Category: Beyond Chicago

Recap just one of your great ideas to improve transportation in “Outside the Box” challenge

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How do cities get more women to ride bicycles? Photo by Mike Travis. 

The Grid Chicago comments section is full of great ideas about how to improve transportation and transportation policy in Chicagoland.

The “Outside the Box” challenge presented by George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, should be all the motivation you need to gather and present your ideas in an essay, video, slideshow, or other media form “to convey a viable and actionable plan that may be implemented to solve a current transportation or transportation policy problem. A maximum of five pictures or illustrations may be included to enrich your presentation. Entries will be reviewed by an executive committee of professors, executives, entrepreneurs and public servants, all of whom are interested and distinguished members of the transportation policy community.”

The first prize is $10,000. Second prize is $5,000 and third prize is $2,500. You must submit your entry by February 15, 2013, and the contest is open to individuals and teams 34 years old and younger.

Get full rules and details.

An update on cyclist Justin Carver, critically injured by a left-turning driver


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Google Streetview of the crash site, 26th and East in Berwyn, from the driver’s perspective.

Click here to donate to a fund that will help cover Justin’s medical expenses.

Steven and I don’t normally devote full posts to non-fatal bicycle crashes, but the case of Justin Carver, a friend of a friend of mine, really hit home with me and has also struck a chord with the local bike community. Because of a careless move by a driver, Justin is currently in the intensive care unit, fighting for his life with a traumatic brain injury and several broken bones.

According to Justin’s wife Kim MacGregor Carver, Justin bicycled from their home in Oak Park to his job at the Stickney-Forest View Public Library several times a week. On Monday, December 3, around 5:15 pm, he was riding north on East Avenue in Berwyn, a residential street. When he came to the intersection of 26th Street, the driver of a southbound Chevrolet Suburban SUV made a left turn onto 26th and failed to yield to the cyclist, striking the left side of his body.

Justin, who was wearing a helmet, sustained severe head injuries. Although there were no skull fractures, there was trauma to the front of his brain and bleeding on the brain, and he received lacerations to his forehead. He also suffered compound fractures to his left tibia and fibia, a broken clavicle and scapula on his left side, and a broken finger in his left hand. “I have to imagine the helmet lessened the impact,” Kim told me on the phone yesterday afternoon, speaking from Justin’s hospital room. “I believe that if he didn’t have his helmet on it could have been over instantly.”

Continue reading An update on cyclist Justin Carver, critically injured by a left-turning driver

Dispatches from Utah: Why wide streets are unpleasant

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One of Salt Lake City’s “saner” downtown streets with one travel lane each direction and left-turn lanes where needed. There’s one light rail lane in each direction. A bicycle priority lane is marked in the two travel lanes. 

Possible extended title: They have so many persistent disadvantages even after several (but weak) mitigation attempts

Preface: Utah law says that people driving automobiles must yield for pedestrians in or approaching crosswalk (stop if in a school zone and the school zone light is flashing). Drivers and bicyclists in Illinois must stop to let people cross the street, in a marked or unmarked crosswalk.

If you read my last “Dispatches from Utah” post you remember that I took a ride on the inaugural Frontrunner South train from Salt Lake City to Provo, Utah. Then my laptop died and things got hairy. I’ve been back in Chicago for over a week now. Riding the trains, both light rail and the commuter rail, was one of the transportation highlights of my trip. The second was walking a couple of miles from one TRAX light rail station to my family’s home. This walking experienced was then followed by a driving trip to meet my cousin at a “local” Thai restaurant. (When your city is as spread out like Salt Lake City, and less dense than Chicago, your definition of “local” is expanded.)

I drove for 20 minutes to meet him. I drove down Salt Lake City’s State Street for a majority of the way. It’s 102 feet wide, with 3 lanes in each direction, a center turn lane, parallel parking on both sides, and sidewalks. There are no bikeways. Many of the city’s and region’s streets are like this. I had an immediate problem: I was driving southbound but the restaurant was on the northbound side of the street. Under no circumstances did I feel safe slowing down and turning left across 3+1 northbound lanes into the restaurant’s parking lot – I didn’t even know if this was legal. I couldn’t even see the addresses of the buildings on the opposite side of the street. After passing the approximate address, I turned left at a signalized intersection and then did a full roundabout drive through a neighborhood for 3-5 minutes before coming back to State Street, now driving on the same side of the street as the restaurant.  Continue reading Dispatches from Utah: Why wide streets are unpleasant

Open thread: What have you noticed on day three of CTA’s decrowding plan?

On Sunday, new bus and train schedules went into effect. The Chicago Transit Authority added service to 48 bus routes, eliminated 12 bus routes, and removed service on segments of 4 bus routes. Additionally, the CTA added 17 trains on the Red, Blue, Brown, Purple, Orange and Green lines (during rush periods). Pace Suburban Bus modified some of its routes to accommodate the CTA’s eliminated routes. See the full details on CTA’s website.

Map of modified and eliminated bus and train routes.
CTA’s map of modified and eliminated bus and train routes.

Did you notice your train or bus was a little less crowded?

Note: Northwestern University Transportation Center (NUTC) was a consultant to CTA to study the decrowding initiative, but there was no report issued. I asked CTA spokesperson Brian Steele about this: “To conduct the study, NUTC took multiple CTA data sets (including ridership, service planning, entries/boardings, operating costs, fare revenues) and did an analysis of service. NUTC then met with CTA and their analysis confirmed CTA’s initial analysis of the data – identifying the best routes on which to augment, discontinue, or reduce service.”

