Streetsblog Chicago

The crash occurred on Milwaukee Avenue, near the black parked car.

Last Thursday at around 4:30 p.m., a driver crashed into a bicyclist returning from a quick trip to The Bike Lane, a bike shop on Milwaukee Avenue across from the Congress Theater. The driver fled the scene and remains at large, while the cyclist – Michael Leete, visiting from Brooklyn, New York – was left on the ground with bleeding around his brain. The driver may have been exiting or entering a parallel parking space near 2207 N Milwaukee Avenue.

The victim’s attorney, Brendan Kevenides, is seeking witnesses to the crash. (Disclosure: Kevenides and The Bike Lane are sponsors of Streetsblog Chicago.) There may be at least one witness: A passerby who arrived at the scene after the crash told Kevenides that police interviewed someone at length, but the department not yet made the crash report available, which would provide a name and contact for the witness.

Kevenides wrote on his blog about the complications of getting police to investigate the crash in a timely manner, similar to the delays seen in the Dustin Valenta case (another hit-and-run crash):

A call to the Chicago Police Department’s 14th District, which would have responded to the scene, resulted in being directed to the “Hit and Run Unit” which is a part of the CPD’s Major Accident Investigation Unit. When I spoke with a representative of the Unit today I was informed that no one would be assigned to investigate the hit and run incident until 12 days had passed from the date of the crash. Only in the event of a fatality does the Unit respond contemporaneously, I was told.

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One of the projects 49th Ward residents can vote to fund would replace this Metra shelter with a structure that offers more protection from the elements. Photo: Jeff Zoline.

Residents of the 49th Ward, which includes Rogers Park and the Loyola University Campus, can now vote on how to spend their alderman’s discretionary “menu” money. In 2010, Alderman Joe Moore became the first U.S. politician to implement this democratic budgeting process, called participatory budgeting. This year he’s allocating $1 million of the ward’s $1.3 million in menu funds for projects proposed and approved by his constituents. As in the other three wards participating in the participatory budgeting process, residents 16 and older can vote.

The first question on the ballot is what percentage of the funds should be allocated to street repaving. This year, any street repaving allocation will be combined with street lighting upgrades, with one dollar being spent on lighting for every three dollars spent on paving. That means, for example, that if voters choose to allocate 50 percent of the $1 million to street repaving, then eight blocks would be resurfaced and two blocks would get new lights, leaving $500,000 for other projects.

Four of the eleven proposals on the ballot are transportation projects, including sidewalk repair, shared-lane markings, a shelter for the Rogers Park Metra station, bus-stop benches, and a pedestrian safety study. Residents can vote for four different projects.

The bikeway proposal would add shared-lane markings (AKA “sharrows”) to 1.3 miles of Clark Street, from Howard Street to Albion Avenue (a ward boundary). This would help close the bikeway gap on Clark Street between Edgewater Avenue and Howard.

The Metra shelter project would add a 150-feet long shelter with a full-length bench to the station’s inbound platform, at a cost of $125,000. The bus stop bench proposal would install black metal benches at 15 stops that don’t currently have seating, on Clark, Howard, Rogers Avenue, and Sheridan Avenue, at a total cost of $36,750.

Finally, residents can vote on whether or not to finance an engineering study to “explore measures to enhance pedestrian safety along Sheridan Road, including curb bump-outs and changes to traffic signal and pedestrian crosswalk timings.” The street, a de facto extension of Lake Shore Drive, could certainly benefit from these improvements. Justin Haugens lives at Lunt Avenue and Sheridan and sits on the traffic and public safety committee for the 49th Ward’s participatory budgeting process. He says committee members “saw people speeding and running red lights” on Sheridan. He also said “the lights seem timed in a fashion that allows drivers who exceed the speed limit to find a ‘cushion spot’ and meet consecutive green lights.”

Early voting occurs this week at four CTA stations and the alderman’s office:

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100 block of West 91st.

Obviously, the homicide epidemic is one of the Chicago’s biggest problems, but here at Streetsblog our focus is on traffic safety, not street violence. However, sometimes the two issues intersect, as was the case in a recent crash.

Around 1:50 p.m. on Sunday, two groups of people were arguing on the 100 block of West 91st in the Princeton Park neighborhood, according to the Chicago Tribune. After the dispute escalated, someone intentionally drove a car over Andrew Prather, 26, of the 8700 block of South Burley in South Chicago, police said.

Prather was taken to Advocate Christ Hospital and Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where he died from his injuries at 4:30 p.m., according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office. An autopsy was scheduled for today.

Police are investigating the case. As of this afternoon no one is in custody, according to Officer Joshua Purkiss of Police News Affairs. We’ll try to provide an update on the case next week.

