A different perspective than the one I created from the front of Brandon’s Bullitt, but more interesting and diverse. Check out the video captured by videographer Nick Kazinsky, hired by Active Transportation Alliance to showcase the event.
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It may just convince your friends to help you advocate for another one next year, and perhaps expanding it to other neighborhoods. Read our coverage on Open Streets.
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The Cook County Forest Preserve District recently installed a multi-use trail in the Kickapoo Meadows forest preserve. This is at 144th and Halsted in Riverdale, Illinois.
This summer and fall I’ve been working with Active Transportation Alliance to develop bike parking plans for suburban schools and municipalities. This has given me a special opportunity to survey the conditions for walking and biking at numerous locations with a variety of environments unique to their geographies. This is the first article in a series that describes those visits. These plans are paid for by grants from Cook County and the Department of Health and Human Services called Communities Putting Prevention to Work. I’m calling this my “CPPW Series.”
I’m starting with the latest municipality I visited, Riverdale, Illinois. Riverdale is south of Chicago and shares a boundary with the Chicago neighborhoods of Altgeld Gardens, and West Pullman, separated by the Calumet River. You can drive to Riverdale on Halsted Street, or take the Metra Electric-University Park line to its two stations, Ivanhoe and Riverdale. Continue reading A walking tour of south suburban Riverdale opens my eyes
32 ghostly-white figures line the north side of Wacker between Wabash and Clark, but they’re not Halloween decorations. These mannequins, male and female, wear black t-shirts reading “One of 32 pedestrians killed last year in Chicago.” On the back the shirts read “It’s up to you. Be Alert. Be Safe. We’re all pedestrians.” These dummies are part of the city’s new shock-and-awe campaign to raise awareness of pedestrian safety issues and reduce crashes. The Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) is spearheading the initiative with the help of the Chicago Police Department, funded by a grant of almost $550,000 from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
Continue reading Mannequins remind drivers and pedestrians to travel safely
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Photo of attention-grabbing mannequins on Wacker Drive represent the 32 people in 2010 who, while walking, were killed by drivers and automobiles in Chicago. Photo by Kevin Zolkiewicz.
Grid Chicago reader Kevin Zolkiewicz has written about the City of Chicago’s campaign to reduce pedestrian fatalities to zero by 2020.
Among the most visible of the initiatives are 32 mannequins that have been installed along Wacker Drive between Wells Street and Michigan Avenue. Each mannequin represents a pedestrian killed in Chicago last year. Klein hopes that the mannequins, combined with other campaign ads that will be plastered on buses, street furniture, and trash bins throughout the city, will encourage drivers to stay alert for pedestrians.
CDOT’s pedestrian safety campaign will involve 15 different initiatives — ranging from awareness campaigns to enforcement — that the agency hopes will change driver behavior and make the city a safer place for pedestrians. Read the full article.
Grid Chicago’s John Greenfield also attended the press conference this morning at 10 AM at Wacker and Wabash and will be writing about it for tomorrow’s feature.
By my count, using data from the Illinois Department of Transportation, there were 3,064 reported crashes in which at least one person labeled a “pedestrian” was involved. There were several crashes where more than one pedestrian was involved, but I selected unique case numbers from the dataset. I was able to agree that there were 32 pedestrian fatalities in 2010. No crash had more than one pedestrian fatality.
There were no pedestrian fatalities in crashes where the “cause code” was “distracted by phone or electronic communication device” or “distracted by other electronic device (including DVD and GPS)”. Only 8 crashes had one of those cause codes.
According to the Chicago Department of Transportation on Twitter, the mannequins will be visiting other neighborhoods.
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Two CTA passengers shared an iPod on the ‘L’. Photo by Erin Nekervis.
I bought a two-year subscription to the Sunday Chicago Tribune. It’s given me a lot of tips and ideas for blog posts, especially when it comes to Metra and the Chicago Transit Authority. Sitting down and browsing through, page by page, is an easier way to consume all of the news: it’s impossible to find every article the same group published on their website for that day (at least I haven’t found a method).
Anyway, on the cover of the Arts & Entertainment section was a large representation of the famous iPod “click wheel”, the touch sensitive “wheel” (without moving parts on most models) that doubles as four buttons. Ah, the iPod has turned 10! Indeed, the Apple iPod came out in October 2001. I got one for Christmas – it was a big deal as it cost $399, or about $511 today.
The article was about how that little white brick started a revolution in how we acquire and listen to music. Author Greg Kot interviewed 13 people, including musicians, a college student, an MC, and a Los Angeles-based entertainment attorney, to get their take on the iPod’s impact: “wonderful and terrible” Kot summarized.
Continue reading The iPod has been affecting our commutes for 10 years now
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As a writer specializing in green transportation topics I try to keep up with all aspects of the booming local bike scene. But now and then I get a reminder that there are so many different facets to Chicago biking nowadays that it’s practically impossible to keep track of them all.
Case in point was the Chicago launch party for Handsome Cycles that Steven and I attended last week at the Chrome messenger bag store in Wicker Park. I was surprised to learn that the shop has been hosting these parties on the third Thursday of every month for some time now. With multiple kegs of complimentary Goose Island 312 beer on tap, it was a very lively shindig.