John Greenfield – Page 15

From safety to where? Discussing the future of safe streets at a CNU talk

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Rob Bielaski, Steven, Mark de la Vergne, Eric Dumbaugh.

By coincidence both Steven and I recently appeared on two different panels about sustainable transportation within a few days of each other. Last Thursday I was part of the talk “Chicago Cycling: What’s Next?” at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in conjunction with their “Bikes! The Green Revolution” exhibit. Monday Steven participated in the discussion “Safe Streets,” hosted by the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) at the Jefferson Tap, 325 N. Jefferson in the West Loop. The panelists talked about what makes streets safe, and discussed new developments in Chicago street design.

Based in Chicago and headed my former Milwaukee mayor John Norquist, CNU is a nonprofit that promotes walkable, bikeable, transit-friendly, mixed-use development. Joining Steven on the panel, which doubled as CNU’s monthly happy hour, were Eric Dumbaugh, an associate professor at Florida Atlantic University who has authored more than forty books about transportation and urban planning, and Mark de la Vergne, a project manager at Sam Schwartz Engineering who has worked on Chicago’s pedestrian plan, the Streets for Cycling 2020 plan, and will be involved with siting and outreach for the city’s upcoming bike sharing program.

Continue reading From safety to where? Discussing the future of safe streets at a CNU talk

Savage ride: a trans-Chicago bike trek with Nelson Algren scholar Bill Savage

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Bill Savage at the McKinley Park lagoon.

[This piece also appeared in Checkerboard City, John’s weekly transportation column in Newcity magazine, which hits the streets in print on Wednesday evenings.]

“Nelson Algren wrote, ‘It isn’t hard to love a town for its greater and its lesser towers, its pleasant parks or its flashing ballet,’” says Algren scholar Bill Savage, strapping on his bicycle helmet. “‘But you never truly love it until you can love its alleys too.’ So there’s this dynamic in the city between the boulevard and the alley, between the beautiful urban spaces and the place where the garbage and the rats are, and if you really love Chicago you’ve got to love both.”

An English lecturer at Northwestern University, Bill grew up in Rogers Park with his brother, sex advice columnist Dan Savage, and still lives in the neighborhood. “I tell my students, it’s very easy to experience the city secondhand, in books and movies and online,” Bill says. “But if you’re not out there on the pavement, whether on foot or on a bicycle or in a car or on public transportation, you’re missing something.”

Continue reading Savage ride: a trans-Chicago bike trek with Nelson Algren scholar Bill Savage

Talk, Forrest, talk! The CTA chief responds to our transit questions

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Steven and Forrest Claypool.

Yesterday the Chicago Transit Authority gave a handful of transportation bloggers the opportunity to meet with CTA President Forrest Claypool at the agency’s headquarters and ask him about the state of the agency and its future projects. Steven and I were joined by our colleagues Patrick Barry, filling in for Kevin O’Neil from CTA Tattler, and Kevin Zolkiewicz from Chicago Bus, who also contributes to Grid Chicago.

During the freewheeling 45-minute discussion Mr. Claypool patiently answered any and all of our queries about the transit authority’s sometimes controversial decisions. He was particularly candid about the upcoming Jeffery Corridor Bus Rapid Transit initiative, volunteering his opinion that this pilot project isn’t really bus rapid transit, but rather a step in the right direction. Here are a few of Steven’s and my questions and Mr. Claypool’s responses.

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My first time driving a hybrid vehicle from I-GO Car Sharing

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On Saturday I needed to pick up a bunch of houseplants from a home improvement store and it seemed like it would be a hassle to carry them safely on my Fresh Air bicycle trailer. Also, after a lot of procrastinating, I recently got my Chicago Card Plus, which provides access to the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) and I-GO Car Sharing, replaced after the old one cracked and stopped functioning months ago. So this seemed like a good opportunity to try out my new card by checking out a vehicle from I-GO, the nonprofit service operated by the Center for Neighborhood Technology.

When I logged onto the I-GO website, I noticed that there were a couple of locations near my home in Logan Square with standard Toyota Prius hybrid cars. I-GO also offers plug-in electric hybrid Priuses, which they say can get 100 mile-per-gallon for trips under forty miles. This results in up to two-thirds lower fuel costs and emissions than the standard Prius, I-GO says, but currently all of the plug-in hybrids are located downtown. The service also recently added several Mitsubishi i-MiEV and Nissan LEAF electric cars to their fleet.

Continue reading My first time driving a hybrid vehicle from I-GO Car Sharing

A quick interview with Gabe Klein at the Bike to Work Rally

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Klein with Active Trans’ Julia Kim.

With terrific weather there was a good turnout at today’s Bike to Work Rally under the giant Picasso in Daley Plaza. As the festivities wound down, I buttonholed Chicago Department of Transportation Commissioner Gabe Klein to ask him a few questions about the state of cycling in Chicago.

This is going to be a big year for bicycling in Chicago. What things are you most excited about that are coming up this year?

There’s so much that we’re working on, but I’m really proud of the bike team’s efforts on the protected bike lanes and the buffered bike lanes, and traditional bike lanes. I mean, last year we put in 39 miles all across the board, which was probably more than we’ve ever done. This year we’re going to put in 25 miles of protected and buffered bike lanes, mostly protected. So I’m very excited about our efforts to make it safer for people, particularly to get to work. That’s why Bike to Work Week is great. What we’ve seen, and I’ve heard it from people in our agency is, people are like, “Wow, I didn’t know it was so much fun and so fast and so easy to get to work on my bike.” And now if we can just make it a little safer, then I think people will be like, “There’s no good reason not to do this.”

Continue reading A quick interview with Gabe Klein at the Bike to Work Rally

Marie Ullrich wants to deliver a feature-length movie about bike messengers

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Marie Ullrich on Milwaukee Avenue.

It’s annoying to see your job or your city portrayed inaccurately in the media, but as someone who spent years as a Chicago courier I was pleasantly surprised by Faster!, a short by filmmaker Marie (“MAH-ree”) Ullrich, which has played several international festivals. Although it’s a work of fiction, the writer/director/producer did a solid job of realistically depicting the nuts and bolts of Chicago’s bike delivery business. You can view the trailer for Faster! here (embedded below). Other locally filmed, bike-related projects she’s completed include an award-winning ad for Chrome messenger bags and an experimental short about ghost bike memorials.

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Now Ullrich is trying to raise $35,000 via a Kickstarter campaign to shoot The Alley Cat, a full-length movie starring Jasper, the female messenger who is the main character from Faster!, played by Jenny Strubin. While the short follows Jasper on a rough day of courier work, the action in the feature film would revolve around a late-night alleycat (underground courier race) gone awry. Ullrich hopes to shoot the movie this summer before she leaves town for a full-time gig teaching in Michigan. I recently sat down with her at Café Mustache in Logan Square to get some background on her work and the deets about her future plans.

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