Category: Planning & Policy

Ride into the safety zone: new traffic calming and ped safety treatments

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Englewood resident Denise King tries out the new refuge island at 63rd and Claremont.

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

Running late as usual, I hop on my bicycle and sprint south from Logan Square, fortunately with a sweet tailwind at my back. I’m heading to the ribbon cutting for new Children’s Safety Zone traffic-calming and pedestrian-safety treatments at Claremont Academy Elementary School, 2300 West 64th Street in West Englewood.

The city has 1,500 of these safety zones, designated areas within one-eighth mile of schools and parks. The Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) is planning to install additional infrastructure at dangerous intersections within these sectors to discourage speeding and make crossing easier. Currently there are about 3,000 pedestrian crashes a year in the city, with about 800 involving kids (full data below). And in this era of rising obesity rates, the goal is also to encourage more children to walk to school and to play at their local park.

Continue reading Ride into the safety zone: new traffic calming and ped safety treatments

Safety of biking hasn’t changed, only our realization on what it takes to improve safety

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This photo exhibits many risks we take because of our current and unchanging designs, a potential dooring scene similar to that which led to the death of Neill Townsend on Friday. Photo by Mike Travis. 

I hate car-centric design. I equate it with theft. It takes away space for efficient and free modes of travel and reduces the quality of air and aural serenity, not to mention the danger to those within and without a car. Improving bike infrastructure is secondary in making a bike culture: the most important task is to highlight the irresponsibility, risk, damage, inefficiency, and death that Chicago’s car culture brings to the city.

Mary Schmich, a Chicago Tribune columnist, asks in the headline of her column today, “Is biking less safe, or does it just seem so?” Data is missing so we cannot answer this question empirically; there’s data for reported crashes, but no information on how many people are cycling and for how many miles. Continue reading Safety of biking hasn’t changed, only our realization on what it takes to improve safety

There’s a lack of cooperation in the region’s transportation authorities

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A South Shore train travels between northern Indiana and downtown Chicago. It’s not a member of the Regional Transportation Authority of Illinois. Photo by Seth Anderson. 

The Regional Transportation Authority is a financial administrator and cooperative service planner at the top of the Chicagoland transit hierarchy. Or at least it’s supposed to be. But transit in Chicagoland doesn’t act regionally, and hasn’t for a long time (if ever). Here’s the evidence:

1. Suburban county board member perpetuates the myth that Metra = suburbs and CTA = Chicago

DuPage County Chairman Dan Cronin is quoted in the Daily Herald about an “impasse” in how to distribute some funds amongst the RTA’s three member agencies. The CTA normally would get 99% of this particular pot, but the RTA is proposing it only gets 95%. (Note that CTA provides 82% or rides and receives 49% of region’s funding.)

“The money is collected from all the taxpayers in the region, the majority of whom reside in the suburbs. Why should we subsidize the CTA more than we already are?” he asked. “They seem to care little for their neighbors in the suburbs.”

Each transit agency operates routes and stations in and outside the Chicago city limits. Each has connecting service within and between municipalities, Chicago and not Chicago. Thousands of Chicagoans take Metra daily for work and other purposes to other points within and without Chicago. Thousands of people who don’t live in Chicago ride the CTA. It’s likely true that a majority of Metra’s weekday passengers don’t live in Chicago, though it doesn’t matter where they come from.

Typecasting transit agencies and their respective passengers based on the attributes of where they live and not the place of where they live – the place matters in order to know where service should go – inhibits the slight progression transit has been making in the region in the past decade.

RTA Chairman John Gates’s heart is in the right place when he said, “This is a regional agency, we have to reach a regional consensus.”

Continue reading There’s a lack of cooperation in the region’s transportation authorities

What’s up with all those K streets west of Pulaski?

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Photo by Jeff Zoline.

[This piece originally ran in Time Out Chicago magazine.]

Q: How did K-Town come to be? That stretch of the West Side with all the north-south streets whose names start with the letter K has always fascinated me.

A: The K streets extend for a mile west of Pulaski Road: Karlov, Kedvale, Keeler, Kildare, Kenneth, Kilbourn. The mile after that, the streets begin with the letter L (Lavergne, Lawler)—though you’d have trouble finding people repping L-Town as their ’hood. The mile after that? M streets. The alphabetical pattern continues through P.

