Streetsblog Chicago

Waiting for the Brown Line at the Belmont stop. Photo by John Greenfield.

[This article also ran in Checkerboard City, John Greenfield's weekly transportation column in Newcity magazine, which hits the streets in print on Wednesday evenings.]

Two Saturdays ago on National Train Day, my transit-racing brother-in-arms Danny Resner and I tried to write a new chapter in the saga of competitive CTA riding, AKA the ‘L’ Challenge. The rules are simple: you must stop at and/or depart from every CTA station by train, although it’s not necessary to ride every inch of track, and you can only travel by ‘L’, bus or shoe leather.

Adham Fisher, right, a Leicester, England, native and 'L' Challenge record holder for 143 stations, with CTA President Forrest Claypool at the 100th anniversary party for the Linden stop, shortly before Fisher beat Danny Resner and John Greenfield in a head-to-head transit race. Photo by Greenfield.

Several people, including Danny and me, have worn the CTA racing crown at various times. In October, ad men Chris Aubin and Garrett Sorrels set the current record for 145 stations: 9:12:39. We hoped to snag the title before the five-month shutdown of the south Red Line for a $425 million track rehab and station enhancement project, which started on Sunday. Here’s how our day went down:

10am We begin our journey in Wilmette at the Purple Line’s Linden station, a stone’s throw from the Bahá’í temple. Last week a seven-month, $2 million slow-zone-elimination project started on the line north of Howard and we see yellow construction vehicles parked along the track as we roll south. Just before we reach Howard to transfer to the Yellow Line there’s an excruciating twenty-minute delay.

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95th Street through Oak Lawn is a typical suburban arterial: very wide, with high-speed traffic. Photo: Oak Lawn Public Library.

A recent decision by Illinois’s 1st District Court of Appeals could make it harder to hold city governments and individual drivers accountable for pedestrian safety.

The ruling by Justice Sheldon Harris [PDF] concerns a case in a which pedestrian was struck and killed by a driver on 95th Street in Oak Lawn. By creating a new legal precedent with a restrictive view of people’s right to walk in unmarked crosswalks, the ruling could have serious implications for pedestrian safety in the eyes of the law.

On November 9, 2009, Joan Orth, 51, was crossing 95th Street at Kenton Avenue at around 5:45 p.m. in the Village of Oak Lawn. Before she could get to the other side of the street, a driver struck and killed her. Diane Dunet, Orth’s estate administrator, filed lawsuits against Oak Lawn as well as ComEd because nearby streetlights weren’t working at the time.

The village and ComEd denied responsibility and the case was thrown out. Oak Lawn said it didn’t owe anything, arguing that Orth “was not an intended and permitted user of the street where the accident occurred” because there was no marked crosswalk, according to the ruling. The village government also argued that the darkened street lights didn’t cause the crash but “presented an opportunity” for it, adding that the crash was the fault of the driver of the vehicle who struck Orth, for which Oak Lawn could not be held liable.

A look at a satellite image of the intersection taken on November 23, 2009 (see map below), confirms there is an unmarked crosswalk across 95th Street, which has six travel lanes and two parking lanes. Orth was struck in a westbound lane, near the center of the street. Attorneys say that Flanagan’s ruling sets a precedent that could weaken the legal protections for everyone using unmarked crosswalks in Cook County.

This case is a little hard to wrap your head around, but the important precedent hinges on the following three concepts that attorney Jim Freeman helpfully explained:

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Bike storage on Metra.

Anne Alt is president of the Chicago Cycling Club and works in the Law Offices of James Freeman, a sponsor of Streetsblog Chicago. 

When legislation encouraged by then-Lt. Governor Pat Quinn allowed non-folding bikes on Metra trains for the first time in 2005, it was a long-sought victory for Chicago area cyclists. Gaining a new way to transport bikes has allowed thousands to take car-free trips throughout the metro area for transportation and recreation.

The user experience and degree of access has varied and evolved since then. The number of blackout dates when bikes are not allowed has steadily shrunk, with some assistance from our friends at the Active Transportation Alliance. Seeing bikes on Metra trains has become a daily occurrence. This inspired one rider to write a user’s guide and another to create a “Can I bring my bike on Metra right now?“ app.

