Category: Planning & Policy

Thoughts on car sharing and the folding car

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Rendering of the MIT CityCar by Franco Vairani. Post updated 9:57 to add commentary on parking. 

This morning, RelayRides will announce it is updating its system on how neighbors share cars. Before, only cars with OnStar and smart card systems could be used (like how I-GO and ZipCar operate now). The change is that anyone with a car can sign up to lend it, for as little as $5 per hour, using a key exchange: the owner and the renter arrange to transfer the key.

I’m looking forward to seeing how this works in practice. I’m going to convince my roommates and friends to sign up their cars. Individual car ownership does not bode well for our society, economy, and environment. The kinds of cars we own have a less significant impact than how we drive them. How we drive is what makes our car culture. The one that costs us more than we can afford, pollutes the environment, and sustains a sedentary lifestyle. Continue reading Thoughts on car sharing and the folding car

Transportation bill update for March 2nd, 2012

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Photos by Jane Healy. 

Update March 5, 2012: Cloture vote is Tuesday, March 6th, via Smart Growth America. 

Republican leadership in the House has essentially admitted that their multi-year surface transportation bill needs to be reworked. Read all our past coverage on it. The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, our region’s metropolitan planning organization, is doing a great job keeping up with this on their blog and in their weekly newsletter. From today’s newsletter:

Transportation reauthorization update. This week, the U.S. House of Representatives discussed replacing their initial 5-year reauthorization bill, the American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act (AEIJA), with a reduced 18-month program.

This proposal would fund federal transportation programs through mid-2013, and would reconnect mass transit funding to the Highway Trust Fund. Also this week, the U.S. Senate failed to advance one of the non-germane amendments that have been attached to Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century [MAP-21, the Senate’s version of a surface transportation bill]), the two-year reauthorization bill. Senate Majority Leader Reid announced that he intends to file cloture on the substitute amendment to MAP-21 [cloture requires 60 votes to pass – the Democratic caucus controls only 53 seats]. The vote is scheduled for March 6.

Read more on their Policy Updates blog.

What else is happening? The Senate has included the Cardin-Cochrane amendment that gives metro areas control over bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure spending.

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The House of Representatives cannot get away with passing a bill that leaves us empty train tracks. 

Will a new ordinance make taxis safer and greener, or just hurt cabdrivers?

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Photos by Paolo Cisneros

Taxicabs make it easier to live in or visit a city without owning a car, and they help reduce traffic congestion and the need for parking spaces, so they definitely play an important role in Chicago’s sustainable transportation scene. This article was contributed by Paolo Cisneros, a graduate of the journalism program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a former writer with the Chicago Dispatcher, which covers the local taxi industry. A native Chicagoan, Paolo’s work focuses primarily on environmental and social justice issues. Follow him on Twitter at @PaoloCisneros.

Remember last fall when a bunch of fancy-pants meteorologists predicted this was going to be one of the harshest winters in Chicago history?

Be honest. How filled with anxiety and dread did your life suddenly become?

For most of us, such a reaction was to be expected, but there was one group of people who couldn’t have been happier about the news: Chicago’s taxi drivers.

Continue reading Will a new ordinance make taxis safer and greener, or just hurt cabdrivers?

Exposing people to “strange” new pavement markings

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Mark, a former Chicagoan, now Bostonian, posted this photo of a flyer he received in his “motor vehicle excise tax” bill (think of it like the annual city sticker, but much more costly). It describes and displays the new kinds of pavement markings that are showing up around Boston. It says, “New pavement markings for cyclists are cropping up around the city. Here’s what they mean for drivers.”

The two-sided flyer uses graphics from the NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide to show bike lanes, shared lanes, bike boxes, and cycle tracks. The opposite side thanks Bostonians for making Boston America’s safest city for walking and cycling. I didn’t know it was – I’d like to know more about this and which data source or metric they’re using.

A pamphlet in property tax bills and city sticker applications could be the start of a wider campaign to bring awareness to different street designs (which were put in place to make one or more transportation modes safer than before). The best bet for sustainable awareness raising is to start moving towards mobility education in schools and at the DMV.

Continue reading Exposing people to “strange” new pavement markings

ATA calls for bill to boost transit funds by indexing the gas tax to inflation

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Active Transportation Alliance director Ron Burke at this morning’s event in Pritzker Park. Participants are holding Riders for Better Transit signs.

This morning Active Transportation Alliance held a press conference to announce that the advocacy group and its partners are introducing legislation in Springfield that would raise the state gas tax and index it to inflation. Under this initiative, called Transit Fast Forward, the tax hike would apply only in the six-county Chicago region, and the extra revenue would be used solely to increase funding to the CTA, Metra and Pace.

The new legislation, Senate Bill 3236, is sponsored by State Senator Martin Sandoval, a Democrat from Chicago. Active Trans estimates the hike in state gas taxes in Chicagoland would only be .4 cents per gallon in 2013, costing an average family an extra $4 for the year. But the result would be an estimated $11.6 million in new transit funding next year, and a whopping $168 million increase in funds over the next five years. Continue reading ATA calls for bill to boost transit funds by indexing the gas tax to inflation

CDOT proposes road diets, protected bike lanes for King, 31st and 55th

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CDOT’s Mike Amsden and 4th Ward Alderman Will Burns

I’m always happy to pay a visit to my old stomping ground of Hyde Park-Kenwood. So Monday afternoon I took advantage of a nice southbound wind and pedaled down the lakefront to Kenwood Academy for a 4th Ward community meeting hosted by Alderman Will Burns. At the assembly Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) bike planner Mike Amsden gave a presentation about the CDOT’s plans to install protected bike lanes and buffered bike lanes on the Near South Side. The new facilities would be part of the city’s Streets for Cycling plan to install 100 miles of protected lanes and some 150 miles of other innovative bikeways over the next few years.

Here’s a map of the proposed locations in or near the 4th Ward. As Amsden outlined at the meeting, these streets would be undergoing “road diets,” removing and/or narrowing car travel lanes to make room for the new bike lanes. Additional benefits would include discouraging speeding and other reckless driving behavior, as well as reduced crossing distances for pedestrians. Continue reading CDOT proposes road diets, protected bike lanes for King, 31st and 55th