A large portion of Chicagoans not only take the bus, train, walk, or bike to work, but they also take these sustainable transportation modes to go shopping, for groceries and everything else.
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Two people attempt to cross Western Avenue, with one of them pushing his purchases in a shopping cart. Photo by Joshua Koonce. Continue reading Grid Shots: Shopping without a car
Crews from Marking Specialists started installing pavement markings on Wednesday, October 5, 2011, continuing on Thursday and Friday. The project’s western extent was pushed to Western Avenue, making it 0.5 miles longer – now at 2 miles long. There are many aspects of this facility that differ from the Kinzie Street protected bike lane, Chicago’s first. John will have a more in-depth article about this project on Tuesday or Wednesday – this is just a photo gallery.
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West of Damen, the eastbound protected bike lane is on the south side of the street. At Damen, it switches to the left side. It’s unclear how bicyclists are expected to make this “crossover”. Continue reading Construction has begun on the Jackson protected bike lane (photo gallery)
[flickr]photo:6207956624[/flickr]Michael Salvatore, owner of Heritage Bicycles
[This article also appears in Newcity magazine.]
Chicago just lost one of its coolest bike shops, but we’re gaining one that may be even cooler. Last week Dutch Bike Co. abruptly closed its Chicago location, only three months after relocating from Lincoln Park to Wicker Park. Founded in Seattle, the company opened its only satellite store three years ago at 651 W. Armitage in a gallery-like storefront. They offered beautiful, practical European-style city bikes by brands like WorkCycles and Linus, most costing over $1,000.
Continue reading A Dutch bike store dies, a bicycle café is born
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A view of the Bloomingdale Trail at Spaulding Avenue. At least one person in the audience asked for a rail car or two remain in the new park. Photo by Colin Clinard.
On the evening of Tuesday, October 4, 2011, I attended the final presentation from the Bloomingdale “charrette weekend” at the McCormick Tribune YMCA, 1834 N Lawndale. The charrette weekend hosted invited stakeholders and members of the public who gathered with the design team to learn about the Bloomingdale Trail history, devise the topics they cared about, and express ideas and concerns about the project. For 16 hours on Monday and Tuesday, the design team synthesized all of the conversations, contribution, and ideas into a final presentation that took about 90 minutes to examine.
What follows is a detailed description of who said what about the project. I’ve divided the article into many sections with bold text headings for easier reading. I imagine that this article will evolve as people ask me questions. Continue reading Bloomingdale Trail public involvement process reached a milestone this week
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A Metra train passes over a congested highway in Chicago.
Congress is “debating” (it doesn’t always seem like a debate but a shouting match full of poorly chosen words) President Obama’s American Jobs Act right now; the latest news is that the Senate has rewritten the bill to add a new 5% tax on income above $1 million. The bill also includes allocations and competitive grant funding for capital* infrastructure projects, for Amtrak, transit, and road (which would include a tiny bit for bicycle and pedestrian projects) and bridge repair and other types. Read the Act.
Infrastructurist has an idea on how that money could be distributed differently:
Take Obama’s latest proposed jobs bill, which includes $27 billion for immediate spending on highways and bridges, and around $9 billion for rail. Clearly, that’s a huge tilt. What about changing that ratio of fund distribution, on the basis that nearly every large city is currently working to introduce transit? In other words, what if we gave $27 billion to transit, and $9 billion to roads?
It’s already been shown that bike lanes and transit projects provide more jobs for the dollar than road building.
Bicycling infrastructure creates the most jobs for a given level of spending: For each $1 million, the cycling projects in this study create a total of 11.4 jobs within the state where the project is located.
…road-only projects create the least, with a total of 7.8 jobs per $1 million. (Reuters)
We’re for giving transit the funding priority.
*In some cases the bill allows for 10% of the money received to be used for operating expenses.
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This is the second of a series of interviews I hope to conduct with all fifty Chicago aldermen about walking, biking and transit issues in their ward. Earlier this year I talked to 27th Ward Alderman Walter Burnett. Last month I spoke with 25th Ward Alderman Daniel “Danny” Solis, whose district includes such diverse neighborhoods as Pilsen, Chinatown, University Village and Little Italy. The different ethnicities of his ward are reflected by the artwork in his City Hall office, including works by Mexican, Italian, African-American and Chinese artists, including a life-size replica of a terra cotta soldier from the mausoleum of Emperor Qin Shi Huang.
We discussed Solis’ efforts to improve pedestrian safety in his ward after a hit-and-run pedestrian fatality at 18th and Halsted, the upcoming protected bike lane on 18th between Canal and Clark and the pros and cons of the Pink Line conversion. We also talked about his dream of a bike/ped path along 16th, the new sustainable streetscape in his ward, and his upcoming trip to Amsterdam to study bike infrastructure. Continue reading Talking transportation with 25th Ward Alderman Danny Solis