Executive Director Makes Comments at the Naperville Transportation Advisory Board Meeting

On September 3, 2026, the Naperville Transportation Advisory Board received a draft Bicycle and Pedestrian plan for review. Accelerate Climate Solutions’ executive director, Catherine Clarkin, made the following comments, advocating for implementation of the plan and for improvements to bicycle and pedestrian safety.

Catherine Clarkin, Executive Director

Good evening. I’m Catherine Clarkin, a Naperville resident, founder of Accelerate Climate Solutions, and someone who bikes and walks to work regularly. During the summer of 2024, interns at my organization did a deep-dive on how to make our city more bike friendly, culminating in our Naperville Bikeability report.

Regarding the plan being discussed tonight, I’d like to first comment on the costs. Averaged out over the period 2027 through 2050, this plan only costs $1.9 million/year for projects within Naperville’s jurisdiction, and not all those costs are borne by taxpayers. Compare this to the $12 million annually that Naperville spends just to maintain roads for motor vehicles, which doesn’t include the cost for special projects, such as road widening. The Riverwalk 2031 master plan will cost over $16 million in capital expenses.

Spending on safe and connected bike infrastructure has many obvious benefits. Imagine taking all the things that people love so much about the river walk and extending that citywide, but also with access for bicycles - wouldn’t that make our city more liveable?

My main concern about the proposed plan is that it doesn’t go far enough to protect cyclists. The safer it is to cycle, the more people will cycle, improving public health, reducing air pollution and congestion, and improving quality of life.

Briefly, protected bike lanes are proven to save lives and promote cycling. Unprotected lanes, do little to improve safety. There is not just one way to create protected bike lanes and Naperville can choose the lower cost alternatives if budget is a concern. The threshold in the report for speed of roads where unprotected bike lanes will be added is too high. Speed kills. According to USDOT, a person walking hit by a vehicle at 32 miles per hour (mph) has a 25% risk of death, and that increases to a 50% chance of death at 42 mph. So, please consider alternatives to unprotected bike lanes on roads with speed limits above 25 mph.

For intersections, solutions such as bike boxes, all-direction stops, and no right-turn on red are underutilized and would make biking and walking safer. These could be implemented throughout downtown Naperville, for example.

Finally, here are some things I like: increased multi-use paths, removing parking in favor of bike facilities, signalized pedestrian crossings, use of green paint to make bike facilities stand out, and changes such as chicanes that signal to drivers to slow down. Thank you.