Chicago River Trail: forty years to build a thirteen-mile recreational path in Chicago?

There has been talk of building a recreational path along the Chicago River for decades. The Friends of the Chicago River, a lobbying group, has been urging the construction of such a path since its inception in 1979. The second Mayor Daley announced that he favored a path along the North Branch of the River soon after winning his first mayoral election in 1989. The Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission (at the time the major regional planning agency) proposed a network of “greenways” along many of the Chicago region’s watercourses including the North Branch of the Chicago River in 1992. The city’s Department of Planning and Development announced an official plan to build a path along the river in 1998. And dozens of additional proposals have appeared since the Internet became an important communication medium in the 1990s.

Nearly all these proposals have included two major components: [1] a segment along the river as it runs east-west just north of the Loop proper and also [2] a much longer stretch along the North Branch of the river running the entire length of the North Side. Some proposals have also added a path along the still heavily industrial South Branch of the river.

Underlying these proposals has been a desire to exploit the recreational opportunities along Chicago’s “second coast.” The river valley not only has the potential to furnish a continuous corridor for walking, running, and bicycling. It also includes some underused parkland, and it’s one of the few places in Chicago where there’s visible relief, and hence modest views. There’s even a waterfall (of a sort).

The fact that the Lakefront recreational path has been such an unambiguous success has colored everyone’s thoughts about a Chicago River path. The Lakefront trail not only provides a highly visible model. The fact that it can be dangerously overcrowded suggests the desirability of building additional trails.

One major factor behind the proposals to build a recreational trail along the Chicago River is that northern connections to a North Side trail have existed for decades.

The North Branch Trail, which runs a full twenty miles (32 km) between Devon Avenue and the Chicago Botanic Garden, took shape under the aegis of the Cook County Forest Preserve in the 1970s and was essentially complete by the early 1980s. Plenty of pedestrians use the trail, but, because of its length, they are outnumbered by cyclists except in the depths of winter. It’s probably fair to say that this trail has become one of the Chicago region’s most attractive features for thousands of local cyclists. The catch is that the trail’s pre-2016 southern terminus at Devon Avenue left users with no obvious way to travel south or east. Devon and Caldwell Avenues, which come together near the trail’s original terminus, are not bicycle- or pedestrian-friendly, and alternate routes, while available, all have their problems as well.

The second northern connection, the North Shore Channel Trail, has a more complicated history. The North Shore Channel is a man-made affluent of the North Branch of Chicago River between Lake Michigan in Wilmette and (roughly) the Falls of the Chicago River just south of Foster Avenue. Plans to build parkland along the North Shore Channel date from the years of its construction, between 1907 and 1911.¹ But the fact that the Channel’s original chief function was to carry sewage south to the Chicago River (and eventually the Mississippi) limited the attractiveness of the idea for years. Various water-purification projects and (eventually) the Deep Tunnel, however, have slowly cleaned the North Shore Channel’s water over the last six decades. The water no longer smells of sewage and is deemed safe for boating. The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (which built and runs the Channel) has never felt responsible for the parkland along the waterway, so it fell to the four municipalities along the Channel—Evanston, Skokie, Lincolnwood, and Chicago—actually to develop the land. In Chicago, certain zones—notably the area where the North Shore Channel joins the North Branch just below the Falls of the Chicago River—became parks as early as the 1930s. Skokie and Evanston didn’t turn their North Shore Channel land into parks until the 1970s, when Skokie began transforming its acreage into a permanent sculpture exhibition and Evanston put a botanic garden and a nature museum on its portion. A de facto trail most of the way through these parks has existed since the late 1970s. Although the trail seems never to have been officially branded as a single entity, the name “North Shore Channel Trail” (often without the “Shore”) is widely used. Whatever the trail is called, people have been bicycling, running, and walking along its 6.8 miles (nearly 11 km) on a substantial scale since at least the 1980s. Like the North Branch Trail, however, it ends awkwardly, just north of Lawrence Avenue.

The North Shore Channel Trail near its southern terminus. The eastern end of the Falls of the Chicago River can be seen in the background.

