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Plowing the LaSalle Street bridge sidewalk.
The Chicago Department of Transportation posted several photos to its Facebook page showing crews working at 5 AM Friday morning using a SW-4S tracked vehicle to clear snow from the Kinzie Street bike lane, and the sidewalk on the LaSalle Street bridge. Continue reading Photos of Chicago plowing sidewalks and the Kinzie Street bike lane
Editor’s note: Michelle Stenzel is a co-leader of the North Side planning district in the Streets for Cycling 2020 Plan and co-chair of Bike Walk Lincoln Park, a committee to make walking and cycling safe in that neighborhood. All photos feature ads in the campaign and were taken by Stenzel. -Steven
The posters began popping up in the Loop last year in October, around the same time the mannequins appeared on Wacker Drive. Most of them have pictures of pedestrians who were seriously injured or killed in a crash. Not real victims, of course, actors presumably, but the photographs are graphic. The people are lying unconscious in hospital beds, with neck braces, head bandages, facial lacerations, and IV tubes. One poster shows a crash occurring from a viewpoint within the car, with the driver’s head hitting the steering wheel and the victim’s body bouncing off the shattered windshield. Another shows a dead man, still sprawled on the street where he was killed. Continue reading Are Chicago’s pedestrian safety campaign posters too depressing?
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Jana Kinsman models a beekeeper’s veil by her hives at Eden Place nature center
Chicago cyclist Jana Kinsman has a honey of a plan. As a freelance graphic designer and illustrator, she did design, illustration and modeling for the 2011 and 2012 Thought You Knew pin-up calendars, featuring glamorous photos of local bicyclists. But last summer while apprenticing at an apiary (a place where bees, not apes, are kept) in Oregon, she got bitten by the bug. She decided to start Bike-a-Bee, a car-free beekeeping project back home in the Windy City.
Kinsman recently created a Kickstarter page to raise $7,000 for hive equipment and packages of bees, plus a bike trailer to transport the gear to apiaries she’ll maintain at urban farms and community gardens all over town. I’m never one to mind my own beeswax when it comes to innovative cycling ideas, so I caught up with her yesterday morning at Café Mustache in Logan Square, where she filled me in on the history and details of her plan, still in its larval phase.
Continue reading The Bike-a-Bee project is generating quite a buzz
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A Midnight Marauders ride on Lower Wacker Drive – photo by Dubi Kaufmann
Last month I posted on The Chainlink, a local social networking site for bicyclists with over 6,000 members, asking them to share their favorite little known cycling routes and ways to escape the hustle-bustle of the city’s most commonly traveled bikeways. I’ve compiled some of their responses for your reading and riding pleasure.
Continue reading Chainlinkers share their favorite stealth bike routes
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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):
Continue reading Shovel it: How two ideas plan to impact sidewalk snow removal this winter
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Flags at Francisco and Devon – all photos courtesy of CDOT, taken the day the flags were installed
[This piece also runs in Time Out Chicago magazine.]
This fall the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) used a shock-and-awe strategy to raise awareness of pedestrian safety issues. As part of its $495,000 “It’s Up To You” safety campaign, funded by a grant from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, CDOT placed scary ads on trash receptacles and buses, illustrating the devastating effects of reckless driving. The department also installed 32 dead-white mannequins along Wacker Drive representing Chicagoans killed by cars last year.
CDOT’s latest ped safety initiative is also in-your-face, but in a kinder, gentler way. On December 8 the department zip-tied canisters of blaze-orange safety flags to poles at ten uncontrolled (no stoplight or stop sign) intersections near senior centers, schools and hospitals all over town. Since state law requires cars to stop for pedestrians in a crosswalk, you’re supposed to grab a flag, wave it to signal drivers to stop, cross the street and leave the pennant in the container on the other side.
On the Monday three days after the flags were installed, I visited locations around the city to find out whether people were actually using the flags, or just stealing them.
Continue reading Is anybody actually using Chicago’s new pedestrian safety flags?