Cycling is no stranger to invention, from the steady swell of Kickstarter campaigns to the almost innumerable cycleways dreamed up to be dangled, dug and floated on various bodies of water around the world. The latest, a 6.5 mile, $84m (£67m) floating pontoon, is currently being imagined for the Chicago River, between the city’s Chinatown and Ravenswood Manor.

The RiverRide, to link Horner and Ping Tom Park in Chicago, was dreamed up by James Price Chuck, investor and co-founder of Second Shore. It’s a six- to 12ft-wide, steel reinforced concrete pontoon, intended as a commuter and leisure route through the city.

We’ve seen the likes of the RiverRide before, not least in the shape of the Thames Deckway, a 7.5 mile, £600m floating pontoon on London’s river which, this time last year, raised some sceptical eyebrows.

Then there was the idea to build bike paths in abandoned tube tunnels beneath London.

Many of these projects tend to miss the point that cycling journeys, like any other journey, require easy access to shops, places of work and schools; a straight route, with a ramp only every half a mile or more, creates unnecessary detours making it impractical for everyday trips. They are often expensive, overly engineered cycling infrastructure, when cheaper, proven solutions are seen again and again on the roads in places like the Netherlands and Denmark, and increasingly in London.

Is this one any different?

Chicago already has cycling and walking trails along 13 miles of the 27-mile river. Photograph: Raymond Boyd/Getty Images

The RiverRide’s design itself is not perfect – at its narrowest the six-foot width for a two-way bike route is not enough. And Chuck’s suggestion that it would be for bikes only at rush hour, then just rollerbladers or pedestrians at other times, misses the point of a commuter route, potentially excluding those who work unconventional hours. Although Chuck says the ramps will be a maximum of 500 metres apart, exactly how the pontoon will connect with the city’s many moveable bridges is unclear.

However, the idea of a floating cycling and walking pontoon on the Chicago River may not be as frivolous as it may seem, and Chuck is certainly not the first person to suggest it.

The creation of a continuous cycling and walking trail on the river was first mooted in 1909 and, just last week, local advocacy group, the Active Transportation Alliance (ActiveTrans), published a report setting out ways to make the dream a reality along the river’s length. Ways to link existing cycling and walking trails – which already cover 13 miles of the total 27-mile portion of river within Chicago (if not on the same side of the river) – include on-river solutions like platforms and, yes, floating pontoons.

“I appreciate the sense of scepticism from some of the projects that have been proposed elsewhere,” ActiveTrans’ Jim Merrell says. “But what’s exciting about the Chicago River trail is that we’re not starting from scratch; it’s really about connecting these existing trails together in a way that’s going to be accessible and useful for everyone in the city of Chicago.”

The challenge to providing a continuous route has been the diverse nature of the riverfront, from the Downtown area with buildings directly abutting the river, to the former industrial areas north and south of the city centre, some still used, and some being redeveloped, or slated for redevelopment in years to come. These right of way issues and poor on-street connections to the river in places are significant issues.

The planned cycleway would build on and connect to the river’s existing trails. Photograph: Second Shore

But the city can work around these challenges by using different elements, from traditional riverside trails to floating segments, like the RiverRide concept, and decked trails on pylons, like the Riverview Bridge, which is being constructed next year.

“We think it’s going to take all of these different approaches to have a continuous river trail,” says Merrell. “The challenge becomes how can we make it seamless and easy for people to use, recognising that’s going to take a lot of different design options, and a lot of different sources of funding, and a lot of sources of public support to get the continuous river trail built.”

The challenge becomes how can we make it seamless and easy for people to use Jim Merrell

With more than 900,000 people living within a mile of the Chicago River, with its desirable north-south alignment through the city, ActiveTrans and Second Shore see the potential to bring an under-used resource back to life as an active transportation corridor.

The two organisations’ plans have, not by coincidence, coincided with a growth in cycling in Chicago. One of the city’s newest – and highest quality – cycling routes, on Milwaukee Avenue, which runs parallel with the river, and diagonally across the city’s grid system, sees around 5,000 cycle journeys per day. The city’s Divvy bike share scheme, meanwhile, covers one of the largest geographical areas of any in the US.

Part of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago Streets for Cycling Plan 2020, which includes a 645 mile network of cycle routes, these schemes, and his goal to make Chicago “the most bike-friendly city in the United States”, has helped companies and people see cycling as a viable way of getting around the city. This has, Merrell says, helped Chicago “leapfrog” other cities in terms of cycling growth, building a groundswell for the continuous river trail, and inspiring many of the emerging ideas on how to make that a reality.

Chicago’s new route for commuters? Illustration: Second Shore

Merrell hopes as well as everyday journeys the river route will link to a network of parks and trails, from the shores of Lake Michigan to a regional off-road trail system across the state, including the city’s 606 trail, a High Line-style walking and cycling trail on a former elevated railway track.

There are floating pontoons that work. One is the Eastbank Esplanade in Portland, Oregon, a $30m, 1.5-mile floating cycle and walkway which includes a 370-metre floating walkway, currently the longest in the US. Another is on the Lea River in East London, helping those on foot and bike use sections of canalised riverbank without a towpath.

As Second Shore’s James Chuck put it: “The river is between two of the most travelled streets in the city and these corridors have the most bike accidents and fatalities. This is not a coincidence: Chicago’s neighbourhoods grew up adjacent to the river because the river used to be the main commercial artery of the city’s growing merchant economy.

“But rail and road took over the transportation tasks and river traffic declined rapidly. Today the neighbourhoods still exist on the river’s sides and Chicago’s downtown central business district is the centre of the city’s economic activity. So the river’s path perfectly connects the business district to 28 of Chicago’s 77 residential neighbourhoods and RiverRide is, de facto, mapping perfectly to the important origin-destination points for a massive and diverse amount of Chicagoans. Fortunately cities like Chicago, London, New York and many the world over are where they are because of the water (rivers, lakes, oceans, bays, seas etc) that enabled their founding and growth. Now the key for these places is to manage their evolutions and harness sustainable opportunities for growth and connectivity.”

Whatever floating or pylon-mounted cycling and walking solution Chicago uses, it needs to be one that works for the people using it, providing access on and off the river to places people need to go. It seems like, in this case, cycling on a floating pontoon to get there may not be so far-fetched.

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