It needs to be said both the North Branch and the North Shore Channel Trails seem today a little old-fashioned. They are not very wide, and they are used by both cyclists and pedestrians. On busy summer weekends, they can thus be rather dangerous, especially for pedestrians. Furthermore, they are both crossed by numerous busy thoroughfares. The North Shore Channel Trail includes intersection crossings where the traffic lights until recently had no provision for pedestrians and cyclists on the trail, and aggressive drivers of turning vehicles made the trail difficult for through users. The North Branch trail is on average less hazardous. It includes two bridges and one tunnel, and many of the street crossings are at mid-block rather than, as on the North Shore Channel Trail, heavily-trafficked four-way intersections.

Despite the problems, both the North Branch and North Shore Channel trails have been busy places for several decades, and the desirability of connecting them to Chicago’s Loop via the North Branch of the Chicago River has been obvious to many. All that was needed was a thirteen-or-so mile (21 km) trail from Devon Avenue to the mouth of the Chicago River. A couple of parks along the way—especially Horner Park but also the much smaller Ronan Park and some additional bits of land along the river—provided something like a mile of off-road paths, but adding to these has not been easy.

In so far as I can tell, with the exception of a path through a bit of added parkland north of Belmont Avenue, very little was accomplished until the first years of the 21st century. In 2001 and 2002, the Chicago Department of Transportation built underpasses in the three places where the southern end of the North Shore Channel Trail crossed streets (none of the crossings even had a traffic light). In 2004, in conjunction with the construction of what is now called Ward Park half a mile north of the junction of the two river branches, a short riverside trail was added just south of Chicago Avenue. Starting in 2009, the city of Chicago began opening a very different project: the Riverwalk, a carefully designed pathway along the south bank of the Chicago River as it passed through the Loop. The Riverwalk isn’t at all an ordinary recreational trail. It includes restaurants and other commercial facilities and can be jammed with tourists who have no interest in going more than a few feet. Thus, at times, bicycle access has been discouraged or forbidden. Perhaps this is what one could expect of a trail through the Loop.

While Riverwalk was being constructed, more conventional sections of recreational trail were being added along the North Branch. In 2016 and 2017 two substantial sections of trail through forest preserves in Chicago’s northwestern corner were opened. These finally brought the North Branch Trail south of Devon Avenue. The southern terminus of this three-mile addition, however, was again sited awkwardly. Finally, last year, two bridges were added in places where isolated trail segments were on opposite banks.

Map showing most of Chicago’s North Side, emphasizing off-road trails and rail-transit lines. The dates are completion-dates of certain features in the far-from-finished Chicago River Trail; see text for more information. GIS data are mostly from the Chicago Data Portal and the Geofabrik version of OpenStreetMap; they have been heavily modified in some cases.

It’s noteworthy that most of the newest segments (the Riverview Bridge, for example) are all a little wider than the North Branch and North Shore Channel Trails and for some stretches attempt to force cyclists to the center of the trail, leaving pedestrian corridors along the edges. Furthermore, the two extreme northern sections of new trail along the North Branch include a couple of substantial bridges and one long underpass.

Here’s a table showing what has been accomplished so far. Note that I haven’t been able to confirm all the dates.² Corrections and additions would be welcome.

Approximately 2001. Path between Lakefront and Michigan Avenue, originally unpaved.
Approximately 2001. North Shore Channel Trail. Underpass under Bryn Mawr.
Approximately 2002. North Shore Channel Trail. Underpass under Foster.
Approximately 2002. North Shore Channel Trail. Underpass under Peterson/Lincoln.
Approximately 2002. Bridge across North Branch off Spalding/Carmen.
Early 21st century (including a park segment from earlier). Trail along Chicago River between Belmont and a block south of Addison (latitude of Cornelia).
2004. Ward Park (then called Erie Park), including a short trail extension along river.
2009. Riverwalk downtown between Michigan and State.
Possibly 2014. Section of trail around Diversey, i.e., Lathrop Homes (later closed temporarily when Lathrop was being reconstructed, now improved and open again).
June 2015. Riverwalk downtown between LaSalle and Lake.
September 2016. North Branch Trail. 1.8 miles. Southern extension to Forest Glen Woods.
October 2016. Riverwalk downtown between State and LaSalle.
August 2017. North Branch Trail. 1.2 miles. Southern extension to Gompers Park.
November 2019. Riverview Bridge/312 RiverRun plus approaches (between Addison and Irving Park).
December 2019 (or just after). North Shore Channel Trail. Lincoln Village Pedestrian Bicycle Bridge (north of Lincoln Avenue).
Fall 2020 (or later). Irving Park Road bridge now still under construction will include an underpass for pedestrians and cyclists.