In the early years, conductors or station security staff, unfamiliar with the new bike policy, often prevented cyclists from bringing their bikes on board, even when the schedules available in print and online stated that bikes would be allowed on that train. Unannounced blackout dates were not unusual. Metra policy required a bungee cord to secure the bike so it couldn’t roll while the train was in motion. Cyclists who were infrequent passengers, or new to taking bikes on Metra, weren’t all aware of this and were sometimes denied boarding if they didn’t have a bungee cord. If there were conflicts with other passengers over use of the designated bike space, conductor assistance was uncommon. Over the last several years, conductors have become familiar with the bike policy and their treatment of cyclists has improved.

Some conductors have even used Metra to bring their own bikes downtown to use when they’re not working. Now they’re more likely to allow some improvisation for securing a bike on the train (such as a belt, cable lock, or U-lock) if a rider does not have a bungee cord. A small change made to the policy helps with those situations. “Bicycles must be secured to the lower rail of folding seats in the priority seating area with long bungee cords (approximately 36 inches recommended) or other devices supplied by the cyclist which adequately secure the bicycle.”

Some of us who ride Metra regularly have noticed the impact of an unadvertised budget measure on bike access: a reduction in the number of open ADA accessible cars on off-peak trains. ADA accessible cars are the only ones where non-folding bikes are allowed. Due to variations in operating procedures and differences in ridership between Metra lines, this change affects some lines more than others. The bike capacity advertised on Metra’s bike policy page and in schedules is based on having 2-4 open ADA cars per train (varying by line and run) and space for up to five bikes per ADA car on diesel trains (increased from three in 2010), and a two-bikes-per-car limit on Metra Electric.

All Metra Electric cars are accessible, with platform-level entry vestibules. On other lines, the number of accessible cars per diesel trainset varies, but is usually less than half the total number of cars. There are many older, non-accessible cars still in use in the Metra system with stairs, but no lifts. The limited number of ADA cars isn’t just an issue for cyclists. We are competing for space with disabled passengers, families with children in strollers, and travelers with suitcases, so the space limitation affects all these Metra riders. A cyclist can lose out by getting bumped if space becomes too tight. When the number of open cars (particularly ADA cars) is too low for the number of boarding passengers (a frequent issue on weekends and holidays), train delays result and everyone loses.

I asked local cyclists to share their Metra experiences through a survey. About half of survey respondents (48 out of 98) are reverse commuters. Some are daily, year-round bike-train commuters, while others use this as an occasional option. Several respondents regularly use a folding bike to avoid space conflicts and eliminate the possibility that they could be denied boarding. (Metra policy allows folding bikes, folded and bagged, on all trains at any time.)

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Editor’s note: Streetsblog accepts guest posts with viewpoints different than our own. Lynn Stevens is an urban planner, blogger at Peopling Places, and long-time neighborhood booster for Logan Square where she’s been an active participant in Bike/Walk Logan Square, the Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival, the Logan Square Corridor Development Initiative, and the (now defunct) Zoning Advisory Committee.

Different ways to pay on CTA and Pace.

Man walks into a coffee shop, orders a cup of coffee, reaches in his pocket for cash.

Barista: “That’ll be $3.00.”

Man: “I thought coffee was $2.25.”

Barista: “It is, but we charge you 25¢ for the cream.”

Man: “But I don’t want cream.”

Barista: “We charge you for it whether you want it or not. And 50¢ for the limited use cup.”

Man: “That’s outrageous! That’s false advertising.”

Barista: “There is a way around it.”

Man: “Oh, okay. How?”

Barista: “You can buy our coffee card.”

Man: “Ok, let me do that.”

Barista: “That’ll be $5.00.”

Man: “What?! Now you’re going to charge me $5.00 for a cup of coffee?!”

Barista: “Well, after you buy your card, you can go online or call the 800 number and give them your name, address, phone number, date of birth, Social Security number… Ha ha. Just kidding about that last one! But you register the card and then you can immediately use the $5.00 value. It’s designed to save patrons time and money, and provides a unique opportunity to combine your coffee account with a debit card for other retail purchases.”

Man: “But I still only want a $2.25 cup of coffee.”

Barista: “You can use the balance on your card next time you come in.”

Man: “But it’ll be two years before I’m back in Chicago.”

Barista: “Oh,” said quietly and with disappointment.

Man: “What?”

Barista: “If you haven’t used the card in 18 months, we charge you $5.00 a month to make sure you don’t lose the $3.75 balance on your card.”

Man sighs with exasperation.

Barista: “Unless,” said with some hope.

