Bloomingdale Trail

For the past year or so, whenever I was riding the el I would see an elevated railway that occasionally had a person walking on it. The other week my curiosity got the best of me so I decided to finally figure out what the heck it was. Turns out it's an abandoned elevated railway that cuts through the north city.


Normally I would be in that train looking down at a strange man taking a photo and thinking, "How did that guy get there?" Oh how the tables have turned. The trail is easy to find but difficult to access - I only noticed two feasible "entrances" in a 2-3 mile span.


Same spot as above but the view to the south.


Anyway, I ended up taking my bike for a ride down the path after work the other day.


Looks like a normal trail but notice the lamp posts on the left. Since the path is elevated, you can take a stroll through Bucktown, Logan Square, Humboldt Park, and other regions with the traffic and crowds under you instead of around you. Although I definitely wouldn't hang out here at night since plenty of vagrants were already wandering around here by the early evening.


The path is pretty rough. Plenty of broken glass, plastic shards of all shapes and colors, tire-busting gravel, random car parts, broken electronics, piles of old railroad ties, an uncovered manhole, etc. Oh yeah, and freight cars. Apparently there's an ongoing effort to clean up the trail (cool) and also to transform it into some paved walkway (not cool).


Ride control.


Street level view of the walkway. It crosses over a couple dozen streets just like this. The murals I posted here are actually taken right off the walls and underpasses of the walkway. Apparently the rail company elevated the track about 20 feet to comply with a city ordinance which sought to reduce pedestrian fatalities at crossings. Yikes.