Photos from day 2 of Elston Avenue cycle track construction

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The northbound section reached Division Street. 

The design reveals itself hour by hour (see day one). Today I visited at 10 AM. One Twitterer had this reaction to the project: “@gabe_klein As a daily Elston bike commuter I thank you and all of @ChicagoDOT for expanding these facilities. cc @gridchicago @thetrolusk”.  Continue reading Photos from day 2 of Elston Avenue cycle track construction

Tales from #bikeCHI: Edition 3

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Photo taken by Melissa. 

A smattering of #bikeCHI posts from the last half of (warm) March I forgot to post earlier.

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Follow us on Twitter: @stevevance, @greenfieldjohn, @gridchicago.

Follow Friday April: Read these blogs

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Photo of people descending stairs at State and Lake by Ann Fisher. 

Taking a cue from Twitter where #FF means “Follow Friday” and people post the @names of others they recommend you follow, I am recommending some sites from our links page that you should follow.

  • A City Guy – Chicago based “thoughts on land use and transportation”.
  • CTA Tattler – Best source for ALL Chicago Transit Authority news.
  • The Urbanophile – Best source for reflective writing about Midwest cities’ economics, demography, and sometimes transportation.
  • Zolk.com – Personal musings on Andersonville, CTA, and transportation infrastructure.
  • Human Transit – International-focused blog about transit resources and operations.
  • Let’s Go Ride A Bike – Two women authors write about their experiences bicycling in Chicago and Nashville.

Should I have recommended someone else? Make your own suggestion in the comments and we’ll consider listing that site on our Links page. All of them are also members of the Grid Chicago Network, a sort of RSS reader about local sustainable transportation news and issues.

You can follow us on Twitter:

Tales from #bikeCHI: volume 2

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The Lakefront Trail on an emptier day. Photo by Katherine of Chicago. 

#bikeCHI is the hashtag to use on Twitter when you’re talking about cycling in Chicago. It’s a pretty broad topic.

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I think you probably know what Zach is talking about. At the most recent Bloomingdale Trail meeting, it was revealed that the Lakefront Trail can be a very busy place: during one count period, there were over 2,300 people per hour in each direction. That’s a higher “ADT” than many streets in Chicago*. Continue reading Tales from #bikeCHI: volume 2

Tales from #bikeCHI

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Texting while cycling is illegal in Chicago, since November 2011. Photo by Eric Pancer. 

#bikeCHI is the Twitter #hashtag to use if you’re talking about riding a bike in Chicago. Here’re two interesting tweets from tonight, both from Dan Ciskey, in order:

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I sympathize with the first one: “just another day in the bike lane” is the new “just another day at the office”. It doesn’t matter, though, if you ride in the bike lane or not, there are hazards everywhere. Continue reading Tales from #bikeCHI

Latent demand for CTA to be on Twitter, and CTA’s other tools

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The Chicago Transit Authority tweeted for the first time yesterday morning at 10:59 AM. They said, “This is an official announcement from CTA: Hello”. They had 1 follower at the time of the tweet (it was me). 25 minutes later they had 49 new followers.

7 hours and 31 minutes later (I checked at random times), they had 1,338 followers. That’s fast.

36 hours later, they have 1,928 followers.

They also launched a page on Facebook and an updates service delivered via email or SMS (text messaging). We’re glad CTA is now on social media (it took awhile). But these are just a few tools out of many that the CTA has for its customers to get information. Let me list them all for you:

Read my story about the state of Chicago transit trackers. Also, you can follow Grid Chicago on Facebook and Twitter, or via email updates.