In other words, as of late 2020, something like half of the necessary thirteen miles have been completed.

If you consider that it’s taken twenty years to build these six and a half miles,³ that means that only approximately a third of a mile per year has been completed to date. At that rate, it would take forty years to finish the trail—a long time! (And this doesn’t take into account the proposed South Side segments at all.)

Of course, what is now known as the Chicago River Trail is hardly the only recreational path to take shape only over several decades. The recreational paths along the Hudson that make up much of Hudson River Park have also been the work of many years. The more modest Schuylkill Banks project in Philadelphia may take even longer. Even Singapore is expecting its Round Island Trail (150 km) to require more than a decade to complete (and that doesn’t count the many years it took to build the already-existing paths). Hardly any government has made the construction of recreational trails a high priority, and, in some cases (including that of Chicago River Trail), the need to acquire expensive property and to micromanage private land-use change have hindered rapid work. Unless there’s a disused rail line to work with, building an elaborate recreational trail through an existing urban landscape is almost by definition an extraordinarily complicated logistical task, and it’s in some ways rather amazing that it gets done at all.

In Chicago, it does seem that things have been speeded up some. The release of the Chicago River Trail Access Plan by the Active Transportation Alliance, a private lobbying group, provided a blueprint that the city has actually been following more or less.

A major issue, however, is that many of the remaining trail segments will not be simple to build. The construction of the 312 RiverRun (finished in 2019) suggests the scope of the problem. This is a bridge across the river combined with a long trail segment over the river in a place where both banks are fully occupied. It wasn’t cheap to build.

The 312 RiverRun. Thanks to the bridge and the over-river section, there is now a one-mile continuous path between Belmont Avenue and Irving Park Road.

An additional bridge has been required north of Peterson, in Lincoln Village (also 2019). Again, cost was high.

The approach to the Lincoln Village Bridge along the North Shore Channel Trail. Note how the trail widens slightly when it reaches the bridge. Most of the new sections of trail are a little wider than the old sections.

Much of the remaining trail will probably be similarly expensive. Over a substantial portion of the projected path of the trail, both riverbanks are occupied by structures that in the ordinary course of events would not be in line for removal, so building in part over the river seems like the only option. In a city whose budget has been squeezed for years by nearly unfulfillable pension obligations and devastated by Pandemic-related spending, it’s very hard to see where funding could come from. 

But there are still opportunities for moving forward.

Insisting that private firms redeveloping the river banks must construct trails is one source of funding. The redevelopment of the Finkl Steel site furnishes both a model and a cautionary tale. The site, along Cortland Street on the east bank of the North Branch, is supposed to see the construction of Lincoln Yards, which will consist of a group of high-rise apartment buildings. It’s probably the largest traditionally industrial site along the river in line for development, and inclusion of a riverbank trail in the project is a no-brainer since such a trail would be likely to make the project more attractive to prospective residents. Under Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the city essentially bribed the developer to move forward with the project by allocating more than a billion dollars in TIF money for infrastructure (this would include a rebuilt Metra station and an extension of the 606 Trail as well as a riverbank trail). Many local activists have been furious about this ever since. But the Finkl plan at least shows the potential of joint action by government and private enterprise, even if it seems that government, in this case, is paying more than it needed to. If Sterling Bay, the developer, doesn’t back out of building Lincoln Yards because of the Pandemic, the result may be a half-mile or so of high-quality trail along the River.

There are some other industrial or commercial properties along the River that also seem in line for replacement. One can hope that Chicago’s planning apparatus will insist that a trail be included in any plans for these sites. It’s worth remembering that a considerable amount of public oversight and a clear-headed awareness of long-term goals are absolute prerequisites for effective public/private cooperation. When these are absent, bad things happen. Two early 21st-century private developments northwest of the Loop proper, both built with the permission of Chicago’s Zoning Board of Appeals, include narrow paths along the River that are open only to residents. These narrow private segments make the creation of a continuous public path along the River very difficult.

A long-talked-about national infrastructure effort—one focusing on environmentally sound projects—would be another possible source of funding, but, of course, no such effort yet exists.

It does seem as though there are enough people associated with relevant government agencies and lobbying groups who have an interest in continuing the project to assure that it’s not going to be forgotten. If the Chicago River Trail is ever finished or even substantially completed, the long talked-about coherent network of continuous off-road recreational trails stretching over the Chicago region will have come a little closer to existing.