Fatality Tracker: 2013 Chicago pedestrian and bicyclist deaths

Pedestrian: 8 (7 were from hit-and-run crashes, 2 in truck crashes)
Bicyclist: 0

The Damen Blue Line station will have two Divvy stations nearby. Photo: Daniel Rangel.

Chicago’s bike-share system, which will go by the name of Divvy, is on track to launch by the Bike To Work Day Rally on June 14. Divvy will start out with 75 stations in downtown and River North before growing to about 400 stations in an area roughly bounded by Lake Michigan, Devon, California and 63rd. So will there be a bike-share station where you live or work? While station locations are still subject to change at this point, some details about the system map have emerged from aldermen’s offices.

The Chicago Department of Transportation has been briefing aldermen on potential locations in their wards. These locations are based on a variety of factors, including available space on the sidewalk, the ability to move metered parking spaces to make way for on-street bike-share stations, and ideas from residents contributed via CDOT’s suggest-a-station website and three public meetings in 2012.

Since the stations aren’t set in stone, aldermen are being cautious so far about identifying locations. But the Lakeview Patch reported on the location of 12 stations for the 44th Ward, represented by Alderman Tom Tunney. Alderman Ameya Pawar, who represents the 47th Ward, showed a partial station map in an email newsletter last week. And Streetsblog has picked up several locations in Alderman Scott Waguespack’s 32nd Ward and Alderman Proco “Joe” Moreno’s 1st Ward. CDOT did not return a request for information about station siting.

Moreno’s CDOT liaison Rudy DeJesus explained that the parts of Logan Square, Wicker Park, and Bucktown in the 1st Ward will be getting a total of 25 stations, of which 22 will be installed this year. The California and Western Blue Line stations will each get one bike-share station, and the Damen Blue Line station will have one bike-share station plus another close by “because of its proximity to the Wicker Park neighborhood,” he said.

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The intersection of Randolph Street and a Kennedy Expressway off-ramp, where Cong Ye was run over by a truck driver yesterday morning. The two mourners went to school with Cong Ye.

The driver of a vegetable oil tanker ran over and killed Catherine Cong Ye, 24, as she crossed a Kennedy Expressway off-ramp along Randolph Street while walking toward the Loop yesterday morning at around 8:30 a.m, reports ABC7. The driver was turning right onto westbound Randolph Street when the ladder on the right side of the tanker struck Cong Ye and she was then run over. She died on the scene about 15 minutes later. The driver was cited for “failure to exercise for due care for a pedestrian in a roadway,” but it appears that no criminal charges were filed.

Tazeen Hamidi, who crosses the intersection frequently, told ABC7 that she and her friends will drive to the West Loop to avoid walking across the intersection. ”Every time we walk we think of how dangerous this is when the cars are either exiting or entering the highway,” she said. “They’re so fast, so it’s really hard to cross the street.”

Off-ramps are dangerous because drivers are still adapting from the high-speed highway environment to local streets. According to Tom Vanderbilt in his book Traffic, “studies have shown that drivers who drove for at least a few minutes at 70 miles per hour drove up to 15 miles per hour faster when they hit a 30-miles-per-hour zone than drivers who had not been previously traveling at the higher speed.”

But the Chicago Police Department does not seem interested in exploring the factors that contributed to this preventable death, telling ABC7 simply that “this was incredibly bad timing and… a freak accident.” For pedestrians in Chicago, is there ever a good timing to be walking? Most pedestrian traffic injuries in Chicago’s central business district occur when the pedestrian is within a crosswalk [PDF].

The ABC7 segment demonstrates one of the major issues with walking around the Kennedy Expressway entrances downtown. People drive right over the crosswalk and ignore stop signs and stop bars:

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Demond Drummer by the 63rd/Halsted Green Line station in Englewood. Photo by John Greenfield.

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

Most Chicagoans associate Englewood with poverty and crime, but local advocates and activists see it as a neighborhood with untapped potential, with excellent access to public transportation being one of the keys to its future success. “From the beginning, Englewood was designed to be a transportation and retail hub, and that does not come up often enough in the conversation,” says Demond Drummer, a resident who works for the Teamwork Englewood community development organization.

Greater Englewood is a predominantly African-American area, roughly bounded by Garfield, Western, 79th and State. It includes two Green Line stations, three Red Line Stops, Metra’s Rock Island Main Line (although trains no longer stop here), and multiple bus routes. The New Era Trail proposal would turn a nearly two-mile, dormant rail corridor into an elevated greenway along 59th between Hoyne and Lowe. The city is also considering building bus rapid transit on Ashland, which would create yet another travel option.