Man: “What?”

Barista: “You could use a debit or credit card.”

Man: “Why didn’t you tell me that in the first place? I just want a $2.25 cup of coffee…black…today.

After man swipes his credit card (without an RFID chip), the machine prompts him to verify the amount of $3.00.

Man: “What?!!!!!”

After reading his recent article on Ventra, I joked with Steven Vance that even he must acknowledge that he covered many points in order to make it “clear” that the Ventra card was “simple,” and that he updated the post to make it even more “clear.” Clear and simple it is not.

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Check your wallet. Do you have the "wave" logo on your credit or debit card? If so, you're ready to use Ventra, and all you have to do to add multi-day passes or receive transit tax benefits is register your card with Ventra.

Ventra, you may have heard, is the new fare payment system for Chicago Transit Authority and Pace. (Metra will not be joining the Ventra system, and is currently testing other fare payment methods.) CTA is switching to Ventra to save $5 million per year on maintaining outdated fare collection technology, according to spokesperson Lambrini Lukidis.

“We also print 35 million transit cards and passes each year,” she said. That’s a lot of waste! Lambrini also mentioned that the credit card industry is moving in the same direction and will be phasing out magnetic stripe cards in the next few years, saying, “We’re ahead of the curve on this, but our main motivation is to make paying more efficient and to mirror the retail experience.”

As with any transition, there will probably be an adjustment period, but the CTA doesn’t deserve the scolding about its communications that Jon Hilkevitch dished out in his Tribune column today. The transition is not as complicated as Hilkevitch makes it out to be. Here’s what you need to know.

The basics

The most important aspect of Ventra is that users will be able to pay fares with their own bank-issued credit or debit card. So you might be able to use the system without acquiring any new cards. This should make paying fares faster and convenient without adding any cost.

If you won’t be using your own bank card, you can get a Ventra Card at 145 train stations or more than 2,000 retail locations, over the phone, or via the Ventra website.

You can buy transit fares with cash or credit at the Ventra vending machines, but if you choose to receive a disposable paper ticket instead of buying a new Ventra Card or reloading an existing one (with cash or credit/debit), you will have to pay an extra 75 cents (for a single transfer and the cost of the paper ticket). CTA and Pace buses will still accept cash, and the fare will not change from $2 and $1.75, respectively.

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The remains of Suominen's car. Photo from Naperville Police Department.

Exactly how does a man charged with driving drunk at over 140 MPH who crashes his car into a billboard avoid jail time? Last month Dean A. Suominen, 37, of Shorewood was zooming down Ogden Avenue in Naperville when he lost control of his Dodge Charger and careened off the road, smashing into a billboard post and fence near an apartment complex, city officials said.

According to the Naperville Patch, first responders found Suominen trapped inside his car in a yard near the complex and extricated him. During the crash the vehicle’s engine was torn loose and thrown into a nearby parking lot. One of the tires also flew into the lot and damaged a parked car. Police found the driver’s blood alcohol level to be .20, more than twice the legal limit. His car’s computer system showed that it had been traveling at 142 MPH when it left the road.

Suominen plead guilty to misdemeanor DUI and reckless driving, the Chicago Tribune reports. The judge sentenced him to two years of supervision and 100 hours of community service but no jail time. The driver will also need to pay $3,000 in fines, fees and restitution, as well as undergoing an alcohol evaluation and attending a victim impact panel, city officials said.

Suominen is extremely lucky to be alive, but imagine what would have happened if he had been less fortunate and struck one or more innocent bystanders. Why does someone else need to be injured or killed before the law considers a car moving at a terrifyingly fast velocity to be a deadly weapon? High-speed drunk driving should not be a misdemeanor but a felony.

"Can we board this car?" Photo by Melissa McClarin.

Chicago Cycling Club president Anne Alt is collecting information from Chicagoland residents about their how they combine bicycling with Metra trips, for a survey that will be open until next Wednesday. She explains the survey’s purpose:

Allowing bikes on Metra has been a huge boost to cyclists and sustainable transportation in the metro area. Unadvertised service cuts (in terms of available space) have impacted Metra’s ability to deliver the access that was previously available and still implied by advertised bike capacity. Other changes (better conductor familiarity with Metra policy on bikes, reduced number of blackout dates) have resulted in some improvements to bike access.

