Category: Chicago

Gangster rap: an interview with bike style icon Lorena Cupcake

Lorena Cupcake

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

In a Midwestern town where folks dress conservatively, bike style icon Lorena Cupcake stands out like a handful of Skittles scattered across the Wall Street Journal. Easily spotted by her candy-colored outfits, rainbow-and-lollipops tattoo and messenger bag emblazoned “Cupcake Gangster,” she’s also an astute commentator on the local cycling, drinking and foodie scenes via her frequently updated, often hilarious Twitter feed.

But Cupcake, 25, is far from just a hipster gadfly. A frequent participant and volunteer at “alleycats,” underground, messenger-style checkpoint races, she runs the bike event Twitter calendar @chicagoholdup and helps stage the annual Bicycle Film Festival. Last year she and a few other petite fixed-gear enthusiasts formed Tiny Fix, a bike gang especially for women under 5’2”, which organizes bar nights, dance parties and now their first alleycat, last weekend’s Tiny Fix Ace Race.

I recently caught up with Cupcake, fresh off her day job as a bank teller, over $3 cheeseburgers at the Blue Frog, a messenger bar at 676 N. LaSalle in River North. She gave me the skinny on Tiny Fix, the upcoming race, and the things she loves and hates about biking in Chicago.

Continue reading Gangster rap: an interview with bike style icon Lorena Cupcake

CDOT unveils draft Streets for Cycling plan, but there’s still time for input

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On Tuesday at the first of several community input meetings before the Streets for Cycling 2020 plan is finalized, the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) unveiled a draft map of locations for the 110 miles of protected bike lanes (PBLs) and 40 miles of buffered lanes to be built during Rahm Emanuel’s first term.

However, the meeting focused on a new concept, the Citywide 2020 Network, a comprehensive plan for 640 miles of bikeways to be created over the next eight years – more details on this in a minute. CDOT also unveiled a draft map of this larger network at the event, held at the Copernicus Center, 5216 W. Lawrence in Jefferson Park.

Although the Streets for Cycling community input process is nearly complete, there’s still time to provide feedback before the final plan is unveiled at the Bike to Work rally on Friday, June 15. After you finish reading this post, take some time to study the two maps. If you have suggested edits to the proposed bikeway locations, see the bottom of the post for several ways you can make your voice heard.

Continue reading CDOT unveils draft Streets for Cycling plan, but there’s still time for input

Quickly: Union Station Master Plan study released today at breakfast on vintage train

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Paul Nowicki, assistant vice president of government and policy at BNSF and MPC board member, speaks before breakfast on one of his company’s executive inspection trains. Photos by Ryan Griffin-Stegink, courtesy of Metropolitan Planning Council.

I had breakfast this morning with planning and railroad industry folks on a BNSF Railway train built a few decades ago to celebrate the release of the Chicago Department of Transportation’s Union Station Master Plan Study. The breakfast was hosted by BNSF (operator of the Metra BNSF Railway to Aurora, Illinois) and Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC), one of the plan’s many partners.

Download the entire study (6 MB .pdf), or view it in parts on the Master Plan’s official website. Read MPC’s blog about the project. Continue reading Quickly: Union Station Master Plan study released today at breakfast on vintage train

Put Chicago on the path to an electrified Metra

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Ed. note: Roland Solinski is a graduate student of architecture at Tulane University. “I am a Chicagoan by birth and the city runs in my blood. I’m fascinated by all aspects of urban design and urban systems, but especially transit systems and public space.” Photo is of a southbound Metra Electric train. 

In November of 2010, the Chicago Tribune published an article that shocked Metra commuters. In it, Tribune reporters revealed that massive quantities of diesel exhaust were hanging in the air on platforms at Union Station and Ogilvie Transportation Center. Worse, the atmosphere inside each railcar contained the same exhaust at even higher concentrations – 72 times that of a normal city street.

In numerous other cities, commuters do not need to worry about harmful exhaust fumes, because their trains run off of electric power. In fact, many cities installed rail electrification systems at the turn of the last century specifically to eliminate toxic smoke emissions, including the Illinois Central’s line right here in Chicago, now called Metra Electric. Continue reading Put Chicago on the path to an electrified Metra

Reactions to CDOT’s Chicago Forward Action Agenda vary

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Transit, safety, and congestion make up parts of the Action Agenda. 

Below are excerpts from others’ reactions to the Chicago Department of Transportation’s two-year plan, the Chicago Forward Action Agenda.

Ryan Richter, writing for Transport Nexus:

I think the very first performance measure, to increase activity, sales revenue, and occupancy rates in neighborhood commercial districts, is a fantastic example of breaking out of the silo. This is a problem that will have to be addressed city-wide through multiple agencies. Recognizing that streets can “add value”  to the neighborhoods means that you begin looking at streets in “complete” terms, as in how can a street serve multiple modes simultaneously?

Continue reading Reactions to CDOT’s Chicago Forward Action Agenda vary

Streetcar desire: John Krause wants trams on Clark Street

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Krause is tired of going Nuts on Clark waiting for for the slow-moving #22 bus.

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

Acid jazz pulsed on the sound system as a group of stylishly dressed transit fans clinked wine glasses last week at Vapiano, a sleek Italian restaurant at 2577 North Clark Street in Lincoln Park. They were there to launch the Chicago Streetcar Renaissance, a campaign to create a world-class streetcar line on Clark from the Loop to Wrigley Field, and eventually add lines in other parts of the city.

“Our mission is to grow the economy and the population of Chicago every year while reducing traffic congestion and making the city easier to get around,” says John Krause, 45, the architect who founded the movement, nattily attired in jeans and a dove-gray sports jacket. “That means every year there will be more people and fewer cars, more commerce and less congestion.”

He has a vision of the clogged traffic and the notoriously sluggish buses on Clark replaced by efficient, comfortable streetcars, more pedestrian traffic, on-street cafés and broad bike lanes. “The only way you can get rid of cars is to replace them with something better,” he explains. “In a car paradigm everybody assumes the city is going to grow more and more congested. But a public transit system is the opposite. The more people who use public transit, the better it gets.”

Continue reading Streetcar desire: John Krause wants trams on Clark Street