Category: Beyond Chicago

Exposing people to “strange” new pavement markings

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Mark, a former Chicagoan, now Bostonian, posted this photo of a flyer he received in his “motor vehicle excise tax” bill (think of it like the annual city sticker, but much more costly). It describes and displays the new kinds of pavement markings that are showing up around Boston. It says, “New pavement markings for cyclists are cropping up around the city. Here’s what they mean for drivers.”

The two-sided flyer uses graphics from the NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide to show bike lanes, shared lanes, bike boxes, and cycle tracks. The opposite side thanks Bostonians for making Boston America’s safest city for walking and cycling. I didn’t know it was – I’d like to know more about this and which data source or metric they’re using.

A pamphlet in property tax bills and city sticker applications could be the start of a wider campaign to bring awareness to different street designs (which were put in place to make one or more transportation modes safer than before). The best bet for sustainable awareness raising is to start moving towards mobility education in schools and at the DMV.

Continue reading Exposing people to “strange” new pavement markings

ATA calls for bill to boost transit funds by indexing the gas tax to inflation

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Active Transportation Alliance director Ron Burke at this morning’s event in Pritzker Park. Participants are holding Riders for Better Transit signs.

This morning Active Transportation Alliance held a press conference to announce that the advocacy group and its partners are introducing legislation in Springfield that would raise the state gas tax and index it to inflation. Under this initiative, called Transit Fast Forward, the tax hike would apply only in the six-county Chicago region, and the extra revenue would be used solely to increase funding to the CTA, Metra and Pace.

The new legislation, Senate Bill 3236, is sponsored by State Senator Martin Sandoval, a Democrat from Chicago. Active Trans estimates the hike in state gas taxes in Chicagoland would only be .4 cents per gallon in 2013, costing an average family an extra $4 for the year. But the result would be an estimated $11.6 million in new transit funding next year, and a whopping $168 million increase in funds over the next five years. Continue reading ATA calls for bill to boost transit funds by indexing the gas tax to inflation

Dutch man posts video showing normal cycling and world goes crazy over it

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Utrecht is a nice city to visit. I recommend it.

Mark Wagenbuur, a Dutch blogger from ‘s-Hertogenbosch, starts the story like this:

One of my videos went viral…again…and while that is in itself rather pointless, it does make clear that a lot of people in the world are completely in the dark when it comes to every day cycling [in the Netherlands]. I published the video over a year ago. It shows a cycle path in Utrecht near the central railway station where all the main cycle routes of Utrecht come together.

Mark then reviews for readers some of the comments people left about the video (which has over 1 million views), on the YouTube page, and on the various sites that embedded it; they’re rife with insults, questions about why overweight people cannot be seen, and other expressions of bewilderment and ignorance. His original video is below. Continue reading Dutch man posts video showing normal cycling and world goes crazy over it

Making cities safer for cyclists and pedestrians: Today’s NYT’s “Room for Debate”

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Photo shows Kinzie Street less than two months after opening a protected bike lane here. This represented a new design direction for Chicago’s streets. I explored this direction more in my article for Architect’s Newspaper. 

“It Starts With Better Design”. I agree.

I said this in Safer roadway designs: How Danes make right turns and When you build for youngest, you build for everyone. Today’s “Room for Debate” on the New York Times website features four experts talking about how to make cities safer for cyclists and pedestrians. Each of the four have a different response to the introduction’s strategy for reducing fatalities, which is that New York City should take a “broken windows” theory approach to cracking down on traffic violations. Much credit is given to this theory and the police’s approach to petty crimes in the 1980s and 1990s in reducing crime overall, citywide (read more about this). Continue reading Making cities safer for cyclists and pedestrians: Today’s NYT’s “Room for Debate”

Is this the first ever bike book commercial?

Updated: Eben Weiss will be on a bike ride from TATI Cycles in Hyde Park to Cellar and 57th Street Books in Lakeview on March 29, 2012. Details are here.

Lots of books have commercials, but they’re often for books by Stephen King, Sue Grafton, or some other soon-to-be national best seller. This is the first commercial I’ve seen for a book about cycling. Thanks to BikePortland for the tip.

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The book is The Enlightened Cyclist, by BikeSnobNYC, or Eben Weiss, the most sharp-tongued (and spot-on) bike blogger in America. The book will be released in March, but you can pre-order it on Amazon.

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Eben Weiss singing books in Seattle by Gene Bisbee. 

See earlier: A Chicago bike shop posts a commercial for its fix a flat on the fly service. 

House transportation bill: What’s at stake for Chicago

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A broken down 4400-series bus on Clark Street in 2007. Steven remembers that these buses seemed to break down more often than other models, and their retrofitted wheelchair lifts were slow and difficult to use. Imagine if they couldn’t be replaced when they needed to be. Photo by Sabrina Downard. 

Ed. note: This is a post by guest contributor Brian Morrissey, of Commuter Age – or is that Commute Rage? – a blog covering the economic and social issues of transportation. It was originally written for Taking the Lane, a blog about “bicycling, economics, feminism, and other cultural commentary” by Elly Blue. -SV

First, the latest on the surface transportation bill from the House of Representatives we’ve been discussing so frequently in the past two weeks (known as HR7):

  • Speaker John Boehner doesn’t have the votes, delays until after President’s Day (Politico)
  • What the House transportation bill means for the Bay Area (SF Streetsblog)
  • Obama takes a stand, threatens veto (DC Streetsblog)
  • Reps. Lipinski and Dold joined CTA and Metra officials to call on the GOP to fix HR7 (WGN-TV)
  • Wed., Feb. 29, is the first ever Riders for Better Transit Day of Action (see end of post)

Continue reading House transportation bill: What’s at stake for Chicago