Well, Mayor Rahm Emanuel only promised one: 100 miles of protected bike lanes. But as I pointed out on Friday, July 22, 2011, there are 25 bridges that are still hostile to cycling.
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If you can see the water below, you’re on an open metal grate bridge. But don’t look down as you may lose your balance. Continue reading Still to go: 99.5 miles of protected bike lanes, 25 bridges
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The city’s first on-street bike parking facility (or bike corral) was installed in Wicker Park this morning by crews from Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT). See more photos from the installation this morning.
Friday, July 29, 2011
5 PM
Flat Iron Arts Building
1579 N Milwaukee Avenue
Join Transportation Commissioner Gabe Klein, 1st Ward Alderman Joe Moreno, Bicycle Parking Program Manager Christopher Gagnon, and Wicker Park-Bucktown Special Service Area Manager Eleanor Mayer to celebrate the city’s first bike corral. Then cross the street to Francesca’s Forno for drinks and refreshments.
Read more about Grid Chicago’s coverage of this on-street bike parking installation.
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CDOT crews install the Tuff Curb on the southeast side of the bike corral.
Update: If you want to know what residents think, avoid the comments section on the Tribune article and head straight to the discussion on EveryBlock. Added Reverend Stein’s letter to the editor (scroll to end) on August 12, 2011.
Alderman Colón (35th Ward) told Moving Design participants last Wednesday that his office fields more calls about parking than gangs or drugs.
The City Council acts faster on parking issues than the others: the importance of parking manifested in March and June 2011 when the City Council passed two ordinances to turn certain stretches of travel lanes on the Logan Square boulevard network into legal and unmetered parking spaces.
Was there backdoor dealing?
News of the street transformation came to light this week, thanks to Jon Hilkevitch at the Chicago Tribune. Passed without any public review, “[residents] fear the move led by 35th Ward Ald. Rey Colon to establish free parking along parts of Logan, Kedzie and Humboldt boulevards, where open parkways foster a feeling of airiness, will make the grand roads seem like parking lots. Logan Square, some residents warn, could become too much of a good thing, like crowded and always bustling Lincoln Park.”
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The map shows the four distinct stretches of boulevards in Logan Square that now offer many hours of free parking each week. Created with QGIS and Adobe Illustrator using data from the City of Chicago. Continue reading Future plans for Logan Square now stymied by new parking ordinance
Bombardier, of Montréal, Québec, announced via a press release on its website Wednesday, July 20, 2011, that the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), has exercised an option in its contract for the 5000-series rail cars that expands the number of cars on order by 300, to 706 cars.
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You may have seen the CTA testing its new train cars – at least one of the cars is painted like in the photo above. The first of the incoming new cars will be used on the Blue Line. Photo by Jeff Zoline.
According to the CTA’s first press release about ordering these trains in 2006, 200 cars were initially ordered, then another 206, and now the final 300 cars available in the original contract.
This announcement will no doubt bring unwarranted criticism against the CTA, centering around the CTA’s budget and how the agency must cut service and raise fares to stay operational. “If the CTA has $933 million to pay for new train cars, how come it doesn’t have money to run a bus route past 7 PM?”
Continue reading Bombardier building 706 rail cars for CTA and Congress’s view of transit
It’s raining as I write this which means many bicyclists in Chicago who want to travel over one of the 25 open metal grate bridges without a bike-friendly deck treatment have to decide: risk the slippery conditions on the bridge that cause your bike to feel wobbly and possibly fishtail, or ride on the sidewalk across the river.
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A photo I took last night showing the new anti-slip metal plates over the bike lane on the Kinzie Street bridge. These plates cover the metal grates that make bicycling dangerous, especially when wet.
Riders no longer have to make that choice today if they bicycle through the Kinzie Street protected bike lane as the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) installed a metal deck over the bike lane portion of the bridge. This is the third bridge in two years that CDOT has treated to make bicycle friendly. (The ribbon cutting ceremony is Monday, July 25, at 11 AM, on the southeast corner of Kinzie and Jefferson.) The other two bridges treated recently are Harrison Street bridge in 2009, and Randolph Street bridge in 2011.
But we still have 25 more dangerous bridges. And CDOT knows this. Continue reading On open metal grate bridges
The Wicker Park-Bucktown (WPB) Special Service Area (SSA), a business improvement district, has purchased 20 specially-designed and orange-colored bike racks from Dero to be installed within the district (see a map on their website).
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A beautiful work in progress. The u-rack is nearly identical to the latest model CDOT has used with the addition of a center piece showing the sustainable transportation modes residents and shoppers in Wicker Park and Bucktown use to get around. Photo courtesy of Dero.
Continue reading Wicker Park-Bucktown SSA moving ahead with bike rack installations