“The proximity to transportation is one of Englewood’s huge assets,” says Asiaha Butler, who works in the real estate industry and president of the Resident Association of Greater Englewood (RAGE). “It can help revive the neighborhood by providing individuals with access to jobs in other parts of the city, and it can encourage new retail here. But we need businesses to be smart and strategic by locating near hubs like 63rd and Ashland, and the 63rd Street Red Line Stop.”

Greater Englewood. Image taken from Chicago Bike Map - orange lines are recommended bike routes.

Drummer agreed to meet me in the neighborhood to discuss the role sustainable transportation can play in bringing Englewood back to its former glory. “In its prime, it was the number-one, non-central-city retail location in the entire country,” he says as we stand under the Green Line tracks by the Halsted/63rd station, another one of the community’s crucial transit nodes. Just north is Kennedy-King College, which relocated here in the mid-2000s; on the northwest corner is a twelve-acre vacant lot where the Englewood Shopping Center once stood before it was demolished in 2001.

Transit hubs like 63rd and Halsted should be a no-brainer for new business investment, but why did local enterprises like the shopping mall close in the first place? “It was an inward-facing shopping center where a parking lot was all you saw walking up to it, so that didn’t help,” Drummer responds. “But you also had retail consolidation, historic racism, redlining and divestment from the neighborhood, and the shutting down of the Green Line. [The line was closed from January 1994 to May 1996 for rehab work, and six South Side stations, several in Englewood, never reopened.] These things kind of created a vicious cycle of exodus.”

Still, Drummer is optimistic that Englewood can leverage its current and future transportation options, and even use its many vacant lots to its advantage, to make an economic comeback. Teamwork Englewood recently finished an eighteen-month land-use planning process with the city and the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. “It asked the question, what do we do in the neighborhood with all these vacant lots,” Drummer says. “With the city’s new Green and Healthy Neighborhoods initiative they want to centralize retail around our transportation hubs.”

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LED lights change colors every few seconds.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Transportation Commissioner Gabe Klein held an event last Thursday to flip on the new LED lights overlooking the beautified Congress Parkway streetscape that was completed last year. I visited on Sunday evening to take a look at the lights.

Congress Parkway needed a lot of help to become a pedestrian-friendly street. John wrote in Newcity in June:

Before the rehab, the zooming cars, dearth of pedestrian facilities and abundance of grim buildings along Congress, like a Brutalist parking garage for federal employees and a windowless AT&T building, discouraged walking trips. But CDOT project director Janet Attarian says the agency did a number of things to improve safety for pedestrians and motorists alike, as well as making it a more appealing street to stroll.

Some sidewalks were widened, planter boxes and stone blocks were added to protect people from traffic, and brick crosswalks were installed along with pedestrian signals and countdown timers. The traffic lights for drivers are timed to give a green wave for motorists traveling at the speed limit of 30 mph.

These improvements will increase pedestrian safety by slowing traffic and keeping cars in their lanes. The next challenge on Congress Parkway is to attract some pedestrian-friendly ground-floor activity. Congress doesn’t have much going on: the LaSalle Blue Line station, a BP gas station, and a federal immigration office. Activity near State Street is a different story, as there are restaurants and Robert Morris University buildings up and down the street.

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At an April 3 public hearing, IDOT showed a version of Alternative 15.4 -- the option that doesn't include a noisy, blighting flyover above Halsted Street -- with six lanes, and ruled out building it. Previously this option called for five lanes at this location (see map below) and the agency had said it would consider building it.

In a move that has baffled and frustrated residents of 400 S Green Street, the Illinois Department of Transportation has apparently ruled out a version of the Circle Interchange expansion project that would avoid building a new, elevated highway ramp above Halsted Street. At an April 3 hearing on the project, IDOT told residents the option to avoid building the flyover, known as Alternative 15.4, was “off the table, not even being considered,” according to condo board president David Lewis.

Lewis said that during an earlier meeting in March with IDOT’s Paul Schneider, the agency said that Alternative 15.4 was still acceptable. Something else changed between the March meeting and the April meeting: IDOT added a lane to the westbound side of I-290 in Alternative 15.4.

Previously, the agency had always shown five lanes where westbound I-290 passes 400 S Green, as you can see in the map of 15.4 shown below. At the April meeting, the agency showed a drawing where that section of the highway had six lanes.

There are currently five lanes on I-290 next to 400 S Green, and the agency’s “preferred alternative” — which includes the Halsted flyover and would generate a lot of noise next to residences – also calls for five lanes on this section of the highway. Streetsblog has submitted multiple requests to IDOT seeking an explanation for the addition of the sixth lane in the option that doesn’t include building a flyover. The agency has not responded.

