Mayor’s comments to Chicago Tribune about speed cameras

[flickr]photo:4904797858[/flickr]

Crossing the street shouldn’t be so daunting that you see a cross on the other side. Photo by Gabriel Michael. 

I posted Saturday a link to the Chicago Tribune’s article about their interview with Mayor Emanuel. They also published the transcript of that 90 minute talk, which I didn’t see until after publishing the post. I’m not going to stop following the speed camera issue. It’s directly related to street safety and active transportation and I’ve not found good research that shows that speed cameras don’t reduce speeding.

Notice in the third paragraph of the first excerpt that Mayor Emanuel is committing all resources (which I interpret as revenues from speeding tickets issued by the automated speed camera enforcement system) to “increasing public safety for children near schools and parks”. The act, now an Illinois law since last Monday, includes specific directives on how the money can be spent although one of them is extremely broad.

Here are some excerpts from that interview I think are relevant to the discussion of speed camera placement in Chicago. They are not the most key in whether or not we should have cameras, but comment on how the City administration is handling the public information campaign.  Continue reading Mayor’s comments to Chicago Tribune about speed cameras

Weekend open thread: Speed cameras, yea or nay?

Watch this video of a small experiment conducted by Volkswagen in Sweden where people who sped funded a lottery that those who didn’t speed were automatically entered into.

[youtube]iynzHWwJXaA[/youtube]

Watch The Speed Camera Lottery on YouTube.

Will speed cameras successfully reduce speeding and injuries in Chicago? Would you support such a speed camera lottery? Do you ever think the speed camera lottery would “die”, meaning that people would stop speeding and the lottery would no longer have revenue? Continue reading Weekend open thread: Speed cameras, yea or nay?

Tribune publishes readers’ responses to McCarron “war on cars” article

[flickr]photo:4825414571[/flickr]

If these CTA customers waiting for a bus had the option to take something faster, I’m sure they’d be interested. 

Ron Burke, executive director of Active Transportation Alliance, let us know today that the Chicago Tribune published four letters to the editor responding to John McCarron’s irritation that the City of Chicago is attempting to rebalance its transportation network to make cycling and walking safer, as well as provide new transit options (BRT).

Read those letters. Read Ron’s own letter.

Some excerpts: Continue reading Tribune publishes readers’ responses to McCarron “war on cars” article

CTA announces open fare system to come in 2014

[flickr]photo:6348935233[/flickr]

If the backside of your Chase Bank credit/debit card has the “blink” text and logo, you’ll be ready for Open Fare.

Soon you’ll be able to pay for a trip on Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) buses and trains with your credit/debit card (provided it has an embedded wireless chip) and NFC-enabled cellphones. Currently all four credit card processors (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover) offer cards with contactless chips – they use RFID technology. The Samsung Nexus S is the only widely available cellphone with an NFC chip. This is all part of an upcoming system called Open Fare. It’s not the same as the regional fare payment system that Pace, Metra, and the CTA are legislated to provide by 2015 (where one fare payment method works on any transit vehicle, often called “universal fare”*). Continue reading CTA announces open fare system to come in 2014

Chicago pedestrian study roundup

John wrote about the City of Chicago’s pedestrian plan and public meetings in June. On Sunday, the Chicago Tribune wrote about a study released by the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT), the 2011 Pedestrian Crash Analysis.

Skip over the “Key Findings” section on pages 7 and 8 (PDF). You’ll find useless factoids that, when you read them twice, tell nothing. For example, “The Chicago Transit Authority rail stations with high numbers of nearby pedestrian crashes were along the Green Line, Red Line – Dan Ryan branch, and Blue Line – O’Hare branch.” That statement is as precise and informative as telling a pizza delivery driver you live within two miles of Western and Diversey Avenues.

In the news

  • Chicago Tribune – Posted online yesterday with today’s date (to coincide with a Monday press release from CDOT), the Tribune “exclusively” analyzed some of the findings. The actual report is better than this article (some paragraphs are lifted straight from the report), but the article adds some juicy bits about taxis and their drivers.
  • The Architect’s Newspaper – Its metaphorical headline could be slightly misleading – “City of broadening sidewalks” – as sidewalks in Chicago have generally been narrowed instead of widened. But I get the relationship to the Sandburg poem and the Pedestrian Plan vision.
  • Let’s Go Ride A Bike – After reading the Tribune article, Dottie said, “Improving the safety of pedestrians by working to change the culture of speeding and recklessness will naturally improve the safety of bicyclists.”

Resources and related items

  • Pedestrian Crash Analysis technical report – You won’t find the raw data here, but it is more detailed than what you read in the summary report.
  • 3D pavement markings on Clark Street – CDOT in partnership with Western Michigan University and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration applied markings to the roadways in an experiment to see if their color and 3D effect would make that intersection safer for pedestrians to cross.
Read more policy insights from Steven Vance. 

Metra’s storm delays and on-time performance reporting

Storm-related delays affect the three Union Pacific (UP) routes more than the other routes because of UP’s stricter rules. The Chicago Tribune reports that UP will be letting up on this rule just a tad.

[flickr]photo:1221761021[/flickr]

A taxi driver rolls through a flooded viaduct at Montrose and Ravenswood, under the UP-North tracks, in August 2007. Photo by Andre Alforque.

In the same article, the Tribune lets readers know how instrumental it was in encouraging Metra to changes its on-time performance reporting. Before, Metra would produce a systemwide average, but that ignored some lines and runs that had performance ratings a full standard deviation away!