Category: People

Ira David Levy’s “Pedal America” show pushes pedaling to a broader audience

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

As a sustainable transportation devotee, sometimes I have to remind myself that not everyone in this country is as fanatical about biking as I am. But “Pedal America,” a new travel series on PBS created and produced by Chicagoan Ira David Levy, aims to spread the gospel of cycling to the unconverted. “I think that with a lot of bike advocacy, we tend to talk to each other, people who are already enthused,” he says over drinks at a Gold Coast café. “But if you’re going to reach the masses you need to find a way that does not come across as overly political. So I work in a little bit of advocacy in each episode but I try not to be too preachy.” Continue reading Ira David Levy’s “Pedal America” show pushes pedaling to a broader audience

The Grid Network is deprecated, but the links page lives on

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The CTA Morgan Green/Pink Line station will open this month. Photo by Seth Anderson. 

I’ve stopped updating the Grid Network page; no new posts since mid-April appear there. I coded the function myself and it was using too many server resources to operate, slowing down the website. The Network was build on top of our Links page, so that lives on.

Here are some of the new links we’ve added:

  • Transport Nexus. A focus on transportation policy as it relates to land use. Very wonky and written by a transit agency employee.
  • Let the Midway Bloom. The author writes about transportation in the Hyde Park area, and promotes small streets as a way to revitalize neighborhoods. He also advocates for dense housing in the Midway.
  • Chicago Streetcar Renaissance. Streetcars can be used as an economic development tool. Chicago was once riddled with tram lines.
  • TRANSPORT/LAND. A Portland, Oregon-based blog about using cargo bikes for disaster relief, coffee delivery, and carrying grandkids on trikes.

What other links should we add?

Visit our different social media outlets, which offer additional ways to find new websites, photos, and videos. 

Jose Lopez offers the PRCC’s perspective on the Paseo bike lanes

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Jose Lopez speaks at the opening of West Town Bikes / Ciclo Urbano in 2009. Photo by Vanessa Roanhorse.

Today I contacted Jose Lopez, longtime director of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center (PRCC) for his perspective on the new bike lanes on Division Street along Humboldt Park’s Paseo Boricua business district. He had read yesterday’s post on the subject, and he feels it’s not quite accurate to say that his organization objected to the lanes when the Chicago Department of Transportation first proposed them in 2003.

Continue reading Jose Lopez offers the PRCC’s perspective on the Paseo bike lanes

Bike facilities don’t have to be “the white lanes of gentrification”

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The new buffered bike lanes, still under construction, in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood.

[Update: on Friday 5/11 The Puerto Rican Cultural Center’s Jose Lopez provided his organization’s perspective on the Paseo Boricua bike lanes. Click here to read Lopez’s comments.]

Bicycling doesn’t discriminate. It’s good for people of all ethnicities and income levels because it’s a cheap, convenient, healthy way to get around, and a positive activity for youth and families. So it’s a shame that cycling, especially for transportation, is often seen as something that only privileged white people would want to do. And it’s unfortunate when proposals to add bike facilities in low-income communities of color, which would be beneficial to the people who live there, are viewed as something forced on the community by outsiders.

Continue reading Bike facilities don’t have to be “the white lanes of gentrification”

Solicitation on CTA trains is prohibited, but it’s often entertaining

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James Porter, pictured above, is one of Chicago’s foremost authorities on getting around the town without an automobile. As a music journalist, singer, harmonica player, and one half of the DJ duo East of Edens Soul Express, he travels from his home in the Mid-South neighborhood of Chatham to every nook and cranny of the city to get to record stores, concerts and gigs, usually by walking, bus and train. Last winter he contributed an essay about his experiences as an expert Chicago Transit Authority rider. Here’s another story from James about some of the colorful characters who help keep the CTA interesting.

He was a dapper brother. In the 1990s, on my way to New City magazine (where I was working at the time), I’d see him all the time. Waves in his hair, double breasted suit, and like the master orator he was, he worked that northbound Red Line like it was Showtime At The Apollo. But his real intent was to turn the morning train into church.

Continue reading Solicitation on CTA trains is prohibited, but it’s often entertaining

WGN radio host talks to CDOT’s Scott Kubly about bike sharing

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Scott Kubly from the Chicago Department of Transportation talks about speed camera enforcement.

Jonathon Brandmeier, weekday morning host on WGN 720AM, talked to Scott Kubly on Friday, April 27, about bike sharing in Chicago. Kubly oversees the Bicycle Program’s implementation of the bike sharing program, among other projects, for the Department of  Transportation (CDOT).

Download the MP3 or listen to it in a Flash player on WGN’s website. Continue reading WGN radio host talks to CDOT’s Scott Kubly about bike sharing