Strong Towns and Playborhoods: A talk with Charles Marohn and Mike Lanza

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Mike Lanza and Charles Marohn. Photo by Steven.

Earlier this week New York-based livable streets activist Mark Gorton invited sustainable transportation leaders from around the country to Chicago for a discussion of ways to encourage the development of walkable, bikeable, transit-friendly communities across the nation. Gorton’s new campaign is tentatively called the American Streets Renaissance.

Dani Simons, director of the campaign, invited Steven and me to drop by after the meeting at the SRAM headquarters to interview two of the participants. Charles Marohn is executive director of Strong Towns, a nonprofit that promotes sustainable, fiscally responsible communities. Mike Lanza, author of the book Playborhood: Turn Your Neighborhood Into a Place for Play (buy on Amazon), advocates for public spaces that allow children to play and move about independently, fostering self-reliance.

John: Mike tell us about your book and the other projects you’re working on.

Mike: Sure. I write a blog and I’ve written a book about children and neighborhoods and play, the central idea being that children should be empowered by their parents and by their communities to be outside in their neighborhoods and to learn how to be independent. It’s something that used to be obvious to people a few generations ago but today it’s very uncommon for children to have independent lives on their own in their neighborhoods. In my mind, the immediate neighborhood right outside their front door, that means their yard, their block, is the foundation to having independent mobility, to being able to ride their bike to school, to walk to school and go to retail stores.

And so I write about other communities outside of my own that have done some very innovative things. I also write a lot about what I’ve done and my own personal journey and trying to make what I call a “playborhood,” a neighborhood of play for kids in my community. One important part of it is making a third place if you will, a neighborhood hangout for kids right where they live. It’s something that has left American life. We used to have places where we could just show up and see people we know, like the Cheers bar. As a kid, I had a street right next to my house where we used to play ball all the time. So having one place to go where you can feel that there’s a pretty decent probability there will be other kids, there’s something to do, there’s a place where you can just show up and hang out with people, is really important.

Continue reading Strong Towns and Playborhoods: A talk with Charles Marohn and Mike Lanza

Dispatches from Utah: Brand new commuter train line opens with enviable features

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The inaugural train parked at the new Provo Station.

This post was going to be on a completely different topic that I started writing Thursday afternoon. I visited a local library in the evening to use the internet at which point my laptop decided to malfunction. I was able to recover the post but it’s no longer relevant and it’s very difficult for me to finish it without my personal workstation. Anyway, please enjoy this post about my vacation in Utah (which is happening as I write).

I’m visiting my family in Utah for six days. On Thursday, my birthday, I boarded the inaugural commuter train from Salt Lake City to Provo, Utah. It’s about 45 miles by train or car and they take the same amount of time (assuming light highway traffic)*. This train is most similar to Metra in its operating characteristics. It uses a single, diesel locomotive to haul a few large cars a long distance at low frequencies on tracks shared with freight. The freight-passenger rail relationship is very different here: the Utah Transit Authority (UTA) owns the right-of-way, purchased from Union Pacific, built its own tracks, and leases them to freight carriers overnight. In the end, no freight trains slow down commuter trains whereas in Chicago, Metra trains are delayed by freight trains on a daily basis.

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Bike space in the train.

The train cars are of a newer and quieter design from Bombardier (manufacturer of Chicago Transit Authority’s 5000-series cars). They have low floors so it’s easier for people with bikes or using mobility devices to board. There are 9 bike spaces in a rack in one of the cars (it appears that more than 9 bicycles will fit). The windows are big and clear. The train provides work tables at some seats, power outlets at the work tables, and free wifi. The Illinois state legislature passed a bill in 2011 that required Metra to study the provision of wifi. Metra announced this year that its refurbished cars will have power outlets.

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Work tables in the train.

UTA has had an open fare payment system for years. CTA and Pace will launch Ventra in 2013. Open fare means people can pay with RFID-enabled bank cards or NFC-enabled smartphones. A new company called Isis allows you to pay for transit with an app you can download. Metra is looking into a similar program, which would display a barcode on you smartphone’s screen.

There is some commercial and residential development around the train stations, but the typical land use around the stations, just feet away, is surface parking lots. This should be the most valuable land and hopefully can easily be converted to higher uses when a developer comes around.

After the train ride and ceremonies I drove around with my mother for a while, running errands and going out to eat. I noticed a lot of bike lanes and also Salt Lake City’s version of the “enhanced” marked shared lanes — in many places the city laid a wide green strip down the middle of a lane. These are accompanied by large “bikes may use full lane” signs, which were first installed in Chicago in 2012 on Wells Street on the ‘L’ structure. I prefer the green strip to the sharrows with dashed lines.

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Green sharrow lane.

There are raised crosswalks in some neighborhoods. These do a good job of slowing down drivers who are used to driving 40-50 MPH on 8-lane wide “neighborhood” streets. I think the City of Chicago should be installing these around train stations is where there is a lot of pedestrian crossing activity because people cross to board buses on the opposite side of the street. Some exist: there are a couple on Lincoln Avenue in Lincoln Square just south of Lawrence Avenue. The Chicago Pedestrian Plan lists raised intersections as a tool to improve pedestrian safety.

* The I-15 highway in the Salt Lake Valley has HOT lanes that allow drivers to pay to avoid congestion. The minimum charge is 25 cents per section and increases based on traffic in the “free lanes” in 25 cents increments.