While today is the last day for public comment on the Circle Interchange project, the case of the extra highway lane raises serious questions about why IDOT has ruled out the version of the project without the Halsted flyover. Why was the sixth lane added? If the design without a flyover still called for five lanes, how would that change the cost of the project? Answers from IDOT have been in short supply.

Until April, IDOT was showing maps of "alternative 15.4" with five lanes on westbound I-290 where the highway passes by 400 S Green Street. The cross section shown at the top of the post is marked in red on the map. View a larger version of this image.

Talking to an IDOT project staffer (left) at a Circle Interchange public meeting.

Tomorrow is the final day to enter a comment into public record about the Illinois Department of Transportation’s Circle Interchange expansion project. Here’s a quick rundown of what can realistically be influenced at this point:

It goes without saying that the project’s elevated highway ramps, or flyovers, will be an aesthetic blight and a detriment to the pedestrian experience. Flyovers are dark, dirty, and feel unsafe. They also cost a lot to maintain.

IDOT’s “preferred alternative,” known as 7.1C, puts an overpass above Halsted Street and within 22 feet of the apartment building at 400 S Green Street (note that this is 15 feet further away from the building than in IDOT’s previous proposal). Another option IDOT is considering would put the same ramp under Halsted Street, at the same level as existing lanes. According to IDOT documents, one reason the agency doesn’t favor this option is because drivers would be merging into I-290 at a maximum speed of 40 mph, not 55 mph; another reason is that it will cost $8 million more and require more closures during construction.

To comment on the project, you can email Steve Schilke, Paul Schneider, or Ann Schneider at IDOT. You can also call Ann Schneider at (217) 782-5597, or send a comment to:

Steve Schilke c/o Paul Schneider
Illinois Department of Transportation Bureau of Programming
201 W. Center Court
Schaumburg, IL 60196

There’s also the option to leave a comment online, though this seems less certain to reach the intended recipient.

Clark Street and Addison Avenue, as seen from the top of Wrigley Field. Note the pedestrians streaming across Addison. Photo: systymf/Flickr

Today Mayor Rahm Emanuel, 44th Ward Alderman Tom Tunney, and the Chicago Cubs announced that they’ve reached a deal for modifications to Wrigley Field and the surrounding neighborhood. Thanks in part to a petition signed by over 230 people and other organizing efforts, a proposed 500-space parking garage near the ballpark won’t be part of the bargain, sparing the neighborhood a traffic generator and that would have made existing problems worse. However, the final agreement also includes the removal of sidewalks on two streets next to Wrigley, so the stadium can be expanded.

As part of the deal, for the next three years the Cubs will subsidize a remote parking lot for fans, located about two miles west of the stadium at Addison and Rockwell on DeVrey University’s campus. Remote parking is already a bargain at only $6 per car, plus a free shuttle bus ride to the ballpark for everyone in it; eliminating the fee should encourage more people to drive to the remote lot, located near the Kennedy Expressway, instead of the neighborhood streets near Wrigleyville.

The Cubs will also be doubling remote parking capacity from 500 to 1,000 spaces; it’s not clear yet where the additional spaces will be located. After three years, the fee may be reinstated if the annual expense for the Cubs exceeds $100,000. Alternately, the free parking may be bankrolled by other local sources.

One of the distinct setbacks in the deal is that it will allow the Cubs to eliminate sidewalks from one side of Waveland and Sheffield to make room for expanding the stadium – at no charge. The city will also permit the Cubs to build an overhead pedestrian walkway – Minneapolis-style – between the new hotel and the stadium, again without charge.

In another effort to alleviate game-day traffic headaches, the Cubs will be paying for three new traffic lights on Clark Street (including one at Waveland) where there are currently all-way stop signs. Since the traffic lights will be synchronized, the thinking is that this will help car traffic flow faster through these intersections. However, replacing all-way stop signs with lights creates new delays for pedestrians and cyclists since, unlike cars, they currently don’t need to queue up at stop signs.

In a nod to the fact that the best way to alleviate game-day congestion is to shift trips from driving to other modes, the Mayor’s Office promised in a press release [PDF] that “the Cubs, Alderman’s office and the Chicago Department of Transportation will jointly develop a marketing and awareness campaign designed to educate fans to use remote parking or other transportation alternatives, such as bikes and the CTA.” It’s not clear who will be paying for this outreach effort. While the CTA and Pace have been running bus-to-the-ballpark ad campaigns for years, spreading the message to a wider audience than existing riders may increase transit use.

The marketing effort won’t include enticements like free transit passes, however. The major new financial incentive at work is just the free remote parking.

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