In the Tribune in 1913, the superintendent of Chicago’s Bureau of Maps, John D. Riley, explained his department’s new proposal for renaming north-south streets: “Under this scheme a certain letter would be assigned for each mile beginning with ‘A’ for the first mile west of the Indiana state line.” Thus, roads 11 miles west of the Hoosier border start with K, the 11th letter of the alphabet.

Abby Kindelsperger responded to the Time Out article:
“Actually, as a teacher at Long & Chicago, I have to disagree that ‘you’d have trouble finding people repping L-Town as their ‘hood.’ My students who live in the surrounding L-streets certainly consider their neighborhood to be L-Town, and never use the city’s label of Austin. I suppose in a community that doesn’t feel much love from the city, renaming is a form of power.”

At the time, north-south streets west of Pulaski were numbered according to their distance from State Street, so the switch from digits to words was done to differentiate them from their numbered east-west counterparts on the South Side (two 42nd Streets might be confusing). The City Council rejected the proposal regarding roads east of Pulaski, which by then already had proper names like State Street and Michigan Avenue, since renaming them all would have been a major pain in the neck.

Upcoming events: Two technology and planning roundtables at Metropolitan Planning Council

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Gabriel Metcalf, executive director of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), speaking at the value capture event. Photo by Ryan Griffin-Stegink of MPC. 

The Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC) hosts roundtables each month about different planning topics. Many are centered on economic or transportation initiatives. Two in October will focus on technology. The first, on Tuesday, October 9, is “Plugging in to Placemaking: Technology’s Role in Community Planning”, and the second, on Thursday, October 11, is “State-of-the-Smart: Maximizing Capacity with Intelligent Transportation Systems”.

For these events, MPC brings in guest speakers from around the country to share their expertise with an audience of professional workers, scholars, and community organizers. I’ve been to several and written about one of them: replacing the gas tax with distance-based charging. They are good for staying abreast of current events, academic work, and best practices. Students will find them a good networking opportunity and a break from university-oriented programming.

Both events are at 140 S Dearborn, Suite 1400, and will be live streamed for free. They have a fee of $15 for MPC donors, $30 for everyone else.

Plugging in to Placemaking: Technology’s Role in Community Planning

October 9, 2012, 12–1:30 pm

Imagine a busy Dad who spends his days at the office and his evenings shuttling kids to practices and play dates. Or a businesswoman whose work frequently takes her out of town. Consider the night student, the small business owner, the shift worker: These are just a few of people who have something to contribute to local community decisions, but rarely have the time to attend traditional public meetings. Read more. Register here. Watch live stream on YouTube.

State-of-the-Smart: Maximizing Capacity with Intelligent Transportation Systems

October 11, 2012, 12–1:30 pm

Improving transportation infrastructure means more than building roads and bridges. Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) use technology to maximize the capacity of existing infrastructure to improve traffic flow, decrease delays, and give riders up-to-the-minute system information for a relatively low cost. The Chicago region has several examples of ITS, such as the Chicago Transit Authority’s bus and train trackers and the Illinois Tollway’s I-PASS electronic tolling system. Still, there is tremendous room for growth. This roundtable will showcase how cities around the world are proving the real potential of ITS by implementing such technologies as congestion pricing, variable priced parking, and smartphone apps. Read more. Register here. Watch live stream on YouTube.

Can Indy rock? Exploring Indianapolis, the Midwest’s next bike mecca

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Eric McAfee and Kevin Kastner on the Indianapolis Cultural Trail.

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

If I had to sum up Indianapolis in one word, it would be “Underrated.” With a population of 829,718, the Hoosier State capital is the second-largest Midwest city (although it’s only the ninth largest metro area in the region.) Despite its size it’s known as “Naptown” and “India-No-Place” due to its reputation as a bland, suburban-style metropolis with few attractions besides the Colts, the Pacers and the Indy 500. I’m told that in the 1980s you couldn’t even buy a sandwich downtown after 6pm and the massive streets, lined with dozens of garages and oceans of parking lots, were so deserted you could safely walk down the middle of them.

But two weekends ago when I took Megbus there to meet up with my buddy Jake, in town for a conference, I discovered a surprisingly hip city with some fascinating architectural features and plenty of fun stuff to do. And while there’s little public transportation to speak of, and the city’s dominant image is a racecar, I was shocked to find a level of bike-friendliness that gives Chicago a run for its money.

Continue reading Can Indy rock? Exploring Indianapolis, the Midwest’s next bike mecca