A Trifecta for Active Transportation

By Connie Schmidt

Jeff Gahris, Chair of the River Prairie Group, put together a trio of wonderful presenters for our January meeting to discuss DuPage trail systems, active transportation, and e-bikes. We had Dave Simmons from Ride Illinois, Ken McClurg from Illinois Prairie Path, and Steve Johnson and Libby A’Hearn from the Friends of the East Branch River Trail.

Dave talked about how his organization is responding to e-bikes, moto-bikes, and trail and bike lane safety. For the past 6 years, Dave has been working with the nonprofit headquartered in Elk Grove promoting safe bike use for recreation and transportation. Their mission is to “Make Illinois Better with Biking”. We learned that legislation coordinated with Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias was introduced for the 2026 session to improve e-bike safety statewide. Individual municipalities have been wrestling with regulation and policy. With leadership from state legislation, law enforcement, education and health care working together the campaign for “Ride Safe, Ride Smart, Ride Ready” is launched. Details can be viewed here.

The second speaker was Ken McClurg, a longtime leader from the Illinois Prairie Path, an east-west trail with several spurs as it travels from Cook County to the Fox River in Kane. This trail is arguably the first successful rails to trails conversion project in North America and dates back to 1963.  A fascinating WTTW documentary that includes history of the IPP and the origin of many of the rail trail projects across North America can be viewed here. Ken talked about the impact of e-bikes and moto-bikes along the Illinois Prairie Path. Their concept is a “suggested speed limit of 15 mph” with recommendations for trail etiquette including wear a helmet and a friendly shout-out when passing to be posted on temporary signs along various sections of the path. Although the actual trail is part of the DuPage Department of Transportation and regulated by the County, the Illinois Prairie Path group is a member volunteer effort to support the trail. Their website includes activities and clean-ups, maps, historical information, and their efforts to add amenities along the trail for the many users. Check out their information here.

The final presentation was made by Steve Johnson and Libby A’Hearn of the Friends of the Friends of the East Branch DuPage River Trail. The DuPage County Division of Transportation has been discussing various routes for this trail project for nearly 25 years when this concept was first introduced. For the last 10 years an advocacy group has written a petition and been extremely active lobbying for governing bodies to move forward. Steve and Libby were on hand to talk about the various plans for a north-south trail that would eventually run from Bloomingdale down to Woodridge. Now a phase one study is in process to look at alignment for the trail from The Great Western Trail down to Butterfield Road. Three routes were discussed, with one being a bike path along Rt. 53, hopefully funded by IDOT when Rt. 53 is widened. One of the other two routes travels through a residential neighborhood on the west side of the river and the other more preferred recreational route would highlight the river habitats following the banks of the East Branch of the DuPage River. Phase one has been funded and is in progress. Read more on the DuPage County website about the East Branch DuPage River Trail project here. There is another website created by the volunteers with the petition and plenty of other advocacy actions to encourage steady progress of this effort as it appears to be stalled. You can access the petition here.