improvements to the Green Bay Road corridor in that community. The only bicycle-related issue portion of the plan is a very minor one regarding
the crosswalk that links the Green Bay Trail on the north side of Wilmette Avenue to Poplar Avenue on the south side of Wilmette Avenue. The crosswalk is now located just east of the Metra railroad tracks and goes across Wilmette Avenue to the west side of
Poplar.
Under consideration is moving the crosswalk slightly to the east to align with the east side of Poplar Avenue. Doing that would eliminate the need for the crosswalk to go over the divider that separates eastbound
and westbound traffic on Wilmette Avenue because the new location would be east of that divider.
From an EBC standpoint, I think the change would be helpful because it would make it easier for club rides that start at Panera to get across Wilmette Avenue and turn west on Wilmette Avenue. (With the new
configuration, it would be safest to exit from the south side of the Panera lot and then turn north on Poplar in order to be at the crosswalk location rather than using the north exit from the parking lot as we now usually do.)
However, for riders using the Green Bay Trail coming from the north to go south on Poplar, it will mean jogging slightly to the east to cross Wilmette Avenue, using the crosswalk and then crossing Poplar to
the west side to continue south. That is not a route that the club generally uses, so I don’t see it as affecting us much.
The rest of the plan dealt with options for parking, sidewalks and streetscape elements, such as benches, plantings, etc. No significant changes are being considered to the existing street and no bike lanes
are planned on Green Bay Road.
The exhibit boards shown at last night’s meeting will be posted soon at the project website,
https://greenbayrdwilmette.org. To submit a comment, send an email to
info@greenbayrdwilmette.org. Comments should be submitted by December 10.
Al Cubbage