Category: Beyond Chicago

Turf and Surf: car-free fun by land and lake

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Todd on the sailboat American Excess.

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

It always bugs me when people say Chicago’s a great city but complain that there’s no access to natural beauty or outdoor adventure here. True, there are no mountains or saltwater for hundreds of miles, but we have ocean-like Lake Michigan close at hand, making this one of the few major U.S. cities where you can work in a skyscraper and easily take your lunch break on a sandy beach.

And this is great place to live if you want to commune with nature without polluting the environment to get there. The South Shore Line electric railroad takes you directly from Millennium Park to the campgrounds of the picturesque Indiana Dunes. The bicycle-friendly Metra commuter rail system means that you can get to state parks likes Illinois Beach, Fox Lake and Kettle Moraine via a relaxing train ride plus a bit of pedaling, instead of fighting traffic jams. And since this is the nation’s rail hub, and Amtrak lines within the state accept un-boxed bikes, it’s easy to take a journey in the mountain-like hills of Southern Illinois or along the mighty Mississippi. So having a good time in the great outdoors near Chicago is really just a matter of attitude.

Continue reading Turf and Surf: car-free fun by land and lake

Highlights from the Chicago Pedestrian Plan

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A Metra train crosses Canal Street, while a person waits to cross the tracks. Photo taken by ryanbytes. 

Our article on Monday discussed some highlights and shortcomings in the Pedestrian Plan, released last week. This post spotlights more of the smart objectives and features in the plan. It additionally features ideas that have been on the books for a while, with little progress made. It helps to have the Chicago Pedestrian Plan open while you read this post; the plan isn’t available as a website.

The previous post listed improving expressway entrances (mainly near train stations, p.73-75), six-way intersections (p.69-71), and developing standards for the pedestrian experience within parking lots (p.76). Each tool or strategy below summarizes the aim of each in “What it says” but isn’t a complete representation of the milestones or action items for that tool or strategy.

Mobility education, 53 Continue reading Highlights from the Chicago Pedestrian Plan

Open Streets, closed coffers: City Hall takes a pass on Chicago’s ciclovia.

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Open Streets director Julia Kim at last year’s Open Streets on State Street. Photo courtesy of Active Trans.

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

Note: I wrote this piece early last week, a few days before Open Streets in the Loop took place on Saturday. As predicted, it was a wonderful event, with even more fun stuff going on than last year. As always, it was thrilling to see a street that’s normally clogged with motor vehicles turned over to positive human interaction. Next Sunday’s Open Streets Wicker Park/Bucktown, on bustling Milwaukee Avenue through bike-crazy neighborhoods, should be even better. It takes place on Milwaukee from Ashland to Western Avenues from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. See Steven’s thoughts on the downtown event below my article.

Last year I wrote a Newcity cover story with the subtitle, “Can Open Streets downtown sell City Hall on future ciclovias?” For this year at least, the answer was no.

Since 2005 I’ve been chronicling the Active Transportation Alliance’s valiant efforts to stage ciclovías, Latin-American-style events that shut down streets to cars traffic, encouraging healthy recreation, community and commerce. It’s hard to believe I still have to report on the relative lack of support from the city, especially since Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) commissioner Gabe Klein have generally been terrific on sustainable transportation issues.

Continue reading Open Streets, closed coffers: City Hall takes a pass on Chicago’s ciclovia.

Getting ready for the protected bike lane “breakthrough”

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The Kinzie Street protected lanes. Photo by Josh Koonce.

[This article also appears on the Green Lane Project‘s website.]

Last month dozens of transportation professionals from across the Chicago area converged on the Sears Tower to learn about protected bike lanes and other new developments in bike facility design. The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, the region’s official planning organization, hosted the workshop “Designing for Bicycle Safety,” led by veteran transportation engineer John LaPlante.

The Green Lane Project’s Martha Roskowski flew in from Boulder to deliver the keynote address, helping to get the audience excited about the brave new world of protected lane design. And Randy Neufeld, former head of of the Active Transportation Alliance and current director of the SRAM Cycling Fund, gave an update on efforts to build the lanes here in the Windy City.

Continue reading Getting ready for the protected bike lane “breakthrough”

Alderman Dowell goes to Denmark

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Alderman Dowell with 3rd Ward bike campers.

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

3rd Ward Alderman Pat Dowell wasn’t always a bicycle-friendly politician. But she says a recent visit to bike-crazy northern Europe opened her eyes to the potential benefits of cycling for her South Side constituents.

Dowell’s Near South district includes parts of Bronzeville, Kenwood, Oakland, Douglas, and the South Loop. Last February, as part of Rahm Emanuel’s plan to build one hundred miles of car-protected bike lanes within his first term, the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) proposed installing protected lanes along Martin Luther King Drive in her ward. But local church leaders opposed the lanes because they feared they would impact Sunday parking and because they felt the white posts used to delineate the lanes would detract from the aesthetics of the historic boulevard, says CDOT project manager Mike Amsden. As a result, the project stalled.

Continue reading Alderman Dowell goes to Denmark

Observations from Europe: Why doesn’t the Metra train run as smoothly?

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An example of a Regio Express train, stationed in Augsburg, Germany. Notice how it has only a single level. It has considerably more room for prams, bicycles, and people using wheelchairs. It also has near-level boarding at platforms (there’s a step down). The train’s name, Fugger-Express, refers to the Fugger family in Augsburg that founded the oldest social settlement still in operation.

I took a Deutsche Bahn (DB) Regio Express (RE) train on Wednesday from Munich*, Bavaria, Germany, to Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany, today in order to see the historical buildings, the world’s oldest social settlement, and, unbeknownst to me, a lot of trams running down pedestrian-only streets. I traveled with a friend who is studying in Munich and his parents. The round-trip price for four adults was 34 euros, or about $42.73. That’s $5.34 per person per direction, for a 40 mile trip.

Continue reading Observations from Europe: Why doesn’t the Metra train run as smoothly?