Our Chicago studio’s valiant bike riders give mixed reviews of cycling in the Windy City: “treacherous,” “scary,” “tranquil,” and “beautiful” are some words used to describe commutes. For the city at large, our bikeway network grew 135% over the last decade or so, and there was a 5.8% increase in bike commuting based on the most recent census data. Great! Despite this–and being the third most populous city in the nation–we still languish at #13 in terms of urbanites who bike to work. There is not much data to explain why the percentage of bike commuters isn’t higher in such a dense city–especially where the majority of the workforce is in the central downtown district.