“I wanted to get a better sense of how much access has been affected on various lines, and what other passengers’ experiences have been,” Alt said. She’ll use the survey results for an upcoming article we’ll publish on Streetsblog.

Traffic backs up at North and Ashland, where people are trying to drive onto the Kennedy Expressway at the North Avenue on-ramp.

Chicagoland has a lot of traffic congestion, according to this year’s Urban Mobility Report from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute [PDF], yet we continue to build more roads while transit service and walking and biking facilities don’t seem to increase as fast. Meanwhile, gas taxes and other fees on drivers fail to pay for all the roadbuilding, meaning we’re subsidizing a very ineffective, inefficient system. A local campaign to implement congestion pricing holds the promise of easing congestion, reducing road subsides, and increasing investment in transit, biking, and walking — but only if Chicago gets it right.

TTI released its annual Urban Mobility Report earlier this week, and lo and behold, Chicago is once again on the list of the country’s most congested cities, along with New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC. This isn’t exactly news. The report, which is based on a flawed methodology and often used to justify highway expansions, says the same thing every year: Congestion exerts a huge toll on our economy — $121 billion in 2011. While the report has its flaws, maybe that dollar figure can be an impetus to reduce traffic on our streets. (Here’s another one, which can’t be so easily misconstrued to support wider roads: Traffic crashes cost our country $300 billion a year.)

Increasing cycling rates will be harder as long as driving is so heavily subsidized.

The report authors make the standard recommendation to build more stuff, saying, “Projects that provide more road lanes and more public transportation service are part of the congestion solution package in most growing urban regions.” But we know that building more roads doesn’t reduce congestion. In fact, as former NJ DOT executive Gary Toth wrote on Streetsblog Capitol Hill yesterday, the TTI report is great proof that decades of highway building haven’t solved the problem.

TTI’s Chicago-specific report [PDF] shows that road capacity in the region continues to grow, as does the number of trips we make by car and by transit; the population is also slightly increasing. The authors don’t expect biking and walking to grow any faster. Given current conditions, they have a point: Even though Chicago is adding bike lanes at a rapid clip, as long as driving remains heavily subsidized, it’s harder for biking and walking – and transit – to compete.

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Proposed Devon Avenue streetscape improvements include neighborhood-specific pavement markings, new social spaces and seating, and with shorter crosswalks at some intersections.

The Illinois Department of Transportation announced last week [PDF] that it is distributing over $20 million in Illinois Transportation Enhancement Program funds to bicycle and pedestrian projects in the Chicagoland area. Highlights for Chicago include:

• A streetscape project on Devon Avenue that will improve the pedestrian environment for two blocks between California Avenue and Rockwell Street. This segment is part of a larger project to improve the streetscape from Kedzie Avenue to Leavitt Street (East of Leavitt, Devon has already received a streetscape overhaul). The project will widen sidewalks, build curb extensions to reducing crossing distances for pedestrians, and add seating, lighting, and trees. Download the proposal.
• A new streetscape on Blue Island Avenue for the two blocks between 19th and 21st Street. This is a depressed-looking part of Pilsen and part of Blue Island Avenue commercial corridor. It has a very wide roadway, with much more aspalt than the current volume of traffic requires. We are awaiting a response from Alderman Danny Solis’s office about details of the proposed changes.

Also of note are two projects for inner suburbs:

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Local cyclists have long dreamed of a complete network of bicycle paths along the various branches of the Chicago River. This fall we’ll be moving three miles closer to that goal when the Cook County Forest Preserve District begins construction on a southern extension of the North Branch Trail. Meanwhile, the trail is also being expanded about a mile east from its northern terminus to connect with the Green Bay and Robert McClory trails.

One of the region’s most beloved multi-use trails, the North Branch currently stretches about 18 miles from Devon and Caldwell on Chicago’s Northwest Side, ending at the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe. It roughly parallels the North Branch of the river, meandering through lush forest preserve land where deer are a common sight. The path attracts over 250,000 users annually, partly because it’s a convenient car-free route to the garden for both city dwellers and suburbanites.

For years the southern extension has appeared on local bike maps as a dotted line, indicating that it was proposed but not built. The proposal to extend the trail south has been around since 1995, according to Pamela Sielski, a landscape architect with the Forest Preserve District. “But we have over 100 miles of paved bike trails to maintain and many other projects and funding priorities,” she explains. “It’s like a house – you have a lot of things to take care of so you have to prioritize.”

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