My fellow Schaumburg Bicycle Club members and I noticed that on the Poplar Creek Trail near Schaumburg, Streamwood and Hoffman Estates, bollards have been removed and strips of new pavement laid down in their place.
On Cook County forest preserve trails, the bollards come in the form of short orange posts, just less than a foot wide, that can fold down onto a square of yellow pavement under them. The county calls them “drop-gate bollards.” Maybe the posts are a different color, like green, on other trails? I struggle to remember, but I do remember that these little bollards have been ubiquitous on Cook County trails all my life, from when I started on the North Branch Trail as a little kid.
So are they all disappearing now?
Jake Hesslau of the Forest Preserves of Cook County told me the agency “has been evaluating our trail safety improvements to keep with current best practices.”
“Our current plans include the removal of most drop gates from our trail systems and replacing them with appropriate signage instead,” he wrote. Then he dropped a little bomb: “Drop gates along the Busse Forest Trail system are planned to be removed in coordination with a future repaving project.”
Repaving project in Busse Woods? That would be huge, and a huge mess, but the trail is showing its age with a lot of cracks and bumps, so the work is due. But Hesslau said the work at Busse, including the removal of the bollards, hasn’t been scheduled yet.
He did say that bollard removal on the Deer Grove and Thorn Creek Trail systems is planned for this year, and work will continue on all paved trails over the next five years.
I’ll now have to pay attention for the bollards’ removal on the Paul Douglas Trail by Hoffman Estates, where for a couple of decades I’ve carefully darted around one as I cross Huntington Boulevard from the west (if I have the green light, of course) along Algonquin Road, then turn south onto the paved trail loop.
Riders are telling me that most have been removed on the North Branch Trail on the Northwest Side of Chicago and through north suburbs, and others replaced. PALOS Rider Noel Joseph says “they are all gone from the Tinley Creek Trail and Turtlehead Lake.”
Have the bollards had a purpose?
Presumably they were used on Cook County to keep out vehicles. They have folded down to allow maintenance vehicles in; are they always kept down now? It seems like they are most of the time, but I saw one set up at Busse Woods recently.
In any case, whenever we bike club members ride together, we’re always pointing them out to each other so nobody runs into them.
Bollards come in all shapes and sizes, and surely you’ve seen them in all kinds of places without even realizing it: schools, parks, grocery stores, downtown plazas. As one manufacturer says, “their primary function is consistent: to manage and control vehicular or pedestrian traffic … (but) they also find extensive use in areas requiring heightened security, like government buildings, airports, and stadiums.”
They can be made with all kinds of materials, and different styles can be used in one place, like a flexible one placed up front that’s not so harsh on impact while a second bollard is more solid and does the real blocking.
But we’re talking about simple, small bollards on Cook County trails. I recall bollards placed inconsistently in other counties, like on the Fox River Trail up the hill coming off the Norris Woods riverfront and onto a St. Charles neighborhood street. That’s where you must first ride around bollards, either a line of them guarding the trail from a parking lot or the one between the trail itself and the street.
On some parts of DuPage County’s crushed limestone trails, there are no bollards — think of crossings in Wayne, and even at County Farm and Bloomingdale roads — while there could be extensive obstacles at other major crossings.
In any case, we were glad to see them removed at Poplar Creek, particularly where the trail was crossing only parking lots or interior preserve roads. Small as they are, they’re just enough to cause a big fall if you hit them even when they’re folded down. Over my riding life I’ve almost made a sport of dodging them (not to mention trying to skip or dodge lips of curbs that create nasty bumps).
“I witnessed a cyclist hit one years ago and break his face, so I’m fine without the bollards,” Kelly O’Brien posted on the PALOS Facebook page.
Have you seen bollards removed on your Cook County trails? Let me know and I’ll update here.
