The village will hold a bike safety carnival in Constitution Court Saturday morning from 9 to 11 a.m.
The event serves as a resource for locals to learn about bike safety and to develop a culture around awareness of bike riders.
“The goal is to create bike safety and to start that conversation about how we can create bike infrastructure in Forest Park,” said Michelle Melin-Rogovin, commissioner of streets and public improvements, during a July 8 village council meeting.
Attendees can partake in a bike decorating station, full of spoke straws, mini license plates, pipe cleaners and stickers. Free helmets will be provided for the first 50 attendees.
The event is co-hosted by Play it Again Sports, which will offer bike safety checks, and Ride Illinois, a nonprofit advocating for bikers. Children who participate in bike safety checks, along with the winners of the bike decorating contest, will receive prizes.
Kribi Coffee will provide coffee, and the Kiwanis Club of Forest Park will bring free lemonade. There will also be shaved ice from the Cool Treats Truck, which is owned by Nadeau’s Ice Sculptures and serves shaved ice, plus frozen bananas and cheesecake. The Junction Diner and Brown Cow will respectively give away 50 certificates for free kids’ meals and ice cream scoops.
Melin-Rogovin said that, although the village used to host bike safety events like this through Cub Scouts and the Kiwanis Club of Forest Park, it’s been decades since the last one.
“We haven’t had an event like this in a long time,” she said.
Melin-Rogovin decided to bring the event back after she heard from residents, while campaigning for commissioner and since being elected, about making local streets safer.
“People really wanted to talk about how to make streets safer for everyone,” Melin-Rogovin said. “Traffic and safety is not just about cars, it’s about all modes of transportation.”
“The first step is bringing our community together to celebrate bikes and bike safety and start to create interest and awareness,” she added.
From there, the conversation may turn to how to create more infrastructure for bikers around town.
“There’s a lot of our communities around us that have pretty good bike infrastructure, but Forest Park doesn’t,” said Scott Whitebone, chair of Forest Park’s Environmental Control Commission, during the organization’s presentation to the village council at a July 8 meeting.
“We have paths that are considered bike lanes, but [they’re] not designed with the idea that it connects with the community around us,” Melin-Rogovin said.
In recent years, there have been pushes to add biking infrastructure in town.
In 2020, Forest Park received a grant to cover a portion of construction on a bike path along Van Buren Street. But land negotiations between the neighboring Altenheim and the village delayed the project. And last year, the village received a grant for installing bike racks at CTA stations.
Perhaps after the bike safety carnival, there will be more of a push for improvements on biking infrastructure, but not without engaging the community first.
“I think that’s the magic of creating events like this,” Melin-Rogovin said, “is that it brings a lot of people together to start talking about what our village should look like in the future.”