Category: Chicago

Fatality Tracker: 44-year-old pedestrian killed in hit-and-run crash in West Rogers Park

Tsering Dorjee, 44, seen here with his youngest son
Tsering Dorjee. Photo by Bill’s Digital Photos.

2012 Chicago fatality stats*:

Pedestrian: 23 (12 have been hit-and-run crashes)
Pedalcyclist: 6 (1 is a hit-and-run crash)
Transit: 8 (our last update listed 7)
Skateboard: 1 (1 is a hit-and-run crash)

Update November 17, 09:30: The driver turned himself in on Thursday. Fernando Jasso Perez, 23, has never had a driver’s license. “Cook County Judge Donald Panarese Jr. set bail at $750,000 for Perez, who was charged with reckless homicide and failure to report the crash” (source). The Chicago Sun-Times published an editorial Friday urging state legislators to create a visitor drivers license for illegal immigrants. One of the benefits they espoused? “Police officers making a stop would know who is driving the car. With the threat of deportation lessened, illegal immigrants would have less of a motivation to leave the scene of an accident.”

Tsering Dorjee, a 44-year-old Tibetan man from India, was killed in a fatal hit-and-run crash on Monday around 6 PM in the 6400 block of N Maplewood Avenue in West Rogers Park and police are still looking for the driver, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Dorjee worked in the Cook County Clerk’s office and was the president of the Rogers Park Chamber of Commerce.

“It’s very distressing and very disappointing because, in our community, we have very few deaths but they are natural – sickness or old age,” [Lhakpa] Tsering said [president of the Tibetan Alliance of Chicago]. “This is the first time a hit-and-run has taken a life in our community.’”

The car was described as a dark blue Volkswagen Beetle with the Illinois license plate P121817. Police asked anyone with information to call 312-745-4521.

Dorjee’s brother-in-law, Dakpa Jorden, 46, “was also injured in the collision and suffered a fractured neck and leg”, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

* The information is only accurate as of this post’s publishing time. View previous Fatality Tracker posts.

Some of my favorite new sustainable transportation stuff of 2012

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Jana Kinsman of Bike-A-Bee.

Newcity magazine recently invited me to highlight some of my favorite aspects of the local sustainable transportation scene for their Best of Chicago issue. Here’s what I selected:

Best bike-centric Kickstarter campaign

Bike-a-Bee

Jana Kinsman’s pedal-powered apiculture service has generated quite a buzz. Last winter Kinsman, a graphic designer and illustrator with the all-female collective Quite Strong, used the “crowdfunding” website to raise $8,646 for beekeeping equipment and packages of bees, plus a bicycle trailer to transport the gear. She now maintains hives at community gardens and urban farms all over town, such as Eden Place, a nature education center at 43rd Place and Shield Avenue in the underserved Fuller Park community. The hives help pollinate nearby plants and serve as educational tools for neighborhood kids. It’s a honey of a project!

BikeABee.com

Continue reading Some of my favorite new sustainable transportation stuff of 2012

Tracking transit: Three apps for Android reviewed

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Even though the train platform heaters have started working (since November 1) the cold might still prevent you from wanting to wait there for any longer than you need to. These transit apps for Android can help you bide your time. Photo by Chicago Transit Authority.

Ed. note – This guest post was contributed by Nick Puczkowskyj, one of the producers of this year’s Cycle Messenger World Championship, and a daily Chicago Transit Authority rider. Nick offered to test transit apps for Android after seeing our review of iOS transit apps proceeding the iOS 6-Apple Maps debacle. 

For the commuter who needs to be in the know at all times, there are several apps available for Android phones. I went about testing three popular Chicago transit apps on my Samsung Galaxy S II. The apps were put through all of the same hurdles for my commute, which involves both bus and rail. Each app was used entirely for one day and then all three were used at once for one day. Every app was able to assist me with every part of my commute. However, some had stronger attributes than others.

Continue reading Tracking transit: Three apps for Android reviewed

Business as usual: Wells Street bridge closure detour falls short of “8 to 80” bike planning

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A variable message sign on Wells Street at Hubbard directs traffic to LaSalle Street. There was no sign directing bicyclists, which is odd because this route on June 26, 2012, saw 679 riders from 7-9 AM at Chicago Avenue. 

The Wells Street bridge closed on Monday, November 5, to all traffic (the sidewalks were open in the morning) so that the bridge can be rebuilt; a new concrete deck will be constructed providing a safer surface for bicycling. The Chicago Department of Transportation estimates construction will finish by December 1, 2013. To reroute traffic, CDOT posted a map and plan showing different detour routes for different transportation modes: one each for pedestrians, bicyclists, drivers, and bus operators.

Information on the street, however, doesn’t match the plan. People on bikes are directed by the map to turn left from Wells Street onto Kinzie Street and then use Clark Street to cross the river. Yet a variable message sign on Wells Street directs Wells Street traffic to use Illinois Street. One Grid Chicago reader told us that changing lanes on his bicycle, during morning rush hour, from the bike lane on Wells Street to make a left onto Kinzie Street was difficult because many drivers were not turning left onto Illinois Street; in the subsequent days he took Clark Street from the north but found traffic to be worse. Continue reading Business as usual: Wells Street bridge closure detour falls short of “8 to 80” bike planning

Could CDOT’s “Zero in Ten” strategy also work for homicide prevention?

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Mural at Drake Avenue and Bloomingdale Avenue in West Logan Square.

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

Each morning Steven and I scan the dailies for sad stories of local pedestrian, bike and transit deaths to adapt for “Fatality Tracker” posts on Grid Chicago, in order to raise awareness of the need for safer streets. And almost every time I look at the papers I also see tragic news about the latest murders, averaging more than one killing per day.

This year the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) put out two planning documents with the stated goal of eliminating all traffic deaths and crashes within the next ten years. I applaud this bold approach, and I can’t help but wonder out loud if “Zero in Ten” could be successfully applied to our city’s homicide crisis as well.

Continue reading Could CDOT’s “Zero in Ten” strategy also work for homicide prevention?

Open 311 technology now implemented in Chicago with apps to help speed up reporting

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Are you ready to start reporting street problems using your smartphone? Install one of the apps listed below. 

The City of Chicago launched its public Open 311 application interface in October allowing residents to quickly make a report, online or with a smartphone, bypassing the lengthy process of calling. App developers are now able to build programs that interact with the City of Chicago’s 311 database, created in 1997, via the Open 311 application interface to provide a faster and richer user experience. While such a process could have been established years ago, we’re happy to have it in Chicago now.

Currently only 14 service request types are available (see list below), which were said to be among the most commonly requested services. The application interface (known to programmers as “API”) was developed in part by Code for America fellows who researched the 311 implementation here and interviewed myriad users (alderman, city employees, operators, neighbors) in February and were coding all the way up until the last week of October. The undertaking has led to a great outcome, shaking up the tedious process of asking for a city service.

Rob Brackett, one of the four Code for America fellows to work on this project in Chicago, came to a recent Hack Night event at 1871, a tech hub at the Merchandise Mart, to showcase the city’s and fellows’ progress (slideshow). Two city staffers – Kevin Hauswirth (social media director in the Mayor’s Office) and Ryan Briones (IT director at the Department of Innovation and Technology, DoIT) – attended to join the discussion with civic coders and designers about the future of 311 and the Open 311 API. We – the public, really – were invited to contribute our own code updates for the city’s Open 311 website on the social coding website called GitHub.

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My service request as submitted to the city’s new 311 website (it currently accepts 14 service types).  Continue reading Open 311 technology now implemented in Chicago with apps to help speed up reporting