[flickr]photo:6691289201[/flickr]
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
[flickr]photo:6680450029[/flickr]
The Riverwalk on the west bank of the Chicago River north of Diversey Parkway.
Hopefully Grid Chicago readers aren’t yet tired of reading about stealth bike routes. We did get a good response the posts about “secret” river routes from the Loop to Division St. and Wellington Ave. to Webster St., as well as our roundup of Chainlinkers’ favorite routes.
By the way, here’s a fun video created by James Presley, which I caught at the Bike Winter Film Festival last Sunday. He explores the Loop to Division route from north to south. The background music really creates tension, like he’s defusing a bomb or something.
Continue reading Stealth River Route III: Diversey to Montrose
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?
[flickr]photo:6671487177[/flickr]
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
[flickr]photo:6215938137[/flickr]
You could make a digital, online version of this map that residents created at the Bloomingdale Trail charrette.
We constantly use maps on Grid Chicago, displaying photos of them, or embedding and linking to them. Here’re all the articles with embedded maps. I’ve even gotten John to make a map for the stealth routes! This is a tutorial on how to create your own map. Continue reading How to create your own online map: Google My Maps
[flickr]photo:6665280757[/flickr]
Grab your phone right now and send the message “CTATRAIN THOR” to 41411. Or send “ctatrain logs” to the same number. Wait a moment.
Clever, right? Continue reading CTA launches train tracker with text messaging