Author: Steven Vance

Don’t forget those bike parking awards nominations

[flickr]photo:6645707161[/flickr]

There are six categories for Ding Ding Let’s Ride-Grid Chicago bike parking awards: four “bests” and two “most in need of”. Nominate a location now!

  • Best Civic
    Government building, library, community center, etc.
  • Best Grocery Store
    National chain, local chain or store or corner bodega/deli
  • Best Non-Grocery Store business
    Retail store, restaurant, tavern, gym, medical office, etc
  • Best Multi-Unit Housing
    Either public or private housing
  • Most in need of Bike Parking
    A location from one of the above categories that has NO bike parking at all, and desparately needs it
  • Most in need of Improvement
    A location from one of the categories above that desparately needs it’s existing bike parking repaired or improved

Continue reading Don’t forget those bike parking awards nominations

Shovel it: How two ideas plan to impact sidewalk snow removal this winter

[flickr]photo:5439311097[/flickr]

A woman walks in the street after snowmageddon 2011. The City administration wants to avoid forcing people to walk in the street. Photo by Jim Watkins.

Mayor Emanuel announced on Tuesday, in a press release, a new website and effort to address snow shoveling and removal problems. The complete effort is packaged nicely on ChicagoShovels.org. It has many features, and I’ll focus on three (only one of which is available right now):

  • Plow Tracker – When there’s a snow storm, the position of every snow plow will be tracked and published on a map. See Plow Tracker in action.
  • Adopt-A-Sidewalk – Claim a portion of the sidewalk that you’ll shovel, and share your equipment with neighbors (coming soon).
  • Snow Corps – Become a volunteer to shovel the sidewalk and door path to seniors and people who are disabled who call 311 to request a volunteer.

Continue reading Shovel it: How two ideas plan to impact sidewalk snow removal this winter

Interviews reveal what Chicago cyclists want

Happy New Year!

I’ll keep this one light as you focus on catching up on all the emails you missed over the holiday – or maybe you need a distraction (there’s comfort in stillness). We published every weekday through the holidays so take a minute to follow up on those articles (a list and summary at the bottom). But if you want to keep reading, this is what we have in store for you today: the Bike Fancy catalog of interviews.

[flickr]photo:6333733296[/flickr]

Jennifer and sons at Cortland Street and Paulina Street. Read their interview. Photo by Martha Williams. 

I emailed Martha a while ago and suggested she use the rich data she had in the personal interviews she conducted with Chicago’s citizen cyclists. Data that can be used to help guide development of bikeway planning (similar to what the Streets for Cycling 2020 Plan is doing). So I gave her some tips on how to put it together and two days ago she published the results. Continue reading Interviews reveal what Chicago cyclists want

Book club update #1: More crashes close to home

[flickr]photo:6602902197[/flickr]

This is the first “book club” update. Read the introduction. 

I only read up to page 102 in Tom Vanderbilt’s “Traffic: Why we drive the way we do (and what it says about us)” before I had to return it to the Chicago Public Library. And since it was overdue I didn’t have the chance to renew it. I liked the book so much and I was underlining and making notes in a public book so I decided to buy it.

My used book arrived from Amazon and I wanted to tell you about one of the (hundreds of) interesting facts and findings: Continue reading Book club update #1: More crashes close to home

CTA late to social media but performing like a pro

[flickr]photo:6596461901[/flickr]

Logan Square, looking northwest, taken October 11, 1968, during construction that moved the Northwest L underground. It previously terminated at Kedzie and Logan Boulevard.

The Chicago Transit Authority didn’t launch their Twitter account and page on Facebook until November 1 this year, but as of this writing has 5,008 followers on Twitter, and 4,972 likes on Facebook. I wrote the day after launch that there was “latent demand” for these methods of communication, and that CTA provides myriad other tools for getting information. Continue reading CTA late to social media but performing like a pro

Safer roadway designs: How Danes make right turns

I went to Copenhagen, Denmark, in January 2011, and I was there for about 48 hours. I met Mikael of Copenhagenize, who lent me his Velorbis bike. I biked as much as possible, at all hours of the day, and I encountered a lot of the cycling infrastructure that makes it easy to bike and encourages the hundreds of thousands of trips by bike a day – even in winter!

This photo essay shows one of the ways you can design an intersection to facilitate safe right turns and through-maneuevers, for both people driving and cycling, as seen in Copenhagen. I’m posting this to show an alternative to the centered bike lane design common in Chicago that leads to many unsafe merge maneuvers that I mentioned yesterday in A tale of five bridges (first photo).

[flickr]photo:5452633843[/flickr]

The driver of the white taxi on the left yielded to bicyclists going straight before making a right turn from the left lane to the right lane and enter the Kennedy Expressway ramp. Not everyone yields.  Continue reading Safer roadway designs: How Danes make right turns